The big day

The trip so far (spaghetti western?)
My room in Seligman. I had to laugh.






















I woke up in Seligman. I love the name because its the moniker of my favourite psychologist. Seligman is one of many Route 66 nostalgia towns that line the new Interstate 40. I really liked Seligman and had real cause to appreciate its existence yesterday.

I was set on seeing the Canyon today but was torn about the trouble I had to go to. I had to backtrack through freezing blizzard conditions (blizzards don't come tepid), and then try to work out a way out. The countdown to Jane's arrival was vaguely closing in on me.

I managed to luck an ideal outcome. Ride like the divvel hisself to the Canyon, get me on a heelicopter, take some photees, git back on to the said motorcycle and resume the divvel-like riding until I make the border of southern California.

$300 and 500 miles later I am happily idling my life away in Blythe, California. I had a great ride along Interstate 10 as I watched the sun drop. The classic cactus of those old westerns flashed by and I wanted to get a photo, but tomorrow will turn up a few good examples.

It was a big day but the helicopter ride was great value. Steve, the pilot, had started flying in Vietnam and was typically, impossibly congenial and super-well-mannered. Whenever I went to take a shot in his direction ( I was beside him in the cockpit) , he would lean forward or backwards to facilitate my photography. Love that sort of thing.

The others in the chopper were a young family of Canadians in the back seat and two English travellers beside me. It was funny to note the perfect timing of the lurches the helicopter took and her involuntary utterances.

The canyon is best seen from the air and I didn't actually drive into the park, but I was really happy with the way things turned out. It was a real thrill.

I went onto Flagstaff (a very sophisticated and attractive town/city) through a snowy national park, I was at 8000 ft again in risky weather and I decided I really needed to lose some altitude. (please don't be tempted to read that as 'attitude', I won't pay it).

So I launched myself towards Phoenix. I dropped 6000 ft and could see all the bad weather disappear behind me. No more bitter cold, no more endogenously depressive outbreaks.

I had no phone reception in the town and a planned meeting with a friend of a friend just wouldn't work out. I just kept going.

Jane arrives Monday so I need to be somewhere close-by.

I will have ridden about 5000 miles on the Guzzi and every day was a great adventure. I have been lucky not to have come to grief but I've tried hard to avoid that sort of thing.

I feel like it's all finishing, but Jane and I will be doing a trip up the coast and then onto Europe for a month. After a few nights in New York of course.

I better not start on the sentimentality now or they won't let me back into Australia in June.

Bloody moron country that it is. We're just Americans without the breeding.