Last day in Taos. :-(

Hello from Taos, New Mexico again!

I was wrong.  Yesterday was not Friday. Yesterday was Saturday!  So that means today is Sunday!  I am ALL messed up!  

We woke up bright & early again and headed down to the Taos Diner where our pal Kristen was working again!  We brought her souvenir t-shirts from Cleveland. Bill & Sue got one from the Rock Hall while Tom & I got one from the CLE clothing company.  She wore the Rock Hall shirt yesterday but her son Victor absconded with the CLE clothing company shirt as soon as we gave it to her!  Obviously she got it back because she was sportin' it today!

Our plan for the day was to head to Santa Fe, about 60 miles from Taos. We stopped along they way for some pix of the Rio Grande.  It's sooooo pretty out here!!! 

Here's Tom, putting his foot in the Rio Grande!

 About half way there Tom noticed his engine light came on.  Then his battery light.  Then his voltage went down to 11-ish.  Crap. He had his voltage regulator fixed a few years back when we were with Cyndi & Dan in Salem, Mass.  Did that take a crap again?  We pulled over at a gas station in Española to formulate a plan.  There's a dealership in Santa Fe, but the Google said they were closed on Sunday.  There's also a dealership in Albuquerque, but that was another 40 or 60 miles from Santa Fe.  Crap.  We decided to wing it and check the Sante Fe dealership first.  Perhaps the Google was incorrect!  As we're enroute, a bazillion plans of attack are going through my head. It's a holiday weekend.  If they're closed tody they'll probably be closed tomorrow too.  We're on a tight schedule and we have to leave Taos in the morning.  Maybe we could ship Tom's bike and half our crap back home and continue on my bike?  Crap.  No matter what, we have GOT to be in Nashville Thursday night for the Iron Maiden/Megadeth show!  

I still had enough thought to snap a pic of the camel rock during my fretting.....

Luckily, my internal scheming was all for naught!  As we pull up to the dealership in Santa Fe we see that not only are they open, they're having a big event with tents and food and demo rides of the 2014 models!  We pull up to the service area and the guys there are super-nice.  They get right to work on Tom's bike.  That's usually the case when you're from out of town.  They go out of their way to get you on the road again. They close at 4 so that gave us plenty of time to hop on my bike and continue into Old-Town Santa Fe.  However, we got sidetracked by a 2014 Ultra on the floor.  (Side note...I apologize for the following bike-talk for my non-riding friends. I may lose a few of you here!)  The salesman gave us the rundown of all the changes for the new models, and there are a TON!  I'm kinda liking them, except....they don't offer a detachable tour pack yet.  They no longer make the Classic so for my next bike I'll be forced into an Ultra.  That won't be for several years though.  By then they should have the detachable tour-Pak thing figured out!  Tom was interested in a demo ride on the new Ultra so he went out to sign up while I paid for t-shirts inside.  By the time I got out there he was just about finished filling out the required forms.  They lady working the tent asked if I wanted to do a demo ride also.  "Nah", I told her.  If anything I'd want to demo the Ultra also and they were all spoken for.  Also, I told her I didn't want to put a helmet on my head in this heat!  (Helmets required for demo rides.). She asked what I currently ride.  I told her an Electra Glide Classic.  The next part is a RIOT..... She then tells me, "you know what bike you'd really like and you should ride is the Heritage Softail."  I looked at her like she had 3 heads!  I asked her why I would want to go from an Electra Glide to a Heritage?  (No radio, no faring, less luggage room, less comfortable!). THIS was her response....."well, you know when you get older you probably won't be able to hold that bike up anymore!" She went on say "I just turned 70 and I can't hold a Street Glide up anymore so I had to go with a Heritage."  I was dumbfounded!  Im thinking to myself...Ok lady, I'm 44 years old so I have at least 25 years to worry about what I can hold up when I'm 70!  Why the Hell would I want to test ride a bike in which I have no interest today?  Just then the lady sitting next to her in the booth piped up and pointed out to Ms. Bonehead "Um...look at how long her legs are....I don't think she'll ever have trouble holding up any bike!"  HAHAAHAAAAHAhaaaa!  THANK YOU!!!  

I noticed that there were helmeted people on bikes in a line, ready to pull out.  "This is group 4", she tells Tom.  "You'll be in group 5 which will leave at 1:10.  The ride lasts about 20 minutes"  (It was only 12:30).  WHAT???? What kind of demo ride is this?  A lame-ass guided parade that's gonna take up all of our afternoon?  I guess demo rides are different than test rides and this deal was LAME!  I mean, if we were captive there for a few hours then it would be OK.  But we had my bike to hop on and get the Hell out of there to see Santa Fe!  Tom told her "never mind" on the "demo parade"!  We saddled up on mine and went to the Old-Town part of the city, with all the cool shops and restaurants!  After a delicious lunch at the San Francisco Street Bar & Grill, we moseyed around, looking at all the cool stuff we can't afford!  

Meanwhile, the dealership called Tom and said the problem was a bad stator. He's looking at about $600 dollars.  "Is that OK?" he asked. Do we have a choice?  hahahaa!  some of the most expensive souveniers from our road trips are the ones you can't see!  Bike parts!  At about 3 we decided to head back to the dealership, Tom's bike was just about ready.  (They also found that his inner primary bearing was shot, so they replaced that too.)  

Back on the road....back to Taos!  Before too long the skies over the mountains started looking hinky.  Yep....rainstorms.  We were heading right for 'em.  

Before we could pull off to get the rain suits on it hit us.  Hard.  Hail and everything.  Bah.  Cold, stinging, blinding rain & hail.  

We took the next exit and found semi-shelter at a gas station to suit up. The wind was blowing the rain around so hard there wasn't too much dry area under the pump canopy!  Soon we were on he road again.  Luckily the rain didn't last too long and were we're able to shed the rain suits in Española. This gave our wet clothes underneath a chance to dry as well as we continued back to Taos!  

Once back at home base, Tom and I opted to eat at Guadalajara Grill again. 

I'm gonna backtrack to last night here.....as we parked our bikes in not-so-legal spots and were making our way to the Cantina, some guy walking by with his wife says "Hey! You can't park your bikes there!"  We weren't quite sure what to make of him or who he was.  His wife broke the ice though, saying "don't listen to him! He's always joking around like that!"  We chuckled, they got on their bikes, and they were off.  

As we were placing our order at the Guadalara Grill counter, I noticed the couple in front of us was the same from last night!  Tom said "I'm gonna tell him he can't park his bike there". I told Tom to resist the urge and just leave him alone!  Of course Tom couldn't resist!  This guy got so upset!  He pointed at Tom's bike and said "look!  There's another bike here!"  Tom said "that bikes OK, but where you're parked is for cars only."  This guy has a cane and he's waving it around and I think he's gonna whack Tom with it!  Just then his wife recognized me from last night and started cracking up!  HAHAAHAAAAHAhaaaa!  Finally someone messed with her husband the way he messes with everyone else!  We ended up sharing a table with them and chatted up a storm!  Their names are Stan and Linda and they live in Amarillo!  "Hey!  We're heading to Amarillo tomorrow" we tell them!  They're heading back home tomorrow as well.  He's a retired school superintendent. She didn't start riding unti she was 55 years old.  She's now 68.  They've ridden to ALL 50 states!  He admits that they cheated for Hawaii, though.  They flew and rented bikes over there!  They were such a neat couple and I'm really glad to have met them and shared stories!  We finished eating and bid each other farewell and safe travels!  Cool stuff!  

Well, tomorrow we're on the road again!  Amarillo by morning..... Well, by late afternoon!

See ya in Texas!