Savoring the Switchbacks

It took me a while, but I recently took a little vacation to Sedona with my wife. While there, I shot some video with my new Go-Pro camera. I learned a bit about shooting video and a bit more about editing it. Here is the first video I shot during the vacation:

I hope to be posting again soon. I also been posting recently at the Sky Island Riders site. I posted, already, about the trip from Tucson to Sedona.

Ride on,

Howard

From Scarab Ride to Sugar High

So, once again, I have been lax about blogging. It's not quite as bad as it seems though,because I have posted a couple of times on my club site since last posting here. Today, I thought I would write about a couple of the group rides I was a part of in May and June.

The Rapture Ride

One of the scooter clubs in Phoenix is the Scarabs. We were invited to ride in their monthly ride and a couple of us decided to attempt the trek to Phoenix for this ride. Craig organized this ride and called it the Rapture Ride. (Remember the guy who said the world would end on 5/21?)

Arizona Falls - There is a lot of water around the Phoenix area.

Initially, we were going to ride up, but that meant getting up around 3am, riding 150 miles or so, doing the ride, then riding back home. We decided to truck the bikes up.

The author at AZ Falls - This is a great park!

This ride was most excellent. I have been to Phoenix many times, but I've never had the opportunity or inclination to just drive around and site see. Craig picked out a bunch of quirky points of interest and connected them together in a fun way

Here we are all parked at AZ Falls

Some of the places we checked out: AZ Capitol Building, the oldest house and the oldest commercial building in Phoenix, the Cross Cut / Williams Cemetery, Papago Park, Arizona Falls and a really nice, though difficult ride around Camelback Mountain.

The view from Camelback Mountain

A Lizard next to the road.

After taking a break at Arizona Falls, we headed for Camelback Mountain. I didn't get a pic, but we were there to get a look at Copenhaver Castle. We had a couple of novice riders with us and, unfortunately, a couple of bikes were dropped on the extremely steep road. Sorry guys.

We cruised by the Arizona Biltmore and the Wrigley Mansion.

Scooter gangsters at Hula's

Hula's French Toast

We finished this ride with brunch at Hula's Modern Tiki. I had the French Toast which has a hint of Kona Coffee in it. Very tasty.

After the ride, John and I rode to where we had left the truck. We loaded the bikes and made the 2 hour return trip back to Tucson.

My Stella's crash bars made the fit in the truck a little snug.

We both had a lot of fun and look forward to attending another Scarabs ride.

The Donut Ride

This ride had been in the works for months. I have seen other scooter clubs do rides where they cruised around tasting one particular item or another. I decided to do a donut tasting ride, but change it a bit. I created a critique form to give to everyone where we could judge each bakery, then at the end of the ride have "Tucson's Best Donut / Donut Shop."

Next to Le Caves

Since "Live to Ride / Ride to Eat" is our unofficial motto, we had a good turnout. I selected 5 local shops, then connected them with a somewhat interesting route. We met at the first shop. Critique forms and pencils were passed out and the tasting began.

This shop even had a little shrine, complete with coffee and a donut.

The ride was a LOT of fun. A group of scooters flocking in to a small donut shop attracts a bit of attention and we had fun explaining to the management of each shop, what we were doing.

At the last shop, I asked if anyone was feeling sick

This was a popular ride, so I'm now working on another "tasting" kind of ride. What should it be? Tacos? Sonoran hot dogs? Ice cream? We'll see.

My next post will probably be about a recent trip to Sedona, AZ. My wife and I went there for six days and had a grand time. I brought the scoot along and got some fine pictures as well as some video.

Ride on,

Howard