Once again I'm at it again! I took my own advice " say YES! and figure it out later", and have launched myself into a road trip across the western USA on a motorcycle. I was due to return to teaching in Saudi Arabia July 1, 2012, but it was changed to September 1, 2012. Having been given a free two months to play I quickly jumped on the internet to look for a street legal dirt bike to ride for fun. I started contacting many of my friends on the possible route I intended to take, and after riding the bike around town for a few days I felt, more so hoped, that the bike would be road trip worthy. In short, I packed my backpack and a motorcycle tank bag and set off! I wasn't sure of where I would be sleeping every night, when I would be in any particular destination, who I would be seeing or meeting along the way, or even if the motorcycle was really even capable of making the entire trip. There were many things that could go wrong as well as many things that could make this road trip a success. These would eventually unfold as I continued on my journey.
The first leg of the journey was from Grand Junction, Colorado to Moab, Utah. My dad decided to accompany me for the beginning of the journey because , much like myself, he loves adventures, camping, and always being a father he wanted to know I'd be okay overall. We ended up hiking 3 miles in the Arches National Park. I don't suggest hiking this far in converse all stars shoes, but I work with what I have, and that's all I had! That night was spent swimming and camping along the river. We tested out the tents and equipment so the next morning I decided that it would probably be wise to take a tent and air mattress for future nights that I may be camping. I had minimal survival gear and felt comfortable with what I had for this trip, but having the addition of the mat and tent might be a wise decision.
The next leg was to go from Arches National Park to Zion Canyon. I encountered some rain and high winds along the way. These are two forces of nature that aren't appreciated greatly when I'm flying down the freeway at 80mph on a dirt bike with knobby tires. The bike is fairly lightweight and has a high center of gravity so I got tossed around quite a bit on it on the freeways. After seeing the foul weather my dad and I decided to head to Mesquite, Nevada instead. On the way the bike started to pause a bit. We pulled over and let the bike cool down. This was my first "uh oh" moment of my trip. I personally know that I could physically handle anything this trip could throw at me, but my biggest concern was if the bike could make it along with me. I had been riding the bike in the top gear at 80 mph for hours on end in 100 degree weather. I was pushing it to its limits to make sure it could handle the entire trip I had planned. The motorcycle needed to cool down, but after cooling down near a Kawasaki dealership conveniently located nearby just in case the problem was any worse, we made it to Mesquite. Mesquite is a fairly strange destination. It's a few hours from Las Vegas and I failed to understand why people would go there to gamble when they could just go a little further to Vegas. It seemed like the land of lost souls gambling away their last pennies in hopes of winning that one multi million dollar life changing win, but without the fun and smiles of enjoying themselves.
The next morning I would be parting ways with my dad and continuing on to Las Vegas, Nevada. I made it there in good time and the slight rain kept the bike cool as I road into the city with no additional problems. I met up with my friend Christian who I had worked on the Bruce Willis movie, Tears of the Sun, with back in 2002. He was now a promoter at the Palms hotel in Las Vegas, and that meant that the fun was about to begin. I stayed with him and his brother at their apartment. Their oldest brother was in town as well for a bachelor party and that just meant that things were about to get even more over the top crazy for us. We did Vegas big! I felt like a VIP getting to go to all the clubs at night, pool parties in the day, and even attended the bachelor party on the 48th floor of the hotel with about 20 black guys and me, the token white guy! I always seem to be finding myself out of place, but that's how great stories are created. Now what actually happened I can not say, but I must admit I'm glad I didn't volunteer for anything. These three brothers treated me like family, and my time in Las Vegas was very well spent. I continued to work on my personal growth and not be so shy by meeting new people and striking up conversations with strangers. I met some great people and I don't think I'll ever be able to do Vegas like I did this time.
After my last day in Las Vegas it was time to ride out west to San Diego, California. It just so happen that it was Gay Pride weekend. Since for part of my trip in San Diego I would be staying with a friend from Hawaii that was gay I knew this was about to be a weekend to compete with what had all just gone down in Las Vegas. Upon arrival I got to hang out with another hawaii friend Kayla. We did a tour of the city since I had never been there. We had some delicious Acai bowls, looked at the fishies in the tide pools, walked the boardwalk, and ate late night burgers from In and Out. I quickly realized that this road trip wasn't just about seeing new places, but it was equally about spending time with my friends and actually getting to know them on a deeper level. I got to see how my friends lived their daily lives in the places they called home for the time being. Once the weekend started then the Pride events started as well. In a nutshell, I hugged super feminine filipino boys in drag, met random women riding my bike around town and ended up in a gay bar with them, met a bunch of incredibly great new friends ( Lance, Paul, Antonio, Fernando, Vanessa, Dan), partied on the rooftop of a hotel, went to a cabana party at the block party, had a coffee date with the beautiful bartender girl after and ran out of gas on our way there, ate a $10 sausage that was worth every penny at the Pride party in the park, ate breakfast at Snoozes with a guest appearance by Kayla again, went on a 4.5 mile hike in converse again, spent time in the jacuzzi again, and met the guy that would let me stay at his apartment in San Francisco in the following days to come. After this amazing time I decided to spend a short time in Los Angeles, California.
In LA I stayed at a friends house that is always a blast to hang out with. I had worked with him on Hawaii 5-0 TV show in 2010 and we always have a ball when we hang out. The highlight of my time with Skeeter was having a contest to see who could kick the M&M further in the parking lot, in which I won! Of course he would be quick to blame the curb that jumped out in front of his M&M, but I didn't recall seeing the curb move at all. I could be wrong, but i highly doubt that. On rare occasions I may be wrong, but this was not one of them. We just do stupid stuff like that and its such a great time together. These are the things I cherish in life. The simple joys. Skeeter also passed on a sweatshirt to me that he was getting rid of, and I would soon find out in the next upcoming days that it was the best gift I could have received since I had failed to check the weather of any of my destinations. I also got to meet up with my long time friend from Hawaii, Jason Fracaro. I love this guys drive to succeed in the entertainment industry. I linked him and Skeeter up last year and this allowed Jason to get his foot a little further in the door. Mission accomplished. I love connecting people with the right people. It's something I take pride in. Connecting people is so easy to do and it benefits both parties. Jason and I went for a motorcycle ride to Malibu and around the greater LA area. We hit some turns, split some lanes, and just had a great day hanging out again. It was great to catch up with these two and see how they were progressing in life and continuing to grow in their lives. It motivates me to succeed more when I see my friends doing it as well.
After two nights in LA I decided to make the long trip between Los Angeles to San Francisco via the famously scenic Highway 1 along the Pacific Coast of California. I highly suggest that everybody take this route sometime in their life. It took me about 11 hours to get from LA to San Francisco, but it was well worth it. The gas in Big Sur at $5.99/gallon was a bit rough though, but the curves of the road, the cliffs, and the islands off the coastline were amazing. Along the way my gut told me that I should check the oil level on my motorcycle. When I did I realized that my motorcycle had been burning it off with how hard I was pushing it. It was lower than it should have been so I momentarily had to backtrack 6 miles to top it off, and keep the bike running at top performance for the future. One thing I had not thought to look up was the weather of any of my destinations. I soon realized this as I approached San Francisco. With 5 layers of clothing on, one of them being the sweatshirt from Skeeter, I rolled into San Fran well after dark, with ice cold hands. The temperature there was much lower than the surrounding areas I had been. I met up with Antonio, whom I had met in San Diego, and sat down in Castro to eat some sushi, meet more new friends, and to defrost my hands. I was amazed by Antonio's hospitality of letting me stay at his place overnight on my journey after only meeting him one night in San Diego. He is a true testament to the core of the Human Race that we all want to get along in harmony and are willing to help out our common man.
The next morning I loaded everything back onto my motorcycle and set off to cross the Golden Gate Bridge as I exited the Bay Area. Being the tourist that I am I pulled over at the lookout point to take a picture of my bike in front of the bridge that was half hidden by the early morning fog. There was a vietnamese family that was showing interest in my motorcycle and wanted to take a picture, but they were to shy to ask. I knew this because the young girl literally said quite loudly, " I'm toooo shy!". Understanding their feeling, and continually trying to work on my shyness on this trip, I in turn asked them to take a pic with me instead. So we all took pictures and everyone had a great couple minutes together.
With this great start to my day, I was then ready to continue on to the Redwood forrest in Northern California. I continued north and continued to pull over to take pictures of anything along the way that I found to be fascinating. The redwood trees were larger than you can imagine. You could drive through some of them. Seeing nature on this large scale makes you really think about the world and its natural resources. Nature is absolutely stunning when we just let it be. I stopped at the Trees of Mystery and took the sky tram to the top to take a look around. The air was crisp and the trees were large. It felt great to be in nature just soaking it up. After 9 hours of riding the motorcycle north the temperature started to get the best of me again, but this time I didn't have a friend to stay with. I had rode to Eureka, California and the temperatures had dropped drastically as well as the sun was getting low in the sky. I decided to call Eureka home for the night and pulled into the Safeway grocery store to order up a hot chocolate, let my hands defrost again, and to jump on my smartphone to look for low cost hotels or campgrounds. This was the first time on this trip that I really didn't have a place to sleep. It was now time to put on the big boy pants and figure things out. I decided on a KOA campground up the road figuring that the weather wasn't as cold as it felt when I wasn't actually riding. I pulled in, set up my tent, and quickly met my neighbors who were a boyfriend and girlfriend that had come from Santa Cruz up north to look at rentals to live in. Once again I kept up with my personal growth of meeting new people. We played poker with nickels and pennies, had a small fire in the pit, and they ever so generously offered me their extra sleeping bag since that was the one item I had not decided to pack. I probably would have been okay with all the layers of clothing I had along with my emergency cover that would keep additional body heat against my body, but I figured I shouldn't risk it if the sleeping bag was being offered. This was another testament to the true kindness of humans from one to another. The sun set, and we all called it a night. That evening the due was heavy and wet. I woke up to one of my converse shoes being soaked since it had been touching the edge of my tent from the inside. Not the most pleasant thing to wake up to since I was expecting to ride out in the early morning cold weather. Luckily the restrooms were equipped with the automatic hand dryers that quickly dried my shoes and saved my feet from being frozen. The ten minutes spent drying my shoe, and charging my phone up, were well worth it in the long run. The ride then continued on.
The next morning I continued on towards Portland, Oregon to meet up 8 hours later with a long time friend of almost 20 years, Morgan. En route there were beautiful lakes, low lying clouds over the mountains, people playing in the winding rivers, herds of wild Elk, and warm sunny skies that accompanied me across Oregon. This was the type of weather I had preferred, especially after the hand numbing drop in temperature in San Francisco and Eureka! I knew that I would be spending a few days in Portland to recoup and rest after three days of riding for a consistent 28 hours on the motorcycle, and I hadn't spent time with my childhood friend for more than 3 years. Portland was a great place to talk about our growing success as young adults, eat great foods, have a gym session to stay healthy on my journey, and to get ready for the rest of the trip. I also decided to buy a little sleeping bag just in case the weather temperatures dropped as I headed to Idaho and Wyoming. Portland is always an amazing city that is also the easiest city to get around for free. The city is laid out in four quadrants, the Northeast-Northwest-Southeast-Southwest, and it has free trains to take you all throughout each of them. The restaurants are amazing and there are plenty of places with sidewalk seating to have a coffee or meal. If you are ever in the northwest of the USA you should make it a point to see the layout and culture of this city.
The next leg of my journey would be to head more north to Tacoma, Washington, which is located just below Seattle. I had been here back in 2002, but didn't really get a chance to explore the area to much. This time around I got to experience the incredible sunsets on the water, the intertwining network of bridges, and I got to see a friend I hadn't seen in years. All around it was well worth coming here. My friend, Rosablanca, and I planned a day trip up to Vancouver, Canada. We figured we would ride up saturday morning and come back that evening. That was the original plan, but then we figured an overnighter may allow us to not rush so much and see more. We packed a bag or two and off we went. Upon arrival, we asked directions at a gas stations since I hadn't thought much about crossing the border to a foreign country, but my cell phone server had. Up came the text message telling me just how expensive it would be if I used my gps there. So reverting back to old school methods of navigation I promptly got us lost. The upside was that we found this amazing beach area near a huge lake. There were tons of people enjoying the sunny blue skies. We could see the city area off in the distance so we then knew what direction we should head in. The best part of traveling is having time on your hands for excursions like this that really make the trip worthwhile. 
After we checked into a hotel we found out that there would be a firework competition being put on by Italy, and about 400,000 people would be in attendance. We rode downtown again, ate some incredible organic pizza, and walked down to beach. I was lucky enough to meet another photogrpaher who was from Saudi Arabia so we talked about home and photography.
After my return to Tacoma I got to meet a friend that I had only known from online so that was great to finally meet in person.I also rode out to Mount Rainier and was able to capture some amazing photos from there. I had been thinking about how cool it would be to hold some flowers in the foreground of a picture with the mountain in the back when all of a sudden I go around the bend in the road and this entire hillside of flowers granted me that wish!
I still hadn't learned my lesson yet to check the weather though. I really thought that hey it's summer so it will be warm everywhere! Sometimes I find myself questioning my own stupidity, but in all it's never over anything that killed me. IT could have, but didn't. So I left Tacoma to cross through the mountains on my way to Idaho. This is where it was rather cold again at 9am. I was layered up and charging through the clouds the hung low across the mountains and sometimes even across the roads. As I started to come down from the mountains the temperatures slowly increased.
By the time I pulled into Boise, Idaho, the temperatures were at 100 degrees! Riding the bike on the tail end of a 11 hour ride at 90mph in 100 degree weather doesn't really make the bike run the best. I decided that camping with my new sleeping bag wasn't going to be necessary, or the least bit comfortable in this hot of weather. I made it in safely and found a hostel downtown instead. This hostel named "Idahostel" is literally a 30 foot walk from the major downtown hangouts. It's filled with artwork and friendly people that live there. I would highly recommend it! One of the guys told me I should grab my camera and check out the alley across the street where there was a live art show going on. People painting street art in a race against the sun setting. I quickly realized that despite it only being a wednesday that this town was a pretty active town. There were people walking around downtown in preparation for the night life. I was told that the nachos at Matador were the best in town and that I absolutely have to try them. After a photo session of downtown I made my way to the bar counter top for some nachos. A guy soon sat down next to me with the traditional chair between us, as to not break the man code rule #3279 ( no two single men shall sit directly next to eachother at a bar or pee in urinals directly next to eachother ). We struck up a conversation about photography and we looked through the pictures of my trip so far. My nachos arrived and were larger than I knew I could handle so I offered to share. He declined, but a friendship started. We later met up with some of his friends to go dance at some bars. We watched girls kissing on the sidewalks, and checked out some other spots. I was still surprised that all this was happening on a wednesday night! The next day consisted of my first major mishap with my motorcycle. The exhaust pipes bolts had come off and this left my muffler laying on the ground. A little walk around town for a hardware store to no avail I tied it up and gps'ed it to ACE Hardware. Ironically a girl had also had muffler problems so we fixed them on the sidewalk and shared my locktight. Saved her a few bucks from buying her own, and she invited me to her pool at her house to cool off in the 105 degree weather. It was much needed and it felt great sipping on ice tea at the pool. That night I slept early. I made it a point to get up to meet Tyler for my last supper in Boise. This later turned into an incredible talk about job opportunities, and more girls kissing on the sidewalk. It was worth staying up the few extra hours to dream about what the future may bring. I was in the company of another motivated dreamer like myself, Tyler, and it was great to just dream about how big our ideas could go in the future. The next morning I left early to avoid the heat. My friend in Casper Wyoming wasn't in town so I decided to go back through Salt Lake City, Utah and to visit other friends. The bike was running hot in the hot weather so I decided to stop and have a manual fan switch installed to keep it cooler. This put me on a slight detour, but I got a taste of small town hospitality and after the mechanic and I worked side by side to add the switch, he charged me $30. I gave him all the cash in my pocket ($35) and continued on. I pulled into Salt Lake City and chilled out with an iced coffee. Later that evening I got my friends together and we hit downtown.
We took pictures together, messed with different camera settings, and joked around about everything. My two separate friends, Stacy and Lindsay, met for the first time and are now friends as well. Like I said before, introducing the right people to each other is something I enjoy doing, and it's such a simple thing to do. The next morning was going to be the last leg of my journey. I made friends with Lindsay's dog, which notoriously hates guys, was treated to breakfast with her and her mom, and set sail on my last stretch.
As I rode back home to Colorado, ideas swirled around in my head about what other future opportunities await me.
In about two weeks I'll be studying for my Masters degree in Education and will be returning to Saudi Arabia to teach others English.
33 days and 4427 miles of Bugs, Sweat, and Gears happened so fast and was so incredible that it all feels surreal to me, as if it never happened that it was all just a dream.
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