Back of the pack

I like it back here, riding sixth and last in our group. When the road is as straight as a Navajo arrow, there’s time and space to think, without worrying about the guy behind you.

I can look ahead and see the rest of the group. There’s E.B., easy to spot in his orange cap, feet up on the highway pegs, hardly looking like a successful merchant banker. There’s Ed, a partner in Arizona Bike Week, on his jade green Harley, silver-headed after his black cap flew off in a gust. There are the two black and silver FXRG-style helmets of father and son, Jay and Brandon, the father an attorney and developer, the son, a race car driver and contractor. There’s the black jet helmet of Dan. a banker from Vail, who often lingers behind me to make sure all is well.

I ride in reverie, taking in the sights and sounds, the never-ending rumble of my V-Twin and those ahead of me. Two cows at the side of the road startle me as we roll through the Navajo Nation, at one point only 40 miles from the entrance of the Grand Canyon.

There are long mesas all around us, framing the desert and our road through it. I marvel at the always-changing sand and rock formations. The round mounds of grey sand look like the pingos I’ve seen near Tuktoyaktuk in the Canadian Arctic. The red canyons recall the summer I spent in the Escalante canyonlands of Utah, not that far from where we ride.

When we stop for breakfast--or is it lunch?--at the Anasazi Inn on the approach to Monument Valley, E.B. remarks, “When you’ve gone more than a hundred miles by 9:30, you know it’s going to be a good day.”

And so it turns out to be.

--Georgs