now, that's what the bike should look like.
That setup means we're going somewhere.

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• In my ever-hopeful quest to find historical markers in a state other than California, I had the Utah Department of Tourism send me info. They didn't mention any markers, but I had a great time looking at all the pretty pictures.
• My coworker Francesca, upon learning of my trip, enthusiastically regaled me with tales of altitude headaches, heatstroke, and nosebleeds from her time spent in New Mexico.

I would much prefer to be out riding right now. I've been doing a lot of group riding lately, which is always fun and social, but I'm starting to get restless. Deep down, I'm really a solo riding kind of person -- for a quick afternoon jaunt, it's nice to have friends along, but my favorite riding is that all-day, dawn-til-dusk, solo ride. Preferably the type where the city I end up in is not the one in which I started. I miss that.

I miss having friends who live a few hours away. When I was in college, a good friend of mine lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, which was about four hours away from the festering cesspool of Beloit. When things got really bad at school, as they were wont to do, I could hop in the car and drive for a few hours. By the time I got to Monica's apartment, not only was I no longer in Beloit, but my head cleared from the drive.

In no way am I comparing my current life to my pitiful college existance, but I still miss being able to "get away" via highway so easily. Now, all of my friends live either in the Bay Area or halfway across the country. My awesome friend Jan lives in Seattle, but that's still a 14-hour ride. Too long for a spur of the moment weekend ride.

Someone I know needs to move to Las Vegas, or San Luis Obispo, or San Diego, or Red Bluffs, or something.

trip planning.
I think that my problem is that I'm getting really sick of planning the Arizona trip. I want to go already. I want to buy the books that I want to read on the trip, and pack the saddlebags, and stop thinking about riding in the desert and actually do it. I want to be sitting in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, Arizona, reading Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang and Walden.

I'm feeding myself books on adventure and books on travel and books on writing about adventure and travel. It's all very well and good, but it's starting to drive me a little batty.

I can't tell if I need to stop reading these books or if I need to stop pretending that I'm not actually a nomad.

I was frustrated with work one day last week, and when I told an acquaintance that I'd scheduled a meeting with my boss, she asked me what I thought the best possible outcome of the meeting would be. I answered "if my boss told me that I should just take a vacation until June, and I could just get on the road already." We laughed, but I'm not really sure whether I was kidding.

dating obsessive people.
At our last Women on Wheels meeting, I got to chatting with one of the newer riders about our significant others and our riding habits. After I'd finished talking about the Arizona trip, and some other rides and mods and stuff that are on my plate, she gave me an incredulous look and said "Your boyfriend doesn't mind you spending so much time with your bikes? Mine would really have a problem with that."

I've been idly thinking about that ever since. Would it bother me if Peter spent every waking moment obsessing about a hobby? I'm not sure. He does that about work sometimes, but that means that his not-work time is not-obsession time. I don't obsess about work, but it means that -- since Peter sees me during me free time -- he sees me during obsess-about-bikes time. I don't think it bothers him (hey, sweetie, you like how I write about you as though you don't read this?)...

I've spent the last decade of my life being annoyed and frustrated with people who eat, breathe, and sleep computers, and now I eat, breathe, and sleep motorcycles. I suppose the only real rationalization for this is that at least my hobby gets me out in the fresh air and allows me to wear lots of leather.

speaking of computers...
I've been spending a lot of time in the evenings setting up my laptop for the trip. I've never used a laptop before -- not much need for one in a one-bedroom apartment -- but Peter gave it to me, so I'm determined to use it. We're Macintosh people, and it's my first OS X machine. It's been an experience to track down all my writing and photo software for OS X, but I think it's finally set up.

I'm hoping that it'll make the trip journal easier, since I can download pictures to the computer every night and type up trip reports as I go. I'm a little skeptical about the latter, since I've historically been a notepad-and-pen note taker, but it's good to keep one's options open. The computer will definitely be useful for the pictures, since I'm pretty sure that I'll take more than 124MB of photos during the two weeks. Just a hunch.