CnC

10 January 2010

Back to the Home Site

Sorry for long time no blog, but since our USA trip we have been busy with a lot of other stuff and little time to post.

We have decided to return to our own site so there will be no more posts here on Blogger.

To follow CnC's adventures in the future, go to

http://lovell.com.au/CnCBlog

Hope to see you there.

Cheers

CnC

26 August 2009

Home Again Home Again

Well it has been a few days since the last blogpost, but after all the actual ride is over.

For those still interested, we had a nice night out at a local Mexican restaurant, not Jack and Linda's usual.

Saturday we spent giving BRed a thorough clean and chasing up a couple of people who had expressed interest in buying the bike. He came up surprisingly clean for the thousands of miles done in a few months. I attribute this to a couple of things, keeping it clean and polished as much as possible on the ride and mostly keeping away from major roads with their heavy vehicles throwing up all sorts of things.

Sunday was a rest day and we went and visited the Ballooning Museum and Old Town. For those unaware, Albuquerque is a major hot-air ballooning centre and every year has a Fiesta when hundreds of hot air balloon enthusiasts gather to fly. Even Jack and Linda regularly do ground crew and chase work for a local pilot.

Old Town is a well preserved section of the original Albuquerque, including a 300 year old church. Most of the shops are souvenir dealers and cafes.

After that we went out to Sadie's for the third time. This is Jack and Linda's favourite mexican food restaurant and the food here is excellent. Inexpensive, plentiful, and Hot. They do good margaritas as well. Here we met Bonny and Benito and had an excellent evening which ended with us getting "pinned" - a slightly risque ceremony.

Monday was pack up and leave day. First thing was take BRed down to the local Honda shop to be placed on show for sale. The Accessory Pit in Albuquerque does GoldWing accessories and trailers as well as trike kits, which are becoming very popular recently. So we will have BRed on sale as is for a while, but Rick the owner wants to trike it so that is a possibility as well.

Then it was load up the car and drive to the airport and say farewell and thank you to Jack and Linda who have looked after us so well these three months.

The flight home was what flights home are - boring and way too long. We had a two hour flight to LAX then spent a fair time trying to locate the VAustralia terminal - they'd moved it since we were last there. We met some old mates in the terminal which helped pass the time - swapping travel stories.

Sure was great to see Camo and Kath waiting in good old Brissie.

No. That's the New Mexico Gunfighters Club putting on a show in Old Town, Albuquerque

The 300 year old church around which the town sprung up.

Final mileage on BRed

Now all we have to do is get this back in the bags.

22 August 2009

Last Day for Billy The Kid - 276 miles

Well, Billy's last day was 128 years ago, but we visited him today.

Our last motel was very nice. They gave us a suite instead of just a room so no headache for the cat.

Jack and Linda arrived on the button of 8.00am and we departed Portales NM for "Home".

We were to travel all in New Mexico and the country reminds us very much of home. There were wide open spaces, long lonley roads and even a salt lake or two.

There were also trains. Lots of trains. Several of them were carrying UPS and FedEx semi-trailers. Hundreds of them.

We got to Fort Sumner and visited a Billy The Kid museum. It was good to see some of the artifacts from the times even if it was a little disturbing to know that some of the items are the same as some in our garage at home. Then it was a short ride out to the gravesite for a quick look.

Back on the road we saw more open country and more trains then stopped in at Willard, a small village. But it had a cantina which had a whole section for bike parking only. Nice. Inside was a bar and cafe. We had a bite to eat. I had a bowl of the hottest chili I have ever had. Certainly cleared up the sinuses.

Approaching Albuquerque, Jack took the lead and kept us off the I-40 superslab. It made for a pleasant ride being able to travel at "normal" speed and see the speedsters - cars and trucks - on the interstate nearby.

Then it was dive in to Albuquerque traffic until we rolled in to Jack and Linda's.

80 days of riding with only a couple of breaks was over. Now to clean up BRed, make him presentable and get ready for the trip home.

Just a few photos today: