Cornering Consciousness

We've been a mixed marriage for three years now, her and her HD and me and my Blackbird. I had a knee-jerk reaction to her attraction to the 1200L but have warmed up to it after 7000 miles. On a whim we stopped by a Honda dealer while out of town and I had her throw a leg over the new Shadow Phantom , Big Red's attempt at garnering the same female demo that HD's after, and she liked it a lot. Now 750 cc's are no match for the torque of the twelve, but that's no matter to her. I'm attracted to the idea of paying half as much for tune ups and accessories and for the fact that it's a Honda. She's yet to ride one - we'll go down to Vegas and try one on (we won't deal with the local Honda shop anymore). We hit the road for Vegas Saturday mid-morning when temps got past 50 Fahrenheit. The cruise through the Virgin River Gorge is always a highlight of any trip west for us, especially to sin city since there's very little else to consider when slabb...

Friday, July 17 Tough to name this trip as I'm trying to get away from geographical titles like “Huntington Canyon.” Places might not mean as much to the discriminating reader as say, “Neckskin flappin” or “Chip Seal & Tar Snakes” or “The GSH” for Grand Staircase Highway. All of which will play out in the prose to follow as I log our fourth road trip of the Summer, the same being the second trip with one of our five children. It's been our goal to take each on their own moto-camping trip. Here it is late July and we have three kids to go. Each child has their choice of destinations, within reason, and Addie our youngest at ten years decided to go to Huntington Canyon, the Summer retreat of her grandfather. We got away midmorning Friday, we being Mindy, Addie and I, taking Highway 9 through Zion Canyon to 89 North. Addie had one “break-in” ride before this under 100 miles, and was still a bit unsure about this trip for a number of reasons; around 800 miles in three da...