VOS 2006, Day 1: Travel
Day 1 of the VOS 2006 started thursday. Jesse "the body" Gordon and i planned to roll out at 7:00 am but were delayed until about 9:30 am because of the 10 inches of snow that fell in downtown SLC. we began what we thought would be an uneventful but lengthy trip to Phoenix. out on the road we decided to go through Page, AZ and figured we'd be in Page around 4:30 pm to get a nice and easy spin done. we rolled into town and thought it didn't look too bad. we were about on schedule so no worries. after the Tour of Page we started the final push to Phoenix. Flagstaff came and went and we decided to push through and get some dinner down the road a bit. we saw the exit for Sedona and the Food, Gas, Lodging signs showed numerous choices. we should have probably eaten in Flagstaff because we were on the nutritional edge of becoming quite edgy about getting something to eat. not a good time to get off an exit with thoughts of sitting down to eat a good meal and driving for 10 minutes realizing that the signs were advertising restaurants in the city of Sedona. this was the first of many covert attempts by the state of Arizona to crack us.
while Jesse scripted his letter to the Arizona DOT, cc'ed to the AZ governor, i flipped a U-turn and motored to get back on the freeway. we were sure there would be something soon. soon ended up about a half-hour later when we saw more signs for food. this off-ramp showed immediate possibilities in the Cliff Castle Casino. i'm not sure which reservation we were on, but thank the lord. we finally had found something to eat. we assumed the good restaurants were inside the casino. you remember the saying about when you assume...well, sure enough, the options were a $45 top sirloin dinner, a 25 minute wait to sit in an empty dining room because only one server was working in a casino loaded with people, and Johnny Rockets. we made a quick decision to have a seat at Johnny Rockets. the menu didn't have anything exciting, but it didn't matter. we needed food. a few drunk guys were hamming it up and all the seniors were staring at them adding fuel to the fire. we placed our order and the seconds were ticking by so slow it was nearly physically painful. you'd think it could get no worse, but suddenly the music turned up. it was Saturday Night Fever by the BeeGee's. this wouldn't be horrible, but then all the waitresses came running out of the kitchen and started to imitate John Travolta's moves from back in the day. this was not a pretty sight. Jesse and i both thought this would last for a verse and then they would go back to serving. but no, the entire song...and i think it was the extra-long dance mix. not only were we starving, we were sitting in the middle of this restaurant while the waitresses danced their lackluster Saturday Night Fever disco. we wanted our food and they were dancing! i began to hear little crackles. i think we were near cracking and the trip was less than 12 hours underway, without any racing. once SNF was finished, our food came out and we inhaled it and escaped before another round. approximately a 1.25 hour delay for .25 hour of food.
pulling onto the freeway, Jesse joked we would round the next bend and there would be an offramp with lots of good places to eat. you guessed it, even a Starbucks! this gave us another hour of complaining...but strengthened our resolve. this trip could not crack us! we finally rolled into Phoenix at about 11:30 pm ready to get some rest. we pulled into the Super 8, Jesse walked in, and i stretched the legs for a minute. he was inside for quite a while, so i walked in to see what was up. they were discussing how they could see the reservation in the system, but they had cancelled it. they only had one small room left for the night and they could supply us with a rollaway bed. they gave us the reservation price, but said additional nights would be $25 more per night. we had a reservation but it was cancelled...by the Super 8! we took the room for that night only because we were so exhausted. i started pulling the bikes off the roof and Jesse was trying to open the door unsuccessfully. he went back to the office to ask for a new key. the clerk came back with him and said you had to do it just right and proceeded to wail on the door furiously...at 11:45 pm! we just stared at each other...we were having a difficult time finding the humor in the situation. the attendant finally remembered the handle was broken and you had to turn it up rather than down. by midnight we had our gear inside, made the phone calls back home to say we made it, and then sat around trying to wind down for another hour or so.
still no one had cracked and we were feeling tough! AZ was making it tough and us and we were going to last.
stay tuned for VOS 2006, Day 2: Time Trial.
playlist:
- The Pixies
- The White Stripes
- Mike Ness
- The Jesus and Mary Chain
- Gorillaz
- Johnny Cash