Flagstaff

Day: 44
Date: 15/05
City: Flagstaff, Arizona
Miles ridden: 40
Cumulative miles: 4044

Yippee, two recovery days! Unfortunately we didn’t sleep very well… The hotel was close to a train line and large trains in front of our window were honking their horns the whole night, every 30minutes or so. Some train drivers must have really enjoyed it, they seemt to try at playing a song with their horns. I guess they thought “if I can’t sleep, nobody can sleep” 😉

The next morning, we talked to the manager and changed rooms. Then we had a swim and called Garmin to exchange our GPS /again/. The day started so hard that we needed a long sleep 😀.
I had ordered an additional battery charger for my helmet camera a couple of days earlier, which should allow us to charge it while we are on the road. It was our first attempt to use the general delivery option available from the post office. That is, to have it sent to a post office and pick it up later. Unfortunately the first attempt did not work….Looking at the tracking information, I realised that my charger had been sent back. Some further investigation revealed the reason: There was no name on the address label, great… . So a little defeated I went to the bike shop with Wombat to purchase some bits for the bike. At the same time we booked our bikes in for our 4000 mile inspection and ensured that we could drop them off before 17:00. After that, we went to another shop to see if we could get spare parts for Wombats broken Zumo 550. The back to the hotel to get the girls and drop the bikes off. The people at the shop were very helpful and we discovered that Scott (whom we had met in Blending) had announced our arrival there. This improved the mood of the staff towards us. Thanks Scott 🙂

We took a taxi home and roughtly planned our west coast trip. After some nice dinner at sizzlers, where Brian entertained the staff by tipping over the lemonade glass and Bjoern seated himself between to benches, we went back and had an early night.

Day: 45
Date: 16/05
City: Flagstaff, Arizona
Miles ridden: 54
Cumulative miles: 4098

Recovery day two. We went to the gym in the morning (only 40min) and did some organization after breakfast, when I got a call from the guy who sold us the Contour plus charger. We agreed that he should sent it again, this time with my name on it. After that we had a short nap before picking up our bikes. Wombat and Val where planning to clean their bikes, Sigrid and I were keen to go to a hairdresser/barber.

So we went to downtown Flagstaff.

There were different painted tigers are over the city and some nice wall paintings.


In one shop we found a nice way of folding tolwels:


We passed the post office where Sigrid picked up her hat that the nice people from Iron horse had sent. Even nicer, they had added a pin from Iron horse to the hat. Sigrid was VERY happy 🙂

I found a unique barber shop and Sigrid a hairdresser. We both got a haircut.


The barber was very nice and had plenty of pictures on his wall from people all over the world who got a haircut in Flagstaff. After that we had a walk through the older part of the city, which had a very nice atmosphere.


Then we went to a shopping centre to buy some cloth to use after the car/bike wash with high pressure cleaner. It took us about 1 hour to remove most of the dead bugs and oil from both bikes. When we came home, the Garmin GPS had arrived, and this one seems to work, yippee!
Did I mention, in the morning I started to miss my video camera? We were hoping that I left it in my tank bag when we dropped our bikes off. I hadn’t.
So when we got home I frantically started to search for the camera, without success. I even went into our previous room and looked behind the couch, no camera. After we unsuccessfully looked through all bags and panniers where the camera could be, we started a more methodically approach. Put everything onto one side, empty a bag/pannier onto the bed, look for the camera, put everything back and move it to the other side of the room. After most bags and panniers where moved, we looked at our inner liner which lay in the corner. Sure enough, somebody had smuggled the camera into the pocked of my liner!
In the evening I prepared Sigrid’s birthday cake with candles and hid it in a drawer in Wombats and Val’s room. Will see how it works with the cake tomorrow!

1 comment

  1. We met you at Bryce Canyon and had a wonderful chat with both of you. We were on a Tauck Tour and you took our pictures for us in our Santa hats for our Christmas cards.
    You told us about your adventures so far and where you were going. I would like to wish you good luck and a safe trip.
    We are George and Ruth Dunham from Winter Haven, Florida.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *