Starts with an “R” and ends with “idin’ Randoms”

That’s right people and aliens that will eventually go on the internet, Ridin’ Randoms!   

These were taken in what is probably the best place to ride a motor cyclin’ bike in the US-o-A, the South West.  Good people, weather and big country are there.  Well except the good weather part b/c the first snow was coming in from the north west behind a cold front.  I was riding to not be in it.  It was pretty exciting b/c if I broke down for even a day, I’d be covered in snow and freezin’ ma man parts.  It was like playing high stakes poker except no cards and instead I was riding a motorcycle across Arizona, New Mex and Tex.

The wind made my New Mex ride so gnar, some times I couldn’t see more from the sand blowing every which way.  However, once the break in the clouds would come, it was something beautiful; a great reminder that sometimes grinning and persevering is rewarded.

I made it on the Navajo rez and did the whole eat fry bread (think Navajo version of funnel cakes….mmmmmmm….Navajo version of funnel cakes), saw a dude who was walking across the earth (know b/c he had a website on his cart for it) and bought a nice Oldman/Gambler/Perv ring fashioned right there in the rez.  I would like to thank my boi, Moto Bikin’ Alex from Chi-city Chicago who gave me the idea at Burning Man!

While in New Mex, I went by the Very Large Array, which is basically a large array (I know!  who woulda thunkit?) that’s used for radio astronomy.  It’s even cooler when you imagine Jodie Foster there with you giving you a tour in her Kermit, The Frog, like voice.  Sucha a babe!

Visited the Carlsbad caverns and let me tell you, it wasn’t the Carlsgood caverns.  All I could think about was how cool it would be to live at the bottom of ‘em.  So bad!

I also went to the petrified forrest.  A million bilion zillion years ago these trees fell down and got covered in doo doo mud.  They then became really cool looking rocks that should be made into jewelry.  I’m not talking about perv rings, although I can unbiasedly say dem thangs are sweet, I’m talking about a big ole gangsta necka-lace or a super gnar belt buckle.  I guess the good thing about them being protected by the national park system is now this place that inspires great visions of amazing jewelry will be preserved for generations. 

Grand Canyon so grand, it gets another blog post!  

The canyon also has a neato-burrito tower on it that’s adorned with Native American art.  It gives you a great vantage to look out at the vastness of the mother beezshmo.  And like every tower I’ve been on, it makes you wish you had a bone’n arrow to shoot at stuff with.

I actually intended on hiking the canyon with newly acquainted friend, Toronto Jesse, named that b/c well, that’s where she’s from.  I knew the dangers as I had already seen the Brady Bunch episodes where they went down in the canyon.  I aint ‘fraid a no snake!  However, some work circumstances arose for TJ and forced me to take the trip by myself.  

To make matters more adventured, there was a large cold front coming through with the season’s first snow.  I had literally one day to see the G-Can as fast as I could before the next day dropped below freezin’ with snow.  Sadly my bike isn’t one of those ones that transforms into snow mobile so I had to move it.  That meant no hikes and no eating your hiking partner b/c you’re snowed in and forced to cannibalism.

Good thing motorcycles are faster than snow storms.  Long story short:

Northern AZ snow storm 0

Marc Alessandria 1

The Grand Canyon is not misnomered!   Or maybe it is b/c grand almost doesn’t do it justice to how big the dang things.   In fact I think if “gigorbus” had been in the english lexicon at the time, it would have been named the Gigobrus Canyon by the white people that ignored whatever the natives named it.   However grand was all they had and dangnummit was it not good enough.

This thing is so big, I disavow any fat momma jokes using the size of the canyon to relate to the size of someone’s obese mother.  You can see the thing from space!  Suck it great wall of China!  Oh?  What’s that, you’re cooler b/c you were built by people and not Jesus?!  if that’s the case, how come there are bunch of Chinamen tourist folk walking all over the GC?!  Score board, Mao’s republic!

When you look down the canyon, you’ll see a cliff that leads to another step and eventually another cliff which in turn leads to another break going deeper.  This happens like 4 or 5 times until you can’t see the bottom.  Told you no fat momma could fill this thing!

Even the diarama’s and diagrams of the G-Canyon were massive.  The lobby of the park included a floating planet to show how you could see this thing from space no problem.  Not only that, but it made me realize I need one of these suspended/light-up planets in my house, cept it won’t be the Earth, it’ll be the Death Star!  Sick!

The pictures shown really don’t bring home how massive this thing is and that’s great.  That way when you go there yourself your mind will get good and blown.  Even standing next to the rail to take photos was a little nerve racking.  Luckily I scored the sweetest Star Trek shirt in Phoenix that features the alien race known as the Klingons.  It was in remembering their honor code and bravery that helped keep me confident in the face of potential cliff fallin.

I went to death valley….and lived!  I know! I should be ona those bumper sticker designer dudes.  But seriously, I went to death Valley and survived.  It wasn’t really hard.  There’s a road that runs right through it and there’s some gas station and general stores with water fountains.  

For a place with the word death in it I expected to see some skullz at least but I didn’t.  Hey, having room for improvement means you can always get better.  Don’t despair DV!  And don’t let the lack of skullz fool you either, there’s some totally ambushy spots.  For a while there I was glad I wasn’t a small android that moved on 3 wheels or else a strange group of hooded creatures who scavenge the desert might abduct me!

It was definitely hotter than a mother’s business at the bottom and very cool when you went up the mountains adjacent to the valley bellow.

I definitely had a great morning riding in there as I had spend the night before sleepin in the open desert in the valley out side the death one.  What would have been an otherwise starry night turned into something of a light sand storm.  To make things more interesting, I didn’t pitch a tent that night b/c I haven’t gotten good at predicting the future yet.  Had to cover my mouth and eyes with goggles and pretend I wasn’t miserable for 2 hours until I eventually fell asleep.  It coulda been worse though, I could have woken up with a scorpion next to my head—Oh wait!  That did happen!   HAHA! Check that one off the list!  Next!

With all these posts some of you might be wondering if Joshua Tree is a cool place in the desert, how come it doesn’t have a town that used to be used to film westerns there.  And in that town, people moved in and made the set buildings into a community.  Well they have!  It’s called pioneer town and it’s totally righteous.

Whilst there I went to a cool bar there Pappy and Harriet’s.  It was adorned with some great decor including cowboy photo’s and chandeliers.  Met some some US marines there and discussed life and mackin on babes on foreign countries when you’re on leave as a Marine.  Something I didn’t know much about but they were experts.  I made some friends from strangers from CA and NYC.  Hey, I spoke english and so did they.  Basically a perfect sitch to trade jokes and high five each other.  There was also a live band there and I danced with some old ladies who knew how to have fun.  The band even covered an oldie but a goodie of a jam:  C’mon Everybody by Eddie Cochran.  If you don’t know the song I’m hear to let you know!

I didn’t really see any pioneers up in Pioneer town.  It more like a ghost town so I just creeped around and took pictures all while imagining that all the townsfolk were scared about a gun fight that was gonna happen a little later.  Don’t worry, I got outa there before bullets started flying!  

I made my way to a place called Slab City.  Once upon a time it was a military base of some sorts but eventually it was left abandoned for people to come and squat on it.  There’s basically a community of people who live there and are more or less outside society.  They aren’t that fringey though b/c they speak english and have dogs.  Who doesn’t have those?!  

I was fortunate to happen upon some military trucks passing through the area heading north to only what I could imagine was either a night firing exercise or a repelling of a small alien invasion in Southern CA.  Eitherway, I could hear distant gun fire accompanied with occasional flashes of light in the north near the mountains.  Don’t worry, I wasn’t scared or nothin’ b/c  I had all the dogs of Slab City barking most of the night to keep me reassured and all awake like.  After finally falling to sleep, I was awakened by every one’s roosters cock-a-doodle-doo-ing.  Slab city?!  More like Loud Animal Noise Town.  Nah, that doesn’t have a ring to it.  

More importantly, Slab City is is the site of Salvation mountain which an art installation this dude did.  It’s pretty amazing and has been featured in tons of movies.  It’s got tons of Jesus and bible stuff up on it.   I figured the least I can do is visit it in case my adventure gets movie-ized.  Oh, don’t worry, it’ll have me rescuing orphans from burning buildings too.   I could describe it words but no one even reads these things right?  Internets is about pictures y’all!  

Slab city is definitely prime real-estate.  It’s only a minute or two away from the Salton Sea which is, that’s right (dang your smart!), a salt lake.  Holy crap is it awesome/terrible.  There a bunch of fish guts on the shore of it from all the fish dying form the high salinity.  And the lake smelled all lank stanky!? Brutal.

I nominate California for the best state to ride a motorcycle in b/c it’s legal to split lanes up in that muh.

For those of you unfamiliar with this “splitting” I’m talking of, let me bring you into the cool people’s club of motorcycle ridin.  Yeah, sure there are some lame lawyers and 6-figrin earning posers in it, but it’s still pretty sweet b/c motorcycling is so inherently cool, it can’t be tarnished by posery.  Splitting lanes is where you, a motro cyclin’ ridumer, can go between cars in the lanes of traffic.  This means while every one is stopped a light and getting out their phones to txt some one something very, very important, you get to go the front of the pack.  The light goes green and then you can rip with nothing but open road.

I’ve since changed my political affiliation with the Right-To-Split-Lanes-In-A- Motorcycle-In-Every-State Party.  You may’ve heard of us.  We believe that every citizen in our great United States should have the right to split lanes of traffic in a  motorcycle.

Splitting lanes aside, Cali’s got it all.  Beaches, coastal highways, mountains, dead lakes, ect.  Sure the state’s a little over regulated.  Every gas pump has a “fume” guard on it.  Using such a nozzle is easy for a car driver for sure but for some one on a motorcycle it’s like pealing a spring loaded mechanical foreskin back with one hand to get the gas come out of the thing with the other.  Every time you fill up it’s a bit of a flex and work out and that makes the guns better so I guess I can’t complain.  Gotta have the guns tip top for the CA babes!  

Regulations, smegulations.  There’s a coastal highway! Here are some pics I took whilst I was on the pacific coast highway between San Fran and LA.  While, the stretch above San Fan is more gnar, this stretch is still a high way on a cliff, over looking an ocean!  It’s still gnargasmic none the less!

Along the coast are a bunch of rich people houses complete with locked gates and scenic overlooks.  I was fortunate to find one such lot of property that was owned by the state.  I know this b/c the sign attached to the chain “blocking” people from entering it said so.  Since it was already knocked down, I figured I be all good Samaritan like and sleep there as to make sure no one would deface the property. 

Good thing too, this spot was incredible.  It was a homeless person’s fortress of solitude.  It was coast front property complete with a prefab fire pit and pine needles aka God’s mattress to sleep on.  To top if off,  I got to watch the sun set over the Pacific.  Most would have to pay millions to get a property like this.  All I had to do was tres-guard some state property for the night.

Here’s some pics I took in East CA.

I visited Mono lake which is just east of Yosemite.  Apparently drinking it is the equivalent of making out with 100 strangers.  Jokin!  Jeez Leweez!  Actually it got it’s name from the natives that lived there.  You see, on the lake are tons of flies eating lank stank stuff.  I can only assumed brine shrimp.  These natives would harvest the flies larvae for sustenance.  A neighboring tribe called them Monachi meaning “fly people” b/c they were eatin um.  Then white dudes came along and named it after the eaters of the these flies.  Best way to name a lake ever.

Totally deserving of the fly name too.  The shores of the lake were covered with flies.  Whenever I got close they would just swarm around a bit to dodge me but really didn’t bother trying to eat me.  I imagine even if I was more disgusted and barfed ma brains, they’s still be to occupied eating stuff in salty, stank lake to even munch on my fresh puke.  Wierdos.  No wonder people ate their delicious babies.

I also managed to sleep on the side of a mountain again and it was great b/c some one had already done the same as there was a fire pit already made out of rocks for me to use.  It was a nice night so I used the skills my previous friend from N. CA had taught me about sleepin without a tent.  I checked for poop and syringes then lit a fire and dreamed some good ones.  

On a side note, if you ever see the words “closed during winter” on a map for a country road.  9/10 chance it’s gonna be gnar ride and a must do.  Thanks CA map for having the secret lingo!

Yo, Semite!  Yo se…..meh tee!  Yosemite!

I didn’t see any semites or rather, all the ones there were disguised as gentiles nor where there any Yosemite Sam stuff other than me occasionally imagining him on the trail shootin’ at varmits.  The the squirrels were super aggressive and varmity, if only my boy Yo Samy Sam had been there to do some shootin!  

Yosemite is quite beautiful.  The thing that made it stand out to me were the water pools which had been designated as no swim zones by the fun police.  It’s probably a federal agency so if I’m being correct, it’s the fun agents.  What a misnomer.  But ever more stand out were the rock faces.  There were all up in that mother.

Apparently Yo! Semite! is a the Mecca for rock climbing.  I found this out when I tried to score a campin’ site for the night and was turned away at all the sites b/c there were alreay full of people who make plans.  However, I went to the camp where all the climbers where and after being told by the park ranger that I shouldn’t ask to share a camp site with the climbers as most were European and didn’t like sharing.  Shyeah right!  You mean to tell me people from a continent who share a currency and get taken over by another nation a few times every century would mind sharing?!  The funny thing of it was that a lot of the Euro dudes’n babes turned me away b/c they were afraid to break the rules as they were in a foreign country and didn’t want to be all law breaky.  Pst,that wasn’t an issue with me.  I live in the US and totally pay the taxes I see the govt. misappropriate by not, IDK, adding a few more camp sites for walk in travelers in their national parks.  In bad mother buisnessin’ fashion, I ignored the ranger and got a spot with some climbers for the night.  

I met a some great people on the hike too.  We talked life and jokes all while almost tripping on rocks and bein surrounded by Yosemital beauty.  Great time for sure! 

On a side note, I hit my 3rd bee while riding to Yosemite.  He hit my neck and made me stop.  I got off and was breathing through my teeth with my face all squinty while I was rubbing the spot like Jackie Chan does whenever he bangs a part of his body botching a stunt. It didn’t help so much but as long as some one is laughing at this it wasn’t so bad. Besides, that bee dude is dead for sure!

Marc:3  

North American Bee Population:0 

One of the best things about California in terms of motorcyclin up on it, is the fact that there is a Pacific Coast Hightway AKA Route 1.  Why the number 1?  Prolly b/c the road namin’ dudes knew it would be the most baller route to ride in a motor vehicle.  I know what you’re thinking.  Is it?  Well, I’ll put it this way:  if Route 1 manifested itself in the form of a pro basketball player whose abilities were sheerly based how enjoyable/intense/curvy Route 1 is, it could take on the entire ‘94 USA Olympic Dream Team, win, and manage to break all the back boards from slam dunks!  Boom Shaka-Laka!  

I have been on some gnarly roads that are turny but never this long.  The sustained radicallity of this mother’s business is pretty much unrivaled in these United States.  I’m talking switch backs, I’m talking 20 mph (suggested) turns.  I’m talking tons of hitch hikers you have to to not hit.  I’m talking scenic views to stare at-SLOW DOWN AND TURN!  Close one.  Good thing we balanced looking at beautiful California coast with rider safety.  Alright!

It’s a great ride and I suggest every one who is reading this to do the dang thang! I’m pretty sure I saw One Eye Willy’s hideout when I was riding.