Day Sixteen

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Santa Rosa, New Mexico

Mileage: 423

After breakfast, we rode the three miles over to Harley-Davidson World, just outside Oklahoma City at 9am for the service on Batman's and Sludge's motorcycles. As promised, they had blocked times for us.

The service on Batman's Road King was simply a change of primary chain, engine and clutch fluids. As for Sludge, there was an issue with the way his engine was running. We noticed as far back as Georgetown that something funny was going on with the Night Rod. Sometimes, it would stall at stoplights and while idling, it sounded like the wash cycle of a washing machine. Yea, those water-cooled bikes get complicated. It was no big deal, though. There were a pair of hose clamps that were loose. There is no way to tell if they came loose or was delivered from the factory that way. Personally, I'll go with the latter. Hose clamps don't just come loose on their own. A quick tightening and Vger began to run smoothly again.

While waiting at the dealership, the three of us drooled on some of the 2009 motorcycles in the showroom. For months, I have been eyeballing a Road King Classic for my next bike, but became fond of the Street Glide. Sure the Road King Classic has great lines, attractive colors, and a nostalgic look with the leather bags, but the Street Glide has a fairing instead of a windshield, a radio and locking hard bags. I hope that for the 2010 line, the Street Glide will come with more colors. There are only a few colors I like, but black always works. (When Henry Ford was asked about vehicle colors, he said, "Sure, you can have any color so long that it's black".)

Batman decided that his next Harley-Davidson would be a big cruiser. Probably the Electra-Glide Classic, the top of the Harley-Davidson food chain. This monster has everything. With a price tag near $30,000, it should!

The rest of our time was spent talking with other HD owners and I bought a clutch part for Maleficent. The clutch had always been on the stiff side, but all pre-2004 models were that way. I bought a kit that is designed to change the mechanical advantage of the clutch system so that it will squeeze more easily. Since my clutch handle was sticking, obviously from all the salt spray in Daytona Beach, I was going to purchase a new clutch cable too, but the package was too big to strap to my bike for the ride home. I'll get one from my dealer at home.

Service was complete by 11:15am and we made our way back to the hotel to load up our gear.

It was a warm and sunny day. It's a real bummer that the sun decided to show like this when our ride is almost over. We had sun in Georgetown, but was partly cloudy too. Today, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We'd pay for that later.

We're off and running by 12:30pm. Batman had made a plan to head north on Texas State Route 287 once we reached Amarillo, Texas. On our fuel stop 40 miles outside Amarillo, we talked and looked at the map. Sludge and I were going to try and make it to Santa Rosa, New Mexico. I could make it home from there in one shot and Sludge could stop in Kingman, Arizona the next day before the trip to the west coast.

After looking at the map, I explained to Batman that there was a state route just past Santa Rosa that would hook him up with Interstate 25 north. It was a better route that his original plan where he'd have to take numerous routes through small towns. Certainly, that would take longer. He agreed. I believe that he wanted spend one more day with his buddies.

As it usually does, the wind picked up once we reached Amarillo. I've been through here many times and it has always been windy. Last September, I was returning from a job in Baltimore and the winds in Amarillo were insane. I was pulling a 6 foot by 12 foot trailer with my truck into a 40 mph headwind. The aerodynamics of my truck is similar to a brick and pulling a brick behind me didn't help either. My mpg was down to 6.9! Even worse is that this is when fuel was near $4 per gallon!

Anyway, we fought the wind and the bright sun for a few hours. At a fuel stop, I recommended that we visit the Dairy Queen next door for an ice cream to help cool off. There were no arguments from the other two. The sun was setting and it made the ride tough. Batman and I received a bit of sunburn, while Sludge, with his full face helmet faired much better.

The sun was nearly down when we finally reached Santa Rosa, New Mexico. We checked into another Best Western and went to a small Mexican restaurant for dinner.

Santa Rosa is an interesting town. Santa Rosa is a town in Guadalupe County, NM. The population was 2,744 at the 2000 census. It is a small town between Albuquerque and Tucumcari, situated on the Pecos River.

The first European settlement in the area was Aqua Negra Chiquita, "Little Black Water" in Spanish, in 1865. The name was changed in 1890 to Santa Rosa (Spanish for "Holy Rose") referring to a chapel that Don Celso Baca (the founder of the town) built and named after both his mother Rosa and Saint Rose of Lima. The "Rosa" may also refer to the roses in the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe and is indicative of the Catholicism of the Spanish colonizers who settled in the area.

Santa Rosa's stretch of U.S. Route 66 is part of film history. When John Steinbeck's epic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, was made into a movie, director John Ford used Santa Rosa for the memorable train scene. Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) watches a freight train steam over the Pecos River railroad bridge, into the sunset.

Santa Rosa has many natural lakes, an anomaly in the dry Desert climate surrounding it. These are sinkholes that form in the limestone bedrock of the area and fill with water, and thus the lakes are connected by a network of underground, water-filled tunnels. The most famous of these is Blue Hole, a popular spot for diving, where frigid 64°F (18°C) water forms a lake over 81 ft (25 m) deep. http://www.santarosanm.org/scubadiving.htm

Tourism and it's location for travelers on Route 66 and Interstate 40 keep this city alive. If a stopping point is needed for your travel, this is good place for it. There isn't much 50 miles in either direction.