Day Two

Litchfield Park, Arizona to Fort Stockton, Texas

Mileage: 677

Even though the movie ended after 11pm, I was awake by 6am and could hear that Sludge was already awake in the guest room. Obviously it was anticipation of the day's events.

The plan for today is to leave my home in Litchfield Park, Arizona and head to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where we will meet up with Batman at the Harley-Davidson dealership in town. It's about a 400-mile trip for Sludge and me and we plan to be there by 6pm.

Since he has a 667-mile ride to Las Cruces, Batman was planning to leave by 5am to arrive in Las Cruces by 6pm. When I got out of bed, the first thing I did was to check my phone messages. There was a text from Batman with a timestamp of 4:48am, saying, "I'm on my way."

Sludge and I went out for breakfast and when we returned delivered my cat, "Harley" to his vet for boarding while I am gone.

After completing all of the last minute details around the house and final checks on the motorcycles, we were ready to hit the highway a little after 10am.

We made a stop at Tucson Harley-Davidson for souvenirs and few miles later, we stopped for fuel and lunch.

Sidenote: We are able to safely travel approximately 140 miles on a full tank. That means a fuel stop every 2 to 2.5 hours. After calculating the distance and fuel mileage, it appears that we will stop for fuel at least 43 times!

We reached Las Cruces, New Mexico about 6:30pm and Batman was already there waiting for us. After half an hour of reminiscing, we got back on the machines and headed for Fort Stockton, New Mexico.

The 140-mile stretch of road between El Paso, Texas and Van Horn, Texas is nothing but desert and mountains with many elevation changes. Temperatures drop quickly in the desert after the sun sets. After an hour or so, we decided to stop and don our leather jackets and by the time we reached Van Horn, we were putting on "UnderArmor" and chaps!

From Van Horn to Fort Stockton, Texas is much the same, but the altitude changes were greater and the temperatures fell even lower. The air temperature was in the low 50's and traveling at 70 mph sends the wind chill down to 38F. We rode for nearly two hours in this condition.

Needless to say, when we finally arrived in Fort Stockton, at 2am local time, we were exhausted. Batman had a very long day and used all he had to make it to our destination. On this day, he has ridden over 950 miles! He started in Denver's near freezing temperatures through the New Mexico deserts at high noon, and again to near freezing temps at the end. He is Da Man! I don't believe I could do it!

Mileage Totals:

Sludge = 1132
Batman = 952
Vito = 677

After today, the mileages will be posted as daily amount.