So riding into Apache country it is clear why these people were so feared in the old West. Apparently they were a semi-agrarian people who grew crops of maize etc, but once they decided to fight they were very dangerous. I feel pretty sure a lot of the danger came from the country rather than the people themselves. That is to say the country is very hilly with an almost endless supply of natural cover in the form of rocks and scrub. You could be standing there and have 20 people hidden within 100m and have no clue they were there. The country is not very exciting but there were a couple of places in valleys with steep walls where it got very pretty.
Anyway, I stopped in Globe when I saw a Suzuki dealership and asked about tyres... I wanted a particular type but they did not have them. They did however put in a great deal of effort to locate them in nearby Phoenix and then they also donated an oil change to my worthy cause, so I have to say right here ¨Thank you very much¨ for all the help and encouragement given by Troy Nowlin and team at All-Pro Cycles in Globe.
I felt good about looking after the bike finally since it has been almost 10,000 Km since left Vancouver- Wow!
After that I camped on the side of the road as usual and headed into Phoenix the next morning. Man they know how to spread out in Arizona. After an hour of normal 4 lane highway on the approach (through the Saguaro cactus of the Sonoran desert), the suburbia of Phoenix started... It went for another hour and a half and they had a full 6 lane in each direction highway for the whole way. Then when I got where I was going (Scottsdale actually) there was a vast landscape of "big-box store land". It seems if you are going to do retail in Phoenix, you do it big. Seriously you could drive for many blocks with nothing but car parks and shopping edifices...
Anyway I got to the BMW dealership that had the tyres I wanted and got them to start on the tyres (3 hour wait)
Now, the BMW dealership was strategically located between the Scottsdale Gun Club, a fitness club, an Automatic weapons shop and a competing Ducati dealership! Brilliant marketing ploy I thought!
Anyway, while I waited for my tyres to be fitted, I decided I'd see what it was like to squeeze off a few rounds with a hand gun. Being Australian and Canadian I had not had access (or need for access) to hand guns and I was just interested to try.
Well with about one minute of instruction and $35 spent I had my hands on a rental Glock 9mm with a 17 round clip. I squeezed off 50 rounds and sent my cardboard target straight to the grave!. Turns out I could hit within about 15cm of where I aimed at 10m and it doubled as I moved the target to 20m - At least I was consistent. Other than that I noticed that it was very loud!,Tthe gun bucked a lot but not out of my grip, and I can have and own one of these things for a mere $500 or so - very strange!
So then I went back to the bike shop and hand over $500 for my new tyres (ouch!) and rode off out of Phoenix and into the sunset!
