I got the Nomad out of the shop yesterday and decided to give it a check ride. Oh not a little run around the block, a real check ride. It's a good thing too.
Vicki and I rode the circuit through
Sedona, Jerome, Prescott, and
Wickenburg which is about 250 miles. It covers elevations from 1300 feet to over 6,000, desert and mountain terrains, long freeway straight-aways, and tight curvy mountain roads. The brakes that I just had replaced need some work. The back ones were screaming like a baby, but not always.
For some reason, probably GLOBAL WARMING (or proximity to the vortex in
Sedona), it was a cold day in hell around here. We had to wear log sleeved shirts under our jackets on the ride and didn't remove them until about noon. While we were getting ready to leave Vicki complained about being too warm but once we got moving she was searching for her gloves. I was even colder than I expected but the uncontrollable shaking of my body helped a lot.
Sedona was
Sedona, beautiful. The highway coming in was torn up but the speed limit is low anyway so it was not an inconvenience. Thankfully it was Thursday. We stopped for gas but headed to Prescott by way of Jerome. The narrow twist streets in that town are certainly not SUV friendly. I had never taken the Nomad on the
dragonesque road between Jerome and Prescott with or without a passenger so I was apprehensive. But Vicki did well and seldom screamed.
The weather was perfect but the air was not clear. The cold front that blew in kicked up a bunch of dust. It was still a little windy in places. The trip down through
Peeples Valley and
Yarnell Hill was fun with a passenger. We got back back by 12:30 and had a great time.
I decided on another practice run, this time through Payson to the top of the Mogollon Rim, to check out the Nomad. It was an overcast day with a 30% chance of rain and an expected high of only 95 degrees in Phoenix. I left at about 6:00 and got into Payson around 7:30, refueled and bought my morning cup of coffee.
