The Motel 6 in Van Horn is right next to the freeway, but I managed to get enough sleep that I felt I could make my night time slab run through the desert.  I left around midnight and was surprised at how light the traffic was on Interstate 10; mostly just me and a bunch of truckers.  I was treated to quite a light show as I headed into El Paso; lightning everywhere on the horizon.  I was somewhat concerned about the rain that was sure to come, and although I did get fairly wet a couple times, drying out happened almost immediately.

At night your biggest dangers on a motorcycle are animals and recapped tires that have come apart.  They call those pieces of recapped tire you see on the road, gators or gator tails.  If you hit one of those in a car, it’s going to cause some damage – if you hit one on a motorcycle, you’re probably going down.  Although my headlights are quite awesome, at 75 mph they aren’t good enough to see a black piece of tire on a black piece of asphalt soon enough to avoid it.  Therefore, my night time freeway tactic is to find a vehicle that’s going about as fast as I want to go and follow about 200 yards behind them.  That way – if there is some kind of road hazard the vehicle ahead will see it first and since they will brake or swerve I’ll be alerted and have an extra 200 yards to slow down.  It’s worked for me to this point and it worked last night as well.

Tucson is a couple hours south of Phoenix and by that time traffic was a factor and the sun was shining brightly and I was thankful that I decided to make most of this trip in the dark.  It’s very nice here in the air conditioning of my parents house.  I’ll spend today and tomorrow here and probably leave early in the morning to avoid the worst of the Phoenix and Palm Springs temperatures.  I’d like to be riding my last thousand miles somewhere other than the interstate but ya gotta do what ya gotta do……