So big, I couldn't stop smiling

I went to collect the bike from the hire shop; which was more of a boutique actually, Harley Davidson branded clothes and other things, everything nice and clean.

I tried a couple of leather jackets before settling on a traditional looking number with the zip across my chest at an angle. I asked about helmets. The selection consisted of several of the type sported by Dick Dastardly’s friend, Klunk. None fit comfortably but I took one anyway. The bike was a Sportster, the smallest, at 900cc but still noisy even on the very wide main road that runs through the centre of Sedona.

Between me and Prescott, 50 or so miles west, there was mainly desert and a range of quite pointy hills. I had left the edge of town and experimented with speed a little before I decided that the helmet was cramping more than just my style. I strapped it to the grab handle and set off again, a little tentatively at first as it seemed very easy to imagine my head meeting the tarmac and splitting open like a melon.

After maybe an hour, having stopped off at the little ex-mining town of Jerome, I had reached an altitude where there was snow on the edges of the road. Only a few minutes more and I was winding down the other side of the range. The view was very, very big; miles of desert with a pencilled in road, squiggling into the haze.