Ride with the Eagles

We're back!  The SBT suffered through six weeks of unpleasantness but no matter, we are back on the bike and on the blog!  Our latest post is here...

The greatest selling American band of all time made a bold move up the music charts this month in 1972.  A quick memory jog may suggest that band to be Aerosmith.  It is not the bad boys form Boston.  Move to the west coast and try again.  The band in question is synonymous with Southern California but its real roots were in Texas.  So much so the band took its name from the mascot of North Texas State University--the Eagles.  (Today the college is North Texas University and they are known as the Mean Green).  

The Eagles founding member, Don Henley was a student at NTSU and hailed from nearby Linden, Texas.  Henley's college garage band realized, like most bands at some point, that the path to success would begin in Los Angeles.  Soon after Henley arrived in Tinseltown he met Glenn Frey and the two shared a common musical interest.  Frey hailed from Detroit and provided some supporting instrumentation to some of Bob Seger's early recordings.  Frey, like Henley, decided that in order live life in the fast lane he would also need to relocate to LA.  Very quickly the newly minted Californians found themselves jamming together as members of Linda Ronstadt's band.   

      

The two men made fast friends with Jackson Brown who had a half-finished song that Frey took a look at and soon found the inspiration needed to complete the work.  The song was "Take it Easy" and it became the first hit single on the Eagles debut album.  The song was a fun look at life with “flat bed Fords,” skirt chasing and “loosening loads.”  The unwitting star of the song became the sleepy town of Winslow, Arizona from the line “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.”

At first Winslow was not impressed.  But as the years have moved on the town has embraced its place in rock and roll history.  So much so that Winslow has a city park (Standin’ on a Corner Park) dedicated to “Take it Easy” and a large mural on the corner depicts the “girl, my Lord in a flat bed Ford.”    The town as luck would have it needed the song when the new Interstate 40 bypassed Winslow and travelers took to the major highway in favor of the slow Route 66 which previously moved commerce through town.  It is from the mural that a bike rider can set out on a cool ride.

And there a couple routes to take that will lead riders to some strange stuff.  About one mile out of town is the Homolovi Ruins, a historic site with excellent examples of surviving pueblo construction.  About 43 miles from town is the location of the largest meteor impact site in the United States—the Barrington Crater.  The crater was formed by a meteor approximately 55 yards wide that struck the Earth’s surface with an energy of 10 megatons at a speed of 45,000 miles per hour.  For riders wanting to stretch their legs further Winslow is about 50 miles from the Petrified Forest National Park.     

So, if you find yourself in Winslow, Arizona we hope you have your bicycle and remember, “don’t the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.”

We have a video of "Take it Easy" on our website at www.stickybottleteam.net