Cross country trip, part 3
Apr. 26th, 2000 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaIt was really hot out in the desert. I stopped for gas in Gila Bend, and drank as much water as I could stand. I was getting ready to leave the gas station, when I remembered something I'd heard once, as a coping technique for extreme heat. I went back inside and bought enough ice to fill all the pockets of my 'stich. I got some strange looks as I stuffed handfuls of ice into my pockets, but it worked like a charm. For the next hour I was quite comfortable. The ice melted into a stream that flowed out of my pockets and evaporated, and the result was very refreshing. All too soon it was gone.
The sun was very low in the sky ahead, but it was still hot. I wondered how often the highway patrol had to pick people up after they collapsed of heat stroke out here? On the other hand, if someone were to collapse out here, how long would it be before they were found? I hadn't seen any police of any sort except the ubiquitous border patrol. Just as I was thinking this I spotted a police car in the median! How fast was I going? I rolled off the throttle. Would this cop come after me? What was their threshold? I hadn't been going _that_ fast. His target did seem to be the eastbound lane. I passed him, hoping, hoping, he wouldn't give chase. But I very soon saw those telltale winking lights in my rearview mirrors. Darn! I carefully pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped the bike. The police car stopped behind me.
I heard him call, "Step away from the bike!" I stepped away from the bike.
He stepped up next to me. "Do you know how fast you were going?"
I gave him a wry smile. "Furthest thing from my mind, I'm afraid. I was busy wondering if I would get heat stroke out here. Besides, the angle of the sun makes it hard to see the speedo." I gestured at the bike.
"May I see your license and registration please?"
"Certainly, if I can just figure out where I put them...." I dug my wallet out of my tank bag and handed him my license.
"Honda Sabre, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"What year is it?"
"1984."
"My brother had one of those once. Did you ride it here all the way from Michigan?"
"Sure did, and it's been an adventure, that's for sure."
"Vacation?"
"Yup." I finally found the plastic bag with my insurance and registration in one of the side cases and handed it to him.
"What do you do when you're not on vacation?"
"I answer the tech support hotline at a small software company in Ann Arbor."
"Chauffeurs license, huh? Where's the cycle endorsement?"
I peered at my drivers license and pointed. "See where it says CY right there?"
He turned it over and looked at the back. "There's no chart here to tell me what the endorsement codes are. Guess I'll just have to take your word for it."
"Don't worry, that really is the cycle endorsement."
He started writing. Darn. Oh well, at least I'd have the story to tell. I waited as he scribbled. He turned the clipboard around and handed me a pen, and said, "Sign here." I signed.
He said, "Now, this is a written warning. I'd like you to control your speed a little better out here, OK?"
A warning! Yay! "Oh yes, thank you!"
"Now that that's out of the way, I have a computer question for you..."
By this time, the sun had gone down to the point where it wasn't too bad out there, and this officer and I proceeded to chat for at least an hour, about computers, jobs, motorcycles, his daughters, my motorcycle trips, etc. I guess it must be dull being a highway patrolman in the desert. At one point a border patrol truck stopped to make sure he was OK. He told them, "Don't worry, this one speaks English!" and waved them on. Finally I said I really had to get going, that my parents were expecting me in San Diego that night. The patrolman (I never did get his name) told me I was the best traffic stop he'd had all year. I laughed. I thought about asking him if I could take his picture, but in the end I decided I'd better not push my luck.
Onward. As the road climbed the mountain range east of San Diego, I struggled in an incredible crosswind; it was a tough ride for ten or fifteen miles. Finally I entered some sort of canyon and the crosswinds died down. I hoped I wouldn't ride into crosswinds on the other side, and I was lucky, it was calm when I got there. I wonder if the winds are less strong at different times of day?
I only got a little lost trying to find my parent's place. The nice guard at Camp Pendleton helped me get straightened around and I found my way into Carlsbad. I rode along the ocean until I came to a familiar shoreline, and despite the construction that had changed the configuration of the driveway, I was able to locate their trailer park. I noticed that the "No Motorcycles" sign was gone; had they somehow managed to have it removed for me? I had some trouble finding their trailer, and rather than wake their neighbors I finally rode back out to the gates, whipped out my cell phone, and called. My mother gave me directions, and walked out into the drive to wave me in. It was well past midnight and my father had gone to bed. I sat up and chattered brightly to my mother for a while; I know she worries about me and I wanted her to see how happy I was to be taking this trip. But she was tired too, and she soon shooed me into bed.
In the morning, my parents took me out to breakfast, and I told them about the rally, and about my visit with Ye. I didn't tell them about the speeding warning; they would have worried. After breakfast my dad went to his office and my mom and I drove back to the trailer park, planning to take a walk on the beach. My mom said she didn't know anything about the "No Motorcycles" sign, had there been one there last time I visited?
As we walked up onto the porch, my mother said, "That's my phone!" She quickly unlocked the door and ran in to answer it. The caller turned out to be Pete Springer, looking for me. He'd see a post from Ye saying I'd been en route to my parent's place in Carlsbad, and he lives in Carlsbad himself, so he'd done a phone number search and found fifteen Beckers listed. My parents were the eleventh ones he had called. We made arrangements to meet for coffee once my mother and I had finished our walk on the beach.
So it was that my mother and I met Pete Springer. We had arranged to meet at a coffee shop which turned out to be closed, so we sat in a nearby Taco Bell and Pete entertained my mother with tales of how he raises rats and fabricates rat condos. He was utterly charming and even though his business is a little odd, I think my mother felt a lot better about her daughter belonging to a motorcycle club. While we were there, Pete's cell phone rang, and I got to speak to Don Young, who was just a bit too far away to join us before I needed to leave. I hope to get the chance to meet him at the big SabMag gathering in Colorado.
It was time for me to take the road north, if I was to reach Kate's at any sort of reasonable hour. I said goodbye to my mother and set out. It was getting late, so I decided I would have to take I-5 instead of the coast highway, simply to make up time. At least I would get to see a little bit of the Pacific Ocean from I-5 before it turned inland. I made as much of those glimpses as I could, but I was very distracted by the grooves in the pavement. Mile after mile, I-5 was filled with these rain grooves, and my bike wove back and forth under their influence. Following my father's advice, when I-405 branched off, I took it. It had intermittent stretches of these rain grooves as well. By the time I got to Long Beach I was completely fed up with riding on the stupid grooves, and I decided to take the coast highway even though it would make me late, just in the hopes it wouldn't be grooved. I stopped for gas and examined my maps; the coast highway intersected I-405 even sooner than I-5 did.
I was still wishing I had some music, so I picked an exit that looked like it had malls, and went looking for Koss Plugs again. I found a Target. This Target did not carry Koss Plugs, but they did have some other Koss earbud speakers. I bought them, and sat in the store restaurant to dissect them. I was able to pull them apart and put their speakers into the shells from my original set of Plugs. Hooray! I got back on the freeway and cranked up the tunes.
As I rode along, I thought about California and Californians. One of the things I had noticed was that other bikers simply did not wave. I wonder if this is why the topic comes up with such regularity on the internet? I could never understand that before, because everywhere else I've been, most bikers will wave. The only time the majority of riders don't wave, is when there is some kind of event happening that puts hundreds of them on the road at once, which would make such waving continuous. There weren't that many riders on the road here. Come to think of it, the Californians I'd dealt with in the stores and gas stations I'd stopped in all seemed rather preoccupied. It wasn't so much that they were unfriendly, as it was a matter of them being distant; they didn't ask me about my Michigan plates, or comment that I must be hot wearing that suit in this weather. They didn't seem to see me. Yet Pete Springer had been so interested in me that he'd made all those phone calls, and Kate had always been very friendly. Had I been closed up during my time in California? I didn't think I had, but random strangers had certainly not talked to me the way I'm used to.
Soon US 101 came back out to the ocean, and I got to see some spectacular views. Some sections of the road were grooved, but not all. I enjoyed the ride along the coast. After a while, the road turned away from the ocean and went into a canyon, where I stopped at a rest area and called Kate to let her know where I was. I was surprised and pleased when she said she would ride out to meet me. We made plans to meet at a Taco Bell in King City. Looking at the map now, I think I see why it took me so much longer than expected to get to King City. The road I was on cuts inland twice, once at Gaviota, and again about sixty miles north, at Avila Beach. It shows the rest areas just north of Gaviota, but I bet I looked at the map and thought I was in Avila Beach. No wonder I was so late meeting Kate. I did stop twice to rest, but I didn't think I'd stopped for more than five or ten minutes each time.
I got to King City, and spotted the Taco Bell, which was closed. Before I could even begin to worry, though, I spotted a bike across the street in a brightly lit gas station parking lot. Standing next to the bike, talking on a cell phone, was a woman who had to be Kate. I was so glad to see her! We introduced ourselves, and I filled my gas tank, then she led me back to her house. She fed me some fantastic chili, and let me use her laundry facilities. We talked about everything. I took a look at the hot tub, and it looked fabulous, but I was just too tired to avail myself of it.
In the morning we got up and sat around visiting for a while, and looked at maps. She's also doing the IBET, and she'd set up a big map on a bulletin board in her living room; she was marking the locations with pins. It was tremendous fun visiting with her and I could have stayed all day, but eventually I had to get going. After a few minutes spent adjusting my windshield and reconnecting the wiring harness for my electric jacket, that I had disconnected so long ago in Texas, it was time to leave this oasis.
Kate rode with me for the first bit of my trip home. We stopped at a rest area overlooking a big reservoir, and I found a stranger to take a picture of us together. It was incredibly windy up there. We looked out over the water at the wind turbines on the far ridge, and she told me how they use these things to generate power, that the arms on each of the windmills are about thirty feet long. It was hard to imagine; at this distance they looked like spindly little things. I wonder how much electricity one of those things generates?
After waving goodbye to Kate I continued on alone through rolling hills with the occasional line of wind turbines on the ridgelines. This isn't really a mountainous region, but the elevation is higher and the air is different than the air at lower elevations, drier. It looked barren to my midwestern eyes. The elevation, the dry air, and the lack of taller plants made the sky seem so much larger and the land so much emptier.
I was starting to get hungry, and my gas tank was getting low, so when I came to a freeway exit with a little cluster of fast food joints and gas stations, I stopped. I sat in the McDonald's and examined the road atlas while I ate my lunch. I could take I-80 all the way from California to Chicago, and get a few IBET locations on the way home. First Reno, then Winnemucca (and there's only one Winnemucca).
I went into the bathroom to wash up, and walked out to find myself confronted by a solid line of uniformed police right outside the bathroom door. Behind them, wandering around the front of the restaurant, were a whole bunch more. Through the windows I could see that the parking lot was full of cop cars. What on earth? I stepped aside and stood staring. I noticed uniforms for many different police forces and units; most of them had to be out of their jurisdiction. Two policewomen brushed by with a joke about how this time it's the boy's turn to wait. Of course. The policemen standing outside the bathroom door were all just waiting their turns. I heard one of the other restaurant patrons say that all these cops were on their way home from a funeral; an officer had been killed in the line of duty and they'd convoyed up to the funeral to pay respects.
Outside, police officers were posing for group pictures and standing around chatting. At the gas station next door, black and white cars were queued for the gas pumps. I slowly packed away my road atlas and suited up. By the time I got to the gas station, the rush was slowing down, and I was able to pull right up to a pump. There were two motorcyclists on the other side of the pump, not police bikes. I chatted briefly with these two riders. We exclaimed over the police presence, and they made some jokes about now being the time to break traffic laws. They were on their way home from a Keith Code CLASS school and they were still high from the excitement. They recommended CLASS with great fervor. Someday I will have to sign up for one of those.
I knew there was a mountain range up ahead, and that I'd have to cross it as I traveled east. I keep peering ahead, looking for the mountains. Generally when you travel towards mountains, you can see them for ages before you get to them, but these were stealth mountains. One minute I was looking at a flat plain that went all the way to the horizon, next minute BOOM I was in mountains! And suddenly there were trees; I was also in a forest. I looked back and the plains had disappeared. The scenery was breathtaking; the best mountains I'd been through on my whole trip. Mountain streams, deep green pine trees; roads where the outside lane looked down over empty space. This was what mountains were supposed to look like. From the road I was on, winding along the north side of the canyon, I could see a train winding along a track on the far side of the canyon.
The weather started to get a bit colder, and I pulled into a rest area to use the bathrooms and put my electric jacket on. When I took off my helmet, I could hear water somewhere, and the sound of the traffic bouncing off canyon walls and reflecting back to me. I could smell pine trees and cold water, not just diesel fumes. A car pulled up nearby and an older gentleman got out. He asked if I'd come all the way from Michigan? I told him I had, and answered a few questions about my trip. He told me about his daughter, how she was always doing similar things. Then he asked if he could take my picture. I said sure, no problem. He started rummaging in his car and I started putting my 'stich on. I turned to see he'd pulled out a huge, professional style camera, and he was already photographing me as I struggled into the 'stich. A candid shot, I guess. I stood with the bike and looked towards the camera for some more posed shots. Then I said goodbye, put my helmet on, and rode off. No idea how much of that got captured on film, or what this guy's deal was, but he seemed harmless enough. Shrug.
I started to see snow in shady spots on the far side of the canyon. Soon, I was looking down at patches of snow. Eventually there was snow all over the ground on both sides of the road. Fortunately the road itself was still dry. It wound higher and higher, and I came to another rest area. I decided to stop and get a picture. I found a stranger to snap a picture of me and the bike against the backdrop of snow. Finally the road started down again and I left the snow behind. I hoped I wouldn't find even more snow when I crossed the Rockies. I told myself I would just have to cross that bridge when I came to it.
I passed the Reno, NV city limit sign just as dusk was becoming full dark. I didn't want to try to take the IBET picture there on the side of the freeway in the dark, so I exited the freeway. I thought about trying to find a city limit sign on a surface street, but figured it wouldn't get any darker, so I might as well eat first. I stopped for dinner at a Schlotsky's Deli. It wasn't crowded, and while I was eating they closed for the night. A young guy who appeared to be the manager supervised two teenage employees and I watched as they meticulously cleaned every spec of dust and dirt. He stopped at my table to ask how my food was, and where was I from, how far had I traveled on the bike? I told him a bit about my trip, and he sat down to visit. I learned that he was the owner of this restaurant, and he was obviously very proud of it. I told him of the Schlotsky's in Ann Arbor, how it's right across the alley from my friend's shop and I eat there a lot, and that his was larger and fancier. He said his was the new style of store, and that the Ann Arbor one sounded like the old style. He said the original store, in Austin TX, is hardly more than a lunch counter.
I asked him about Reno. Where were the city limits? He told me that the road I was on was actually circular and goes all the way around the city. I explained a bit about the IBET, how I needed to photograph a city limit sign, a post office, or a police station. He tried to persuade me that the best proof of my visit would be if I photographed the arch downtown, that this was a famous landmark and would be perfect to prove I was there. He was visibly disappointed when I said the rules were not that flexible. He wasn't sure which roads would go outside the city, but he gave me directions to the main post office downtown.
Back out on the freeway, the skyline was very visible. The buildings were all picked out in different brightly colored lights. It was stunningly beautiful, albeit somewhat tacky. I enjoyed looking at it. Downtown was a mass of colors and lights; everything seemed to move or flash. People in evening clothes wandered the streets. I rode under the arch, with its hundreds of lights spelling out "Reno - Biggest Little City In The World."
I found the post office without much difficulty, and parked as close as I could to the sign out front. Unfortunately this wasn't very close. As I dismounted, a taxi pulled up. The driver yelled something I could not hear. I walked a little closer to the car.
"Pardon me, what did you say?"
"The post office is closed!"
"Yes, I know."
"But they're closed!"
"That's OK, I just need a picture."
"They don't take pictures at this post office. For that you have to go to the one on Valencia Street!"
I smiled. "Don't worry, I have my own camera."
"But they're closed!"
He was practically frothing at the mouth. I ignored him and turned to look at the post office. I couldn't see a good way to get the shot I needed. He continued to yell about the hours this post office was open and what services they offered. Since he was so determined to help, I turned and asked him for directions to the other post office. His response? "That one's closed too, lady, you'll have to wait until morning to get a picture!" He had started to drool.
The picture just wasn't going to work and I was tired of this lunatic taxi driver. I decided not to waste any more time on it. There are plenty of other cities named Reno, smaller ones that are closer to home. I got back on the bike and rode away. The taxi driver was still yelling about post offices even as I left.
I left the lights of Reno behind, and rode out into the darkness of western Nevada. The sky was cloudy and I could not see many stars. There were almost no lights visible anywhere, except for the lights of my fellow travelers on I-80. This went on for what seemed an eternity.
It started to rain a little bit as my tiredness overtook me. I pulled off into a rest area. The rest area had no plants of any sort, and the picnic tables were under little shelters. I rode my bike up the sidewalk and into a picnic shelter. I put it on the centerstand and leaned back to catch a little nap. A half hour later the rain had stopped and I was back on the road, racing a freight train that was running along the track next to the freeway. Soon I outpaced the train and left it behind.
My fuel gauge sank lower and lower, and I saw nothing but darkness up ahead. I started to worry that I might run out of gas. I hadn't seen any gas in fifty or sixty miles, and I only had about fifty miles left on the tank. Soon I had only forty miles, then thirty. It was 3AM, if I did find a gas station would it be open? Twenty five miles left. If I found a closed gas station, perhaps I should camp outside it and wait for morning, instead of risking running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Lights appeared on the horizon up ahead. Hooray! Please let there be gasoline! I spotted a sign saying there was gas at the next exit, so I took that exit. The gas sign had an arrow pointing to the left, I turned left. A quarter mile later I came to what looked like the main intersection of a very small town. There was an Exxon station on the corner with a lit sign. I pulled up to the single pump. The sign in the window said open, but the lights inside were out. Maybe this was like some of the emptier areas in Michigan's upper peninsula, and the pay-at-the-pump gas would be available even though the station was unattended. The message on the pump said "Please select credit or debit." I pushed the "credit" button, and it responded, "Please insert card, magnetic stripe down." Yay! I inserted my card. "Please wait..." I waited. "Dispense gas." I put the nozzle into my tank and pulled the lever. Nothing. I waited a little longer, and tried again. Nothing. The screen said "Canceling transaction" then cycled back to "Please select credit or debit." Argh!
I decided to ride around this town and see if I could find a 24 hour station before settling in to wait for this one to open. I got back on the bike and rode off down the street. A couple blocks up on the left, I spotted another, much larger Chevron station, and this one was obviously open. Yay! I filled my tank there, as the train I had passed earlier rolled through town.
Back out on the road again, it wasn't much farther to Winnemucca. I exited the freeway in Winnemucca and right next to a large cemetery I found the sign I needed: "Winnemucca - ELEV 4280". It took a few tries but I finally managed to light both the rally flag and the sign, and get the picture I needed. I rode down the main street. Wow, compared to what I'd traveled through, Winnemucca was a hotbed of activity. Three or four open gas stations, half a dozen motels, streetlights and everything. I didn't see the Blue Moon Lodge, though I didn't really look. It's more fun to not know whether it exists or not.
The grey dawn brought a drizzling rain. As the sky grew lighter, the rain grew heavier. I took a ranch exit and ducked into the dry spot where the ranch road went under the freeway to put the rain cover on my seat and the rain mitts over my gloves. I stopped for breakfast at a Denny's restaurant and looked out the window at the rain; if I saw clouds like that at home I'd settle in for an all-day soaker. Somehow I'd always thought of Nevada as a dry, desolate place; it was odd that they were getting so much rain. I got the waitress to find me two plastic bags, and I struggled to get the Totes on over my boots.
The road started up a gradual incline. Soon I was riding through small mountains. Up and up. It started to get colder, and I turned up my electric jacket. The rain kept coming down. Yuck. I hoped that once I crossed this little mountain range, I would leave the rain behind. It started to get foggy. My face shield steamed up and I could hardly see. I wiped it with my hands and I could see a little better, but there was fog on the inside, too. I cracked it open and waited for it to clear, but it didn't. I wished for a spot to pull over; I wanted to change to my fog city shield, but I didn't dare stop on the roadside in this rain and fog. Finally water started dripping down the inside of my face shield. This was actually an improvement. I reached up to wipe the outside of it off with hand again, and discovered that it was covered with ice. Great, just great. What could I do but laugh?! I started whooping with laughter inside my helmet. By this time I had slowed to about 30mph. The road didn't seem slippery, but I wasn't about to test my brakes here. I hoped no one was coming up behind me. I rode over the top of the hill and started down. The rain stopped like someone had turned off a faucet. Down I went, passing a sign welcoming me to Utah, and off the freeway at the very first exit I came to. I stopped and waited for my heart to stop pounding. I looked down at my 'stich; it was already perfectly dry.
While filling my gas tank in Wendover, Utah, I met a rider on a ratty looking CB750. He was a ski bum named Cal, on his way to Arizona to meet with someone who had a commercial website. These folks were going to sponsor him as he and a friend rode their bikes to Chile. Cal seemed very enthusiastic and ready to cope with the things that came his way, but I have to admit I worried a bit, looking at that bike. He told me he'd spent the winter rebuilding it, that it was cosmetically rough but mechanically very solid. The bike looked pretty tattered to me, and he wasn't well equipped; his luggage was all strapped on the passenger seat, he had no electrics, and he didn't seem to know what sort of fuel range the bike had. I showed him Doug's vest and tried to sell him on the notion that he should have such stuff, but I don't think he was convinced. I pressed one of Doug's cards onto him, just in case he changed his mind. At least the bike was sporting new looking Dunlop 491s, a good high mileage compound tire. He gave me the URL of his sponsors web site; they were going to provide him with a laptop so he could make daily reports on his progress. I'll have to check in periodically and see how he's doing. I hope that if he suffers any equipment catastrophes they happen soon, while he's still in the USA, rather than someplace in the third world. I asked him which way he was headed, and warned him of the conditions up in the pass to the west, but he said he was taking another road, headed south.
While we were talking, a woman came over to ask for help checking the oil in a Ryder truck. She was on her way from Atlanta to the west coast, driving this rental truck and towing a small car. She didn't know how to check the oil in the truck, but she wanted to be sure it got done, since she was going to go so far. Cal calmly went over to check the oil in the truck. I watched him wade right into the situation, as the woman looked on, wrung her hands and fussed. I decided he would be just fine, whether or not he ever got to Chile. As I left, he was adding a quart of oil to the truck, smiling confidently and soothing this poor nervous woman's fears.
The Great Salt Lake is in a basin, and there is no place where the water can flow out. When it rains or snows in the mountains, water flows down into this basin, and the only way it gets out again is by evaporating. The water rinses any water soluble minerals down into the lake, and evaporates, leaving these minerals behind. The water in the lake is heavy with these minerals, "salts." Like the salt in the ocean, only more so. The area is very dry, and the basin is large. The lake is quite shallow and only covers part of the basin. The rest of the basin is covered with the dried salts that the water leaves behind when it evaporates. The highway runs across a perfectly flat, dirty white landscape; it looks like snow on an airport. No plants grow here; the salt is too much for them. I looked out across this vast white plain, ringed by distant mountains, the divided expressway ahead like two parallel lines on the Euclidean plain, the other ends so far away they appeared to merge into one vanishing point in the distance. It was like riding across the surface of an alien planet.
Once I left the protection of the hills, the wind just howled. It blew so hard I could barely keep my bike pointed down the road. I had to continuously countersteer like I was making a hard left. Aluminum cans, plastic bags, assorted bits of rubbish came dancing across the median and crossed my path at alarming rates of speed. Occasionally the wind would throw something even larger; I saw several barrels cross the road in the distance ahead of me, and at one point I narrowly missed hitting one of those giant plastic boxes people use to carry extra cargo on the roof of small cars. I imagined what it must have been like for the driver of that car, to have that box ripped from his roof and flung into the path of oncoming traffic!
I started looking for a place to pull over and rest. My adrenalin was pumping and keeping me going, but eventually I knew I would tire; it was physically exhausting to ride this way. Finally I came to an area where small hills stuck up like pimples in the midst of the vast expanse of nothing. These hills were little outposts of the desert in the middle of something even harsher and more desolate, and the contrast made them seem friendly and welcoming. In these hills, there was a rest area. The rest area had picnic shelters with windbreaks around them, and a big parking lot. I stopped to use the restroom and drink some water. I read the sign warning me to beware of desert creatures such as snakes and scorpions, and decided not to take my boots off.
After a half-hour or so, I decided I was ready to venture forth again. I only had a little more salt flat to cross, and there were hills near enough to provide some shelter from the wind. Soon I reached the water, and then the outskirts of Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake City, orange signs routed all traffic off of I-80 and onto a tortuous path that added a lot of miles to my day; it was as if they wanted to give us all a tour of their entire freeway system. I recognized a few landmarks from when I'd visited there before, and I fought back the temptation to see if I could ride the bike up Little Cottonwood Canyon to Alta this early in the spring. (My schedule was way too tight for me to go riding up blind canyons!)
Eventually the detour ended, and I was back on I-80. Park City seemed closer to Salt Lake City than I remembered, but the mountains were every bit as beautiful in spring as they had been in winter. I stopped for gas in a small town where all the buildings clung to the hillside, their little steep driveways emptying down into one tortuously twisted main street, and trees shaded everything that wasn't shaded by the mountains themselves. The gas station was full of four wheel drive trucks with big dogs riding in the back, Volvos with kayaks on their roofs. Everyone there looked like they'd just stepped out of the pages of an Eddie Bauer catalog. The people looked like they belonged here, but I wondered how many really did?
Back on the bike. More rugged, beautiful mountains.
I crossed the border into Wyoming and started thinking about where I might stop for the night. I had hoped to reach Denver and find crash space with some SabMag listers there, but Denver would add a couple of hours to my return trip. Considering how slowly I was covering the miles, I just couldn't afford that extra mileage, not if I was going to get back to work on Monday. I decided that even though I had always intended to camp when I couldn't find a friend to stay with, I was just too tired and I had too many miles left to cover in my remaining two days. I decided to find a motel room. Not only that, I decided I would start looking for this room before it got dark, instead of continuing until the wee hours and putting myself in a situation where not being able to find one would be a catastrophe. So it was that I stopped for the night in a motel in Green River, Wyoming, while it was still early enough to spend an hour on the phone.
I called home and talked to Michael.
I called Jack Tollett to let him know where I was and make sure he wasn't worried, since I'd been discussing the possibility of stopping in Fort Worth to see them if I came home by that route.
I called Doug in Denver, my friend from the SabMag list, to let him know that I wouldn't be making it to Denver.
I watched the weather channel and saw that while I might have to ride through a little rain on my way home, that was nothing compared to what I would be confronting had I taken the same route home that I took out. Oklahoma was one giant flash flood warning, with sections of the freeways closed, and more rain on the way. Any rain I rode through in Nebraska and Iowa should be brief. I had chosen better than I knew, when I chose not to ride back across the southwestern USA.
The next day I rode through more mountain rangeland. The land was dry and covered in thin grass, and was mostly used as cattle range. There were numerous ranch exits. I passed ponds that were like small versions of the Great Salt Lake; they were in closed basins and had little rimes of salt around them. There were odd looking sections of fence here and there, not blocking anything off; they looked like perhaps they were only there to serve as windbreaks. Every time the freeway passed a town, just outside the town there would be a gate (currently open) that could be brought down to block the freeway, and each gate had a sign, "When gate is closed, I-80 is closed, Return to Rock Springs." Or Rawlins, or Laramie. I imagined the snowstorms that could close the freeway. I crossed the Continental Divide, not just once but twice.
I stopped for lunch at a Pizza Hut in Rawlins. As I parked my bike, I noticed another bike parked outside. This one had pedals, it was a nice, relatively new mountain bike. It had a bicycle trailer attached. The bicycle trailer was full of stuff and had a small tarp tied over the top. I wondered if this was a bicycle tourist or a local? I looked more closely at the trailer, and noticed something odd. It had shift levers attached all over it, and the bars that made its frame were wrapped in peeling electrical tape. Very odd. Inside, the restaurant was not very crowded, and I looked around for the rider. I spotted him instantly. An older fellow with glasses, who was eating food from the salad bar in very messy fashion. He had food smeared all over his face, all the way back to his ears and in his hair. He looked up, saw me looking at him, and a look of abject terror crossed his face. He quickly looked back down to his plate and continued to eat. I could see that he had demons of his own to fight. I didn't try to engage him in conversation. The waitress seated me at a table where I couldn't see him, and he couldn't see me, though I did notice him making about six or seven more trips to the salad bar before he paid his bill and left.
About 30 minutes later, and four or five miles outside of town, I passed that mountain bike with trailer; he was riding along the shoulder on I-80 eastbound. I wonder where he was heading, and if he had people worrying about him?
I could almost feel the difference when I crossed into Nebraska. I knew, just knew, that my trip was smooth sailing from this point home. The land was noticeably gentler, the air softer. I started thinking about IBET locations again. When I stopped for gas in Sidney, I took the opportunity to examine my road atlas and for locations I could pick up easily. I-80 dips within a few miles of the Colorado border, and a Colorado state border sign was one of the locations. I decided to drop down and get it. Just before sunset, I left the freeway at exit 95, and rode about three miles along a country road, until I found the sign, "Welcome to Colorful Colorado." I took the picture and was changing my tinted face shield for the clear one when a farmer pulled up to ask if I was OK? I assured him I was fine, just changing face shields, and waved him on.
I crossed the South Platte and thought about how the Platte Rivers could be so shallow; there's not much water and it's spread so wide. It's a wonder they don't carve a narrower channel, or just dry up. Then it was dark and I was alone with the music from my CD player. It's so much easier to ride all night with the music to hold me up. There's not much to look at in the dark, and the road across Nebraska didn't offer much in the way of adrenalin rushes, the way other roads I'd traveled had. I passed Kearney, where they had built some kind of strange edifice that arched over the road, some sort of monument. There were all kinds of signs saying not to stop, that there were large fines for parking on the shoulder. I wonder why they built this huge thing right over the freeway, if not to attract attention from tourists, and why they hadn't put up signs directing the tourists to the proper place to park for a closer look? Weird.
About an hour before dawn, I rode into thick fog. I could hardly see, and I was getting tired and hungry, so I took the first exit and stopped at a 24 hour gas station. Inside, they had microwave sandwiches and several lunch tables. The cashier was happy to have company at this hour of the morning. She asked me about my trip, and told me about her husband, who was a biker, about her children, and how she and her husband had once tried to move to Montana, but ended up coming home to Nebraska. She also gave me good directions to my next IBET target, La Paloma Mexican Restaurant in downtown Lincoln. Soon we were joined by a woman who delivered fresh donuts, who sat down and chatted with us as well. She told me about her teenage daughter, how well she was doing in school, she had a great future, not like all these other girls at the high school who were pregnant already. Meanwhile her twenty-something daughter might join the military, it would be a great future, much better than food service.
The sky started to get a bit lighter outside, and traffic into the store picked up. I said goodbye to the store clerk and the donut lady, and continued on my way amid much admonishment to be careful, watch out for deer along the river, etc.
Lincoln was deserted at 6:30 on a Sunday morning. Following the store clerk's directions, I made my way along US 6 into town, into the one-way district, and there it was, La Paloma, on a corner. They were closed, so I couldn't try the enchiladas, but at least there was plenty of on-street parking available. I got the picture I needed, and headed south to Route 2, east to Route 43, south to Panama. This was an unconfirmed location, but it was in my road atlas and not too far away, so what the heck? Sure enough, not only were there city limit signs (Panama, population 207), there was also a post office. I took my pictures and headed back north towards the freeway.
Just outside of Eagle, Nebraska, my speedometer needle leapt wildly a few times and sank to zero. My odometer and my trip meter stopped turning. Yet I knew I still had forward momentum. Sigh. I stopped for gas in Eagle. I didn't want to take the fairing off again, it was such a hassle putting it back on. After I filled the tank I reached up behind the fairing with my hand and felt for plugs that might have come undone. I tried to follow the wire from the sending unit and see where it went, but I couldn't find anything wrong. Well, if something had to break, at least this is non-essential. I continued towards home, shaking my head over the complexity this would add to my maintenance schedule. I decided not to visit any more IBET locations that required me to go too far from I-80.
I crossed the Missouri River into Iowa. Iowa's actually a very pretty state, with rolling hills, rivers and streams. I stopped for lunch and gas in Stuart, a little earlier than I might normally have stopped, since I didn't have a trip odometer to confirm what my fuel gauge told me. A little later I passed a sign for Winterset and I thought of a friend I know from the tech support hotline, who lives there; he'd told me that there are a lot of covered bridges in the area, and that it had been the location of a movie I hadn't seen, "The Bridges of Madison County". There weren't any covered bridges on I-80 and I didn't have time to explore, or even to call Larry up and invite him to lunch.
I picked up Davenport, my last IBET location for the trip, and it was time to head for the barn. Across Illinois, the corner of Indiana, and into Michigan. I was now just another motorcyclist, my license plate no longer announcing to everyone I passed that I was "from away." I pulled into my driveway just a little after midnight. Michael and the cats were waiting up for me, dozing on the couch. It was good to see them!
Throughout my trip, I found myself thinking again and again that the land out west was hostile and forbidding, while Michigan was so much kinder and gentler. Less than two days after my return, the weather gods revenged themselves on me for thinking such thoughts. Michael and I stood on our porch and watched in amazement as golf ball sized hail fell over our neighborhood. My truck and Michael's car were both parked outside (the garage was full of motorcycles) and both were covered with little tiny dents. The house will need a new roof. So much for living in a gentler place.
The sun was very low in the sky ahead, but it was still hot. I wondered how often the highway patrol had to pick people up after they collapsed of heat stroke out here? On the other hand, if someone were to collapse out here, how long would it be before they were found? I hadn't seen any police of any sort except the ubiquitous border patrol. Just as I was thinking this I spotted a police car in the median! How fast was I going? I rolled off the throttle. Would this cop come after me? What was their threshold? I hadn't been going _that_ fast. His target did seem to be the eastbound lane. I passed him, hoping, hoping, he wouldn't give chase. But I very soon saw those telltale winking lights in my rearview mirrors. Darn! I carefully pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped the bike. The police car stopped behind me.
I heard him call, "Step away from the bike!" I stepped away from the bike.
He stepped up next to me. "Do you know how fast you were going?"
I gave him a wry smile. "Furthest thing from my mind, I'm afraid. I was busy wondering if I would get heat stroke out here. Besides, the angle of the sun makes it hard to see the speedo." I gestured at the bike.
"May I see your license and registration please?"
"Certainly, if I can just figure out where I put them...." I dug my wallet out of my tank bag and handed him my license.
"Honda Sabre, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"What year is it?"
"1984."
"My brother had one of those once. Did you ride it here all the way from Michigan?"
"Sure did, and it's been an adventure, that's for sure."
"Vacation?"
"Yup." I finally found the plastic bag with my insurance and registration in one of the side cases and handed it to him.
"What do you do when you're not on vacation?"
"I answer the tech support hotline at a small software company in Ann Arbor."
"Chauffeurs license, huh? Where's the cycle endorsement?"
I peered at my drivers license and pointed. "See where it says CY right there?"
He turned it over and looked at the back. "There's no chart here to tell me what the endorsement codes are. Guess I'll just have to take your word for it."
"Don't worry, that really is the cycle endorsement."
He started writing. Darn. Oh well, at least I'd have the story to tell. I waited as he scribbled. He turned the clipboard around and handed me a pen, and said, "Sign here." I signed.
He said, "Now, this is a written warning. I'd like you to control your speed a little better out here, OK?"
A warning! Yay! "Oh yes, thank you!"
"Now that that's out of the way, I have a computer question for you..."
By this time, the sun had gone down to the point where it wasn't too bad out there, and this officer and I proceeded to chat for at least an hour, about computers, jobs, motorcycles, his daughters, my motorcycle trips, etc. I guess it must be dull being a highway patrolman in the desert. At one point a border patrol truck stopped to make sure he was OK. He told them, "Don't worry, this one speaks English!" and waved them on. Finally I said I really had to get going, that my parents were expecting me in San Diego that night. The patrolman (I never did get his name) told me I was the best traffic stop he'd had all year. I laughed. I thought about asking him if I could take his picture, but in the end I decided I'd better not push my luck.
Onward. As the road climbed the mountain range east of San Diego, I struggled in an incredible crosswind; it was a tough ride for ten or fifteen miles. Finally I entered some sort of canyon and the crosswinds died down. I hoped I wouldn't ride into crosswinds on the other side, and I was lucky, it was calm when I got there. I wonder if the winds are less strong at different times of day?
I only got a little lost trying to find my parent's place. The nice guard at Camp Pendleton helped me get straightened around and I found my way into Carlsbad. I rode along the ocean until I came to a familiar shoreline, and despite the construction that had changed the configuration of the driveway, I was able to locate their trailer park. I noticed that the "No Motorcycles" sign was gone; had they somehow managed to have it removed for me? I had some trouble finding their trailer, and rather than wake their neighbors I finally rode back out to the gates, whipped out my cell phone, and called. My mother gave me directions, and walked out into the drive to wave me in. It was well past midnight and my father had gone to bed. I sat up and chattered brightly to my mother for a while; I know she worries about me and I wanted her to see how happy I was to be taking this trip. But she was tired too, and she soon shooed me into bed.
In the morning, my parents took me out to breakfast, and I told them about the rally, and about my visit with Ye. I didn't tell them about the speeding warning; they would have worried. After breakfast my dad went to his office and my mom and I drove back to the trailer park, planning to take a walk on the beach. My mom said she didn't know anything about the "No Motorcycles" sign, had there been one there last time I visited?
As we walked up onto the porch, my mother said, "That's my phone!" She quickly unlocked the door and ran in to answer it. The caller turned out to be Pete Springer, looking for me. He'd see a post from Ye saying I'd been en route to my parent's place in Carlsbad, and he lives in Carlsbad himself, so he'd done a phone number search and found fifteen Beckers listed. My parents were the eleventh ones he had called. We made arrangements to meet for coffee once my mother and I had finished our walk on the beach.
So it was that my mother and I met Pete Springer. We had arranged to meet at a coffee shop which turned out to be closed, so we sat in a nearby Taco Bell and Pete entertained my mother with tales of how he raises rats and fabricates rat condos. He was utterly charming and even though his business is a little odd, I think my mother felt a lot better about her daughter belonging to a motorcycle club. While we were there, Pete's cell phone rang, and I got to speak to Don Young, who was just a bit too far away to join us before I needed to leave. I hope to get the chance to meet him at the big SabMag gathering in Colorado.
It was time for me to take the road north, if I was to reach Kate's at any sort of reasonable hour. I said goodbye to my mother and set out. It was getting late, so I decided I would have to take I-5 instead of the coast highway, simply to make up time. At least I would get to see a little bit of the Pacific Ocean from I-5 before it turned inland. I made as much of those glimpses as I could, but I was very distracted by the grooves in the pavement. Mile after mile, I-5 was filled with these rain grooves, and my bike wove back and forth under their influence. Following my father's advice, when I-405 branched off, I took it. It had intermittent stretches of these rain grooves as well. By the time I got to Long Beach I was completely fed up with riding on the stupid grooves, and I decided to take the coast highway even though it would make me late, just in the hopes it wouldn't be grooved. I stopped for gas and examined my maps; the coast highway intersected I-405 even sooner than I-5 did.
I was still wishing I had some music, so I picked an exit that looked like it had malls, and went looking for Koss Plugs again. I found a Target. This Target did not carry Koss Plugs, but they did have some other Koss earbud speakers. I bought them, and sat in the store restaurant to dissect them. I was able to pull them apart and put their speakers into the shells from my original set of Plugs. Hooray! I got back on the freeway and cranked up the tunes.
As I rode along, I thought about California and Californians. One of the things I had noticed was that other bikers simply did not wave. I wonder if this is why the topic comes up with such regularity on the internet? I could never understand that before, because everywhere else I've been, most bikers will wave. The only time the majority of riders don't wave, is when there is some kind of event happening that puts hundreds of them on the road at once, which would make such waving continuous. There weren't that many riders on the road here. Come to think of it, the Californians I'd dealt with in the stores and gas stations I'd stopped in all seemed rather preoccupied. It wasn't so much that they were unfriendly, as it was a matter of them being distant; they didn't ask me about my Michigan plates, or comment that I must be hot wearing that suit in this weather. They didn't seem to see me. Yet Pete Springer had been so interested in me that he'd made all those phone calls, and Kate had always been very friendly. Had I been closed up during my time in California? I didn't think I had, but random strangers had certainly not talked to me the way I'm used to.
Soon US 101 came back out to the ocean, and I got to see some spectacular views. Some sections of the road were grooved, but not all. I enjoyed the ride along the coast. After a while, the road turned away from the ocean and went into a canyon, where I stopped at a rest area and called Kate to let her know where I was. I was surprised and pleased when she said she would ride out to meet me. We made plans to meet at a Taco Bell in King City. Looking at the map now, I think I see why it took me so much longer than expected to get to King City. The road I was on cuts inland twice, once at Gaviota, and again about sixty miles north, at Avila Beach. It shows the rest areas just north of Gaviota, but I bet I looked at the map and thought I was in Avila Beach. No wonder I was so late meeting Kate. I did stop twice to rest, but I didn't think I'd stopped for more than five or ten minutes each time.
I got to King City, and spotted the Taco Bell, which was closed. Before I could even begin to worry, though, I spotted a bike across the street in a brightly lit gas station parking lot. Standing next to the bike, talking on a cell phone, was a woman who had to be Kate. I was so glad to see her! We introduced ourselves, and I filled my gas tank, then she led me back to her house. She fed me some fantastic chili, and let me use her laundry facilities. We talked about everything. I took a look at the hot tub, and it looked fabulous, but I was just too tired to avail myself of it.
In the morning we got up and sat around visiting for a while, and looked at maps. She's also doing the IBET, and she'd set up a big map on a bulletin board in her living room; she was marking the locations with pins. It was tremendous fun visiting with her and I could have stayed all day, but eventually I had to get going. After a few minutes spent adjusting my windshield and reconnecting the wiring harness for my electric jacket, that I had disconnected so long ago in Texas, it was time to leave this oasis.
Kate rode with me for the first bit of my trip home. We stopped at a rest area overlooking a big reservoir, and I found a stranger to take a picture of us together. It was incredibly windy up there. We looked out over the water at the wind turbines on the far ridge, and she told me how they use these things to generate power, that the arms on each of the windmills are about thirty feet long. It was hard to imagine; at this distance they looked like spindly little things. I wonder how much electricity one of those things generates?
After waving goodbye to Kate I continued on alone through rolling hills with the occasional line of wind turbines on the ridgelines. This isn't really a mountainous region, but the elevation is higher and the air is different than the air at lower elevations, drier. It looked barren to my midwestern eyes. The elevation, the dry air, and the lack of taller plants made the sky seem so much larger and the land so much emptier.
I was starting to get hungry, and my gas tank was getting low, so when I came to a freeway exit with a little cluster of fast food joints and gas stations, I stopped. I sat in the McDonald's and examined the road atlas while I ate my lunch. I could take I-80 all the way from California to Chicago, and get a few IBET locations on the way home. First Reno, then Winnemucca (and there's only one Winnemucca).
I went into the bathroom to wash up, and walked out to find myself confronted by a solid line of uniformed police right outside the bathroom door. Behind them, wandering around the front of the restaurant, were a whole bunch more. Through the windows I could see that the parking lot was full of cop cars. What on earth? I stepped aside and stood staring. I noticed uniforms for many different police forces and units; most of them had to be out of their jurisdiction. Two policewomen brushed by with a joke about how this time it's the boy's turn to wait. Of course. The policemen standing outside the bathroom door were all just waiting their turns. I heard one of the other restaurant patrons say that all these cops were on their way home from a funeral; an officer had been killed in the line of duty and they'd convoyed up to the funeral to pay respects.
Outside, police officers were posing for group pictures and standing around chatting. At the gas station next door, black and white cars were queued for the gas pumps. I slowly packed away my road atlas and suited up. By the time I got to the gas station, the rush was slowing down, and I was able to pull right up to a pump. There were two motorcyclists on the other side of the pump, not police bikes. I chatted briefly with these two riders. We exclaimed over the police presence, and they made some jokes about now being the time to break traffic laws. They were on their way home from a Keith Code CLASS school and they were still high from the excitement. They recommended CLASS with great fervor. Someday I will have to sign up for one of those.
I knew there was a mountain range up ahead, and that I'd have to cross it as I traveled east. I keep peering ahead, looking for the mountains. Generally when you travel towards mountains, you can see them for ages before you get to them, but these were stealth mountains. One minute I was looking at a flat plain that went all the way to the horizon, next minute BOOM I was in mountains! And suddenly there were trees; I was also in a forest. I looked back and the plains had disappeared. The scenery was breathtaking; the best mountains I'd been through on my whole trip. Mountain streams, deep green pine trees; roads where the outside lane looked down over empty space. This was what mountains were supposed to look like. From the road I was on, winding along the north side of the canyon, I could see a train winding along a track on the far side of the canyon.
The weather started to get a bit colder, and I pulled into a rest area to use the bathrooms and put my electric jacket on. When I took off my helmet, I could hear water somewhere, and the sound of the traffic bouncing off canyon walls and reflecting back to me. I could smell pine trees and cold water, not just diesel fumes. A car pulled up nearby and an older gentleman got out. He asked if I'd come all the way from Michigan? I told him I had, and answered a few questions about my trip. He told me about his daughter, how she was always doing similar things. Then he asked if he could take my picture. I said sure, no problem. He started rummaging in his car and I started putting my 'stich on. I turned to see he'd pulled out a huge, professional style camera, and he was already photographing me as I struggled into the 'stich. A candid shot, I guess. I stood with the bike and looked towards the camera for some more posed shots. Then I said goodbye, put my helmet on, and rode off. No idea how much of that got captured on film, or what this guy's deal was, but he seemed harmless enough. Shrug.
I started to see snow in shady spots on the far side of the canyon. Soon, I was looking down at patches of snow. Eventually there was snow all over the ground on both sides of the road. Fortunately the road itself was still dry. It wound higher and higher, and I came to another rest area. I decided to stop and get a picture. I found a stranger to snap a picture of me and the bike against the backdrop of snow. Finally the road started down again and I left the snow behind. I hoped I wouldn't find even more snow when I crossed the Rockies. I told myself I would just have to cross that bridge when I came to it.
I passed the Reno, NV city limit sign just as dusk was becoming full dark. I didn't want to try to take the IBET picture there on the side of the freeway in the dark, so I exited the freeway. I thought about trying to find a city limit sign on a surface street, but figured it wouldn't get any darker, so I might as well eat first. I stopped for dinner at a Schlotsky's Deli. It wasn't crowded, and while I was eating they closed for the night. A young guy who appeared to be the manager supervised two teenage employees and I watched as they meticulously cleaned every spec of dust and dirt. He stopped at my table to ask how my food was, and where was I from, how far had I traveled on the bike? I told him a bit about my trip, and he sat down to visit. I learned that he was the owner of this restaurant, and he was obviously very proud of it. I told him of the Schlotsky's in Ann Arbor, how it's right across the alley from my friend's shop and I eat there a lot, and that his was larger and fancier. He said his was the new style of store, and that the Ann Arbor one sounded like the old style. He said the original store, in Austin TX, is hardly more than a lunch counter.
I asked him about Reno. Where were the city limits? He told me that the road I was on was actually circular and goes all the way around the city. I explained a bit about the IBET, how I needed to photograph a city limit sign, a post office, or a police station. He tried to persuade me that the best proof of my visit would be if I photographed the arch downtown, that this was a famous landmark and would be perfect to prove I was there. He was visibly disappointed when I said the rules were not that flexible. He wasn't sure which roads would go outside the city, but he gave me directions to the main post office downtown.
Back out on the freeway, the skyline was very visible. The buildings were all picked out in different brightly colored lights. It was stunningly beautiful, albeit somewhat tacky. I enjoyed looking at it. Downtown was a mass of colors and lights; everything seemed to move or flash. People in evening clothes wandered the streets. I rode under the arch, with its hundreds of lights spelling out "Reno - Biggest Little City In The World."
I found the post office without much difficulty, and parked as close as I could to the sign out front. Unfortunately this wasn't very close. As I dismounted, a taxi pulled up. The driver yelled something I could not hear. I walked a little closer to the car.
"Pardon me, what did you say?"
"The post office is closed!"
"Yes, I know."
"But they're closed!"
"That's OK, I just need a picture."
"They don't take pictures at this post office. For that you have to go to the one on Valencia Street!"
I smiled. "Don't worry, I have my own camera."
"But they're closed!"
He was practically frothing at the mouth. I ignored him and turned to look at the post office. I couldn't see a good way to get the shot I needed. He continued to yell about the hours this post office was open and what services they offered. Since he was so determined to help, I turned and asked him for directions to the other post office. His response? "That one's closed too, lady, you'll have to wait until morning to get a picture!" He had started to drool.
The picture just wasn't going to work and I was tired of this lunatic taxi driver. I decided not to waste any more time on it. There are plenty of other cities named Reno, smaller ones that are closer to home. I got back on the bike and rode away. The taxi driver was still yelling about post offices even as I left.
I left the lights of Reno behind, and rode out into the darkness of western Nevada. The sky was cloudy and I could not see many stars. There were almost no lights visible anywhere, except for the lights of my fellow travelers on I-80. This went on for what seemed an eternity.
It started to rain a little bit as my tiredness overtook me. I pulled off into a rest area. The rest area had no plants of any sort, and the picnic tables were under little shelters. I rode my bike up the sidewalk and into a picnic shelter. I put it on the centerstand and leaned back to catch a little nap. A half hour later the rain had stopped and I was back on the road, racing a freight train that was running along the track next to the freeway. Soon I outpaced the train and left it behind.
My fuel gauge sank lower and lower, and I saw nothing but darkness up ahead. I started to worry that I might run out of gas. I hadn't seen any gas in fifty or sixty miles, and I only had about fifty miles left on the tank. Soon I had only forty miles, then thirty. It was 3AM, if I did find a gas station would it be open? Twenty five miles left. If I found a closed gas station, perhaps I should camp outside it and wait for morning, instead of risking running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Lights appeared on the horizon up ahead. Hooray! Please let there be gasoline! I spotted a sign saying there was gas at the next exit, so I took that exit. The gas sign had an arrow pointing to the left, I turned left. A quarter mile later I came to what looked like the main intersection of a very small town. There was an Exxon station on the corner with a lit sign. I pulled up to the single pump. The sign in the window said open, but the lights inside were out. Maybe this was like some of the emptier areas in Michigan's upper peninsula, and the pay-at-the-pump gas would be available even though the station was unattended. The message on the pump said "Please select credit or debit." I pushed the "credit" button, and it responded, "Please insert card, magnetic stripe down." Yay! I inserted my card. "Please wait..." I waited. "Dispense gas." I put the nozzle into my tank and pulled the lever. Nothing. I waited a little longer, and tried again. Nothing. The screen said "Canceling transaction" then cycled back to "Please select credit or debit." Argh!
I decided to ride around this town and see if I could find a 24 hour station before settling in to wait for this one to open. I got back on the bike and rode off down the street. A couple blocks up on the left, I spotted another, much larger Chevron station, and this one was obviously open. Yay! I filled my tank there, as the train I had passed earlier rolled through town.
Back out on the road again, it wasn't much farther to Winnemucca. I exited the freeway in Winnemucca and right next to a large cemetery I found the sign I needed: "Winnemucca - ELEV 4280". It took a few tries but I finally managed to light both the rally flag and the sign, and get the picture I needed. I rode down the main street. Wow, compared to what I'd traveled through, Winnemucca was a hotbed of activity. Three or four open gas stations, half a dozen motels, streetlights and everything. I didn't see the Blue Moon Lodge, though I didn't really look. It's more fun to not know whether it exists or not.
The grey dawn brought a drizzling rain. As the sky grew lighter, the rain grew heavier. I took a ranch exit and ducked into the dry spot where the ranch road went under the freeway to put the rain cover on my seat and the rain mitts over my gloves. I stopped for breakfast at a Denny's restaurant and looked out the window at the rain; if I saw clouds like that at home I'd settle in for an all-day soaker. Somehow I'd always thought of Nevada as a dry, desolate place; it was odd that they were getting so much rain. I got the waitress to find me two plastic bags, and I struggled to get the Totes on over my boots.
The road started up a gradual incline. Soon I was riding through small mountains. Up and up. It started to get colder, and I turned up my electric jacket. The rain kept coming down. Yuck. I hoped that once I crossed this little mountain range, I would leave the rain behind. It started to get foggy. My face shield steamed up and I could hardly see. I wiped it with my hands and I could see a little better, but there was fog on the inside, too. I cracked it open and waited for it to clear, but it didn't. I wished for a spot to pull over; I wanted to change to my fog city shield, but I didn't dare stop on the roadside in this rain and fog. Finally water started dripping down the inside of my face shield. This was actually an improvement. I reached up to wipe the outside of it off with hand again, and discovered that it was covered with ice. Great, just great. What could I do but laugh?! I started whooping with laughter inside my helmet. By this time I had slowed to about 30mph. The road didn't seem slippery, but I wasn't about to test my brakes here. I hoped no one was coming up behind me. I rode over the top of the hill and started down. The rain stopped like someone had turned off a faucet. Down I went, passing a sign welcoming me to Utah, and off the freeway at the very first exit I came to. I stopped and waited for my heart to stop pounding. I looked down at my 'stich; it was already perfectly dry.
While filling my gas tank in Wendover, Utah, I met a rider on a ratty looking CB750. He was a ski bum named Cal, on his way to Arizona to meet with someone who had a commercial website. These folks were going to sponsor him as he and a friend rode their bikes to Chile. Cal seemed very enthusiastic and ready to cope with the things that came his way, but I have to admit I worried a bit, looking at that bike. He told me he'd spent the winter rebuilding it, that it was cosmetically rough but mechanically very solid. The bike looked pretty tattered to me, and he wasn't well equipped; his luggage was all strapped on the passenger seat, he had no electrics, and he didn't seem to know what sort of fuel range the bike had. I showed him Doug's vest and tried to sell him on the notion that he should have such stuff, but I don't think he was convinced. I pressed one of Doug's cards onto him, just in case he changed his mind. At least the bike was sporting new looking Dunlop 491s, a good high mileage compound tire. He gave me the URL of his sponsors web site; they were going to provide him with a laptop so he could make daily reports on his progress. I'll have to check in periodically and see how he's doing. I hope that if he suffers any equipment catastrophes they happen soon, while he's still in the USA, rather than someplace in the third world. I asked him which way he was headed, and warned him of the conditions up in the pass to the west, but he said he was taking another road, headed south.
While we were talking, a woman came over to ask for help checking the oil in a Ryder truck. She was on her way from Atlanta to the west coast, driving this rental truck and towing a small car. She didn't know how to check the oil in the truck, but she wanted to be sure it got done, since she was going to go so far. Cal calmly went over to check the oil in the truck. I watched him wade right into the situation, as the woman looked on, wrung her hands and fussed. I decided he would be just fine, whether or not he ever got to Chile. As I left, he was adding a quart of oil to the truck, smiling confidently and soothing this poor nervous woman's fears.
The Great Salt Lake is in a basin, and there is no place where the water can flow out. When it rains or snows in the mountains, water flows down into this basin, and the only way it gets out again is by evaporating. The water rinses any water soluble minerals down into the lake, and evaporates, leaving these minerals behind. The water in the lake is heavy with these minerals, "salts." Like the salt in the ocean, only more so. The area is very dry, and the basin is large. The lake is quite shallow and only covers part of the basin. The rest of the basin is covered with the dried salts that the water leaves behind when it evaporates. The highway runs across a perfectly flat, dirty white landscape; it looks like snow on an airport. No plants grow here; the salt is too much for them. I looked out across this vast white plain, ringed by distant mountains, the divided expressway ahead like two parallel lines on the Euclidean plain, the other ends so far away they appeared to merge into one vanishing point in the distance. It was like riding across the surface of an alien planet.
Once I left the protection of the hills, the wind just howled. It blew so hard I could barely keep my bike pointed down the road. I had to continuously countersteer like I was making a hard left. Aluminum cans, plastic bags, assorted bits of rubbish came dancing across the median and crossed my path at alarming rates of speed. Occasionally the wind would throw something even larger; I saw several barrels cross the road in the distance ahead of me, and at one point I narrowly missed hitting one of those giant plastic boxes people use to carry extra cargo on the roof of small cars. I imagined what it must have been like for the driver of that car, to have that box ripped from his roof and flung into the path of oncoming traffic!
I started looking for a place to pull over and rest. My adrenalin was pumping and keeping me going, but eventually I knew I would tire; it was physically exhausting to ride this way. Finally I came to an area where small hills stuck up like pimples in the midst of the vast expanse of nothing. These hills were little outposts of the desert in the middle of something even harsher and more desolate, and the contrast made them seem friendly and welcoming. In these hills, there was a rest area. The rest area had picnic shelters with windbreaks around them, and a big parking lot. I stopped to use the restroom and drink some water. I read the sign warning me to beware of desert creatures such as snakes and scorpions, and decided not to take my boots off.
After a half-hour or so, I decided I was ready to venture forth again. I only had a little more salt flat to cross, and there were hills near enough to provide some shelter from the wind. Soon I reached the water, and then the outskirts of Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake City, orange signs routed all traffic off of I-80 and onto a tortuous path that added a lot of miles to my day; it was as if they wanted to give us all a tour of their entire freeway system. I recognized a few landmarks from when I'd visited there before, and I fought back the temptation to see if I could ride the bike up Little Cottonwood Canyon to Alta this early in the spring. (My schedule was way too tight for me to go riding up blind canyons!)
Eventually the detour ended, and I was back on I-80. Park City seemed closer to Salt Lake City than I remembered, but the mountains were every bit as beautiful in spring as they had been in winter. I stopped for gas in a small town where all the buildings clung to the hillside, their little steep driveways emptying down into one tortuously twisted main street, and trees shaded everything that wasn't shaded by the mountains themselves. The gas station was full of four wheel drive trucks with big dogs riding in the back, Volvos with kayaks on their roofs. Everyone there looked like they'd just stepped out of the pages of an Eddie Bauer catalog. The people looked like they belonged here, but I wondered how many really did?
Back on the bike. More rugged, beautiful mountains.
I crossed the border into Wyoming and started thinking about where I might stop for the night. I had hoped to reach Denver and find crash space with some SabMag listers there, but Denver would add a couple of hours to my return trip. Considering how slowly I was covering the miles, I just couldn't afford that extra mileage, not if I was going to get back to work on Monday. I decided that even though I had always intended to camp when I couldn't find a friend to stay with, I was just too tired and I had too many miles left to cover in my remaining two days. I decided to find a motel room. Not only that, I decided I would start looking for this room before it got dark, instead of continuing until the wee hours and putting myself in a situation where not being able to find one would be a catastrophe. So it was that I stopped for the night in a motel in Green River, Wyoming, while it was still early enough to spend an hour on the phone.
I called home and talked to Michael.
I called Jack Tollett to let him know where I was and make sure he wasn't worried, since I'd been discussing the possibility of stopping in Fort Worth to see them if I came home by that route.
I called Doug in Denver, my friend from the SabMag list, to let him know that I wouldn't be making it to Denver.
I watched the weather channel and saw that while I might have to ride through a little rain on my way home, that was nothing compared to what I would be confronting had I taken the same route home that I took out. Oklahoma was one giant flash flood warning, with sections of the freeways closed, and more rain on the way. Any rain I rode through in Nebraska and Iowa should be brief. I had chosen better than I knew, when I chose not to ride back across the southwestern USA.
The next day I rode through more mountain rangeland. The land was dry and covered in thin grass, and was mostly used as cattle range. There were numerous ranch exits. I passed ponds that were like small versions of the Great Salt Lake; they were in closed basins and had little rimes of salt around them. There were odd looking sections of fence here and there, not blocking anything off; they looked like perhaps they were only there to serve as windbreaks. Every time the freeway passed a town, just outside the town there would be a gate (currently open) that could be brought down to block the freeway, and each gate had a sign, "When gate is closed, I-80 is closed, Return to Rock Springs." Or Rawlins, or Laramie. I imagined the snowstorms that could close the freeway. I crossed the Continental Divide, not just once but twice.
I stopped for lunch at a Pizza Hut in Rawlins. As I parked my bike, I noticed another bike parked outside. This one had pedals, it was a nice, relatively new mountain bike. It had a bicycle trailer attached. The bicycle trailer was full of stuff and had a small tarp tied over the top. I wondered if this was a bicycle tourist or a local? I looked more closely at the trailer, and noticed something odd. It had shift levers attached all over it, and the bars that made its frame were wrapped in peeling electrical tape. Very odd. Inside, the restaurant was not very crowded, and I looked around for the rider. I spotted him instantly. An older fellow with glasses, who was eating food from the salad bar in very messy fashion. He had food smeared all over his face, all the way back to his ears and in his hair. He looked up, saw me looking at him, and a look of abject terror crossed his face. He quickly looked back down to his plate and continued to eat. I could see that he had demons of his own to fight. I didn't try to engage him in conversation. The waitress seated me at a table where I couldn't see him, and he couldn't see me, though I did notice him making about six or seven more trips to the salad bar before he paid his bill and left.
About 30 minutes later, and four or five miles outside of town, I passed that mountain bike with trailer; he was riding along the shoulder on I-80 eastbound. I wonder where he was heading, and if he had people worrying about him?
I could almost feel the difference when I crossed into Nebraska. I knew, just knew, that my trip was smooth sailing from this point home. The land was noticeably gentler, the air softer. I started thinking about IBET locations again. When I stopped for gas in Sidney, I took the opportunity to examine my road atlas and for locations I could pick up easily. I-80 dips within a few miles of the Colorado border, and a Colorado state border sign was one of the locations. I decided to drop down and get it. Just before sunset, I left the freeway at exit 95, and rode about three miles along a country road, until I found the sign, "Welcome to Colorful Colorado." I took the picture and was changing my tinted face shield for the clear one when a farmer pulled up to ask if I was OK? I assured him I was fine, just changing face shields, and waved him on.
I crossed the South Platte and thought about how the Platte Rivers could be so shallow; there's not much water and it's spread so wide. It's a wonder they don't carve a narrower channel, or just dry up. Then it was dark and I was alone with the music from my CD player. It's so much easier to ride all night with the music to hold me up. There's not much to look at in the dark, and the road across Nebraska didn't offer much in the way of adrenalin rushes, the way other roads I'd traveled had. I passed Kearney, where they had built some kind of strange edifice that arched over the road, some sort of monument. There were all kinds of signs saying not to stop, that there were large fines for parking on the shoulder. I wonder why they built this huge thing right over the freeway, if not to attract attention from tourists, and why they hadn't put up signs directing the tourists to the proper place to park for a closer look? Weird.
About an hour before dawn, I rode into thick fog. I could hardly see, and I was getting tired and hungry, so I took the first exit and stopped at a 24 hour gas station. Inside, they had microwave sandwiches and several lunch tables. The cashier was happy to have company at this hour of the morning. She asked me about my trip, and told me about her husband, who was a biker, about her children, and how she and her husband had once tried to move to Montana, but ended up coming home to Nebraska. She also gave me good directions to my next IBET target, La Paloma Mexican Restaurant in downtown Lincoln. Soon we were joined by a woman who delivered fresh donuts, who sat down and chatted with us as well. She told me about her teenage daughter, how well she was doing in school, she had a great future, not like all these other girls at the high school who were pregnant already. Meanwhile her twenty-something daughter might join the military, it would be a great future, much better than food service.
The sky started to get a bit lighter outside, and traffic into the store picked up. I said goodbye to the store clerk and the donut lady, and continued on my way amid much admonishment to be careful, watch out for deer along the river, etc.
Lincoln was deserted at 6:30 on a Sunday morning. Following the store clerk's directions, I made my way along US 6 into town, into the one-way district, and there it was, La Paloma, on a corner. They were closed, so I couldn't try the enchiladas, but at least there was plenty of on-street parking available. I got the picture I needed, and headed south to Route 2, east to Route 43, south to Panama. This was an unconfirmed location, but it was in my road atlas and not too far away, so what the heck? Sure enough, not only were there city limit signs (Panama, population 207), there was also a post office. I took my pictures and headed back north towards the freeway.
Just outside of Eagle, Nebraska, my speedometer needle leapt wildly a few times and sank to zero. My odometer and my trip meter stopped turning. Yet I knew I still had forward momentum. Sigh. I stopped for gas in Eagle. I didn't want to take the fairing off again, it was such a hassle putting it back on. After I filled the tank I reached up behind the fairing with my hand and felt for plugs that might have come undone. I tried to follow the wire from the sending unit and see where it went, but I couldn't find anything wrong. Well, if something had to break, at least this is non-essential. I continued towards home, shaking my head over the complexity this would add to my maintenance schedule. I decided not to visit any more IBET locations that required me to go too far from I-80.
I crossed the Missouri River into Iowa. Iowa's actually a very pretty state, with rolling hills, rivers and streams. I stopped for lunch and gas in Stuart, a little earlier than I might normally have stopped, since I didn't have a trip odometer to confirm what my fuel gauge told me. A little later I passed a sign for Winterset and I thought of a friend I know from the tech support hotline, who lives there; he'd told me that there are a lot of covered bridges in the area, and that it had been the location of a movie I hadn't seen, "The Bridges of Madison County". There weren't any covered bridges on I-80 and I didn't have time to explore, or even to call Larry up and invite him to lunch.
I picked up Davenport, my last IBET location for the trip, and it was time to head for the barn. Across Illinois, the corner of Indiana, and into Michigan. I was now just another motorcyclist, my license plate no longer announcing to everyone I passed that I was "from away." I pulled into my driveway just a little after midnight. Michael and the cats were waiting up for me, dozing on the couch. It was good to see them!
Throughout my trip, I found myself thinking again and again that the land out west was hostile and forbidding, while Michigan was so much kinder and gentler. Less than two days after my return, the weather gods revenged themselves on me for thinking such thoughts. Michael and I stood on our porch and watched in amazement as golf ball sized hail fell over our neighborhood. My truck and Michael's car were both parked outside (the garage was full of motorcycles) and both were covered with little tiny dents. The house will need a new roof. So much for living in a gentler place.
