Bonneville

It was cold Thursday morning when we left the Red Lion Inn in Elko, Nevada and headed east toward the Utah border.  We rode under a mostly clear sky but a stiff crosswind from the north pushed at us steadily.

Weather was heavy on my mind. In fact, this was my Facebook post that morning:

Everything to the north and west of us was wet, too.  Here is what my Garmin Pilot app was showing me for weather radar:

Marty's girlfriend Anna sent us pictures of the place that we had stayed at in Bonanza Oregon covered with an inch or more of hail!

It was clear to me there was a steady series of cold storms moving from west to east across the northern states and I wanted nothing to do with them.  And so it was that we abandoned hope of visiting the Grand Tetons or Yellowstone where the forecast called for snow.  We had already ridden through two inches of slush at La Veta Pass in Colorado on the first day and that was both painfully cold and dangerous. We re-charted a course that would take us on a more southerly route and made arrangements to stay with my college roommate in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday night.

The ride across the Utah desert was more of the same, the freeway follows a broad valley first northeast then southeast as it avoids scaling over a ridge of barren mountains.  The last town in Nevada is Wells and there were billboards for a "pussycat ranch" (prostitution is legal in parts of Nevada) that someone had proudly emblazoned with the letters C-L-O-S-E-D rather than take it down. 

Once in Utah, we crossed the famous Bonneville Salt Flats where speed records are set by rocket cars and such.  It had an eerie beauty to it.  The sky over this broad plain were cloudless. At one point the mountains in the distant north appeared to float above the salt bed on a mirage. The Department of Transportation has come up with a smart way to get drivers to drive at the 75 mph speed limit - a five mile long speedometer calibration run is set up with signs that tell you how many seconds should have elapsed if you are holding the limit.  

We came to the Great Salt Lake with its scent of brine and large dehydration mining operations for extracting its mineral wealth.  After rolling through the city on freeways, we headed for the Big Cottonwood Canyon for an exhilarating run up to Guardsman Pass.  We posed for pictures at the top, then rolled on to Park City, Utah about five miles down the eastern slope. At Park City, we ate dinner at a brewery on Main Street.  

We decided to push on another hour or so after supper. the weather forecast looked decent - dry and no colder than 45 degrees - and to camp for the night.  

Comfort

Before we left on this trip, a longtime friend, Dan O, who lives in Kansas City wrote to tell me if our meanderings took us in his direction, he would be happy to see us. After seeing the cold, wet weather that we faced in Wyoming and South Dakota, I needed another plan. We had already ridden through slush in Colorado and it was both painfully cold and dangerous. I called Dan and asked if his offer was still open. He told me they would love to have us stay overnight. We remapped our return route through Salt Lake City, Denver, and across Kansas to his place in Missouri.

At the hotel in Elko, Marty and I thought about what we had eaten for supper the last few nights. Monday we shared a bag of beef jerky. Tuesday we shared a bag of peach rings. Wednesday was much better, Ken and Charlene cooked brats on the grill served with potato salad. We were way under budget for meals, so this night we went to the hotel's restaurant and dined like kings on steak, salmon and shrimp. Afterward we went into the casino and played blackjack - losing slowly, but losing nonetheless - at a table where the dealer was a dour Korean woman.

Marty had two challenging nights in Bonanza with baby Collette and I had driven and ridden more than ten hours. Our heads hit the pillow and we were out from exhaustion.

I rose early Thursday morning and have completely caught up on blogging for the first time on this trip. I have scanned hundreds of emails both personal and work-related. Back at the office, the user acceptance testing of the newly developed Titan planning system is going pretty well. I am beginning to look forward to the final few rides of this trip and to settle back into my normal life.

Desert Chill

Marty and I hit the road on Wednesday headed back to Reno, Nevada. I had called the garage and the Kawasaki Ninja's clutch repair was completed.  What a huge relief those words were to my ears.  As we headed down the dusty mountain road from Ken and Charlene's home, we mapped out a route that took us an hour out of our way but would take us around the base of Mount Shasta.

We rolled along on a two lane highway through northern California forests where easily one in every four vehicles was either a logging truck or a flatbed truck hauling lumber to market. Once we made it to Susanville, we were back on familiar roads for the run back to Reno.

We headed straight to the garage where Charlie greeted us and explained the problem with the clutch. A linkage rod had worn and separated from its mate, so when the clutch handle was squeezed, the rod rotated but failed to move the parts inside the housing. He had a spare rod on hand and was able to complete the repair with no delay waiting for parts.

We returned the SUV to the Enterprise rental office. I wanted to ride the bikes as far east as possible, so rather than wait for Enterprise to pick us up, I had Marty follow me on the Harley. I smiled as I watched him wrestle with a bike that is twice as heavy and half as nimble as his little Ninja. "I don't know how you ride that hog," he said.

Once more, we packed up and rode off into the desert.  A stiff cross wind buffeted us from the north. I checked the weather along the planned route and saw snow in the forecast for Yellowstone park. A dreary, cold, and wet weather pattern was squatting on our route. We were feeling the chill already, but at least it was dry.  We stopped about 6:00 pm to put on warm clothes.

This time lapse video captures the last hour of the ride as darkness fell.

All in all, we covered more than 600 miles that day

Bonanza

Our stay in Bonanza was relaxing and a lot of fun.  Ken and Charlene are two of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met. I am proud to welcome their granddaughter Anna to my family, she is a terrific mother. And I am pleased to have met my granddaughter Collette.

A few years ago I visited Brazil and the most memorable part of the trip was the two days I spent in the home of a friend. It was really interesting to see up close the differences between daily life in their country and in mine.

I live in a suburban world where things are ever so modern, and ever so insulated from nature. Our hosts in Bonanza are far more in touch with the outdoors. I feel the same way about my trip to Bonanza as I do about my trip to Brazil. There is certainly room for other ways to live and those ways are probably better than the homogenized suburban middle-class world I live in.

If you ever get to visit them, maybe you will be as lucky as I was to have Charlene cook you breakfast made with the freshest eggs to be found anywhere ... they raise chickens and goats for food on the table.  Charlene has a huge heart and has always had a home filled with children. She and Ken took in their granddaughter Anna through her pregnancy and saw to it she was safe and had excellent care. 

Ken, who bears a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, has a slender frame but don't let that fool you, he had the energy and strength of two oxes.  I offered to help him move a big stack of railroad ties, but he completed the chore himself before we got back from a shopping excursion. Marty and I helped him restack twenty bales of hay and I was reminded how soft my life is.  Ken has shoed horses for decades and is in a group that will be packing 40,000 fingerling trout on horses and mules to stock a remote mountain lake.  

Anna has been through quite a lot in her young life and the baby brings her a great deal of comfort. It is delightful to watch her as a nurturer ... she has a comfortable and natural feel for mothering. She is probably better prepared emotionally for parenting than my son Marty, but he was up for the challenges that baby Collette threw (or threw up) at him.  He embraced fatherhood and Collette nicely. Anna and Collette will be moving to Minnesota in a month where Marty has a good job and an apartment lined up.

Busted

As we rolled north from Reno in the rented SUV, we were immediately struck by the odd sensations of no noise, no wind, no bugs or grit, and a sofa-like seat. After a week on motorcycles we had begun to forget how comfortable (and isolating) that riding on four wheels can be.

Just before I left Minnesota, I had lunch with friends at work. One of them told a story of how he had avoided a speeding ticket:

1. He pulled over immediately - no lag whatsoever - as soon as he saw the squad car lights.
2. He turned off the ignition and put the keys on the dashboard. He couldn't make a run or harm the officer with his vehicle.
3. He pulled out his wallet and removed the license and insurance card and set them on the dashboard.  There was no fumbling in pockets or the glove compartment where a weapon might be hidden.
4. He placed his hands in plain sight at 10-and-2 O'clock on his steering wheel.  

I need to thank him, because on the road to Bonanza OR a California Highway Patrol officer caught me running along too fast. I knew it immediately and was at the shoulder slowing to a stop before he completed his U-turn.  By the time he got to the passenger side window, we were ready for him.  He said "Wow, you sure stopped fast. Do you have guns or something in there?" I laughed and said "Absolutely not!" and went on to explain the strategy I had been given to make the patrolman feel more comfortable and, hopefully, lenient.  He smiled and said it worked and wouldn't give me a ticket!

We continued our run up to Bonanza at a legal speed.  

Thank you, Mike K.

Leaving the Bikes

I called Ross's Garage at 8:15 and was told that the owner did the work on bikes but he was out until 10:30 or so. We gathered up our laundry, had breakfast at Starbucks, and headed to the coin laundry in the RV park that was part of the resort.  We continued our internet research and studied a parts diagram carefully and read postings on various Kawasaki boards about bikes with similar problems.

While the clothes were in the dryer we walked to the motorcycle parking area to have another look.  We discovered that someone didn't like the way I parked my bike and "keyed" a scratch into my gas tank ... a wonderful souvenir.  After some tinkering with the clutch cable tension and fiddling with the linkage, we were able to get the clutch to disengage. "Mission accomplished," I thought.  But the celebration was premature, a few shifts later the Ninja bike's clutch was stuck once again.

A woman at the coin laundry told me she had been at the park for eight months. The coin laundry  is a gathering spot for retirees to watch Fox News and get their daily ration of "fair and balanced" news. We folded our clothes in the company of a slack jawed group of conservative and elderly people who have chosen to spend their remaining lives in an RV parked in a massive paved lot behind a casino. Enough said?

We checked out of the hotel and loaded the gear onto the bikes in our now well-practiced ritual. We rode 1/2 mile east on Glendale Avenue to Ross's Garage. Along the way Marty had to perform the coast-through-right-turn-on-red-and-make-a-U-turn maneuver once to avoid stopping and stalling the bike.

Once at the garage, we talked to Charlie, the owner. We later learned that Ross had passed away five years ago and that changing the name did seem right. I told him about our situation.  Charlie quickly confirmed a) what we had gathered from our internet research and b) that he knew Kawasaki clutches. And with the strong endorsement from the man at the gas stop the previous night, I felt really comfortable with him.

And so we left the two bikes at Ross's Garage. Enterprise Car Rental came to pick us up, along with our saddlebags and camping gear. There was a bit of confusion in the pickup that led to us waiting an hour, but Enterprise made up for it by upgrading us to a bigger vehicle at the lower rate. We were soon on the road in a handsome and rugged GMC Terrain SUV headed northwest for Bonanza OR.

The looming question was whether the Kawasaki Ninja's clutch could be repaired in time.

Luck

Sunday at 5:00 pm found us stuck at a highway reconstruction project on the western side of Topaz Lake which straddles the California-Nevada border 45 miles south of Carson City. The eclipse would begin about 5:30 and be at its peak at 6:30. We wanted to see the eclipse from Lake Tahoe where clear skies awaited. We were still at least 45 minutes away under a broken cloud cover on the eastern (i.e. wrong) side of the mountains. Marty's bike was hobbled by a clutch that won't disengage.

A pilot truck led our convoy through five miles of gravel at the construction site. From there we breezed north up the highway another twenty miles before turning west to cross the mountains. As we passed stands of tall pines, the sun flickered through gaps between branches. I realized this was an effective solar filter and I could see that the moon had barely begun occulting the sun.

We arrived about 6:00 at Elk Point, a public beach on the eastern shore of the lake. We tried using filters on our iPhone cameras with so-so results, the autofocus struggled with the setup. Fortunately a group near us had spare eclipse glasses with dark dark filters that made it safe for us to watch directly. A cheer went up on the beach as the moon moved to nearly dead center of the sun. Bingo! We had nailed the timing, location, weather, and viewers but only with a stretch of good luck.

But our luck with the bike was not as good. We checked websites of Kawasaki dealers along our route and found all were closed until Tuesday. We need to arrive back in Minnesota no later than Memorial Day, we had already pushed our luck riding this far, if the clutch failed completely in some remote spot we could be in serious trouble.

Once the show was over, we climbed back on the bikes to get another hour behind us before darkness fell. We decided that Marty's clutch and the Monday morning traffic of Reno were incompatible. We needed to push on past downtown then find a hotel. But we misjudged one thing: typical cities the size of Reno have plenty of hotels on the outskirts, but Reno isn't typical. With several 40 story resort-hotel-casinos in the center of town, there's no market for outer ring hotels. Eighteen miles and six exits later, we realized our search was fruitless. Only empty road lay ahead. We were discouraged. But then we made a fortuitous stop at a gas station slash liquor store. I described our circumstances to the clerk and he lit up like a slot machine.

"I know exactly who can fix your bike. Ross's Garage on Glendale Avenue downtown. He replaced the head gasket on my Ninja a pur a new motor in my truck. He is honest and does great work. There aren't any hotels out this way but the Grand Sierra Casino is close by Ross's."

I called the hotel and reserved a room for $59. With one stroke of good fortune, we had a workable plan. We backtracked to the center of town and checked in to a huge comfortable room on the 15th floor of the Grand Sierra.