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.

Run to the Sun

We exited the park Sunday afternoon about 2:30 by the less-traveled east gate. 

This was the big day when the moon would pass directly between the Earth and sun in a rare solar eclipse. In most eclipses, the apparent size of the moon matches the disk of the sun so only the sun's billowing corona glows around the darkened center. Because the moon is at its outermost point, or apogee, in its slightly oval orbit, it appears a bit smaller and blocks less of the sun. This was to be a "ring of fire" or annular eclipse.

Our goal was to be on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe for the solar eclipse, but we were hobbled by the stuck clutch on the Kawasaki Ninja. Without a clutch, mountain riding would require Marty to rely on brakes, not downshifting, in tight curves and downhill runs. Because brakes are prone to overheat and fade when used too heavily, this cut his margin of safety. We had to ride slower.

The ride was, as we'd come to expect, both beautiful and full of "twisties." The road climbed steadily to the highest elevation we'd been to on the entire trip, 9,900 feet. Despite the relatively dry winter, we saw huge snow banks. At one point I rode past a family having a snowball fight. We came upon an accident scene where park rangers were blocking what little traffic there was. Marty made a slow U-turn and looped back a half mile while I explained that he would not be able to stop and restart on the uphill grade. The ranger understood and let him pass smoothly by.

The exit checkpoint sits at on a treeless windswept ridge just before the road descends from the high plateau. The road down is excellent quality with two lanes in both directions and broad sweeping curves. It is the kind of run that forces you to shout 'Wheeeeee!' but you really can't keep that up for eight or so miles. The road builders did skimp a bit on guard rails, there were hardly any until the last mile or so when brakes would be red hot and failing. As a result the view was completely unobstructed most of the way down. There was next to nothing between me and and 2,500 foot drop.

Back at "normal" 5,000 foot elevation, we turned north. The sky was mostly overcast and there were even a few sprinkles on the windshield. I checked the hourly forecast for Lake Tahoe and it showed cloudless skies for the rest of the day. The lake sits on the west side of a tall north-south line of continuous mountains. In order to view the eclipse we would need to make it at least to the summit. Thirty miles shy of the turn west, my heart sank. We were faced with another road construction project. The sign told us to expect 20 minute delays as we rolled to a halt behind a long line of cars and RVs.

Clutch

About midway back to Yosemite Valley, we came to the turnoff for the road to Glacier Point which towers directly above our campsite. This 17 mile side trip across a forest plateau pays off at the very end twice -- first with views of the Little Yosemite Valley to the south then with a "holy crap!" overlook of half dome, Nevada Falls, and a full panoramic sweep of the Yosemite Valley. 

Time was getting short, we faced a noon deadline to be out of our campsite. We joked about excuses we could give to the ranger such as a mechanical problem with the bikes. Soon after the turn onto the main road, we weingressing down toward the tunnel when I heard Marty shout "What the heck?" as he swerved and slowed rapidly. He had been coasting with the clutch lever pulled in and the bike in a low gear so he could slip the clutch to slow down. The clutch had suddenly engaged on its own. We pulled over. Our first thought was that the clutch cable had snapped, an easy fix. Unfortunately, this was to be. Something inside the clutch case was broken.

A car (or bike) with a manual transmission can be shifted from gear to gear without a clutch. The trick is to find the right throttle setting that takes the pressure off the gears, neither accelerating nor engine braking. The shift may be a bit clunky, but you can still move on. The bigger challenge is how to get moving from a dead stop. Marty's bike is light and low enough that a rider can push with his feet to a few mph, just fast enough to jam the bike into first gear and ride onward. With the clutch locked, stopping is also a problem. The solution is simple: don't stop. I would ride ahead of him, come to a full stop at stop signs, then slide into the intersection blocking cross traffic momentarily while he slid by at a slow speed. 

We managed the six miles to our campsite arriving about 1:15, well after the noon checkout time. The next campers, two young men, were already set up on the site. We apologized for the inconvenience and broke camp. As we loaded our bikes, a second van pulled into the same site with two more guys. I found myself listening in on their fascinating conversation. They are a group of rock climbers who were about to climb the shear rock face of El Capitan! I didn't understand half of their jargon or slang, but I got the gist of the discussion. Especially when their voices went low as they spoke of reaching places where they are sure they cannot move in any direction, but do it anyway.

I gave Marty a push to get his fully loaded bike rolling and he kicked it into first and puttered away. I ran back to my bike and soon caught up. As we left the campground, I told the ranger (the same fellow from Minnesota) about our misadventure with the clutch and we hit the road. 

Free Ride

Sunday morning we were on the bikes at 7:30 for a fun ride with none of our saddlebags, camping gear, tools, or any other burden. My bike is not a "cruiser" with the larger front tire, fairings, and permanently fixed saddlebags. Mine is easily 100 pounds lighter than the Road Kings and such while still having the 96 cubic inch engine, six speed gearbox, and a rugged frame suitable for long voyages. And I can strip it down by removing the saddlebags and let it run free.

Our primary target was the Mariposa Grove of giant redwoods. From the North Pines campsite, the grove is an hour south, just past the final turn to the park entrance we had come in through on Saturday. Not only were we free of baggage, but the roads were empty at that hour. I have often said that riding a motorcycle is as close as you can get to flying without leaving the ground. On this run I felt like a peregrine falcon swooping and diving through Yosemite.

Near the south entrance there lie a gas station, a visitor center where permits are issued for the more advanced trails and rock climbing, and a classic white clapboard hotel named the . We topped off the tanks for $5.70 per gallon then headed into the hotel for breakfast. We both ordered eggs Benedict and the hollandaise sauce had a surprising peppery zing to it, about as spicy as medium salsa. We both really liked it, but I commented to the waiter that most guests appear to be older and have more docile tastes. I supposed that since the continental buffet is included with the room bed-and-breakfast style, few guests order from the menu. He checked with the chef and returned with a bottle of "Plant Sauce" telling us the chef had added this great stuff to the hollandaise today.

The previous day on our trail hike we came across this handsome fellow.

We showed it to the waiter who called over a bus boy who knew more about snakes and told us this one is a King snake. They eat rattlesnakes, which are abundant because the previous two winters were wetter than usual so there were more rodents and so on up the food chain. There is a nmemonic that is supposed to help distinguish between venomous Coral snakes that have a red stripe between yellow bands. King snakes are harmless to people, so now I will remember red-touch-black is okay and red-touch-yellow is not.

After breakfast, we rode the last few miles to the Mariposa Grove. Marty asked a ranger where to find the very largest sequoia and she told us that was the Grizzly Giant and it was .8 miles up a hiking trail from the parking lot. We were both still a bit sore from Saturday's climb to the Lower Falls, but we ignored the tender muscles and headed on up. Along the way there was a tree with an arched tunnel cut through large enough to easily fit a dozen people inside. There were also several fallen trunks about six to ten feet in diameter. Some showed the scars from fires and one had a four foot wide section cut out so the trail passed through. After photos with the great tree -- which is largest in girth, but limited in height -- we returned to the bikes and headed north.

Into Yosemite

I have been given a wonderful gift: the ability to fall asleep quickly, to sleep deeply through an avalanche, and to fully recharge in about six hours. I wake in the morning at my finest and ready to start the day. Marty is more of a typical twenty year old who pushes it later at night and sleeps later in the morning. So far this is working out really well because it gives each of us a little "me time" at the end of his day and at the beginning of mine.

Saturday morning, I woke early in the Motel 6 bed with the sound of heavy trucks rolling by on the freeway a hundred yards (or less) across the parking lot. I went to the lobby and signed in for Wi-Fi service for two hours of blogging, email, and photo uploads while Marty slept.

Comedian Steven Wright has a funny one-liner "It's a small world, but I would hate to paint it." While I was in the lobby, an older man came in and we struck up a conversation. It turned out that he is a tour guide at the Hoover Dam. Our tour guide two days prior was named Charlie and had mentioned that he retired from the phone company in Orlando. When I told this man at the Motel 6 our tour guide was Charlie, he immediately said "He's a great guy. He came from Orlando and worked for the phone company."

We loaded the bikes, by now this ritual was becoming routine and well practiced. We know exactly how each piece fits into the puzzle for a snug and secure ride. After a McDonald's breakfast, we set off.

In the central plains states, agriculture has a monotonous repetition of row crops. If you are passing through a corn growing area, you will see mile upon mile of cornfield. Likewise with wheat.  Two years ago when I rode across western North Dakota in August, I was stunned by the beauty of mile upon mile of sunflowers all facing the sun.  But in the Imperial Valley, it seems that each farm is distinct from the next. As you drive by, the view shifts from strawberry field to corn, apple orchards, radishes, grapes and every imaginable type of produce. It makes for a far more interesting ride as you try to guess "what the heck are they growing?"

We refueled in Madera and headed east into rolling ranch country. No more row crops, just hayfields, horse farms, and cattle. We turned to the northeast on an exhilarating road that ran past a reservoir, swept by gorgeous ranches, and climbed to 4,000 feet.  Soon the scrubbier foothills turned to pine covered mountains as we road higher and higher. We had an enormous amount of fun even before we got to the south gate of Yosemite National Park. At the gate we showed the annual pass I had bought at the Grand Canyon and breezed on through. The twisting climb continued up to an elevation approaching 9,000 feet then we descended through a long tunnel and emerged into the Yosemite Valley.  

I had reserved a campsite by the Merced River in the campground that is the furthest into the valley.  My reservation was for both Friday and Saturday nights. When we arrived a few minutes before 3:00 on Saturday, the ranger at the gate said we were just minutes away from losing the site.  We chatted with the ranger and ... small world once again ... he was from Shakopee, Minnesota just a few miles from our home town of Chaska.  

We decided to take a trail hike up to the base of the Lower Falls and I shot this short video.  Words cannot begin to describe the majesty of the sheer stone faces with numerous waterfalls that cascade from like lace curtains. It hardly seems fair to see a spectacle like this when you are a mile up and hardly have any breath to spare. The hike took us up about 1,200 feet above the valley floor -- a little over 100 stories. And even at that we were less than 1/3 of the way to the top.


I have a personal preference to NEVER cook while camping.  For one thing, food means cooking, dishes, coolers, stoves, dishrags and soap, and so on. As a second issue, food attracts critters. The national parks are filled with signs admonishing campers to store food in locked bear-proof steel cabinets, don't cook in tents because the smell will attract bears, to place trash in vault-like trash containers, and to never leave food in cars because bears will tear doors off to get at it. Third, when you add it all up, cooking at a campsite isn't really all that cheap. Why bother with the bulk, the danger, and the expense when you can eat a restaurant?  

We cleaned up after our hike and headed for the Ahwanee Hotel. The dining room bears a striking resemblance to the Great Hall of Hogwarts Academy including the floating candles but sans the sorting hat.  

Our waiter was Adrian and his name tag showed his hometown as Transylvania, Romania. He told a hilarious story of the Halloween when a bat found its way in. Another staff member calmly remarked "Oh That's just Adrian." But because vampires cannot be photographed I have proof of his humanity.

Exhaustion

By late Friday afternoon, we had made it to the Monterey Peninsula. We ran through Carmel, past the golf course at Pebble Beach and into Monterey. After my iPhone's screen turned into a fractured mess, I had made a 6:00 appointment at the Apple store in Monterey. We arrived early and had to wait for our appointment. When I bought this phone I purchased the Apple Care Plus package knowing that it was a bad bet on Apple's part. For $49 I had a new phone. But the process of restoring my apps and data from iCloud backup took a lot longer than I had anticipated.

We lost more almost two hours to the phone swap. Supper was a slice of pizza and a greek salad at a place in the mall with free Wi-Fi so the iPhone restoration process could complete while we ate. We sat next to a table full of ten year olds. I thought that at least two of them needed their Ritalin dose to be cranked up a few milligrams.

By now I was weary. Really weary.  Camping on the beach at Ventura seemed a lot more distant than only fourteen hours ago. I am a morning person; I had awakened before sunrise and was in the shower at 6:00 am. By 7:30 we were rolling west on the coastal freeway. There were two rest breaks at a Walmart and the mall in Monterey, but my 54 year old body was screaming "No mas! No mas!" We were at least four and a half hours short of our goal to camp in Yosemite.

We pressed eastward into the Imperial Valley until we reached Santa Nella. Marty still had the energy to ride onward, but I was wiped out and knew that we had already pushed too far for safety. We checked into a Motel 6 in Santa Nella and quickly fell asleep.

Coast

This is what an iPhone looks like after it has been run over by a pickup truck. As the screen shows, it still works.

Friday May 18 was planned to be an ambitious ride.  Our original target was to spend Thursday night 30 miles west of Santa Barbara, but we had fallen short by an hour.  So if we were still going to make it to Yosemite by dark, we needed an early start and for the day to go flawlessly.  It didn't.  But it was still a fantasy-come-true kind of day.  

We first road west from Ventura past Santa Barbara.  As we approached the northward turn, signs warned to beware of high winds in the canyon.  The campground I had wanted to stay at the previous night may have looked great on a map, but it was also directly in the path of those canyon winds. 

As we passed through Lompoc, I felt something hit the bottom of my right boot.  I looked in the rear view mirror and saw something bounce to a halt in the road just before a pickup truck ran over it.  I circled back and found my iPhone lying with a shattered face, but still working.  It had vibrated loose from its cradle in my windshied.  

We joined two other riders for a fun run through the terrain running toward Vandenberg AFB.

We missed a turn at San Luis Obispo and it turned out to be a wonderful mistake.  Rather than circle back to the missed turn ("always forward" was our motto), we instead ran up to Atascadero and down highway 41 through another beautiful canyon run.

As we approached the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, we came across a beach where elephant seals gather by the hundreds at this time of year.  Volunteers watch over the herd and give impromptu lessons about the seals to those who stop by.  The area reeked with the musky odor of this mass of blubber.

We had put nearly 2,000 miles on the bikes since we left Denver on Sunday. At long last we came to the winding stretch of coastal highway that leads to Big Sur.  The weather was perfect, traffic was light, and there were no trucks and very few RVs to stand between us and an amazing run.

Pacific

[As I write this, t is 3:00 am in Reno, Nevada on Monday, 21.  My last post was written three days ago in the Imperial Valley of California. I am several days behind on the blog, but will do my best to catch up.]  

Continuing Thursday's journey, we chose to avoid the famous traffic of Los Angeles by staying north of the Angeles National Forest.  We continued west across the desert toward Palmdale then made our way southwest through the hills on Soledad Canyon Road. 

There's a look that Marty gets in his eye when he is about to cut loose.

The ride through Soledad was both beautiful and thrilling.  Between the weather, the scenery, and the 20% higher price of gasoline ... I don't understand how anyone can live in California and not own a motorcycle.   

We stopped at Santa Clarita for our evening meal, we finally found an In-N-Out burger and stuffed ourselves with double cheese burgers and shakes.  In California, fast food restaurants are required to post the calorie count of their menu items.  Since we had never eaten lunch and had muscled our bikes across the desert, we earned every calorie we consumed.

From Santa Clarita, we continued due west to Ventura and the Pacific Ocean.  Highway 120 through Santa Paula is lined with farms that grow avocados, strawberries, and other items that fill the produce section of our grocery back home.

As we approached the ocean, Marty made it clear that he would only get to see ONE Pacific sunset and he would not miss it stuck on the bike.  We pulled off at Ventura and shot pictures as the sun disappeared behind the hills of Santa Barbara.

My goal for the day was a campground about 30 miles west of Santa Barbara, but the sun was down and we found an open spot in a county park named Faria Beach.  We camped overnight sleeping 50 paces from the pounding surf.  

Take a Gamble

"The Vegas Strip" was the scene for our final epic battle with Las Vegas traffic ... in 105 degree heat ... sitting atop a hot engine ... road weary from a long day's ride across the desert. A fully loaded Harley isn't easy to keep upright at a normal stoplight. The strip was three miles of bizarre and garish hell.

We checked into our room on the 34th floor of Treasure Island, I soaked in the tub for a full 30 minutes.  

We slept for two hours and headed out at 10 pm recharged for Marty's first time in Las Vegas since he was 3 years old.  We walked the Strip, my favorite place on the planet for people watching.  We played blackjack at the Bellagio, I won enough to pay for a day of fuel.  About 1:00 am we headed for the parking garage and checked out the bikes for a ride to Fremont Street in downtown.  We gambled more and we won again, we were now up over $100. I shot this time lapse video on the ride back to the hotel.  Our heads hit our pillows about 3:30 am.

Thursday morning I rose about 8:00 and left Marty sleeping while I got breakfast.  It cost me $120.  The first $20 was for huevos rancheros, coffee and juice.  The rest was quickly consumed by a blackjack table.  Easy come, easy go.

We loaded our gear ... everything had gone up to the room except the can of spare gasoline ... and about 11:30 am we hit the road once more.  Our mission for the day was to cross the Mojave Desert and Death Valley bound for Santa Barbara.  It took brute force to ride into the 30 mph headwind.  The thermometer on Marty's bike read 115 degrees.  Partly out of boredom and partly to survive the wind blast, I took to "wake surfing" the 18 wheelers by riding close beside them as I passed then cutting away from them as I plunged through the bow shock of wind at their nose. 

We refueled at Barstow and road in search on an In-N-Out Burger for lunch, but we never found it.  Instead, we found another long stretch of old Route 66.  Marty commented that this was a nice break from the interstate highway.  The old road had been simply laid on top of the gently rolling desert, so it was fun to ride the long straight undulating highway.

Marty and I ride with a Chatterbox intercom that connects us to each other and lets us list to music or make phone calls.  Voice dialing with Siri on the iPhone is terrific.

Heat

We rose early on Wednesday to see the Grand Canyon at its very best. At sunrise, you can have the whole thing pretty much to yourself. the air is clear - less haze - so the distant view is better. And best of all, the steadily rising sun cast shadows and illuminates the walls and spires from a low angle.

We posed the motorcycles on the a flat rock just a few feet from the precipice and shot photos.

I scrambled out onto a rocky point and set up my iPhone to take a 30 minute time lapse movie of the canyon's shifting shadows. Back at the bikes we saw a half dozen people stroll by, a few asked if they could take pictures before we moved them to legitimate parking spots. A bit later an Australian man came running back to us with eyes as big as saucers and holding my iPhone. He sincerely believed the owner of the phone had fallen into the canyon! We shared a laugh and he apologized for ruining my little movie. But the story is far better than the video ever would have been.

Back at the lodge, we loaded up and checked out. We hit the road bound for Las Vegas.

By now we've become completely charmed by back roads. Interstate highways are truly a marvelous system for trucks, RVs and air conditioned cars, but not for motorcycles. Heavy trucks move a lot of air, so there is a buffeting behind them and a blast as you pass though the "bow shock" of high pressure piled up at their nose. On a bike, you feel curves and hills. On the interstate, the curves have been smoothed and the hills have been chiseled to gently sloping grades. Interstate highways also have a wide buffer strip of land between the shoulder and the fence line. on a bike, you smell the scents - good and bad - of the places you traverse. The buffer strip of land robs you of the perfume of spring blossoms and the stench of cattle feed lots. My favorite smell of this day was the pine scent of a forest of scrubby pinions as we cruised southward to the freeway.

At Seligman AZ we left the interstate and followed a 90 mile stretch of famed route 66 to Kingman. The town of Seligman has completely embraced its iconic thoroughfare with classic cars, diners, motels and tourist traps.

Along the road to Kingman there are several Burma Shave sequences of five sign poems.

At Kingman we shopped for the polarizing filter and good riding boots for Marty. The tall box shouldered store clerk at the Boot Barn could have played the wise older sheriff in any Western movie.

The ride northwest from Kingman was blazingly hot. Temperatures were over 100 degrees F and the thermometer on Marty's bike read 115.

We took the deluxe tour of the Hoover Dam. If nothing else, it offered immedite relief from the heat. We stood on top of a "pipe" big enough for two double deck buses to drive through. 56,000 gallons flowed under our feet each second at the pressure of the 400 foot deep lake. The flow caused the platform to hum under our feet. Next stop was the cavernous room where the big dynos generate electricity. Acres of terrazzo floor inlaid with native inspired art nuveau motifs ... and that looked as good as new. From there we went deep inside inspection tunnels inside the dam. The dams seeps ("You don't say the L word around her") a few hundred gallons a minute, this was anticipated and there are channels for collecting and harmlessly diverting it. The full two mile network of inspection tunnels is put to use annually and after earthquakes for comprehensive crack tests.

Hoover Dam from Nevada side

Vent from above

Same vent from inside

Inspection tunnel to vent

Camera outside vent, pointed up

New bridge viewed from vent

Descending to dam from Arizona side

We returned to the bikes and took the Canyon Road route to Las Vegas. If you haven't driven around it, Las Vegas has sprawled into a quite large city. I-215 is six lanes wide and buried in a trench. I worried about passing out from the heat and exhaust fumes and found I could not ride with my feet on the engine guard (a roll bar of sorts) because they let the heat of the engine rise straight upward to scorch my legs. Then things got worse. Traffic slowed to a crawl and we endured four miles of stop-and-go traffic. If you put me on a spit with an apple in my mouth, I could have been the guest of honor at a hog roast.

Party

A human pyramid in the barren desert. The hot desert winds can play funny tricks on the mind, but was this a mirage?

Tuesday started before dawn. At 7300 feet, the desert temperature fell to the high thirties. My sleeping bag stopped being cozy somewhere in the forties. I had been up about 3:30 to add extra socks and was rewarded with a beautiful meteorite whose brilliant arc covered most of the sky from south to north.

We watched the sun's first rays glint over the buttes while we broke camp. I was a little surprised when a pair of dogs trotted up to check us out. It turned out they were running companions for a young native woman out jogging the rutted trails around the lake. We muscled the bikes back over the earthen berm that concealed us and we headed southwest 80 miles to Chinle.

We stopped at the Best Western for a hearty (and perhaps heart clogging) breakfast. At the table next to us, a white haired man spoke with a woman in their native language. He wore the sort of hat that VFW members might wear, but his read "Navajo Code Talkers." These were men who were assigned to forward units during WWII to communicate in a code the Japanese could never break: the Navajo tongue. These Indian soldiers endured the very worst of the Pacific island battles. As I paid our check, I asked the hostess; she confirmed that he was indeed a code talker. She kindly let me pay for his meal.

We detoured into Canyon de Chelly National Monument whose centerpiece is a deep, narrow, and terra cotta colored canyon whose walls contain what remains of cliff dwellings. These were built by the Anasazi (Ancient Ones) who thived in the area but mysteriously and quite suddenly vanished 700 years ago.

These photos give a good sense of the scale of the canyon and cliff dwellings.

At one of the overlooks, I bought a necklace from a tiny and hardworn woman. When I told her it was for my girlfriend's 49th birthday, she smiled with her few teeth and said she too will turn 49 next week.

The next four hours were spent riding another back roads adventure toward the Grand Canyon. Along the two lane Desert View Road leading the last twenty miles to the park gate, I was surprised to see a steady stream of sixty or more vehicles heading the opposite direction. Around the next bend, the reason for the cluster of traffic in the middle of nowhere stood in the middle of the road holding a stop sign. The Arizona Department of Transportation was spraying a coat of oil on the next 13 miles of pavement. Groups of vehicles were being led through the stretch by a pilot vehicle and we'd have to wait 30 minutes for the next caravan.

An impromptu party sprang up in the desert as people poured out of their cars to mingle. The RV behind us held three young men from the Netherlands. A guy from North Carolina gave me advice to get a circular polarizing filter to sharpen distant scenes in full sunlight. A group of cheerleaders formed a human pyramid.

Eventually the pilot truck returned with its string of eastbound travelers. The party ended and we followed the ADOT truck westward.

After our bone chilling night on the ground the night before, I checked for cancellations and we got a room at a Park Service lodge. After hot showers and two hours of sleep, we had a late supper at the El Tovar lodge's fancy restaurant.