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.