Departed home Tuesday morning with no agenda, just wanted to get further North than I had previously been in Colorado, which was a Memorial Day weekend trip 2up with my wife to Durango. This time I was by myself on the 04 RT with my side cases, Big Mak tankbag, and Givi V46 top box. Even though I only had 10,500 miles on the odo at departure, I had the dealer do the full 12K service, and with only 2000 miles on my Metzeler Z-6’s, they were just getting scrubbed in.
North from the Phoenix area at 0630 on Tuesday I took route 89 straight towards the White Mountains of Arizona – past Payson and up the hill towards Heber. A lot of construction along this route and it was within the first three hours of the trip that one of the more unusual things happened to me. A pretty good size rock flipped up, hit the top of my Cee Bailey windscreen, then careened up and hit the inside of my visor – which was flipped up. Now, I am an ATGATT guy, and that includes keeping the visor on my Schuberth at least part way down all the time, but the smell of the pine trees was s intoxicating I had it up for a little while and this amazing rock hit the inside of the visor and then bounced down, squarely in to the lens of my Ray Ban dark glasses. It impacted the right lens of the glass with enough force to leave a deep pit in the impact resistant lens and to make my cheek below the rock feel like I had been cold-dingle by a jealous husband (DAMHIK what that feels like – and it’s been a long time…). I continued on to Holbrook, Arizona, an old whistle stop on Route 66, and when I stopped for my first gas-up, I flipped open the Schuberth and out came the offending rock and a little bit of gravel. I think it hit so hard that it broke the rock a little bit. Guess I was real lucky on that one – it was a classic “could have put your eye out†situation. But in retrospect, having a windscreen and dark glasses should have been enough protection, and it was, but man, if I had not had the dark glasses on, I would have been talking to an oculoplastic surgeon instead of writing this little yarn.
So I jumped on the super-slab (I-40) and headed East in to New Mexico until I picked up old route 666 (been changed to US 491 now for political correctness – will it never end!) and headed North to the Colorado border across the Northwest corner of New Mexico. Past the beautiful rock formations of Shiprock and the Four Corners area, alongside Mesa Verde to the East, then in to Cortez, Colorado, and a turn East to Durango. I didn’t even stop in Durango, just proceeded north to the idyllic little mining town of Silverton, and on North up towards Ouray. This stretch of mountain road is among the most beautiful and dangerous road you can possibly take. The mountain vistas are stunning, but the road has no shoulder and just drops straight off, at least 500 feet straight down off the edge into the canyons, with no guard rails in places and a number of hairpins. I enjoyed the beautiful ride, but it is not for the faint of heart. About 1630 I rolled in to Ouray and stopped for gas. Chatting with the girl at the gas station she thought I could easily make Montrose in less than an hour, so I did, then I decided that the day was beautiful, the sun was still fairly high, so I would keep heading North in the general direction of Steamboat Springs.
Route 50 North from Montrose to Delta looked a bit boring so I turned East and down through Cimarron, then turned North through Maher and in to Paonia. Stopped in Paonia to find a place for the night, but once I got there it seemed a bit boring, and I still had some light and the weather was warm, so I pointed north and just kept going. First to Redstone – a very beautiful stretch of road. I actually jumped off the bike and snapped a quick photo – you can see how I am losing the sun.
And as I was losing the sun I was gaining the “Bambi†factor – all the little deer families standing by the side of the road and thinking of trying their luck in front of me. Kept going North, up to Carbondale – which seemed kind of boring, then finally in to Glenwood Springs.
I’m glad Glenwood Springs seemed interesting, because I was out of daylight and after nearly 700 miles, about half of them twisties, I had a sore butt!. Got a room at the Glenwood Springs Inn and walked over to the hot springs, about 2 blocks away. Had a soak and walked ver to Juicy Lucy’s steak house for a sirloin and a Fat Tire before retiring. Didn’t take any snaps in Glenwood since it was already dark.
Awoke the next morning, went down to the gas station for air (I do this every day on the road) and gas. As I was putting air in my tires, a pick-up truck with three young Latin men pulled up and waited to get some air while I finished the job on my bike. They seemed like hard-working young men getting ready for a day of landscaping or something, no jailhouse tattoos or anything like that. One of them seemed to be quite articulate and well-spoken, the other two were less articulate, more profane, and spoke only Spanish. I speak Spanish as well so I eaves-dropped on their conversation. It was about my bike. The two Spanish-only speakers, who were probably hired labor, were saying how bad-*ss my bike looked and wondering how fast that “f*ck*r†would go (I learned my Spanish in L.A. – I know ALL the words). At that point the articulate one asked me, in perfect English, how fast my RT would go. I told him that it wasn’t really fast for a motorcycle and that I didn’t push it – told him I had it up to 111 mph nice but that mostly I want it to cruise at 85 or 90 all day long. Then I told him that I have a real, real fast bike at home, a Yamaha R-1. I told him that the R-1 produced more horsepower than his pickup and that I had been up around 150 on it, and that it should be able to go about 175 but I hadn’t really opened it up yet. His jaw dropped, and he said to me,†Man, you’d have to have some ‘nads to ride that fast…†He was right.
West on I-70 out of Glenwood Springs, along the river – a beautiful stretch of Interstate, through Grand Junction and out to route 139. Route 139 goes due North in to the Northwest corner of Colorado over two 8500 foot passes and in to the Rio Blanco mountains. It ends at route 64, which goes in to Dinosaur, Colorado in the Northwest corner of the state, and then I crossed over in to Utah and rode up to Vernal, just south of Flaming Gorge.
My initial plan had been to head north to Ketchum, Idaho, and see what all the fuss was about with Hemmingway, but my butt was sore from the previous day, and I decided to head west. I picked up the super slab, I-80, and went west. Up past Park City and down some treacherous high speed merging and funneling in to Salt Lake City – then stopped for gas to the West of the city on the Southern edge of the Great Salt Lake. I saw something there that was an unusual site to me – a three-trailer semi rig:
They have them all across Utah. I went West across the salt flats t the Nevada border, and in to the little foothills there around Wendover. I decided to try to make Reno by the end of the day. It was a marathon, iron butt session and I rode and rode and rode until I ran out of light in the little town of Lovelock, Nevada, on I-80 about 90 miles East of Reno. I’m glad I stopped there – had a nice night in Lovelock. Checked in to a 60-year old motor hotel on the Western edge of town called the Lovelock Inn. There were a lot of newer chain hotels near where they have rerouted the Interstate in Lovelock, but the Lovelock Inn is old school. It has been there 60 years, and since they have moved the Interstate a little bit it still goes through Lovelock but not really past the Lovelock Inn. It is a big, ranch-stye premises with lovely old mature trees that must have been planted there at least 60 years ago when they built it. The lady at the check-in counter was a senior citizen, and I imagined she had probably been working at that counter since she was a little girl and the hotel was new, some 60 years ago. She gave me a room right next to the office and told me I could ride my bike right up on to the cement apron in front of the door, which was good, because the rest of the hotel grounds were surfaced with heavy gravel – not so good for riding and even less good for parking. I had a rib eye with rice and beans and tortillas at a local Mexican joint and returned to the peace of my room, with the windows open on the cool evening, nestled under the trees. They had the fastest high-speed wireless Internet connection there I have ever used. On that one night in Lovelock, I really felt truly isolated. Nobody knew where I was or how to reach me, and it was very, very peaceful. That’s about all I needed.
Woke up in Lovelock and decided I would head over to Sparks, Nevada, and look for Sierra BMW. I have bought several items through their excellent mail-order site so I thought it would be good to stop by. I put the coordinates in my GPS and headed off – got there about 80 minutes later. It is located in sort of an industrial park area in a new and sort of sterile-looking building:
Inside, it was a well-stocked dealership, in a big and expansive sort of way. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I walked in and introduced myself and told them I was an E-commerce customer of theirs and they just sort of shrugged and said that’s nice. Not really what I expected, like “where you headedâ€Â, “anything we can do for you in particularâ€Â, “thanks for your businessâ€Â. I guess that’s okay. I was going to buy a tee shirt for my collection but their tee dealership tee’s were kind of lame looking and I was under whelmed with my reception. Meanwhile, the bike was on the center stand out front. I had not had a single mechanical issue or burned any oil in the 1600 or so miles up to that point, but I looked at the left cylinder head and saw just a little drop of oil under one valve-cover bolt which had been time-certed after my dealer stripped it. There was also a little drop of oil around my moto-techniques oil plug and a little bit of oil accumulated on the Tupperware right behind the left cylinder. The oil level was fine. I could not figure this out. Was it the moto-techniques cap or the time-certed bolt leaking? Why didn’t it leak the night before? The oil level was fine. I went in and told the guy at Sierra BMW and he just sort of shrugged - no offer to help, take a look – pretty much straight indifference. I decided to wipe the area off carefully and then to ride down the road.
Not really having a clear destination, I decided that the best thing to do was to put the coordinates of San Jose BMW into my GPS and head that way, and then check and see if I was still leaking at all. So that’s what I did. Up the grade through Reno to the top of the Sierra Nevada, and then down into California. Boy, you sure could tell you were in California by the overwhelming smell of grade AAA California blue-ribbon PORK. I’m talking about the California Highway Patrol. On the long grade down from the Nevada border, I thought I was on a road on which the Gover-nator had declared martial law! I saw a white, unmarked CHP Jeep Cherokee which had a big-rig pulled over, and a little later on an unmarked CHP gray or blue sedan had a passenger car pulled over. An all-white marked CHP cruiser had another big rig pulled over and a little farther down the hill an black-and-white marked CHP unit had another driver pulled over. For part of the down grade, where it was down to one lane because of construction, a marked, black-and-white CHP SUV acted as a pilot vehicle, keeping us all in a line like little ducks, me with an 18-wheeler filling up my mirror the whole time. I guess the CHP is doing God’s work out there on I-80. Not sure what it is, but they sure are being zealous about it.
At the bottom of the grade I stopped at the California welcome center in Auburn and asked for a map – at each other state welcome center I had gotten a nice map, but they told me in the California center that the only maps they have are these cheesy ones with no detail on them. Harumph – I know why they don’t have any free maps – THEY ARE SPENDING ALL THEIR MONEY ON CARS AND SALARIES FOR THE CHP!!! Here’s a picture of my bike, Lazy Lightning, at the California welcome center in Auburn:
Well, no more oil leakage at all, but I seemed to remember that our own Dean-O said he might be in San Jose, so I headed West through Sacramento, then down South on 680 along the East Bay, past some cool stuff – a ship “graveyard†where the old naval vessels go and a brewery where they make Anheuser-Busch products, down to I-800 and over to San Jose. I know San Jose a bit because as an undergraduate in the 1970’s at the University of California at Santa Cruz, I had a girlfriend who lived in San Jose for about a year and I used to make it over that way pretty often. No problem finding San Jose BMW and Dean-O was waiting for me right out in front – he didn’t know I was coming, but there he was. I already posted a little story about this here:
http://r1150r.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=3198
Now – if you opened the link and looked at my account of my visit to San Jose BMW, you will know what a nice and warm greeting I got there. On further reflection, let me just say this:
If riding and owning BMW motorcycles is a religion, then San Jose BMW is one of the cathedrals of our religion. It is hallowed ground where old school meets new technology, and every BMW rider that either is or ever has been is your best friend.
Well – the trip continues, and I am not yet done with it, having stopped here in LA after doing some wine-tasting up North. I will post part two after the trip is complete, after Labor Day, but for now let me close with those great memories of a visit to San Jose BMW.
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