Road Trip! Update: Days 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.
Okay folks.. sorry this took so long to get to you, but things have been fairly hectic since I've been back.
So here it is, the rest of the ride report. Also.. in case you missed the pics I posted before, you can find them here. Start on pic #38 in the slide show if you want to see them in order. :)
Day 8 we rode from Eugene, OR to Seattle, WA, 287 miles.
kilrara had to leave early to go to work, so we said our goodbyes, but he left us a key so that we could leave on our own schedule. This worked out famously, because as it turned out, I was totally out of anything resembling clean clothes. Sam and his roomie were kind enough to allow us the use of their washer and dryer, and we managed to get everything taken care of before heading out.
We didn't go too far before stopping for breakfast in Corvallis to meet up with Laia (saberpirate) for coffee and breakfast at Allan Bros. Beanery. It was really great to catch up with her, since I hadn't seen her since.. hell, I don't know, graduation!? I know.. I'm terrible. But it was well worth the 10-mile detour because the company was wonderful, the food was fantastic, and Corvallis was definitely interesting.
I wanted to make a note of something for those of you who have never driven through Oregon before. You can't pump your own gas there. WTF, over? Seriously? Apparently there's one other state that does it on the East coast (Edit: Thank you, Laia, for clarifying. :D It's New Jersey), but seriously!? Thankfully for us, when you're on a motorcycle, the extent of what they do is swipe your card for you and hand you the nozzle to fill the bike.
Onward to Washington... we crossed the bridge into Portland (and it was chilly!) and took the picture at the big "Welcome to Washington" sign just on the other side. Tracy had been to WA before, but the last time he was there he missed out on getting a photo with the sign... suffice it to say, he was happy to add that to his collection (4 more to go!).
On our way to Seattle, we made yet another detour in DuPont to visit with my old Reserve commander, Mike Davis. We only got to visit with him briefly, but it was still cool to see him again (I hadn't seen him since we got back from deployment in '04), and to chit chat. From there, we made our way to Seattle. Our friend, Mark, lived down town, so we caught a little rush hour traffic on our way to his place, but it wasn't too bad. He graciously allowed us use of his garage to store the bike and our gear, and we walked up the hill to Broadway and ate dinner at a sushi restaurant named Hana - which was fan-freaking-tastic, I might add. From there, we walked to Dahlia's to meet his girlfriend and her sister, had a couple of drinks and some dessert before hopping over to Chez Gaudy's. There, we had a couple more drinks, met up with Laura and her boyfriend/fiance/hubby/whatever Louie. One of the drinks Tracy got was something called a Black Velvet. I'd never heard of it before that night, and frankly, reading the ingredients made me want to hurl: Guiness and champagne. Really? Well, being the adventurous type, he opted to try it. I did, too... and surprisingly, it was actually a very tasty beverage. It took the edge off of the Guiness... which might actually defeat the purpose of drinking Guiness, but for people like me that don't particularly care for the bitter bite, it made it palatable. :)
At any rate... suffice it to say, they don't mess around with their drinks in Seattle. I had 4 drinks and was sufficiently toasty. Being as the walk back to Mark's apartment was all uphill, we all (sans Laura and Louie, as they had brought their own transportation) piled into a cab to go back. I won't go into details about a couple of things Tracy and I saw at Mark's apartment... but they were pretty humorous (and relatively harmless... lol). Mark let us have the run of his apartment and went to his gf's place to crash. As drunk as I was, I wasn't having much of anything except sleep at that point, so soon after they left, I went to bed. And so ends Day 8...
Day 9 we rode from Seattle, WA to Richland, WA, 200 miles.
Another short day lay ahead of us, so we once again took our time in the morning. Mark had suggested breakfast at a coffee shop around the corner from his place, but it turned out to be closed (apparently they had later "summer" hours that Mark wasn't aware of), so we walked up to Broadway again and ate at Noah's Bagels instead. We packed our things back into the hard bags, donned our riding gear, and made way out of Seattle.
The trip crossing the Cascades was rather chilly. I remembered passing a sign with a temperature reading of 49 degrees.. and I know it only got colder as we reached the summit. The odd thing about Washington... once you begin to clear the mountains into the east side of the state.. it's a completely different climate. Literally - the west side (where Seattle is) gets 300 days of rain a year. On the east side.. the opposite. It's more like a desert in that regard - yellow grass and lots of sage brush. And oh thank God, it was actually WARM - for the first time since arriving in Oregon. Literally, the clouds ended in a a sharp line and it was clear blue sky. We found a scenic turnout and stopped to take pictures, as there was an excellent view of both Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier in the distance.
I called my brother, Charlie, at one of our gas stops, and he informed us that after they had offered to let us stay with them, they had realized that since the boys each moved into their own rooms, they no longer had a "guest" bedroom for us to stay in, and they also no longer had a sleeper couch. Oops! So they, in apology, put us up in a Days Inn in town. Unnecessary in my book, I would've been fine sleeping on the floor with a blanket, but they insisted.
We stopped by the hotel first once we arrived in Richland, as we had arrived early enough for Charlie to still be at work. It worked out for the better since Tracy and I had the opportunity to change and freshen up a bit before going to their house for dinner. It was cool to finally see Charlie's collection of motorcycles. He has a '95 Ducati Supersport, an old Honda dual-sport, an old Capriolo, an old BSA, and 3 other bikes that I have no idea what they were as they were in pieces. Charlie is quite the tinkerer.. and actually machines many of his own parts.
Dinner was good, too.. Charlie's wife, Robin, is quite the cook. After dinner Charlie entertained us with a slideshow of photos he had taken when he and Robin had visited my parents and me in South Africa. After it got dark and as it was getting late, we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel.
Day 10 we rode from Richland, WA to Wendover, UT, 595 miles.
With a long day ahead of us, we made a point of getting up early for breakfast so we could get on the road by about 8am.
We didn't even make it out of Richland... and Tracy got pulled over doing 75 in a 65 while we were still in the city limits. I had my iPod turned on, so I didn't hear a single bit of the conversation that took place between him and the police officer, so as I was explained later, the officer let us off with a verbal warning. From there he commented on Tracy's Iron Butt plate and talked to him a bit about our trip before letting us go. Whew! Close call. First (and hopefully last) time Tracy's been pulled over on that bike.
We continued on our way... not a great deal of interest on this trip. The roads in southern WA and northeastern OR were fun. We got flipped off in Boise. And it was hot in Nevada. That was about it.
We stayed on the NV side of Wendover at a little casino-hotel called the Wendover Nugget. Not a bad place.. we had a king-size bed and a big jacuzzi tub for $80 a night. We did talk to a lady while we were in line to check-in. Why you ask? Because she made a comment to Tracy to the effect of, "you must not be from around here... that accent definitely isn't from Utah!" Haha...
We were pretty worn out, but we opted to go ahead and eat dinner in the hotel. The service was definitely lackluster and the food was so-so, but we were so tired we didn't really care.
Day 11 we rode from Wendover, UT to Denver, CO, 725 miles.
We got up early, once again with the intention of making an early start. Originally, we had been expecting a 650 mile day. As it turned out, halfway through our day, Tracy changed the route, and it wasn't until we got to Denver that we realized we rode 725 miles. I'm not so sure I would've been up to the task if I had known ahead of time, but there you have it.
We grabbed some quick breakfast and coffee at the Starbucks in the hotel before heading out. We didn't go very far at all before stopping to see one of the main attractions that I had been looking forward to on the trip: the Bonneville Salt Flats. To say this place is one of the few in the world that lives up to it's expectations is an understatement. It was freaking amazing. Words don't do it justice. Pictures only scratch the surface. Being there is really the best way to experience it, so if EVER you have the chance, do it. And actually do it right - drive all the way down to the end of the track. It's worth the detour, even if you're not out there to set a land speed record.
I'll post a photo that shows what the "track" looks like to save having to describe it:
To get to the track you take a road off of I-80 to a cul-de-sac that slopes off onto the salt. The track itself is basically 10 miles long by 80 feet wide. The salt is pretty smooth as you ride over it. Tracy and I stopped to take photos at the cul-de-sac before riding out onto the salt itself. He had gotten the bike up to about 115mph before I noticed he was backing off the throttle. Confused, I had peeked over his shoulder as he was turning around to motion ahead of us - there was a big group of vehicles lined up (perpendicular to the track) ahead of us on the horizon.
We roll up, and it turns out to be a large group of folks firing off some home-made rockets. But the show had stopped because one of the guys had rolled a four-wheeler four times and Life Flight was on it's way to evacuate him to the hospital. Bummer for him... but it benefitted us in that, since they had stopped shooting rockets, we could continue to the end of the track to take the photos we had intended to take. So after confirming that it was okay to do so with the people in charge of the rocket group, we went on about our way down the track.
We stopped at the last set of cones, right before the edge of the area that the government maintains. It had started to get warm out on the flats, and I was wearing my UnderArmor Cold Gear shirt beneath my jacket. Being as we were in the middle of no where, and every sign of civilization was beyond the horizon, I felt perfectly comfortable removing the offending article of clothing and changing to a t-shirt. I guess someone (other than Tracy, obviously) could have seen me if they had a set of binoculars. If they were that desperate, more power to them. We took a crapload of pictures, collected some of the salt stuck to the tires, and made our way back to the gas station at the highway to wash the caked-on salt off of the bike (the main concern was the radiator.. it had covered nearly the entire thing!) before continuing on our way to Denver.
We stopped in Salt Lake City for lunch, which is where Tracy had opted to change the route. The GPS wanted us to take a state highway from Salt Lake to I-70, but 2-lane highway would be slow going, and we were already going to be rolling into Denver pretty late, so Tracy opted to modify the route to take us down through Nephil, to the 25 (I think?) and ultimately to I-70. Where we hit I-70, there was a sign that said "No Services 110 Miles." They weren't kidding. There was nothing but desert and canyons for that entire distance. It was quite beautiful, and I got a great many photos along that stretch.
We stopped at the Salt Wash (where we chatted briefly with a lady who was there who said she also rode and was planning on buying an SV). I got pictures of a couple of potential Darwin award winners who decided it would be a good idea to go rock climbing... in nothing but surfer shorts and flip flops. From there we made our way through Eagle Canyon, and stopped to take more pictures in Spotted Wolf Canyon, which was positively breathtaking.
The sun was starting to go down as we stopped for our Colorado state sign picture. Another couple in an SUV trailering a Harley had also stopped to take a picture of the sign and offered to take the picture of us together in front of it. The husband, who went by the moniker "Moose" gave Tracy his business card. Apparently they were on their way to Sturgis (we saw a great many more bikes being ridden/trailered in that direction the next day, too).
We made way into Colorado. Before the last stretch of about 150 miles into Denver, we stopped for gas. I was about ready to hit a brick wall - I was exhausted, cold, and my back was starting to hurt. Surprisingly, my butt didn't bother me so much. Oh yes, and I was hungry - we had planned on eating dinner in Denver. But being as it had already been more than 10 hours since lunch, I opted to grab a candy bar and an energy drink to keep me going for the last couple of hours. While we were resting there, we saw a guy on the bench next to us dozing. At some point, he suddenly woke up and decided it would be a good idea to take a walk. He literally stumbled into a car and sat on it's hood for a moment before he could regain his balance and continue walking. But it was a rather brief walk.. he only walked around all the gas pumps before going back inside the gas station. Oooookaaayy.... so, he earned the apropos nickname of "Stumbly."
Once all our appropriate cold gear was donned, we hopped (for lack of a more fitting term.. we weren't exactly peppy at that point, lol) on the bike for the last leg of the day's trip. We hit the summit right after passing through Vail and right before passing through Frisco. Frisco is at about 12,000 feet, and I imagine the summit is a bit higher. It was in the mid-40's going through there, and dark. The twisties weren't too bad - it was an interstate after all - but it wasn't as much fun as it might have been going through in the day time. If we had had more time to spare (in other words, if I didn't have to be back at work by a certain day), we would have just stopped somewhere before the Rockies and gone through in the morning. Alas... we didn't have much of an option but to keep going.
We finally rolled up to the hotel at about 1:30am local time. We were pretty worn the fuck out. We had considered getting food when arriving in Denver, but at that point I wanted to see nothing except a whole lot of pillow. So to bed we went. And it was good.
Day 12 we rode from Denver, CO to Amarillo, TX, 427 miles.
We tried to get a somewhat early start that morning. By comparison to the previous two days, we had a fairly short distance to ride. But things didn't start off on quite the right foot. In closing and latching the hard bag with all my stuff... I managed to break the latch. Good thing Tracy always carries duct tape on his trips, or we would've been pretty much hosed. So we tape the bag shut, throw it on the bike, and google the nearest motorcycle dealership. Why? Because it was going to be hot going through New Mexico into Texas, so Tracy figured it'd be better to have something like a tie-down to keep the bag closed, since he wasn't confident the glue on the duct tape would hold up to the heat. So we made our pit stop, strapped the bag shut, and went about our way. Not the prettiest of rigs, but we made it all the way home with it that way.
I think I was still tired from the previous day, because I didn't much pay attention to what was going on around me on our ride to Amarillo. Or maybe it really was that boring. About the only bit of excitement was stopping to see if a rider needed help. Turned out he had a flat tire, but he couldn't find the hole... he already had help coming, so he said he was fine, and we continued on our way.
Once again we stayed at the Big Texan in Amarillo. We had a good dinner and put ourselves to bed.
Day 13 we rode from Amarillo, TX to Oklahoma City, OK, 250 miles.
Our last day, was just a short jaunt back to OKC. We had a pretty bad crosswind leaving out of Amarillo, which was making my neck sore. Thankfully once we started approaching OK, it started dying down. Not much of interest on the way back to Tracy's home, except that he finally rolled over 50,000 miles on his Hayabusa. Quite an accomplishment.. can't say there are many other bikes of that nature with that kind of mileage on it. :)
And that, ladies and gents, is that. Sorry if I seemed like I was rushing it towards the end.. I kind of was, and there really wasn't a great deal that happened the last day or two. We were basically just trying to make it home and take a break from the bike. :)
I can definitely say I'd do a trip like this again. I would prefer to be on my own bike. Just not the one I currently own. ;)
So here it is, the rest of the ride report. Also.. in case you missed the pics I posted before, you can find them here. Start on pic #38 in the slide show if you want to see them in order. :)
Day 8 we rode from Eugene, OR to Seattle, WA, 287 miles.
kilrara had to leave early to go to work, so we said our goodbyes, but he left us a key so that we could leave on our own schedule. This worked out famously, because as it turned out, I was totally out of anything resembling clean clothes. Sam and his roomie were kind enough to allow us the use of their washer and dryer, and we managed to get everything taken care of before heading out.
We didn't go too far before stopping for breakfast in Corvallis to meet up with Laia (saberpirate) for coffee and breakfast at Allan Bros. Beanery. It was really great to catch up with her, since I hadn't seen her since.. hell, I don't know, graduation!? I know.. I'm terrible. But it was well worth the 10-mile detour because the company was wonderful, the food was fantastic, and Corvallis was definitely interesting.
I wanted to make a note of something for those of you who have never driven through Oregon before. You can't pump your own gas there. WTF, over? Seriously? Apparently there's one other state that does it on the East coast (Edit: Thank you, Laia, for clarifying. :D It's New Jersey), but seriously!? Thankfully for us, when you're on a motorcycle, the extent of what they do is swipe your card for you and hand you the nozzle to fill the bike.
Onward to Washington... we crossed the bridge into Portland (and it was chilly!) and took the picture at the big "Welcome to Washington" sign just on the other side. Tracy had been to WA before, but the last time he was there he missed out on getting a photo with the sign... suffice it to say, he was happy to add that to his collection (4 more to go!).
On our way to Seattle, we made yet another detour in DuPont to visit with my old Reserve commander, Mike Davis. We only got to visit with him briefly, but it was still cool to see him again (I hadn't seen him since we got back from deployment in '04), and to chit chat. From there, we made our way to Seattle. Our friend, Mark, lived down town, so we caught a little rush hour traffic on our way to his place, but it wasn't too bad. He graciously allowed us use of his garage to store the bike and our gear, and we walked up the hill to Broadway and ate dinner at a sushi restaurant named Hana - which was fan-freaking-tastic, I might add. From there, we walked to Dahlia's to meet his girlfriend and her sister, had a couple of drinks and some dessert before hopping over to Chez Gaudy's. There, we had a couple more drinks, met up with Laura and her boyfriend/fiance/hubby/whatever Louie. One of the drinks Tracy got was something called a Black Velvet. I'd never heard of it before that night, and frankly, reading the ingredients made me want to hurl: Guiness and champagne. Really? Well, being the adventurous type, he opted to try it. I did, too... and surprisingly, it was actually a very tasty beverage. It took the edge off of the Guiness... which might actually defeat the purpose of drinking Guiness, but for people like me that don't particularly care for the bitter bite, it made it palatable. :)
At any rate... suffice it to say, they don't mess around with their drinks in Seattle. I had 4 drinks and was sufficiently toasty. Being as the walk back to Mark's apartment was all uphill, we all (sans Laura and Louie, as they had brought their own transportation) piled into a cab to go back. I won't go into details about a couple of things Tracy and I saw at Mark's apartment... but they were pretty humorous (and relatively harmless... lol). Mark let us have the run of his apartment and went to his gf's place to crash. As drunk as I was, I wasn't having much of anything except sleep at that point, so soon after they left, I went to bed. And so ends Day 8...
Day 9 we rode from Seattle, WA to Richland, WA, 200 miles.
Another short day lay ahead of us, so we once again took our time in the morning. Mark had suggested breakfast at a coffee shop around the corner from his place, but it turned out to be closed (apparently they had later "summer" hours that Mark wasn't aware of), so we walked up to Broadway again and ate at Noah's Bagels instead. We packed our things back into the hard bags, donned our riding gear, and made way out of Seattle.
The trip crossing the Cascades was rather chilly. I remembered passing a sign with a temperature reading of 49 degrees.. and I know it only got colder as we reached the summit. The odd thing about Washington... once you begin to clear the mountains into the east side of the state.. it's a completely different climate. Literally - the west side (where Seattle is) gets 300 days of rain a year. On the east side.. the opposite. It's more like a desert in that regard - yellow grass and lots of sage brush. And oh thank God, it was actually WARM - for the first time since arriving in Oregon. Literally, the clouds ended in a a sharp line and it was clear blue sky. We found a scenic turnout and stopped to take pictures, as there was an excellent view of both Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier in the distance.
I called my brother, Charlie, at one of our gas stops, and he informed us that after they had offered to let us stay with them, they had realized that since the boys each moved into their own rooms, they no longer had a "guest" bedroom for us to stay in, and they also no longer had a sleeper couch. Oops! So they, in apology, put us up in a Days Inn in town. Unnecessary in my book, I would've been fine sleeping on the floor with a blanket, but they insisted.
We stopped by the hotel first once we arrived in Richland, as we had arrived early enough for Charlie to still be at work. It worked out for the better since Tracy and I had the opportunity to change and freshen up a bit before going to their house for dinner. It was cool to finally see Charlie's collection of motorcycles. He has a '95 Ducati Supersport, an old Honda dual-sport, an old Capriolo, an old BSA, and 3 other bikes that I have no idea what they were as they were in pieces. Charlie is quite the tinkerer.. and actually machines many of his own parts.
Dinner was good, too.. Charlie's wife, Robin, is quite the cook. After dinner Charlie entertained us with a slideshow of photos he had taken when he and Robin had visited my parents and me in South Africa. After it got dark and as it was getting late, we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel.
Day 10 we rode from Richland, WA to Wendover, UT, 595 miles.
With a long day ahead of us, we made a point of getting up early for breakfast so we could get on the road by about 8am.
We didn't even make it out of Richland... and Tracy got pulled over doing 75 in a 65 while we were still in the city limits. I had my iPod turned on, so I didn't hear a single bit of the conversation that took place between him and the police officer, so as I was explained later, the officer let us off with a verbal warning. From there he commented on Tracy's Iron Butt plate and talked to him a bit about our trip before letting us go. Whew! Close call. First (and hopefully last) time Tracy's been pulled over on that bike.
We continued on our way... not a great deal of interest on this trip. The roads in southern WA and northeastern OR were fun. We got flipped off in Boise. And it was hot in Nevada. That was about it.
We stayed on the NV side of Wendover at a little casino-hotel called the Wendover Nugget. Not a bad place.. we had a king-size bed and a big jacuzzi tub for $80 a night. We did talk to a lady while we were in line to check-in. Why you ask? Because she made a comment to Tracy to the effect of, "you must not be from around here... that accent definitely isn't from Utah!" Haha...
We were pretty worn out, but we opted to go ahead and eat dinner in the hotel. The service was definitely lackluster and the food was so-so, but we were so tired we didn't really care.
Day 11 we rode from Wendover, UT to Denver, CO, 725 miles.
We got up early, once again with the intention of making an early start. Originally, we had been expecting a 650 mile day. As it turned out, halfway through our day, Tracy changed the route, and it wasn't until we got to Denver that we realized we rode 725 miles. I'm not so sure I would've been up to the task if I had known ahead of time, but there you have it.
We grabbed some quick breakfast and coffee at the Starbucks in the hotel before heading out. We didn't go very far at all before stopping to see one of the main attractions that I had been looking forward to on the trip: the Bonneville Salt Flats. To say this place is one of the few in the world that lives up to it's expectations is an understatement. It was freaking amazing. Words don't do it justice. Pictures only scratch the surface. Being there is really the best way to experience it, so if EVER you have the chance, do it. And actually do it right - drive all the way down to the end of the track. It's worth the detour, even if you're not out there to set a land speed record.
I'll post a photo that shows what the "track" looks like to save having to describe it:
To get to the track you take a road off of I-80 to a cul-de-sac that slopes off onto the salt. The track itself is basically 10 miles long by 80 feet wide. The salt is pretty smooth as you ride over it. Tracy and I stopped to take photos at the cul-de-sac before riding out onto the salt itself. He had gotten the bike up to about 115mph before I noticed he was backing off the throttle. Confused, I had peeked over his shoulder as he was turning around to motion ahead of us - there was a big group of vehicles lined up (perpendicular to the track) ahead of us on the horizon.
We roll up, and it turns out to be a large group of folks firing off some home-made rockets. But the show had stopped because one of the guys had rolled a four-wheeler four times and Life Flight was on it's way to evacuate him to the hospital. Bummer for him... but it benefitted us in that, since they had stopped shooting rockets, we could continue to the end of the track to take the photos we had intended to take. So after confirming that it was okay to do so with the people in charge of the rocket group, we went on about our way down the track.
We stopped at the last set of cones, right before the edge of the area that the government maintains. It had started to get warm out on the flats, and I was wearing my UnderArmor Cold Gear shirt beneath my jacket. Being as we were in the middle of no where, and every sign of civilization was beyond the horizon, I felt perfectly comfortable removing the offending article of clothing and changing to a t-shirt. I guess someone (other than Tracy, obviously) could have seen me if they had a set of binoculars. If they were that desperate, more power to them. We took a crapload of pictures, collected some of the salt stuck to the tires, and made our way back to the gas station at the highway to wash the caked-on salt off of the bike (the main concern was the radiator.. it had covered nearly the entire thing!) before continuing on our way to Denver.
We stopped in Salt Lake City for lunch, which is where Tracy had opted to change the route. The GPS wanted us to take a state highway from Salt Lake to I-70, but 2-lane highway would be slow going, and we were already going to be rolling into Denver pretty late, so Tracy opted to modify the route to take us down through Nephil, to the 25 (I think?) and ultimately to I-70. Where we hit I-70, there was a sign that said "No Services 110 Miles." They weren't kidding. There was nothing but desert and canyons for that entire distance. It was quite beautiful, and I got a great many photos along that stretch.
We stopped at the Salt Wash (where we chatted briefly with a lady who was there who said she also rode and was planning on buying an SV). I got pictures of a couple of potential Darwin award winners who decided it would be a good idea to go rock climbing... in nothing but surfer shorts and flip flops. From there we made our way through Eagle Canyon, and stopped to take more pictures in Spotted Wolf Canyon, which was positively breathtaking.
The sun was starting to go down as we stopped for our Colorado state sign picture. Another couple in an SUV trailering a Harley had also stopped to take a picture of the sign and offered to take the picture of us together in front of it. The husband, who went by the moniker "Moose" gave Tracy his business card. Apparently they were on their way to Sturgis (we saw a great many more bikes being ridden/trailered in that direction the next day, too).
We made way into Colorado. Before the last stretch of about 150 miles into Denver, we stopped for gas. I was about ready to hit a brick wall - I was exhausted, cold, and my back was starting to hurt. Surprisingly, my butt didn't bother me so much. Oh yes, and I was hungry - we had planned on eating dinner in Denver. But being as it had already been more than 10 hours since lunch, I opted to grab a candy bar and an energy drink to keep me going for the last couple of hours. While we were resting there, we saw a guy on the bench next to us dozing. At some point, he suddenly woke up and decided it would be a good idea to take a walk. He literally stumbled into a car and sat on it's hood for a moment before he could regain his balance and continue walking. But it was a rather brief walk.. he only walked around all the gas pumps before going back inside the gas station. Oooookaaayy.... so, he earned the apropos nickname of "Stumbly."
Once all our appropriate cold gear was donned, we hopped (for lack of a more fitting term.. we weren't exactly peppy at that point, lol) on the bike for the last leg of the day's trip. We hit the summit right after passing through Vail and right before passing through Frisco. Frisco is at about 12,000 feet, and I imagine the summit is a bit higher. It was in the mid-40's going through there, and dark. The twisties weren't too bad - it was an interstate after all - but it wasn't as much fun as it might have been going through in the day time. If we had had more time to spare (in other words, if I didn't have to be back at work by a certain day), we would have just stopped somewhere before the Rockies and gone through in the morning. Alas... we didn't have much of an option but to keep going.
We finally rolled up to the hotel at about 1:30am local time. We were pretty worn the fuck out. We had considered getting food when arriving in Denver, but at that point I wanted to see nothing except a whole lot of pillow. So to bed we went. And it was good.
Day 12 we rode from Denver, CO to Amarillo, TX, 427 miles.
We tried to get a somewhat early start that morning. By comparison to the previous two days, we had a fairly short distance to ride. But things didn't start off on quite the right foot. In closing and latching the hard bag with all my stuff... I managed to break the latch. Good thing Tracy always carries duct tape on his trips, or we would've been pretty much hosed. So we tape the bag shut, throw it on the bike, and google the nearest motorcycle dealership. Why? Because it was going to be hot going through New Mexico into Texas, so Tracy figured it'd be better to have something like a tie-down to keep the bag closed, since he wasn't confident the glue on the duct tape would hold up to the heat. So we made our pit stop, strapped the bag shut, and went about our way. Not the prettiest of rigs, but we made it all the way home with it that way.
I think I was still tired from the previous day, because I didn't much pay attention to what was going on around me on our ride to Amarillo. Or maybe it really was that boring. About the only bit of excitement was stopping to see if a rider needed help. Turned out he had a flat tire, but he couldn't find the hole... he already had help coming, so he said he was fine, and we continued on our way.
Once again we stayed at the Big Texan in Amarillo. We had a good dinner and put ourselves to bed.
Day 13 we rode from Amarillo, TX to Oklahoma City, OK, 250 miles.
Our last day, was just a short jaunt back to OKC. We had a pretty bad crosswind leaving out of Amarillo, which was making my neck sore. Thankfully once we started approaching OK, it started dying down. Not much of interest on the way back to Tracy's home, except that he finally rolled over 50,000 miles on his Hayabusa. Quite an accomplishment.. can't say there are many other bikes of that nature with that kind of mileage on it. :)
And that, ladies and gents, is that. Sorry if I seemed like I was rushing it towards the end.. I kind of was, and there really wasn't a great deal that happened the last day or two. We were basically just trying to make it home and take a break from the bike. :)
I can definitely say I'd do a trip like this again. I would prefer to be on my own bike. Just not the one I currently own. ;)