OK. So I'm on a ride, not a rally...

Phil Tarman

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I am sharing a room in GJ with a real nice guy. But, he's a talker. Can you imagine what happens when you put two talkers in the same room?

Last night, my GPS wouldn't talk to my computer, so I had to hand-enter all the stops I wanted to make for bonuses. That took forever and then I realized two things: 1) I was going to be riding Beartooth Pass, Chief Joseph Pass, and the Powder River Pass (US-16 between Worland and Buffalo, WY, in the dark. 2) I was going to have to try to take my rest bonus in Cody. Without a reservation a couple of weeks in advance, that's next to impossible.

I also realized that getting on and off the bike for every bonus picture as well as to take pix of the signs that have one of the letters in the words "Heaven" and "Hell" (only one letter per sign), and the last-minute bonus addition made last night of 25 points/picture of a church, was going to be accumulating fatigue.

So I reversed the direction of the route (manually, of course) and eliminated Beartooth and Chief Joseph, which also eliminated Montana and getting four states was important to earning the points to be a finisher.

And then...and then...and then along came Jones,. Well not slow-talking Jones but my roommate. I had just gotten in bed at 10 when he came in and we started talking. I finally fell asleep at about 11:30 and then woke up at 1:30. Did I mention that roomie snores. Loudly and erratically. I never got back to sleep.

So I decided to make this a ride. Now I'm going to bed and planning on leavng here (here being the Rodeway Inn in Buffalo by about 4:30 so i can get back to GJ by the finishing time.

It was a great ride -- except for one little thing. In Lander, WY, I stopped for gas and really needed to go to the bathroom. I put the gas in the bike, went inside, did my business, messed around for maybe 10 minutes and then realized I hadn't turned off the ignition. It had enough juice that it didn't clear the memory on the trip meters, but not enough to turn the engine.

I called AMA and all they will do if you have a problem is bring you fuel or tow you to a dealer. I told the woman that I guess I needed to be towed. She said she'd call me back. While I was waiting on that a couple in a pickup getting gas asked how I was doing. When I told them, he said, "Well, i guess we've all done that," and she said, "Who can I call to get this man some help?"

Then she told me that I was a block from a shop that worked on Harleys but they were good people. She called the owner and he said he'd get somebody to me right away. Then AMA called and said they'd have a guy from Strokers, a shop that was only a block from my current location, there in no more than 15 minutes.

The guy came, loaded the bike in their covered trailer, took it and me to their shop -- a whole block away -- and put a trickle charger on the bike. An hour later and it started up. The whole deal took about 2 1/2 hours, which for a town not far from Nowhere, Wyoming, ain't bad at all.

I rode 568 miles today and have 499 for tomorrow.

Nighty night!
 

junglejim

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Sounds good Phil. The pressure is off. Just have fun and enjoy the ride. You can "rally' another day.

I'm envious because my motorcycle is parked most of this week. Doesn't matter that I had a good week kof riding last week, I'm still envious.
 
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Sounds like Murphy is spending the weekend with you! Maybe he'll leave me alone while I do the 8000 mile service on the NT.

To quote Jim; "Have fun and enjoy the ride."
 
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Phil Tarman

Phil Tarman

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I'm back in Grand Junction. I got about six hours of sleep last night and got up, loaded up, gassed up, coffee-ed up, bought a breakfast sandwich, and rolled out of Buffalo just as the sun topped the horizon. You could barely see it because of the tremendous amount of smoke in the air. Wyoming's magnificent scenery was only visible about 5-10 miles away.

It was 110 miles to Casper, where I followed the directions Google Maps had given instead of Garmin's. I was on a brand-new road and Shirley, my GPS, kept re-calculating from my location, which was 2-3 miles from any road in her data base. One of the disadvantages of the new road is that there aren't any gas stations along it or west of Casper once you get back on WY-220. Finally the new road took me onto 220, the one I needed to go south to Rawlins.

I rode past two reservoirs on the North Platte River, Independence Rock and Devil's Gate, historic sites on the Oregon Trail. It was considered bad luck to be at Independence Rock after July 4, because it meant you might not get to Oregon before snow shut down travel on the Trail for the winter. Devil's Gate was a location you could aim at when you left Independence Rock. The LDS Church has a museum there which teaches people about the handcarts the Mormon pioneers used on their way to Salt Lake.

I didn't stop at either place but was able to gaze on my old hunting grounds on the north slope of the Whiskey Mountains, a small range on the east side of Muddy Gap, where I hunted pronghorns and deer with my .54-cal Thompson Center Hawken black powder rifle. I always "made meat", as the mountain me of old would have said. The Green Mountains are on the west side of the gap.

I also didn't stop at the gas station at Muddy Gap because I only had 50 miles to go to get to Rawlins, where I knew gas would be cheaper. I hadn't figured the extremely high winds I'd buck getting through the Gap or the fact that I'd be crossing the Continental Divide twice before I got to Rawlins. I can tell you that the gas gauge moves very slowly down near the bottom of the red arc, but by the time I got there, I'd slowed down to 55mph trying to stretch the tank. I finally got to Rawlins and only took 4.742 gallons. Heck, I had nearly a whole half gallon left. i could have gone another 20-25 miles. Maybe. People who live out here ought to know that you shouldn't try to stretch a tank of gas by riding past a station just because you can save 10 cents a gallon by going on down the road.

I rode through the little town of Baggs and into Craig, where I had lunch at McDonalds and called the rally master to tell him that I had chosen an option that hadn't been listed in the Rally Pack: namely, to ride the "How the West Was Won Ride" as opposed to the HW3 Rally. He had said at the banquet on Friday night to ride places you wanted to go, to have fun, and to be safe. I think my choice let me do all three.

I rode on roads I had ridden on bicycles:

1) CO-139 between Loma and Rangely. This road had been traveled by Fr. Escalante when he explored a good deal of the western country that would become the US. It goes over Douglas Pass, which was tough to climb on a bicycle coming from Rangely, but an absolute hoot going down on the south side. It was just as much fun going north on a motorcycle. On the north side, I came around a 20mph corner and found a bunch of cattle on and near the road. I talked to them like my rancher buddies would have and they moved...slowly...out of our way.

2) CO-64 between Rangely and Dinosaur. A road which shows how little the energy companies cared about preserving the environment before public and governmental pressure made them do it. I saw a dead horse on the side of the road just south of Dinosaur and several herds of what I assume must have been wild horses along that stretch of road.

3) US-40 between Dinosaur and Vernal. I'd also ridden this stretch on my Concours when Joanne and I were on our honeymoon. We'd gone to Vernal so we could go to Dinosaur NM. There are two elements of the Monument. One is where they have quarried great numbers of dinosaur fossils (and are still doing so). The other is about a 50-mile ride back in to an overlook of the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers. It was on this road that we road across about a mile (and I'm not exaggerating [for a change]) of Mormon crickets. Joanne thought it was one of the coolest things she'd ever seen, but she didn't know how squishy they made the highway if you your were the ride trying to control two wheels. :)

4) US-191 north of Vernal. A steep climb featuring 10-12 tight hairpins. On the bicycle, we'd been going down the hill trying to keep old and young people from hurting themselves. These are 7-8% grades and things can get out control in a hurry on a bicycle. But going up them on a motorcycle was just flat out fun.

5) CO-13 between Meeker and Craig on one bike camp and CO-13 between Meeker and Rifle on another one. Today, south of Meeker I ran into the edge of one the thunderstorms that were scattered around and got hit by hail slightly bigger than pea-sized. About two or three miles after I rode out of it, I met a "biker" riding north without a shirt. For his sake, I hope the hail had stopped before he got to it. It stung through my 'Stitch!

I rode on roads I've ridden before and I also rode on some roads I've never been on either in a car or on a bike. Notable were US-191 where it swings east north of Verbal to go over the dam of Flaming Gorge Reservoir. You ride through some interesting geology and have great views of long valleys between mountain ridges.

At our banquet tonight, we learned that three riders hadn't made it back. One had hit a buffalo (or, more properly, a bison) of the four-legged variety as opposed to Wyoming (or New York) community variety. He wasn't hurt. I can't imagine hitting a buffalo and not being hurt. Another guy hit a deer and wasn't hurt. A third guy hit gravel and went down and had to be airlifted to a hospital, but it turns out that he only had relatively minor injuries.

In addition to the dead horse, I saw a dead cow, a dead elk, several dead deer, and a Harley rider who appeared to be fairly seriously injured. Lots of bikers were on the road coming back from Sturgis. The guy I saw was in the middle of downtown Tensleep, WY (which got its name from the Indians who said the place was just about ten sleeps from anyplace else). He had been wearing one of the plastic beanie-type helmets. People were moving his bike out of the street when i got there and someone was stabilizing his neck. It looked like he was unconscious, but I didn't stop to ask.

The live animals that got "interesting" for me started with a big mule deer doe, who was standing on the edge of US-16 as I came down toward Buffalo. I was only doing 45-50 because of the curve I was in and saw in time to get slowed waaaay down, but she just stood there chewing her cud and watching all the cars go by. The second one just a few miles south of Buffalo in the early morning light. He was a trophy-quality pronghorn antelope about six feet from the shoulder of the interstate. Wyoming has fenced all of the interstates and keep the shoulders mowed so people can see wildlife, but this buck obviously didn't know that antelope can't go over fences. They go under barbed wire fences and the WY DoT uses stranded fencing that has wire about ever foot horizontally and about every 6-9" vertically. The other close calls were with swallows near the reservoirs southwest of Casper.

I had a great ride and am just as glad to get the rally bug out of my system. My roommate, good old Jones, rode in the Iron Butt Rally this year but dropped out after the 2nd leg. He took 3rd in this rally, and has taken 3rd in two other rallies. The top three finishers were within 60 points of one another. Out of 65 riders who started, only 30 qualified as finishers. It was a tough rally. Jones said that he felt really good about his plan and his ride and if anyone beat him, he knew that they would have done their work.

Because of the smoke in WY, I didn't get many pictures, but I'll post some after i get home.
 

junglejim

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Wow Phil, that's quite a post. Lots of detail. It sounds like you have shut the bike off but your are still running at 6,5K rpm. How much coffee did it take to make that ride??? Or were you using stove fuel again?

Glad you had fun and scratched you motorcylce itch. I'll bet you feel good about it too (after you recover from being worn out).
 
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