I'm in Spearfish .... at Bell's Motor Lodge Motel. I know Chuck Henderson is here, too, but I haven't seen him yet.
I have mentioned that I rode from Greeley to St. Francis, KS, to meet Mike Simmons and ride back to our house with him. Well that was 374 miles and the longest ride I'd taken in 2020 had been 176 miles on March 11. Until I get acclimatized every year, I get a pain between my shoulder blades and that was working pretty well by the time we got home yesterday. Plus, I'd had a rockin' one whole hour of sleep Monday night before meeting Mike. Last night I was sleeping great and then at 4AM, 2 hours before my alarm was set to go off, I woke up and had to make run for the facility. I got up four times before 5AM but managed to sleep for another hour.
Mike came upstairs as I was eating breakfast and told me he had decided to head home. I called Jim Moore and told him that I was running late and he said he'd wait for me in Crawford.
THEN I was a whole 1.3 miles from my house and had to stop for traffic light at one of the busiest intersections in Greeley. After 25 months of not dropping my bike -- I dropped it. No damage to the bike, I got a cut on the nose when my helmet rolled down and smacked my glasses and my practically brand-new Shoei Neo Tech 2 got a deep scrape on the face shield. It's the full height of the shield and pretty deep. A couple of guys got the bike picked up and moved to the sidewalk. I thanked them and had just started the bike and was ready to ride, when a very nice very concerned police officer walked up and started checking to make sure that I was OK. He wanted to call someone to come get me and help me make arrangements to get my bike back home. I kept telling him I was OK and that I was riding to Spearfish, not 1.3 mile back to the house. About five minutes into that conversation, a fire truck pulled up. They were convince right away that I was OK, but then an ambulance pulled up. It didn't take too long to get rid of them but the whole episode ended up taking at least half an hour.
I got the dead little town of Hereford, CO, and was ready to swing left for Carpenter and Burns, WY, and the road was torn up and closed. The detour sign pointed straight east and I knew that it turned to gravel when it was still 25 miles from Pine Bluff, WY. But going back to a road that would get me to Crawford would have involved at least 35 miles of backtracking. So, I figured to take the detour until I got to the last place where I could turn back South on pavement. I only went about 2 miles before I could turn north. It was dirt, but well graded and I was doing 40-50 mph the first couple miles. Then it turned into semi-graded and way too well watered dirt. It was slick occasionally rutted mud for maybe 6 miles and then the detour pointed back west. But this stretch looked like it had been disked with farm equipment and then watered way too much.. No way was I driving that. But another mile north and I was able to get back to pavement riding on semi-graded dirt and rocks.
I finally got to Crawford at 2:30, met Jim, and we got to Spearfish just a bit after 6PM.
I had breakfast this morning with Chris and Frosty from Spokane, Rich from Albuquerque, Jim Moore, Chuck Henderson, and a friend from my Concours days, who had ridden from Montrose and then from Loveland yesterday with Randy Frank, a former ST-1300 rider who's now on a '19 Goldwing DCT.
I'm taking care of some business, then I'll go out to the campground and sit around murdering the cow's husband.
