Day 1 (Note - pictures and additional video coming soon)
Laurie and her friends decided on a Cannon Beach outing so the ride she and I had tentatively planned for got changed to a guy ride to Death Valley. The Cosmos was in her favor as a passenger on this year's Spring Break ride would have been miserable.
My long time riding buddy Al had to bail for medical reasons so there was just me and Bob who left from a Starbucks near the freeway. The weather had been basically shitty for the previous 2 weeks - rain, snow, hail, cold - and system after system rolling off the Pacific. We planned to head for Mountain Home, ID but that was out as the forecast was for snow in that direction. Instead we headed South for Redding, CA where it was warmer, in the range of 55 degrees.
Things went well till we got way South of Olympia. It began to snow. There was ice on the road. The big LT objected. We bailed for a rest area to let things warm up a tad.
Impatience took over after 20 minutes and we left after replacing a fuse in Bob's power block. Once down a longish hill we were out of the slippery stuff and made for Portland. Temperatures in the low 40s. Electric gear on medium and in time we got past Eugene, stopping for lunch when the freeway was all jammed up due to a wreck up ahead.
The ride through Oregon is typically endless given the 65 mph speed limit and I would violate the speed law a little but there was enough police protection to keep things in check. Thankfully, a guy on a red R1200RT blew by and we had a legitimate rabbit to follow. He holds 80 and I can see his brake lights a half mile ahead. Southern Oregon and the Northern part of California have never been as much fun. Thanks to whoever that RT rider was!
Secured a room in a Motel-6 with the geezer discount, ate some food and set to leave for Susanville in the morning.
Day 2
We depart on secondary roads that become narrower and steeper and as we climb it gets colder, and colder still. Eventually we are the only two on this route and the road bed is icy, with fresh snow all over the place. Very pretty, but scary as hell too. I really don't want to fling the LT down this path and become tense, which just makes stuff worse. I constantly tell myself to relax. The temperature reading is 14 degrees. Up hill is way better than down hill on icy roads and we finally descend to a dry section of road. OK, Cool the torture is over! Nope we head back into the stuff, up another steep ascent to a high plateau - and just freeze our asses off in between icy sections. You don't notice the cold so much when your bike is twitching around.
Now, I've never been on a ride where my feet got cold until today. Screw this, I need to get to where it is warm - and wick the big LT up to stupid. In an eternity of 20 minutes we get to the steep downhill into Susanville. MacDonald's coffee never tasted better and got us warmed up for the ride to Tonopah, NV. Just outside of town there are signs about road work ahead and double fines for misbehavior. I get intermittent chirps from my radar detector but figure the LEO is rolling in my direction. Not. I crest a hill and there he is and I roll off the throttle finally getting the bike to below the posted limit when he fires me up. I'm thinking the guy did me a big favor and wave as I roll past.
Pretty much a slog down to Reno on a dangerous two lane and then around Sparks to Fallon, NV and a fuel stop. So far the big bike averages 47 mpg. At Tonopah, NV we stop to discuss where to sleep for the night. Bob says "How about here?"
"Can't sleep - clowns might eat me"
If you ever go through Tonopah, NV and need a place to stay be sure to stop at the Clown Motel. Inexpensive, clean, and clown stuff everywhere.
Day 3
We are covering ground pretty fast so decide to RON in Beatty, NV and trip into Death Valley from there. The Motel-6 is new and inexpensive. We sojourn into Death Valley and for sure, it is a big hole in the earth and it is warm. Finally 80 degrees and it feels glorious so we fart around looking at stuff, eating lunch, and acquiring souvenirs.
Death Valley is all it is cracked up to be. It is hotter than anywhere else. It is dry. The park officials want you to know just how far below sea level you are and provide signs accordingly. When we stopped at Stovepipe Wells I got to thinking Al Gore needs to be here and correct those signs as I'm sure increased sea levels resulting from Global Warming have then off by a few feet. There are sand dunes, a little like Namibia, and the Devil is responsible for a lot of the cool topography - Devil's Corn Field, Devil's this, and Devil's that. Saw a few bikes too. Crossed trails with a couple on a KLR 650 a couple of times and eventually met them in Beatty, over ice cream. A Canadian couple who haul the bike with their motor home and use it for local exploration though they also do some long and challenging rides on it as well. Headed for Top of The World this summer.
We walked to the Beatty museum but it was closed. Had it been open we would have been persuaded to ride back to Rhyolite, a ghost town I saw a sign for as we left Death Valley. If you are in the area don't miss it: RHYOLITE
Day 4
I slept well. It takes me a few days to get fully released from work and now I felt ready to ride - but I was second guesing the weather. So far we had done OK in missing major bad weather but we were about to head North after a jaunt around Las Vegas and the roads I wanted to explore, though of no concern directly, would place us in destinations forecast for snow. Indeed, as the title of this piece suggests the temperatures have been 12 degrees cooler than normal, and the snow levels are forecast to drop below 5000 feet. The bummer in that is the nice twisty bits of Nevada are in those higher elevations. So the plan is modified and we head for Ely, NV and divert onto highway 318 off 93. Most recommended. Good road surface. Good scenery.
It is snowing ever so lightly as we enter Ely and lunch. The road West on 50, our preferred route, would have us into clouds at 5000 feet and the liklihood of snow so having had enough of that, we decided to make for Wells, NV on 93. I've never been to Wells before. There isn't much there, but the Motel-6 is inexpensive and welcoming. Make a note of it if you travel this way. It is cold here with a little snow lingering in the parking lot and on the nearby hills. Windy too.
Day 5
It is 19 degrees when we load the bikes up at 0700 so we dawdle over breakfast - makes it 22 degrees when we get rolling. I'm back to riding a big K1200LT as my preferred long distance bike. The fairing does an excellent job keeping the wind off me, and the Gerbing electric jacket, heated grips, and heated saddle combine nicely even though it is cold out. Our route intends to take us to Arco, ID though the Craters of The Moon NP and then North to Missoula. It gets colder as we move along, with more snow on the ground and I'm thinking maybe we are in for a bad ride as there are 2 passes to deal with on 93. One North of Arco and another North of Salmon, ID. I began to think of alternatives. Happily, the temperatures rise as we turn North on 93 and as we rise to the first pass get even warmer. Uplifting.
I suggest to Bob that he take the lead into Hamilton, MT as I've been over this section and he will enjoy riding it at his slightly faster pace. No half stepping for the next 40 or so miles as the boy takes off on his GS like a bird dog told to go play. The road becomes a bit technical nearer Salmon, ID and you really get into bagging the decreasing radius corners. A citizen in his pick-up can slow you down and so it was for Bob, which meant I could catch up to him - just in time to see him begin to blast around a LEO on a double yellow. I'm yelling in my helmet "Bob, don't do it dude" - but he does, and the rollers are instantly on. I kept on going. Figured I'd get the cell phone call for bail money so made for Salmon, ID and waited.
Turns out the LEO is a Fish & Wildlife type and let Bob go after managing the stop with what sounded like a lot of diplomacy for a LEO. OK, so gassed up we continue North. As we are leaving town I notice my electric jacket isn't pluggd in, which has often been the case after a fuel stop on this trip. I have yet to finalize a rigid routine for pit stops on this bike. No worries, just put the big girl on cruise control and reconnect things.
If you have done any lurking on the K1200LT forum you will have encountered endless posts from riders who complain of a mild tank slapper if their hands are off the bars, and the bike speed decends through 45 mph. I've never had this experience because I always have my hands on the bars, until today. Must have hit a little rock or some such, and away to wiggle town we go. Bob says he never saw geezer hands move so fast. But the bike returns to control easily, and would do so on its own through dynamic stability - but it is spooky. Regardless, we both spent our "out of the noose" time for the day. Had we not had that little head shake interlude we might have collided with these - all things in perspective:
The climb to the summit is straight forward but the down side run is nasty. They use bigger gravel on the roads in these parts to give 4 wheelers some traction but the LT is shod with ME-880 tires and they don't like them rocks, especially when mixed with some snow melt. Another one of those "I just want to get down now" periods. In time it happens - we are down and into Hamilton, MT. Snag a Motel-8 room for the night and call it a good day.
Day 6
True to form it is very cold as we begin the departure ritual and decide to dawdle over breakfast to let things warm up. Both of us have a dry cough and speculate about ingesting left over nuke testing detritus in Nevada. I get a chill shortly after we start the day's ride and can't seem to shake it. The temperatures hover around 35 degrees and going up Lolo Pass becomes a tough proposition. I'm cold, and tense up.
Even with all my electric gear on high - I just can't get warm. Bob takes the lead at the summit to enjoy that 60+ miles of twisty road bed and we have fun stopping in Clarkston, WA for food, warmth and the first Starbucks of the trip.
The break is good as I warm up and no longer shiver. I bought some Halls cough drops and we discussed our plan to RON along the Columbia River this, our final night out. I decided to blast for home as I could feel the cold coming on strong, and didn't want to be out of shape tomorrow with a couple hundred miles to ride. Essentially we just rode accrosss Washington on 26 all the way to Vantage. Not a comforting thing as the wind is howling and the sky is solid grey, getting darker with every mile. It rains, then it really rains, but the damage is in the head - the big bike just shrugs it all off.
In Ellensburg, WA we get the last fuel of the trip and another Starbucks break so I can quit shivering. Then we make for Snoqualmie Pass. Outside Easton it begins to snow and the thermometer drops to that flashing snowflake level and I'm riding Me-880s that hate rain. But at least it is a wet road bed and better than the icy ones we have been on. The crud is worse on the West side and stays worse till we pull onto highway 18. I'd add a comment about temperature gagues on motorcycles. I like them for the most part because when you are sweating or shivering it is nice to know the exact temperature to which your discomfort coincides. The progressive nature of the BMW instrument conveys messages of probable ice related doom in slightly more intense ways as the temperature drops. Maybe it was just being ill, but I had to switch the thing to average mpg to keep from scaring the willies out of me. TMI.
We split up at highway 167 and I was home on 35 minutes. I ran my naked butt through all the hot water in our tank, nailed a half bottle of DayQuil, and went to bed - where I stayed for the next 3 days until my bride insists I go to the local Doc-In-A-Box. That is another story and nothing to do witth motorcycling.
This was the coldest ride I have ever done and I was honestly hoping for warmer conditions but the big BMW K1200LT provided excellent protection so, for the most part, it was just colder than we wanted. No big deal. The bike averaged 46 mpg with an overall average speed of 53 mph for the entire trip of a little over 3K miles. That is down a little compared to my 2003 LT, but may be attributable to the increase in hp and winter blend gasoline. Oh, for the economists out there - premium gas was about $4.00 per gallon in WA, OR, and CA. .50 to .60 less everywhere else, especially in out of the way places. The stock comfort saddle was pretty tolerable but not perfect. I made some last minute changes to my electronics complement which worked OK in all dimensions except for Bike to Bike - I have an issue there to troubleshoot.
Oh, almost forgot - get an i-Phone as a ride buddy. We easliy checked weather forecasts, radar maps, etc. for our trip on almost every stop. We found weather underground.com to have the fastest loading i-Phone formatted and most informative content; stuff like cloud ceilings and snow levels as well as accurate temperature guesses. That alone made route decisions more intelligent. The i-Phone has an acceptable camera so you can e-mail a quick picture home and the text messaging is idiot poof - I kept up a 3 day dialogue with a friend - each time we stopped for the night there would be another entry to respond to. WiFi is available most places now so quick Internet connections are readily available and if not the E network, though slow, does get the job done. Though I have no use for it, you business geeks can tap into Exchange Server if you really have to stay that connected to work.