Day 3

The weather is pristine… absolutely clear and gorgeous with long contrails against cobalt blue sky.  The canyons that had seemed to oppressive the previous evening are magnificent colors or orange and red and stretch up, around and along the line of the road.  I am amazed at the sight.

I hunker down next to the bike and have a look.  There isn’t a spot of oil anywhere.  The sight glass shows the oil between the marks.  There are no drippings or burn spots on the header or muffler anywhere.  This is very good news.

Shifter Jammed

Repair Tool

Play Nicely

I walk around to the other side and look at the shift lever.  That bad boy is bent alright.  I need a piece of something made of stronger metal than the shift lever and flat as hell to try and wedge under there and bend it back up.  I remember going through my tool kit with George Friday evening wondering if there might not be some 46mm miracle tool in there and I think that maybe the chain tensioning adjustment lever might do the trick.

I take off the seat and retrieve the tool; it sliiiides right between the lever and the linkage and braces nicely against the transmission housing.  A couple of quick judicious tugs and the lever is now straightened back out nicely and shifting easily.  This is also very good news.

I look at the body damage next and see that it’s not as bad as it could have been.  Cracked plastic and scratches aside, I should just count my ass lucky.  I make the promised call to Robyn and explain the situation and tell her the good news.  The fastest way home at this point though is along the original route, minus Zion.  We agree to meet for lunch in Vegas around noon time and I pack up and get ready to go.

I check out of the motel and mount up on the bike and hope that I’m not wrong in my estimation of the condition of my engine.  She starts up and shifts up and down naturally.  I hit the road and proceed along my previous tracks to the scene of my shame.  There is no one on this road anywhere.  I could sunbathe on the double yellow and no have a problem.  At one point I notice that the road continues at least three or four miles in straight edge fashion with low scrub brush on either side.  The air is crystal clear and I can see that I’m the only human for at least 10 miles around.  I decide to test the engine and start to pull the throttle back as far as it will go and watch the revs pile on in sixth gear.  The faster she goes the faster she wants to go.  The engine is music.  She tops out at 8000 RPM for some reason with plenty of ponies left in the stable; probably some factory limiter that I’ll worry about at some later point.  I ease it back down through the ton to something approaching legality and head northwest on 89 into the hills.

I pass through the hairpin and see no sign that either I or the overturned big-rig had been there the previous evening.  The road climbs as steeply as promised by the state trooper and gets incredibly twisty.  20 and 30 MPH turns with unguarded cliffs on the outside edges.  Smooth flicks and rolls as I climb back up into the Alpine zone and snow starts to gather in the shadows on either side. 

I would have killed myself up here if I’d tried to ride it the previous night.  Sharp decreasing radius turns, bad road conditions, no guard rails, cold, weariness and ice would have spelled my doom.  My guardian angel really looks out for me.  I promise myself that next time I’ll pay attention and stop when I KNOW I should stop.

I enter the city of Jacob’s Lake and take a pass by the road leading to the Lake proper and ultimately to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  This was not a place to ride a motorcycle casually.  With preparation however, it was absolutely beautiful.  Not a single other car in sight for miles of light twists and turns, bold sweepers and straights through pine forest.  I fill up the tank, take some pics and ease and down the road.

Finally 89 crawls out of the mountains and back into the deserts and mesas providing gorgeous views for those of us there to drink them in.  I hope this place is packed with sport-tourers in better weather because it’s a shame I was the only one out there.

North Rim

Slab, slab, slab through Utah.  I started to get a pain high up in my back just inside my right shoulder blade.  Every time I’d lean forward to grab the left hand grip again after resting my arm on my hip as I rode, it felt like the devil himself was jabbing burning embers into my back.  My right wrist was starting to get sore too but there was nothing to be done about it.  Hopefully the Ibuprofen would kick in and I’d be able to tolerate it for the last 400 miles or so to home.

US389 became US59 became US9 and finally became I-15.  Utah became Arizona again and Arizona became Nevada.  The long line of slab seemed to go on forever.  The constant passage of time mocking me as I move from one highway to the next.  As I-15 started it’s way down from Arizona into Nevada though, the road finally became professionally paved again (it seemed like it was paved by high school students serving detention through Utah) and the decent out of the mountain country back down into the arid plain of Nevada was a high speed sweeper run through canyons that was just the thing to perk up the interest again.  Chasing the river along its banks from the freeway at sometimes legal speeds was exhilarating and it finally poured its way onto the Mojave Desert.  I looked at the gas gauge as I blew past Mesquite and figured I’d gas up in Glendale only 10 miles beyond.

It seems that every state I ride through has a city named Glendale.  Maybe that should be a goal.  Visit each state's Glendale and report on the change in culture between them.

Sufficeth-to-say, if that is a ride, you can strike Glendale, NV off the list.  The only thing there is a dirt road that leads out to what seemed to be a rock quarry; nary a gas station in sight.  It would suck to run out of gas after all I’d been through to that point.  I started rubbing my left hand against the gas tank and purring at my bike “just a couple more miles… please… just a couple more miles”.  In desperation I pulled off at the Moapa Indian Casino only to discover that they also sell gasoline and fireworks.  Not exactly my idea of the two great tastes that taste great together, but I didn’t see any obvious signs of recent explosion so I filled my tank there and called my honey to say that I was going to be on time.  We decided to eat at Peymon’s Mediterranean Café on Maryland Parkway in Vegas.  It’s a personal favorite of ours; excellent, excellent food, big ice teas and easy on the digestion.

I roll on down I-15 with a full tank and into Las Vegas from the northeast.  After all the desolate landscape of the previous 24 hours it felt very odd to be surrounded by screaming, honking tourists.  One lady cuts me off as I head down Flamingo and approach the strip.  I reply with a thumb on the air horn and a little (unintentional) wheelie as I go by, touching the front wheel down again in front of the Barbary Coast.  It strikes me that I just did a minute wheelie across the Las Vegas strip.  Goody for me.

Cheap Mexican Food

Lunch completed and more ibuprofen downed it was back onto the slab for the final push into California and onward to home.  I left Las Vegas around 1:30 and figure a 5PM arrival in Los Angeles.  Right at State Line, though, I run smack into every damn student that’s going back to class in LA.  Fortunately, since I’m back in California that means lane splitting.  The road is jammed tight with cars all making the same mass exodus to Los Angeles.  It would stay that way all the way to Baker where I topped off the tank and hoped to make it all the way back home on what I could stuff in there.  After Baker, traffic opened up a little and I could thread my way through the cars and trucks with greater ease, increasing my pace and making a return before dark seem possible.  Each livestock truck I came up to that was carrying hogs made my desire for increased speed greater.  Barstow passed by, then Victorville.  Eventaully onto the 210 running fluidly west from Rancho Cucamonga until, again, I run into completely stopped traffic. 

I pulled off around Irwindale to swap out my tinted visor for the clear one and swap batteries in the GPS.  Back onto the 605 and make an uneventful trip through the maze of freeways to Playa Del Rey.  605S, 60W, 10W, 405S, 90W and home.  I strip off the luggage and put on lighter armor and take the bike and whatever fumes are left in the gas tank back to the Arco station and holding my nose, throw their gasoline in for the ride to work the next day.