10/10/10 – There’s No Place Like Home!

Well folks, after 51 days of rambling around the USA and Canada on my bike, I saw many things and met people that I would never have seen in 1,000 years of corporate travel. Airplanes, cars, busses, trains and ships all have their places, but there’s definitely something much more visceral about seeing, smelling, feeling and experiencing our continent on a motorcycle. Many of you have probably never noticed that virtually every motorcyclist waves at another passing motorcyclist, but it’s a tiny comforting gesture that satisfies my soul and I experienced it thousands of times over the past 14,000 miles or so. Meeting fellow riders at a rest area or in a motel is even more special; I’ve learned that many bikers are unsung military heroes who served our country with honor and they ride as a tribute to their comrades who weren’t so lucky and to live-out the freedom that they helped to ensure.

This morning I was eager to ride straight home from Reno over the familiar route through the Sierra Mountains. I set-out at about 9:00 and quickly realized I was back in California when I stopped for gas; The price spiked to $3.25 and I was confronted with the awful vapor-trapping bellows on the pump that makes it impossible to fill-up a motorcycle. After the most expensive fill-up of my journey, I was on my way over Emigrant’s Pass, Donner Lake and lots of stimulus-funded road construction. It was a crystal clear autumn day, except for a few clouds nestled into the mountain peaks that created interesting foggy spots. As I headed down into Sacramento Valley, it was warm and congested. I reflected on all the places I’ve seen and wondered why 30 million people, including me, choose to live in such a congested place where taxes are oppressive, the government stinks and services suck. My conclusion: it’s the weather and the diversity. Lots of places in the U.S. are nice, but many of them are just one-pony shows, even the five-legged cow in Prarrie-Dog Town.

I stopped for lunch near Davis, CA and called Kelly to see how Anthony’s baseball team was doing in the tournament. Kelly suggested I come down to Manteca, CA because if the boys won their morning game, they would be in the championship game this afternoon. I checked Google-Maps and took a 72-mile detour from my planned route through back roads, delta and farmlands around Stockton that were worth seeing. I crossed 3 draw-bridges and arrived at the Big League Field of Dreams in plenty of time to have a beer before the first pitch of the championship game. Although the Red Sox played a more seasoned team, we won the nail-biting game 5 – 2 and it was a splendid ending to my fantastic odyssey.

As I rode home with a million people returning from their weekend in the mountains, I prayed that my threadbare tires would hold-up for the 80-mile final trek and they did. I stopped at Lucky’s to get ham-dog fixin’s for tonight’s vittles [hamburgers shaped like hotdogs] and they were a big hit. The kids did their homework as we watched the 49ers loose again – oh well, maybe next year?

Anyway, it’s really good to be home!

10/9/10 – The Loneliest Highway

I bugged-out from Salty this morning at about 9:30 under mostly cloudy skies and cool temps. For the first 135 miles all I saw was the Great Salt Lake, mountains, and salt flats. If you ask me, the only thing great about the salt lake is its size; IMHO, It should be called the Great-Big Salt Lake. The problem with this lake is that virtually nothing lives there; no trees, no plants, no birds, Nothing. Yes, I know Dr. Science, the lake is teaming with Sea Monkeys and single-celled creatures. Who cares? The place looks like Mars with water and it would be nice if it was 10 miles long instead of 135 miles. How about adding something green? Also, there are a number of factories with smoke-billowing stacks out near the baron lake shore. Bomb factories, perhaps?

Anyway, my 568 mile ride today was long, cold, hot, dry, windy, smelly, monotonous and wonderful. After crossing the Bonneville Salt Flats, the road winds up into the mountains and valleys of Nevada. The peaks were dusted with snow and the winds were gusty. After changing into winter gloves, I proceeded to follow a pattern of long straight rides through massive valleys of scrub brush, tumble weeds and wild flowers, followed by winding roads into the mountains - Repeat many times. It's a lot like Groundhog Day. In central Nevada it’s common to pass though 20 tiny towns and more than 100 miles with no gas stations. Nevada has some beautiful scenery, but not much is useable for agriculture. It’s understandable why the state has defaulted to gambling and prostitution for it’s livelihood. The past week in the high desert has left my sinuses parched and in need of just a tiny bit of humidity.

Barring unforeseen events, this is my last night as a vagabond. It’s truly been a fantastic journey, but I’m ready to get home to resume my Real life with my family. I’m very appreciative to my family for allowing me to live-out my dream and to you, my blog-followers, for sharing my motorcycle odyssey and providing support.

In the coming days, I’m planning to add an Epilog to my Motorcycle Odyssey Blog, in which I will share some of my learnings from 7+ weeks of rambling around North America.

10/8/10 – Mormon Country

The weather forecast today called for scattered showers, so I donned full rain gear today and the reverse-jinx actually worked. I saw rain in the distance and there were wet roads that had been recently drenched, but I rode 400 miles without a drop. I’m truly living a charmed life.

Riding westward out of the Rockies, I stopped at a place called Parachute, CO that’s famous or infamous for being the site of one of the last Old West train robberies. Remnants of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch robbed a train here back in the early 1900’s and took all the gold. A posse of locals, including one guy with a parachute chased them and killed one of them, but the loot was never recovered. Anyway, the ride through western CO and Utah today was fabulous; cool and cloudy, but glorious. I included a picture of an actual blown-down tree in today's post. There are long stretches of big flat valley’s surrounded by high flat plateaus of beautiful sedimentary stone, as well as twisty mountain roads through fantastic craggy rocks that look like scenery out of Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons. Salt Lake City has now sprawled-out alll the way to Provo and it’s just one giant megalopolis for about 50 miles.

After checking into a SLC motel, I watched the first inning of the Giant’s game and they were winning 3 -0, when TNT returned to “normal programming” and my motel doesn’t have the a station carrying the rest of the game. I decided to go downtown to the center of the Mormon Universe, Temple Square. Everything in UT is measured in terms of blocks from the Temple [true]. I’m staying at exit 7,200, which means it's7,200 blocks from the Temple. The Temple, Tabernacle and all the Temple Square grounds are gorgeous. They are also teaming with female LDS disciples from all over the world who swoop-down on everyone who enters the grounds and try to convert them, including me. They told me that the Tabernacle was build entirely from white pine because that’s all they had at the time. The columns were painted to look like marble and the pews were stained to look like oak. The organ has 11,000 pipes and it’s all pristine and beautiful.

I walked a few blocks over to the UT state capitol building and it’s also spectacular. If you’re into skiing or snowboarding, the resorts are world-class and very close to town. My assessment of SLC is that it’s an incredibly monolithic city and a bit salty, but it’s also clean, safe and easy to navigate. On balance, SLC is a very nice city that’s worth seeing.

10/7/1- The Rocky Mountain Way

After chatting with Stacy And her family until the wee hours of this morning, I called home way too late and then started blogging for all-y’all. By the time I finally got to sleep it was after 4:00 and I successfully negotiated a very late check-out from Casa-de-Gerhard’s Rest Home for Transient Bikers. I came out of my cave around noon and struck-up a great conversation with the proprietor, Stacy-Rae. We continued to catch-up on everything that’s transpired in the past 25 years of our lives since we last spoke. I told her the true story of a friend who was airlifted from the top of the Rocky Mountains because of an apparent heart attack that turned-out to be exhaustion, coupled with an excessive dose of Chicken Pills. If you haven’t heard the story, ask me about it sometime.

Stacy had stern words for me regarding my description of her contribution in bagging the 1,100 Lb. moose with her husband last season. Correction to yesterday’s Blog-post: Stacy not only dragged the beast to their truck, but she also field-dressed him and single-handedly butchered the meat into individual vacuum-sealed packages in the woods and then packed them on ice. Then she worked into the night mounting the head before they came home for a moose steak BBQ. I was still a little tired when she told me the details, but I think that’s what she said. I’m truly sorry for the feeble description of Stacy’s contribution to the kill in yesterday’s post.

After a late lunch, I shoved-off from Casa-Gerhard at around 4:00. It was warm in Denver, but 30 miles west, I was over 11,000 feet up in the mountaind and had to stop to change into winter gloves. There was fresh powder on the high peaks and it was a gorgeous ride. Because it was so late, I had little time to stop and take pictures, so you’ll have to take my word for it. The Rockies’ are different from the Sierras in that there are more steep rocks [hence the name] and they seem even more vast, but they don’t have Lake Tahoe. What they do have is pine trees clinging on the rocks and golden aspens lining the banks of every stream and river. The Aspens also pepper the pine forests with beautiful golden foliage. Fall colors in the Rockies is worth adding to your bucket list and if you like to ski or snowboard, there are many famous resorts on I-70, like Vail, Aspen and lots more.

At 6:30 there was lightning flashing in the distance and loud thunder. It wasn’t particularly cold and fortunately there was no rain, until there was. The skies opened-up in the middle of a narrow, windy, steep mountain pass with lots of road construction, big rigs and oncoming traffic with their bright lights on. It was a treacherous ride for 18 miles to the city of Glenwood Springs, CO where I pulled-off and got a very nice motel room at America‘s Best Value Inn. The Polish woman at the front desk gave me a copy of the Aspen Daily News and I read a great front-page article entitled: You Can Own a Famous Bong. The author found the bong while diving in local dumpsters. After doing lots of investigative research, he determined the bong was used in filming of the classic epic film called "Cougar Hunting" and he’s now trying to auction the bong to obtain a retirement nest-egg [I’m not making this up].

Tomorrow I’m planning to ride to the Salty City and pay a $1 initiation fee to a private club, which is required in order to get a drink at a bar in Utah.

As I wrote this post, I watched Tim Lincecum pitch a gem with 14 strikeouts against the Braves in a 1 - 0 win for the Giants!

10/6/10 – Rocky Mountain High

Today I started-off slowly; I threw in a load of wash and watched Mr. Deeds on HBO. It was a typical Adam Sandler movie; funny but corny and predictable. I negotiated a noon check-out with Mr. Patel. If check-out is at 11:00 and you want noon, you must start your negotiation at 1:00 and let him think he has won the negotiation at noon. The epilogue of my blog will contain details of how to live in motels for many weeks.

I have been to Denver many times and mostly I've just seen the airport. On this visit I wanted to see the town a bit more than just a one night stand. My goal was to have lunch downtown, see the Capitol and take a tour of the Denver Mint. Instead, I had a delicious Mexican lunch for $6, I took pictures of the Capitol and the Mint closed at 1:00. Plan B was to tour through the Denver Art Museum. King Tut is here, but I decided to see the regular art galleries. If you’re into western art, as I have become, this is the place for you. Lot’s of Frederic Remington’s works and other western sculptures, as well as a great array of ancient Mexican art from the Toltec’s, Mayan’s, Aztecs and other Mesoamericans.

There are two things that really caught my attention at the capitol in Denver: The number of squirrels and the number of homeless. If I were homeless or a squirrel, I’d be long-gone from here. My assessment is that Denver’s glass buildings are just as boring as Chicago’s, but it’s a cleaner city, it’s got majestic mountains nearby and it tries harder to be great, so I declare it a nice city [unlike Chicago]. Also, because it’s the capitol, it has a golden dome that give’s it extra credit. By the way, I forgot to mention that I rode through Topeka, KS this week and it seemed like a perfectly nice Capitol city even though I had no time to stop in.

I arrived at Stacy’s home in Westminster, CO at around 5:30 and met her husband Tony and their grown son Joey. We had fun reminiscing about old times and eating moose meat that Tony shot and Stacy helped drag to the truck. After dinner we chatted about all the stuff that’s wrong with our current situation and played fetch with their little dog, Stoli. Stacy and I stayed-up and caught-up on several decades during a brief thunderstorm before she retired and I called home to a worried wife. I’m sorry Dear.