Southwest Tour - Day 4
Day 4 - Torrey to San Jose CA, 851 miles
Today's ride was very event focused ... ride the ride, without alot of pictures. It's not that the scenery wasn't incredible ... to the contrary, the route out of Torrey on UT24 was a different view of UT than I had seen before. The landscape in Nevada similarly appealing. And today's entrance into California was by far, hands down, the best way to experience California for the first time. But all that was overshadowed by one little nusance ... my tires. It couldn't be just one. No, it had to be the both of them. Having checked them before leaving the house, the plan was to ride this ride, and then get a fresh set once I got home and had the 12K mile service performed. Yet somehow, either the dessert temperatures, or the off-road excursions, or maybe just the aggressive riding though the mountains and across the plains. Either way, by the time Saturday night came to be, I was looking at less than 1 mil before I hit the wear bars on the rear, and maybe a solid mil before hitting the wear bars on the front. The likihood was very high that I would end up wearing through the rubber to the steal cords on at least one of the tires, if not both. The combination of more dessert riding, plus elevated temps, meant that I would need to keep my speeds lower in order to conserve what little tire I had left. I let the group know I wouldn't be making the ride with them from Torrey to Fallon NV, as they were planning to be a bit more "spirited", and settled into another solo ride at my own pace.
I departed Torrey right on schedule for once, right at 08:00am local time. By 10:00am I was at the intersection of I-15 and US50. I would hopscotch with a couple of riders on the initial couple of gas stops. Sagerider would pass me at the I-15/US50 stop, then I would pass him back in Delta, UT. He would pass me for the final time at the UT/NV border, after which I wouldn't see him again.
The biggest part of today's trip was Nevada, from a sheer mileage perspective. I had heard so much about US50 through Nevada, I had to try it for myself regardless of the impressions it had left on others. At the end of the ride, I have to say it was not what I expected at all. The overall jist of the route is as it had been explained ... you're crossing mountain range after valley after mountain range. But the vision I had built in my head more more bleak than what reality would unfold for me today. First off, the wind today was something mean. Not West Texas mean, change direction and intensity at will to find a way to catch you off guard, but she was pretty stiff for sure. The wind would alternate between being a crosswind from the North, a crosswind from the South, or a straight on head wind. I think the only thing it didn't do for me was give me a tail wind ... and after a couple days of really good gas mileage, today's number would reflect the stiff wind.
But putting the wind aside, this day in May might well have been the perfect time to make that ride. The temps didn't get that hot down in the lower elevations, and while there was still snow showing on several out the mountain peaks ... the temps never got that cold at altitude either. The temperature range I encountered was somewhere around 55 degrees outside of Torrey, generally low 60's in the mountains, and low 80's in the valleys. Temps would push 90 once I got into the lower elevations in California, but that's not relevant to this part of the discussion. :)
The mountain passes all had variety, with each one being unique. There was a fantastic mix of sweepers, switchbacks, tight turns, and all the way over to 270 degree cloverleafs. And you could take each of those uphill or downhill, with camber or without. From a purely visual perspective, it was fascinating to see a couple or three mountain ranges off in the distance, and as you worked your way through the first one, a new range would show up on the horizon that you couldn't see before because the last range blocked it's view, or you would finally see yourself staring down that huge snow capped range that you had seen standing tall behind the past three ranges that you have just taken down. The approach from one range to the other changed, so while there was a lot of straight stretches across the valleys, it wasn't a cookie cutter or scripted transition. Add to that the occasional small town that you'd roll through between passes ... small towns like Eureka NV where I meet the group of riders out on a lunch run ... one of their members being a recent convert from his old Goldwing 1200 to a 2002 BMW K1200LT, of the rustic town of Austin NV, with it's quant good looks until I realized they were going to pound me with the highest gas prices of the weekend ... over $3.80/gal for 91 octane. I might need a new fuel filter after that stop ... there's no telling what kind of contaminates are in the fuel tanks, but the pump itself had to add enough rust to the mixture to make things bad.
But the good and the bad, I'm still very much looking forward to my return trek through Nevada, this time on a more rural set of roads than the 2-lane stretch of US50.
And with Nevada knocked out, and after grabing my first meal of the day at a Burger King in Sparks NV (I was scoping out stopping locations near BMW dealerships in case I pulled over for food/gas and realized my tires were showing cord) at 5:00pm PDT, it was time to come into California. Oh what a treat.
I don't know if it was a combination of it being a Sunday afternoon, or if there was some other factor(s) at play, but that run on I-80 into California from Nevada was an absolute zen-like motorcycle experience for me. Maybe it was the hi-viz jacket, or the fact that CHP is also riding R1200RTPs, but traffic just seemed to clear out of the left lane and let me have my fun. The right lane was a horrid road surface, all pitted up from the winter's tire-chain cladded traffic, but the left lane was all mine...expired tires be damned. It wasn't until I had to merge onto I-880 that I would be brought back to reality, but for all my times coming into California ... I can think of no better route than to take I-80 from Reno into Tahoe, with snow still being on the hills, the streams carrying melted snow down to the rivers flowing, and on one stretch the train tracks cut out on the side of the mountain, just opposite the flowing river off to the left of the Interstate. No pictures there either ... not because I was worried over the tire situation, but because I was enjoying the road to much to take my hands off the bars ... to set the cruise while I tried to frame up a picture ... those images will just have to live in my head, it was a special time for me.
When I did finally roll into the hotel parking lot at 8:30pm just as the GPS had originally predicted, the tires were still not showing cord yet, the hotel had a great room waiting for me, and the Applebee's across the parking lot had cold beer and great conversations there at the bar. Riding always has it's challenges, not always of the magnitude of whether you'll be stranded somewhere with dead tires and missing work, but it's overcoming those challenges and being able to sit down at the end of the night with a cold beverage of choice and all those images running back through your mind ... oh yeah, that's the gratification I get from sitting on the bike for repeated 14 hour intervals. I won't even get into how many contingency plans I had for if/when the tires decided to not cooperate. :)
Today's ride was very event focused ... ride the ride, without alot of pictures. It's not that the scenery wasn't incredible ... to the contrary, the route out of Torrey on UT24 was a different view of UT than I had seen before. The landscape in Nevada similarly appealing. And today's entrance into California was by far, hands down, the best way to experience California for the first time. But all that was overshadowed by one little nusance ... my tires. It couldn't be just one. No, it had to be the both of them. Having checked them before leaving the house, the plan was to ride this ride, and then get a fresh set once I got home and had the 12K mile service performed. Yet somehow, either the dessert temperatures, or the off-road excursions, or maybe just the aggressive riding though the mountains and across the plains. Either way, by the time Saturday night came to be, I was looking at less than 1 mil before I hit the wear bars on the rear, and maybe a solid mil before hitting the wear bars on the front. The likihood was very high that I would end up wearing through the rubber to the steal cords on at least one of the tires, if not both. The combination of more dessert riding, plus elevated temps, meant that I would need to keep my speeds lower in order to conserve what little tire I had left. I let the group know I wouldn't be making the ride with them from Torrey to Fallon NV, as they were planning to be a bit more "spirited", and settled into another solo ride at my own pace.
I departed Torrey right on schedule for once, right at 08:00am local time. By 10:00am I was at the intersection of I-15 and US50. I would hopscotch with a couple of riders on the initial couple of gas stops. Sagerider would pass me at the I-15/US50 stop, then I would pass him back in Delta, UT. He would pass me for the final time at the UT/NV border, after which I wouldn't see him again.
The biggest part of today's trip was Nevada, from a sheer mileage perspective. I had heard so much about US50 through Nevada, I had to try it for myself regardless of the impressions it had left on others. At the end of the ride, I have to say it was not what I expected at all. The overall jist of the route is as it had been explained ... you're crossing mountain range after valley after mountain range. But the vision I had built in my head more more bleak than what reality would unfold for me today. First off, the wind today was something mean. Not West Texas mean, change direction and intensity at will to find a way to catch you off guard, but she was pretty stiff for sure. The wind would alternate between being a crosswind from the North, a crosswind from the South, or a straight on head wind. I think the only thing it didn't do for me was give me a tail wind ... and after a couple days of really good gas mileage, today's number would reflect the stiff wind.
But putting the wind aside, this day in May might well have been the perfect time to make that ride. The temps didn't get that hot down in the lower elevations, and while there was still snow showing on several out the mountain peaks ... the temps never got that cold at altitude either. The temperature range I encountered was somewhere around 55 degrees outside of Torrey, generally low 60's in the mountains, and low 80's in the valleys. Temps would push 90 once I got into the lower elevations in California, but that's not relevant to this part of the discussion. :)
The mountain passes all had variety, with each one being unique. There was a fantastic mix of sweepers, switchbacks, tight turns, and all the way over to 270 degree cloverleafs. And you could take each of those uphill or downhill, with camber or without. From a purely visual perspective, it was fascinating to see a couple or three mountain ranges off in the distance, and as you worked your way through the first one, a new range would show up on the horizon that you couldn't see before because the last range blocked it's view, or you would finally see yourself staring down that huge snow capped range that you had seen standing tall behind the past three ranges that you have just taken down. The approach from one range to the other changed, so while there was a lot of straight stretches across the valleys, it wasn't a cookie cutter or scripted transition. Add to that the occasional small town that you'd roll through between passes ... small towns like Eureka NV where I meet the group of riders out on a lunch run ... one of their members being a recent convert from his old Goldwing 1200 to a 2002 BMW K1200LT, of the rustic town of Austin NV, with it's quant good looks until I realized they were going to pound me with the highest gas prices of the weekend ... over $3.80/gal for 91 octane. I might need a new fuel filter after that stop ... there's no telling what kind of contaminates are in the fuel tanks, but the pump itself had to add enough rust to the mixture to make things bad.
But the good and the bad, I'm still very much looking forward to my return trek through Nevada, this time on a more rural set of roads than the 2-lane stretch of US50.
And with Nevada knocked out, and after grabing my first meal of the day at a Burger King in Sparks NV (I was scoping out stopping locations near BMW dealerships in case I pulled over for food/gas and realized my tires were showing cord) at 5:00pm PDT, it was time to come into California. Oh what a treat.
I don't know if it was a combination of it being a Sunday afternoon, or if there was some other factor(s) at play, but that run on I-80 into California from Nevada was an absolute zen-like motorcycle experience for me. Maybe it was the hi-viz jacket, or the fact that CHP is also riding R1200RTPs, but traffic just seemed to clear out of the left lane and let me have my fun. The right lane was a horrid road surface, all pitted up from the winter's tire-chain cladded traffic, but the left lane was all mine...expired tires be damned. It wasn't until I had to merge onto I-880 that I would be brought back to reality, but for all my times coming into California ... I can think of no better route than to take I-80 from Reno into Tahoe, with snow still being on the hills, the streams carrying melted snow down to the rivers flowing, and on one stretch the train tracks cut out on the side of the mountain, just opposite the flowing river off to the left of the Interstate. No pictures there either ... not because I was worried over the tire situation, but because I was enjoying the road to much to take my hands off the bars ... to set the cruise while I tried to frame up a picture ... those images will just have to live in my head, it was a special time for me.
When I did finally roll into the hotel parking lot at 8:30pm just as the GPS had originally predicted, the tires were still not showing cord yet, the hotel had a great room waiting for me, and the Applebee's across the parking lot had cold beer and great conversations there at the bar. Riding always has it's challenges, not always of the magnitude of whether you'll be stranded somewhere with dead tires and missing work, but it's overcoming those challenges and being able to sit down at the end of the night with a cold beverage of choice and all those images running back through your mind ... oh yeah, that's the gratification I get from sitting on the bike for repeated 14 hour intervals. I won't even get into how many contingency plans I had for if/when the tires decided to not cooperate. :)
posted by Charlie at
2:56 AM
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