There were some beautiful cars there - '57 Chevies, T-Birds, Corvettes, hot rods, etc., as you might expect in such a parade but you got to see a map of just where Seligman is - or isn't. It's way out of the way. Dozens of trikes turned up. They had been swarming in all the previous day and into the evening. As with any good gathering there were some highly customized rigs present. My Kodak throwaway camera had already become waterlogged from all the rain so I haven't any pictures, but if you find your self out that way try to catch this event. It's well worth it. Last year's event was on July 24.

I headed north and west on Old Route 66. This road loops up and around a pretty but sparse desert. In all the excitement of being in a parade and such I left town without filling the tanks and I knew I didn't have enough to reach Kingman on the main highway. I determined a mid-point and if I didn't find gas by then I was going to have to turn back. As it happens, there is an oasis out in the middle of nowhere called Nelson which had no gas, but has a tourist spot called Grand Canyon Caverns which I took the time to tour. I also bought an official "I Traveled Route 66" patch which still needs installing on something. The caverns are a busy place as it happens, and I picked up a couple fossils and conversed some with a FXE rider who was headed out at the same time I was. He said there was an Indian village on the way to Kingman and would have gas there and so off I went to Peach Springs where gas was plentiful and folks seem to appreciate Harley Davidson motorcycles.

It was warming up quite a bit now. I had been at high elevations for much of my ride from Utah on, and while it was hot, the thin air was never cloaking with heat, in fact I'd been in a lot of heavy rain. I believe the altitude was probably around 3500 feet or so, and the heat was becoming problematic. The area was picture perfect desert and the road was in perfect condition and there was no rain that I'd been hammered with the last 1200 miles. By the time I rolled into Kingman I was parched and needed a long break and fluids. I'd been carrying 3-4 quarts of water with me at all times and was down to my last jug as I hit town. I refilled them and bought two more from a convenience store as well as some Gatorade and found some shade while I pondered my next course change.

I'd intended to ride up 395 in California and meet with my Brother in Bridgeport and I wanted to cruise through Barstow which had been an important place in my old dirt bike days (Barstow to 'Vegas and Check Chase races). The weather man convinced me it was not a good idea as it was forecast for 125 degrees all over eastern California. So I nosed the Fat Boy north by west on Hwy. 93 and Las Vegas.

I've never been through this part of Arizona and I was a bit surprised at the number of people who live here - there isn't anything for miles around, but maybe that is the draw. The road from Kingman to Boulder City is excellent and I had only one problem - the sun was bouncing straight off the speedo and chrome headlamp into my face and the glare was miserable and I didn't have a fix for it. I'd thought it was hot between Seligman and Kingman but nothing compared to the heat as I neared Boulder City. The road cuts at a right angle through miles of deep ravines and the near vertical cuts reflected and trapped the heat on the road such that I had to breath through my mouth because my nostrils were cooking. I also picked up quite a bit of traffic and the road got pretty twisty. I got a few horns blown my way because I was not playing tailgate with the locals the way they thought I should. I rolled into the Boulder City Dam visitor center and grabbed three bottles of water (which were warm) from the cooler and went into one of the overlook areas where water mist is sprayed continuously and emptied all three jugs. After sitting in the mist for about 45 minutes I refilled one of the bottles and returned to my bike and emptied the bottle onto my shirt and pants to provide evaporative cooling. It was 125 degrees on the thermometer and I now had to wear a helmet as I was in Nevada - I emptied another water bottle into my full coverage hat and strapped it on.

Back on the road again, the wetted clothing doing it's job, I was soon in Las Vegas looking for an off ramp with a gas station and an on-ramp. It is nearly all roof tops from Boulder City to L.V. and traffic was the worst and greatest threat since I'd left Denver. I got gas and used the station water hose to wet down my entire body. The water was actually pretty damn warm and letting it run for a while didn't help much. I hopped back on the highway and stayed on Hwy. 95 and was gladly out of L.V. in short order. More gorgeous desert, little to no traffic, and a long stretch of highway ahead. This was pretty damn nice.

I rolled on for about an hour or so and started feeling a bit hungry. I caught sight of a cafe/casino up ahead on the left so diverted into it. Shit oh dear, what have we here? There was a monster lottery somewhere and this little shit hole was selling tickets and there must have been 500 people lined up in the heat to buy them. I grabbed what little shade I could, popped a water bottle, and just watched dumbfoundedly as these silly-assed people proved a fool is born every minute. I wish I could remember who it was who said "Lotteries are for people who are bad at math". I refilled the water bottle and got back onto the road.

I still wanted to get over to Hwy. 395 in CA and a couple options were coming up. I could cross Death Valley from Beatty, cross over at Lida, or go on up to Tonopah and take the big asphalt stripe. I decided to lay over at Beatty and check out conditions with the locals as there had been hellacious thunderstorms in the area the week before. Beatty is yet another one of those towns that begs the question "Why the hell is it even here"? I don't know, but it had several restaurants, plenty of gas, and multiple choices for lodging. As I rolled into the parking lot of the motel and shut down I heard some shouting and screaming coming from the office. Seems the young gal who was the day manager was taking a load of crap from her pimply faced SO who left her finally in tears as I walked in. I gave him my meanest "Bronson" look as I was peeling off my "Go ahead - make my day" gloves. Image is everything in the super hero business. I got a room, stripped off my T-bag and emptied my saddle bags, and dialed "Arctic" on the AC. Nothing. Lots of humming, lots of fan noises, no air. I pulled the grill down and looked into a solid block of ice. I reversed the thermostat to "Sahara" and went to dinner. Over dinner it became pretty obvious I would become an interesting statistic if I chose to ride across Death Valley so I went with plan B which was Lida pass. I chose well as this is one of the prettiest rides I've ever been on. When I got back an hour later the ice was gone and with "Arctic" once again selected, I had a nice cool room. The bike was parked right outside the door and was daisy-chained to a column, a rose bush, and a water pipe - it looked safe and it was. I got a pretty good night's sleep on a lumpy bed and was up and rolling early.

The road from Beatty to the Lida turnoff is surrounded by truly ancient desert vistas rich in patterns and colors. This was my first trip into Nevada and I hope to have more. It is absolutely everything I enjoy about desert traveling. I'd hoped to buy gas at Scotty's Junction but no luck and the map showed the next stop would be Big Pine in CA or Tonopah where I didn't want to go. I turned off and headed toward Lida Pass. It's a twisty two-lane road that climbs steadily from the Sarcobatus Flat desert area Hwy. 95 crosses. Broad vistas, gnarled desert pines, scrub brush, pucker bush and elkhorn cactus make up the flora. Buzzards, bugs, and small birds are the fauna. Signs warn of deer crossing but I never saw any. I crossed over a wide stretch of the road that had recently been under water. A few flash floods had been through and highway crews did a good job of marking the rough stuff. It would get worse, much worse.

The top of the pass is unremarkable except that the road stops climbing and starts descending. The evidence of heavy weather, mostly missing from the east side, was abundant now. Wide slashes were cut by fast water. In several places it had crossed the highway leaving debris everywhere. Again, highway crews had been at work. The road was quite safe, but a lot of damage had been done by the flooding. This is a fantastic area to ride through and I enjoyed every mile except the very last - "ROAD CLOSED AHEAD". Oh great - I'm just about on fumes and the road to the only reachable gas stop is closed. I wandered up past the signs for a short ways and saw why and knew that road would be closed for a long time. It was gone.

I drifted around for a bit and located a ranch house with a pickup truck throwing up dust and headed that way. I met the truck at an intersection and a mighty darn pretty gal told me the town of Dyer had gas but it was Sunday and may not sell any. She said if I couldn't get any gas there to come on back because she had some jerry cans in the barn I could fill up from. Maybe it was the heat, or the fatigue, or the unlikely composition of the circumstances, but I do believe I would have split a cord of wood for another one of those smiles. I left her with a wave and headed to Dyer where I filled up both tanks and grabbed some junk food.

Dyer is a postcard town in a long, wide and green area called Fish Valley. Absolutely a stunning eyeful of world. The longer I stayed in Nevada the more I'd come to appreciate the range of beauty found there. The weather was perfect, warm but not stifling, and deep blue skies. After a bit of conversation with the store owner, who is as friendly a gal as you could hope to meet, I pushed on to the only open route to California - Hwy. 6. The route to Hwy. 6 allowed me to travel quite a bit of Fish Valley and left me with some memorable mental images of a place I would like to travel through again.

Hwy. 6 has the ubiquitous "State line" casino so I rolled in and had lunch. I must have looked pretty scruffy because I was getting that recognizable show me the money look so I pulled a twenty out and ordered a beer and service got better immediately. It had been my intention to drop into Bishop, CA which is my personal gateway to the California Sierra's, but it was well out of the way. A shorter route to Bridgeport would to be through Bentson, but to hell with that, I was after adventure and memories. I took the long way and went into Bishop where I bought gas and had a long look around. More years ago than I care to count I used to come through here to go fishing and hunting. The place where I broke down a split rim and fixed a flat doesn't look any different since I was there. We were bombing Vietnam at the time.

Hwy. 395 north from Bishop is another gorgeous ride. I'd driven it many times in cars, trucks, vans, and even flew over it in a Piper Cherokee, but this was my first time on two wheels. The view from the seat of a Harley is even better than from the Piper. After hitting some light to moderate rain I finally pulled into Bridgeport and made some phone calls to hook up with by big bro. But since this is getting a bit long, I'll pick it up in another post.

Part II

Ok, so here I am on the verandah of a really nice restaurant in Bridgeport, there are Harley's parked on the curb below, the wind is buffeting, I've just pulled in from Beatty, NV, and I'm sucking a nice cold beer which is well deserved. One of the gal's to my left is the rider of a clean shovel sitting before me and she tells me she's spun out the oil pump shaft. The lineage is long, but nothing in my Evo kit is of any use to her. I offer my cell phone but she has a cavalry on the way already. Cool, I'll sit back and watch a High Sierra thunderstorm overrun the town - no place I have to be. "Howdy!" just then says my bro...

Well hell, he's antsy to get outta Dodge before the real shit comes in, so my revelry is cut short and I'm reaching for my California approved helmet. We're not 5 minutes in the saddle before Sasquatch takes a bit piddle all over the whole valley. I don't know where we're off to but Dale knows the way like a hound so I try to keep him in my headlight. The old phart likes to dial up that Heritage given a chance.

Before too long or too wet we arrive at Twin Lakes and wend our way to a cabin he's been staying at. Jeri his wife is there and soon brother-in-law Allen and wife Naomi are all aboard and I'm made to feel at home, very much in the lap of luxury, I must say. Way back in the 1960's I used to fish from various logs and weirs at these lakes. I'd never spent the night near them indoors - a creature comfort I could come to relish.

We get all caught up on family stuff, have a fantastic dinner, spend an hour or so on the deck watching the sun go down and the bats come out, and it's bedtime for all. Hehehe -- a bed. Very nice..... I'm about 3,000 miles away from the last real bed I'd slept in. This is pampered life.....zzzzzz

So dawn brings the ubiquitous breakfast and Dale and I decide to do some fishing on the lower of the Twin lakes. I'm primed because I haven't been able to find time for fishing for years and there's something about my Big Bro that I just like being around him. I keep thinking some of his sage wisdom will rub off on me or something. So after a short hike down to the lake and about 90 minutes or so of drowning worms we call it a day and I have a mighty fine rainbow trout on my string and Dale has some drowned worms - God loves bikers who fish.

Not having a lot of time to dally, I need to think about the ride back to Seattle so Dale and I hop on our Harley's and head over to Gardnerville where he lives. This is along a wild and river-worn valley. There is no question that the road is very new and the canyon walls are also pretty new. The Walker River has torn this place a new ass recently. The road along the Walker twists as wildly as does the river but the highway engineers must all ride Softtails because it is a joy to wind along this stretch of concrete. Somewhere along the Walker one of the chrome brows on Dale's tail lamps flew off and whacked me on the head. Probably a good thing he sold it some weeks later 'cuz it was falling apart!!

After 45 minutes or so we were rolling into Dale and Jeri's new driveway. His driveway is on Harley Drive, by the way. Coincidence? I think not! More good reunion stuff, a quick tour by bike around town, and a massive steak and potato later and it's lights out time. This is sooooo quiet compared to home it is almost annoying to have to listen to all the noises your nose and cranium make.

Morning and breakfast come early and I have more road to hit. It's with not a little sadness I say goodbye because I don't know what circumstances will bring us together again soon. Guess I'll have to think of something.

So I head for 395 headed towards Reno and beyond, not having any plan in place or even caring how I wend my way home to Seattle. Surprisingly, I didn't stop till I was home in Seattle, 800+ miles away. The day didn't start out like it was going to be an iron butt thing, but that's just what happened. Happily, it wasn't without reward.

On leaving Gardnerville I rode straight north to Reno through some pretty uneventful Nevada then turned north by west and put Susanville in my sights. This is a nice stretch of highway alternately surrounded by rocky scarps and open prairie. I held speeds to 65 mph not wanting to draw any attention out here in the dingles. The weather was ideal - clear, no hint of rain, and warm without the unbearable heat. I rolled into Susanville just in time for lunch, a pee, and gas. I've always liked this area because it is a good blend of city and country in with a decent climate. There are fantastic vistas just to the north in the Lassen National Forest, to the south in the Sierra mountains, and the deserts to the east. The elevation is 4200 feet which should put it well above the snow line in winter seasons.

Susanville is also at the center of a spider web of roads leading out of town and I had to choose one that would take me back to Seattle. I chose Hwy 139 mostly because I'd never been on it and it was the least "slab" like on the map. It turns out to be a beautiful ride. The rode climbs straight up out of Susanville and in just a very short time you find yourself above 7000 feet on a high broad prairie dotted with dry lakes, wet lakes, lava flows, and high desert plant life. There is nobody on the road but me and it is pretty twisty (read fun) at various points. The area around Eagle Lake is really nice - I didn't have a chance to see what camping/facilities were on the lake but a resort is indicated on the map.

Rolling along mile after mile with no traffic is a nice thing. The road ducks in and out of sparse forests, winds along the lay of the land, and leaves plenty of gaps between twisties to let the mind relax and wander. In what seemed like an incredibly short time I was pulling into a gas station at Adia. It was suggested by one of the locals that I could take a very scenic side trip along a more primitive road to a junction called Lookout then head north through the Modoc National Forest to rejoin the main highway but it looked like a long way to push a bike if I had any mechanical problems so I stayed on the main road and nosed it down out of the mountains into Klamath Falls, OR.

This was about the time I knew I wasn't going to stop till I was home. I'm not a big fan of Oregon - there are few if any roadside rest areas and the folks don't seem to take to you if you're not from there. They seem to have just a bit of an edge to themselves. It's all the more surprising given that I am from Oregon myself and in fact am certifiably Portland, OR's oldest baby boomer, being the first born in the City of Roses on Jan 1, 1946. Anyway, an odd thing happened as I turned north at the edge of Klamath Falls - I was buffeted by several trucks which were going the other way - the wind was from the west - and as each truck would pass my visor would cloud up such that by the time I reached a gas stop at the northern end of the lake I could barely make out the road. I pulled in to a very nice cafe and pulled off the helmet and shit oh dear, it and I were covered in a thick layer of dead green midges. Midges are disgusting bugs that were imported into K Falls to control mosquitos. Now the midges are as big a problem. I guess they have a big business in auto air cleaners there.

I decided not to fight the tourists to see Crater Lake so stayed to the main highway till I turned north by west on Hwy 58. This is a really nice way to cross the Oregon Cascade range. The road is well maintained (no rest areas), has great scenery, parks, lakes, camping, and gas stops. I damn near laid the bike down when I pulled in for gas in Oakridge - I put my foot out as I came to a stop and it slid right out from under me on the loose gravel. Somehow I got it stopped but if it had gone all the way I couldn't have picked it up without help because of a shot back. I didn't have to feel too stupid, but it was damn close.

The Cascades along this highway are populated by some pretty rangy looking evergreens and the forest is never really dense as it can be in the coastal areas of the PNW. This makes for well-lighted turns and none of the slippery mossy stuff you find in the wetter forests. The biggest problem is that on the downhill side of the mountains all the trucks I passed going up want to pass me going down. It was pretty obvious I wasn't going to have a nice comfortable cruise toward Interstate 5 so I hit the throttle and held it at or above 85 as much of the time as conditions would allow. And I still had trucks on my ass.

Once on Interstate 5 the ride quits being fun and becomes a commute. I've been up and down this piece of road so many times I can name the rocks. The wind picked up to an extreme level and was blowing right across the road. From Eugene/Springfield until I got almost to Portland the Fat Boy was tipped to the left into the wind about 20 to 30 degrees. The full disk wheels did not seem to be a problem but as I was in the extreme right lane, anything that went by me and broke the wind flow caused a great deal of excitement as I was getting slapped around quite a bit. My speed was between 65 and 75 at this time, and it didn't matter if I went faster or slower, the buffeting was pretty hefty.

Just south of Beaverton I hit some road work and was stuck in traffic moving at a crawl at good times and stopped dead at others. It took about 2 hours to go twenty miles after which the road was wide open again. Even in Portland it was easy sledding as the sun was setting over the coastal range. It was fully dark before I was 25 miles into Washington state. I hit one more stretch of road work just north of Olympia where it was stop/go/crawl/stop, etc., for about 15 miles after which it was back to normal. At around midnight I hit the button on my garage door opener and rolled into the garage and shut down the engine and cut off the fuel valve. The speedo showed 100 miles short of 4000 miles traveled since I'd left two weeks earlier.

I still get a little dewy thinking about this ride - I'd never undertaken such a long solo run and I wanted it to be memorable. As I've been sitting here so many months afterward jotting down various memories I've found it's just not possible to paint that kind of experience in written words. I've recalled in much greater detail and volume moments of the ride which for brevity will have to go unshared but which will not go unremembered. I hope to do it again.

dp -- BS#3