- 173400 km on the bike
It is raining cats and dogs next morning, and continues for hours.
I haven't had a break day in quite a while, so I decide to have
one today. I walk to the reception to pay for the room for a second
day. Inside are several local people, and I have never seen so many
people smile so much about such bad weather. Rain is regarded as
a rare wonder here - I don't dare to tell them that for me its rather
a nuisance.
I have a lazy brunch and watch two movies at the nearby cinema:
The
Bourne Ultimatum and Stardust.
Both movies are currently rated well over 8 points on the IMDB,
but I am not overly impressed with either of them. Once more seasoned
movie buffs have watched them, I am sure they will disappear into
the mediocre ranks where they belong.
Next morning the sun is shining out of a clear, blue sky. The surrounding
countryside already looks much greener thanks to yesterdays rain.
One of my usual checks is of course for the tyre pressure. This
morning I need no gauge to see that the front tyre is flat. I thoroughly
check the tyre for any foreign object that might have punctured
it. As expected, I find none. Knowing what kind of guys actually
fitted the tubes and tyres in Calgary I am not surprised about the
flattie. I'm probably lucky that it held together for 13000 km.
Having a faulty front tyre on a motorbike is very dangerous. If
the tyre fails at highway speeds, a serious accident is inevitable.
I need to know what kind of problem I am having. Luckily there is
a petrol station next door where I re-inflate the tyre to the correct
pressure of 36 psi.
Then I slowly drive five miles and check the pressure. It is down
by maybe one pound. I now have to enter Interstate
15 north due to the lack of alternative highways. I exit after
another 30 miles. Now the pressure is down to 33 pounds. So I have
a slow leak. That should be fixable. At Cedar
City I leave the Interstate and search for a petrol station
with an air hose that will fit to motorbikes. As many of you who
are bikers themselves know, plenty of petrol stations these days
feature solid metal valve connectors, purely designed with cars
in mind. Motorbikers frequently can't get these things to work,
because either the wheel spokes or the disc brakes are in the way.
The second place I try has the good, old rubber hose job. I completely
deflate my front tyre and then attach the can of tyre sealant to
the valve. I bought this can on day one in Canada, and ever since
then the can has been inside my right pannier, waiting exactly for
something like this to happen.
I pump the sealant into the inner tube, then drive a few miles to
distribute the sealant throughout the tube. Afterwards I return
to the petrol station and inflate the tyre to the correct 36 psi.
Pampered European bikers might think that in America they have the
same luxurious, gauge equipped and free-of-charge air hoses like
in Europe. Unfortunately it isn't so over here. If you are lucky,
then they have a grimy air hose without any of those elaborate inflate
or deflate buttons. And no gauge either. And if you need to add
air, then you usually have to insert about 75 cents into that contraption
to fire it up. Then you have three minutes in which to perform what
I call the "wheel dance"; attach the hose to the first
tyre and press it onto the valve for a few seconds. Remove hose
and check tyre pressure with your own, personal gauge. If not enough
pressure yet, then repeat the process. A car driver wanting to do
a proper job has to perform this dance for his four tyres and then
for the spare in the boot - all in under three minutes. If the US
department of transportation wonders why so many accidents happen
over here due to tyre failure caused by under-inflation, then they
should watch their citizens doing this wheel dance, and then come
to Europe and see how we do these things.
The tyre sealant appears to do the job all right, but I will know
for sure only tomorrow morning when I check the pressure.
The road by now has climbed to 6000 feet and stays there. Up here
the ride is quite comfortable and not too hot. But all around me
there are new thunderstorms forming and the sky ahead looks somewhat
threatening.
At Salina
I leave the Interstate and have lunch at a very nice place called
Mom's restaurant. I normally try to avoid places that have names like this, but all the locals recommend it as the best place to eat
- and they are right, the food is delicious.
At the NAPA
store across the street I buy a replacement for the used tyre sealant
can - if I don't do that straight away, Murphy's
law dictates that my rear tyre will develop a puncture within
hours.
From Salina onwards I ride north on highway
89. All around me above the mountains large thunderstorms have
formed. Spectacular lightning is going on. Luckily so far my route
led through the valleys and away from the storms. But at Fairview
Sally, my GPS, directs me directly up the mountain flank into one
of these giant storm cells. No, thanks, not for me. After 400 km
I seek shelter at the Skyview motel instead.
- 173900 km on the bike
Next morning the sun shines out of a deep blue sky again and nothing is left of yesterdays storms. I set out at 9.30 am into the La Sal National forest. The road winds up to 2700 meters and the views are fantastic. Tranquil lakes, pine forests and a winding road are all that is required to put me into biker heaven.
Far too soon do I reach the far side at Huntington,
where I turn north onto state route 10 towards Price.
This is Carbon
County, and that name is well chosen, because coal mining and
coal burning power plants are plentiful around here.
Soon I reach highway
191, heading northeast towards Duchesne.
The countryside gets rapidly more and more arid, as you can see
in this picture:
At Duchesne I turn eastwards on highway
40 towards Roosevelt.
After a quick lunch there I head on to the last outpost of civilization
for a long time, the town of Vernal.
I fill up the tank and ride on, finally crossing the state line
into Colorado.
The first town here is Dinosaur.
Eight miles after passing this little hamlet I hear a muffled bang
and within a millisecond my front tyre collapses.
Yesterday I mused about the dangers of a front tyre collapsing at
65 miles per hour, today I can report that it is a rather hairy
experience. The steering bar immediately behaves like a bull at
a rodeo.
I can't use the front brakes, so I have to ride this Tiger turned
Rodeo bull for even longer before I come to a standstill.
Luckily the tyre stayed on the rim and looks undamaged. I am in the middle of nowhere here. The last sizeable town was Vernal, 50 miles to the west. That I have just driven past that signpost pictured below does not make matters any better.
About half a mile back I can see the roof of
a lonely farmhouse. I turn the bike around and hobble on that flat
tyre to the farm. There are some large trees there, which at least
give some shade. I have a look around the place; except for a trio
of guard dogs it seems to be entirely deserted.
Well, it is just 4.00 pm, I have one gallon of drinking water, it
is nice and warm here and I also have all the time in the world.
I think I might call upon the next biker that zooms past. There
is also a stack of mail boxes in front of this farm, so sooner or
later someone might come along to collect his letters.
I take a seat in the shade and get out my pipe - there is nothing
else to do. After a few minutes I hear the distinct sound of two
Harley engines. But having just one look at the bikers makes me
decide to let them go. I don't want to have to join the Hells
Angels and replace Kitty for a Harley to get out of this fix.
Half an hour later a Dodge
Durango stops at the letterboxes. I have a word with the driver.
Her name is Lindsay, and she promises to ride home and make a few
phone calls, then come back and let me know the outcome.
Another hour later the farm owner arrives. Her name is Leona. I explain what has happened. She phones Lindsay to see what progress has been made. She invites me inside to sit at her garden patio. We discuss the possibilities and finally agree that the best plan of action would be for me to remove the front wheel of my bike with her husbands tools, drive with her to her cafe in Dinosaur tomorrow and phone around to see if there is a dealership around that can fit a new inner tube.
She also offers me to stay overnight in their brand new caravan that sits at the rear of the farm. That is extremely generous.
- 174300 km on the bike
Next morning we set out at 7.30 am to her place, the Bedrock
Depot, in Dinosaur. She has asked me yesterday to add a German
translation to her menu, as lots of Germans visit the place. To
my surprise that takes me until noon. Then I phone a large motorcycle
dealership in Vernal, and yes, they have the proper inner tube replacement
in stock and are willing to fix my problem right away this afternoon.
Leona borrows me her Chevy MPV
(now, would you do this to a total stranger who just stranded
outside your home 12 hours earlier?) and at 2 pm I set out back
the way I came. Just over an hour later I am at the dealership,
and within 30 minutes I receive the properly inflated wheel back.
Great! I pay 30 bucks for the job, and by 6.30 pm my bike is resting
on two sound tyres again.
Next morning I say goodbye to my two generous hosts, Leona and her husband Robert, and hit the road at 11 am. It is clear from the outset that the day will end with thunderstorms, the clouds are already bubbling up at noon. Well, I will ride as long as I can, but thunderstorms here in the desert can be very dangerous. Even if they occur miles away, otherwise dry creeks may fill within minutes and flood nearby roads. By the time I am past Steamboat Springs the sky looks like this:
I decide not to stop, as it is not even 3 pm, so soon I have to
put on my raingear. But that is no problem, as I am now in the Routt
National forest, and the road winds up to 2900 meters. Once
out of the forest, but still at 2600 meters, I turn north-east onto
state route 14 towards Walden.
I decide to ride on for a bit longer. 12 miles beyond Walden I hear
that by now familiar muffled bang again, and the front tyre collapses
once again while I am doing over 100 kilometers per hour. Like the
last time, I manage with profound difficulties to bring the bike
to a halt without any mishap.
I think I can call myself now some kind of an expert on blown out
tyres after having the same tyre deflating for the second time in
two days. But here I am not near a farm. This is the total outback,
and even getting back to the tiny hamlet of Walden is impossible.
I suppose it is needless to say, that a black wall of clouds with
thunder and plenty of lightning is slowly moving in on me from the
west.
I have time to think about what must have happened: there must be
a spoke from the wheel poking inside the tyre, puncturing the inner
tubes. Or some damage on the tyre itself is chafing the tube. In
any case, the guy who repaired the damage yesterday just couldn't
be bothered to check for the cause of the problem. He just put in
a new inner tube, job done, have a nice day. It becomes more and more obvious that the majority of craftsmen in this part of the world are just incompetent morons, or, as they say in England, "cowboys".
I am about to get my pipe out and prepare myself to be engulfed
in the deluge that is approaching from the west, when two Pick-Up
trucks stop at the same time next to me. Three guys step out and
enquire what is wrong. I show them what is wrong. They offer me
a lift into Walden. That is mighty nice of them, but how can we
put 500 pounds of motorbike onto their truck? But with quite impressive
pioneer spirit, they find some wooden planks in a ditch nearby,
move one of the trucks to an embankment, so that we can easily move
Kitty onto the truck.
The chaps have one tie-down strap and I have the two from my baggage
roll, so we manage to secure the bike on the truck. Then they drive
me and my bike back to Walden. All three strictly refuse any payment
for their rescue services, claiming that they were about to go bowhunting,
but that it was raining anyway at their destination, so they claim
to have not missed out on anything.
I hobble on my flat-footed bike to a motel nearby, where I get their
second-last room, and manage to get the bike under its cover just
before it starts to rain.
I soon realize that I have another big problem; this weekend is
Labour
day weekend, i. e. next Monday is a bank holiday nationwide.
This is also the weekend where the bowhunting season starts out
here. Which simply means that today is Friday, and no workshop will
be open before next Tuesday. And all motels and hotels in Walden
are booked solid for tomorrow and Sunday night, not a single room
is available in the entire town.
I have to find a way to either fix my tube problem tomorrow or find
some place to hole up for the weekend and next Monday. How I am
going to do that I have no idea. I can't move the bike, there are
no rooms beyond tonight and I have also to find the cause of this
multiple tyre blowout before I can even think of going anywhere
else.
- 174600 km on the bike
The motel receptionist, a lady named Babbie, has volunteered to
drive me to the nearest motorbike dealership, providing that I can
find one that has another new inner tube in stock and pay for the
petrol. I do find a Harley dealer in Steamboat
Springs who has one in stock. We leave at 9.30. It is a 120
mile round trip, but we manage to be back at the motel before noon.
There is also a local mechanic at work just 100 yards from the motel.
I hobble my flat-footed bike to his place. We agree that I will
do the work myself using his tools, as he is far too busy to do
it for me.
The mechanics name is Brian and he is a very friendly and helpful
chap. He doesn't have any machines for tyre fitting, so I'll have
to do it all manually. With the help of two prybars
I remove the tyre and have a look at the old inner tube to see what
caused the second blowout. The diagnosis is quite simple; after
the first blowout I drove that half mile to Leona's farmhouse. Of
course some dirt and debris entered the tyre when doing so. That
brainless ape who fitted the replacement tube just couldn't be bothered
to clean out the inside of the tyre or the rim. A piece of debris
chafed directly on the running surface of the tyre against the tube
and finally blew it - less than 200 miles after the "repair".
It is obvious that if I want to have anything relating to motorbikes
done to Swiss standards on this continent, then I will have to do
the job myself.
It takes me three hours to wash out and blow-dry the tyre, check
every square inch of the inside to ensure that there are no foreign
objects left in it, clean the rim inside until it is spotless, put
in a new rim band and refit the tyre with the new tube.
At 2.30 pm I say goodbye to Brian and Babbie and hit the road. Highway 14 heads straight for the Roosevelt National Forest and the road rapidly climbs to well over 10000 feet (3000 meters)
The scenery is spectacular, though my original plan was of course
to be out of the mountains before the long bank holiday weekend
starts. Now I have to pay the price for these unwanted delays; the
weekend warriors are out in force, creeping through the mountains
with smoking brakes at 30 miles per hour. But I nonetheless enjoy
those 110 miles to Fort
Collins, where I get myself a room at the local EconoLodge.
After this successful solution of yesterdays problem, I pop out
to a bottle store and get me a bottle of local beer, called Fat
Tire (I am sure they mean tyre, but don't know how to spell it correctly...) to celebrate the hopefully final
fix to my tyre problem. The beer is excellent and is brewed
in this town.
- 174750 km on the bike
It is about a 70 mile ride from Fort Collins eastwards along state
highway 14 to my turnoff north onto state highway 71. The road leads
mainly through the open prairie of the Pawnee
National Grassland. Ever since the dust
bowl of the 1930's this entire area is completely deserted.
Cars come along here maybe one every 20 minutes - even on this bank
holiday weekend hardly anybody drives along this lonely road.
At a railway crossing a coal train trundles along. 225 carriages,
each loaded with 23 tons of coal - over 5100 tons of payload altogether.
No wonder they put four locomotives to the train, two pulling up
front and two pushing at the rear.
Everything is just bigger here. After a couple of miles on highway 71 I reach the state line and enter Nebraska. This state is certainly not known for its exciting scenery, but it is excellent for making some mileage, which I really want to do after all those delays due to incompetent motorbike mechanics.
At Gering I have my lunch at a Chinese restaurant called China House. This place wants to get into the top 100 Chinese restaurants in the USA. I have to say, the food is really excellent, but the place has the flair of a railway station waiting room, the local clientele behaves like hooligans at a soccer game, the loo could seriously do with a revamp and they don't warm the crockery - I fear that even in the culinarily unsophisticated United States some more effort is required to make the top 100.
Thunderstorms are building up when I leave the restaurant and take
the old Oregon
Trail back to my mapped route, crossing the North
Platte River on the way. North of the town two big storms are
unloading lots of rain - but the highway runs exactly in between
the two, so I don't get more than a few drops.
Soon I turn onto highway
385, which leads me out of the panhandle
and into South
Dakota.
My original plan was to stay overnight in Hot
Springs, but I can see from far away that a massive thunderstorm
is brewing directly over the town.
For this reason I divert to Rapid City instead and get a room at the Super 8 motel. The proximity to Mount Rushmore costs 20 dollars more than a "normal" Super 8 room - 80 bucks in total. My original plans were to actually visit those four stoned presidents, but as it is a bank holiday weekend I will give them a miss, as the place is too crowded for my liking.
- 175350 km on the bike
I leave Rapid City at 10 am westwards to pick up my original route near Silver City. I pick up highway 385 again and continue my ride north.
Soon I reach the state line to North Dakota. While taking above picture a Ducati roars past, doing probably twice the legal speed of 65 mph. I ride on at my usual speed of 55 to 60 mph. Five miles onwards the Ducati is parked off the road - in front of a state troopers police car.
The altitude slowly decreases to under 700 meters and it gets fairly warm. But about every 90 minutes I pass another degree latitude north, until I have finally reached the North Dakota Badlands.
The nearest sizeable village is Watford
City. The word "City" should not be taken too seriously
out here, it was probably more the wishful thinking of the town
fathers. The local convenience
store sells pizza, so I have an early diner there and the "Four
Eyes" motel provides all mod-cons for 40 bucks. The motel is
run by the local chief of police. I'd expect this village to be
a peace haven for law enforcement officers, but he tells me about
a couple of local 187
cases, that would make a great Hollywood script.
As usual you can download my route and tracklogs from Colorado to
North Dakota here.
- 175850 km on the bike
Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog and some trip markers.