Day 1 - Sacramento (CA) to Winnemucca (NV) - 310 miles
Day 1 - Sacramento (CA) to Winnemucca (NV) - 310 milesHaving loaded up the bikes the previous evening, Patrick got me out of bed at a reasonable time and we left before 9am. After about 10 miles I started to feel hot and a bit tired and wondered if it was time to stop for a rest yet.
The drive up to Reno on I-80 is one of the more pleasant motorway trips one can take. The road gradually wends its way upwards, through the foothills, until you suddenly find yourself in the mountains proper. You know this, because you start going slower and slower (coming back, you get the bonus that you use no petrol at all). After 80 miles or so, you end up going over Donner Pass, and get to practise imagining what eating people is like. Ish.
At Truckee there is the Donner State Park, where the Donner party holed up after getting stuck in the mountains by an early (and extremely bad) winter. I just spent half an hour searching the net for some sort of link to tell you all about this, but there doesn't seem to be one. Which is a shame, because I think it is one of the more fascinating Sierra/Emigrant stories. So here is the Lucy link to the story of the Donner Party.
We rode to Reno, Patrick did some work (apparently involving him going into an office, asking them if everything is ok and leaving again. Do not try this at home. He is a trained technician.).
Nevada is made up of lots and lots of mountain ranges running north and south, and I-80 runs along the valley floor dodging in and out of them. People complain that it is flat and boring, but it's actually really nice watching the mountain ranges going past. A bit like being on a train and watching the scenery zip by. The thing that surprised me was realising that the Truckee River flows east. OK, I know, this makes perfect sense, where else would it go? but I had an imaginary picture of it flowing into the sea. It doesn't. It flows into a "sink", which is a polite word for a desert swamp.
As you go east from Reno, the air gets dryer and dryer and you get hotter and hotter. My legs, securely protected by their knee pads and conveniently warmed by the engine, started to feel nice and toasty.
Having no thermometer is a drag. How can you tell people what amazing temperatures you underwent, without having real numbers? Saying: "oh yes, it was a bit hot..." is definitely weak.
A petrol stop in Lovelock gave me the opportunity to nip into the toilet and soak my t-shirt in the sink to cool myself down. With the intercomms still attached, I got to chat to Patrick while doing this. This is fine, so long as you don't go into one of the toilet stalls and not notice that someone else has come in the bathroom. They give you really odd looks when you come out, if you do this.
Anyway, Patrick got chatting to a guy with slicks on his Golf Gti. It turns out he was on his way to an Pro Solo National (people driving around a course set out in cones against the clock and each other)(if you want more information, try looking at the SCCA's Autocross explanation page) in Wendover, on the Utah border. More about this later.
Winnemucca is a little town is in the middle of Nevada, who's main claim to fame is that Butch Cassidy once robbed their bank. If you read the history books carefully, it transpires that it probably wasn't Butch Cassidy at all, just someone pretending to be him (it was a bit of a giveaway when someone at the bank recognised "Butch" as being a local lad). Winnemucca was named after an Indian chief in the area, but I'm not sure why. I'm not sure about Winnemucca full-stop. It is an odd place. I don't understand why it is there. Some places you can imagine are there because it makes sense, but Winnemucca is just stuck in the middle of the desert next to the river. But they do have a sense of humour about their town, as the billboards all the way across the desert show you.
This oddness was backed up by the slightly surreal fact that the town was filled with people wearing 50s style clothes and dancing to 50s style music. Interesting beehive hairdos abounded.
It turns out that every year Nevada holds something called "Hot August Nights", which is an excuse for car geeks to get out their hotrods and polish imaginary specks of dust off them, and for other car geeks to look at them. Those who aren't car geeks get to dance, wear strange clothes and drink beer.
We took a nap and when we came out a few hours later to go to dinner, someone had thrown a couple of buckets of fine sand all over our bikes. The sky looked like a glum, wintery day in England, except for the fact that it was 90°F (32°C).
Sand storms aren't anything like what they portray in the films (predictably). This one had deposited its sand, and even though the wind had dropped, the air was still full of dust - like a London peasouper. Sort of.
Day 2 - Winnemucca to Wells (NV) - 183 milesHaving spent weeks (well, maybe a few minutes) deciding which route we were going to take, it was important to recognise the time honoured tradition of making sure we didn't follow it. This is the correct way to tour. So instead of heading south across Nevada, we decided to go and watch the autocross meet in Wendover.
Thinking about this now, it was an extremely good idea. The wind was blowing hard, with (we later found out) 85 mph gusts. If we'd gone south, we would have got about three miles to the gallon and managed a top speed of about 45mph (maybe). As it was, we were heading east and the wind was mostly behind us. But whenever the freeway swung south, we ate a lot of sand, drove at 45% and tried to dodge tumbleweed (yes, this stuff really exists).
The CB-1 doesn't suffer much in the wind (and taking the 12 seater plane from Cambridge to Amsterdam taught me a lot about being buffeted by the wind), but Patrick's f2 acted like a giant sail and swooped alarmingly back and forth across the freeway.
As we pulled into Wells, we could see a convoy of about 20 Corvettes in the distance setting off on some run. Every single motel carpark was filled with shiney cars being polished even shinier by their proud owners. Evidently "Hot August Nights" was here as well. Luckily, we'd acted like grown-ups and phoned ahead and managed to get ouselves a room in the luxurious Motel 6. (“You can pay a load of money for an expensive hotel, but when the lights are out, you won't notice the difference”.)
In the lobby there was the sort of woman everyone should get to take on holiday with them. She was complaining bitchily about everything, including the airconditioning. This made me chuckle - having just spent several hours driving in the heat, we were enjoying the cool air. I mentally went over what it would be like to take this woman on a bike trip and disgarded it as too frightening.
Wells is admittedly 80 miles short of Wendover, but it was the best we could manage and we were suffering from slight lethargy. We flopped by the pool for a while. We even got in the pool (briefly), but then a storm came in, so we retired to our room.
The munchies set in and I made a chocolate run across the road to the shop. Having dodged the slot machines (this is what you are supposed to do in Nevada - spend your entire time feeding slot machines...) by the entrance, I found (oh joy!) a miniature thermometer. It even had a velcro blob on the back so that I could stick it to the bike for maximum heat index. It was bound to be highly accurate and cost me $2.
My return journey was hampered by the fact another squall was coming
through and visibility had dropped to 10 feet. The motel across
the road had vanished and I worried about missing it and blundering
out into the desert and being lost forever (this gives you a clue as to
how big Wells is). Crossing a road, during a sand storm, with my eyes shut,
was one of the less clever things I've ever done.
Day 3 - Wells to Ely (NV) - 211 miles
One of the more amazing sights I've ever seen, is coming over the rise at Wendover and seeing the Great Salt Lake Desert, complete with authentic heat haze, stretching out 80 miles before you.
The early emigrants crossed over here in the 1850s/60s. I bet they were pissed off.
We sat in the sun at an abandoned airfield for much of the afternoon, watching Miatas thrashing Corvettes around the cone track. One of the best things about autocrossing is that you can have more than one driver for the same car. This does cause problems when you are supposed to be running against each other, but makes for highly competitive husband and wife opponents. The thought of autocrossing kept popping into my head for the rest of the holiday and I think there is a distinct possibility that this will be the next hobby we take up. Patrick says the only rule is that if I beat him (chance would be a fine thing) I will be walking home to my new house.
When it was over, we took a quick detour to look at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Careful examination revealed that they were definitely flat and made of salt. I can report this from personal sampling, but wouldn't recommend doing it, particularly on a hot day. There was a sign up, explaining all about how they prepare the surface in the Spring for the speed trials. It looks and feels like hard ice. The sign said the record was 650mph. 650 mph suddenly makes it look a lot shorter.
In the late afternoon, we were back in Wendover getting petrol in preparation for the 120 mile drive down to Ely and we had our first "mishap". Patrick noticed the rear tyre on the CB-1 was looking a little deflated. (you'd think the rider of the bike might have noticed, eh? Er... I put forward the camping load in my defence...) The tyre gauge revealed a stupendous 12 psi in the tyre and closer inspection produced the shiney head of a nail. Hum.
We filled the tyre full of air and crossed our fingers. It's not as if we were travelling anywhere too remote. Come on, the next petrol station was just down the road... only 120 miles... (how easily one adjusts to the Nevada way of thinking...)
The 120 miles was down one of the valleys between two aforementioned north-south ranges. It was very peaceful driving down there in the late afternoon, with the sun glowing lazy orange off the sagebrush. As this road was not marked as a scenic highway, we made sure we were unimpressed by the vistas.
The trusty CB-1 reached Ely an hour and half later and still had a whole 18 psi left. Drastic action was necessary. Not exactly being a thriving metropolis, we only located a single listing in the yellow pages for motorcycles in town - a Plymouth/Dodge/Yamaha dealer. Unfortunately, they were unfamiliar with motorcycles...
| Utah Intro |
Specification |
Day 1 of the Trip |
Day 2 |
Day 3 |
Day 4 |
Day 5 |
Day 6 |
| Day 7 |
Day 8 |
Day 9 |
Day 10 |
Day 11 |
Day 12 |
Day 13 |
Day 14 |
elsie@calweb.com 30 August 1995