US MotoGP Day 5

Nevada Desert

The name struck fear in the hearts of westerners in 1800’s. I can certainly see why. I have flown over the Nevada desert several times in a small plane and was amazed by the emptiness. However, there is nothing like riding a motorcycle across it to make you realize how easy it would be to die there.

Adam and I have been planning our desert crossing for several days. The heat and lack of fuel stops was our big concern. On most bikes the fuel wouldn’t be such an issue, but our sport bikes only have a range of about 130 miles before hitting reserve. It is easily 130+ miles between fuel stops in the Nevada desert. You miss or pass by on one fuel stop and you could be a in a world of hurt. Our plan was to cross from Cedar City to Yosemite. There are several dots on the map indicating “towns” but I have ridden in the west long enough to question the existence of some of these towns. Good thinking, many we went through were abandoned or without fuel. We talked to one FZ1 rider from New York that said he ran out of fuel crossing the Mojave and had to wait for an hour in the heat for someone to pass and give him a ride, then he had to get back to his bike with fuel, it was a real mess and cost him some bucks. He had never ridden out west before and said he had always found fuel ever 60 miles or so but that many of the “towns” he had passed didn’t have fuel. Duh.

Leaving out of Cedar City early to beat the heat, we found out we beat it all right. It was COLD! We froze our butts off and had to stop and put on additional clothing. I kept thinking the sun would come up and things would warm up, but since the Mojave is at 5,000 foot elevation it took a while to warm up. That afternoon the desert would talk to us at things heated up nicely. Our Joe Rocket Sahara cool vests worked well in the afternoon, making the desert crossing much more bearable. In fact, I found the ride with the cool jackets to be very pleasant. We would wet them down at each fuel stop and they would keep us nice and cool until our next fuel stop. My iPod locked up right as we left Cedar City so I was forced to spend the day listening to the whine of the CBR – nice but not for10 hours of flat roads.

Speed

The way to get across the desert is to use lots of throttle. The ride is mostly flat, the roads are good, and you can see for like 75 miles. You can see a car coming for 15 miles even at our average speed of 100+ mph, you watch it grow for 1-2 minutes until you finally fly by it. That might be the only car you see for 50 miles. On one 120 mile stretch I counted 3 vehicles that we passed. No houses, no barns, no stores, no signs of civilization except the arrow straight highway disappearing into the distance. We set the bikes on 100 mph and just cruised. The other vehicles we passed were doing between 85-90 mph so we were not going much faster than the other traffic around. You would see a car ahead going in the same direction, and even at 105 mph it would take minutes to catch and pass them. We could have cruised faster except my helmet would try to suck off my head. Adam’s helmet had a spoiler so he didn’t have that trouble. Gotta get me one of those.

Grasshoppers

Cruising at high speed across the desert, I started feeling what I thought were rocks hitting my boots. I though my tire was kicking up some loose gravel or something. I saw Adam drop way back in my mirror so I slowed. He slowed even further. Finally I waited for him to catch up and he was coated with grasshopper juice. We had run into a huge infestation of grasshoppers in the desert. We ran side by side for about 20 miles so that the person in front didn ‘t kick up the grasshoppers onto the person behind. There were thousands if not millions of grasshoppers all over the place. You couldn’t see them on the road unless you slowed down, but you could certainly feel them plastering your boots as we sped by. I believe we wiped out thousands of grasshoppers.

Fuel

Fuel was more critical than water to us. With fuel we could find water. Without fuel we would run out of water. We quickly learned to ask the locals at each fuel stop whether we could find fuel along our next stretch. At Ash Springs we asked if there was any fuel between there an Tonopah, 180 miles away. They hummed and hawed, and one guy said there was a 20% chance there would be fuel available in Rachel NV. Other than that, no.

Humm. Our bikes might be able to stretch our total fuel to 180 miles if we used reserve and was conservative with the throttle. We had hear reports of guys getting 200 miles out of a tank, but we had never experience that. The most we ever got was 136 miles before reserve, and once I went 160 miles total with 25 on reserve. So we really were not sure if we could make it if fuel was unavailable. Our other option was to divert 250 miles south.

Humm. OK, we figured out the solution was to buy some water in bottles, dump the water, and then fill them with fuel. We strapped those on the back of my bike behind my luggage, wrapped them in a plastic bag, and this way Adam could keep an eye on the fuel as we drove. Big mistake.

Luckily we found fuel in Rachel, but when we pulled the fuel bottles off my bike we also found that they had leaked. The plastic bag did not hold the fuel either, so now the fuel had leaked onto my tail section of the bike. Fuel and paint don’t mix, so now the paint was ruined in my beautiful CBR. That sucked big-time. I guess you live and learn. I just seem to learn many of my lessons the hard way.

Bubba Tate – Motorcycle Patrol Officer – Tonopah, NV

If you ever find yourself in Tonopah NV on a motorcycle, you will probably meet Bubba Tate on his Harley police bike. Tonopah is pretty small, right in the middle of the desert – although they do have a McDonald’s. Bubba was running radar but no problem for us since we had our radar detector. However, Bubba makes it a point to stop and talk to all the riders passing through. He is just the nicest guy you could ever meet and an avid motorcyclist. He has family in Oklahoma so we talked a bit about that. He also provided invaluable information on riding in California, giving us great routes, scenic views, places to stay, etc. He warned us to divert around Yosemite and take a route around the north side. He said it was much less traveled, just as scenic, and a twisted, crooked SOB with some very, very steep grades. He was not exaggerating one bit. Absolutely great advice we would discover later. Bubba, if you ever get to Oklahoma be sure and look me up.

Sierra Nevada

After the mind-numbing drone across the desert, we were greeted with the stunning beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Wow. Again I have flown over them, driven all through the Rockies and Tetons, but I was still floored by the Sierra Nevada mountains. We used Bubba’s spectacular route and man, he was not kidding. On the way up Sonora Pass it is one twisted, crooked, steep, winding piece of asphalt. I think the road designers must have been from San Francisco in the 60’s and high on LSD when they designed it. I have NEVER seen a more twisted road in my life. I rode in first gear most of the time, flicking from side to side, up and down, wheeling and tire spinning as we climbed. Adam even got airborne on some of the humps and bumps. The road was fun, but not my favorite, since there was no way you could be smooth and aggressive. It was way too dangerous to really hang it out and drag a knee, to tight to get into a rhythm, and just a really difficult, but fun ride.

After we crested the summit at 9,800 feet we started down the other side. Our normal aggressive ride slowed to a crawl as we both looked in awe at the scenery. WOW. No way you want to hammer down the west side of the Sierra’s. It is stunningly beautiful with huge cliff faces, gigantic trees, crystal clear waterfalls. Eventually we just turned off the bikes, but them in neutral, and coasted down the mountain in silence. No traffic to speak of, just nature in it’s finest splendor all around. Nothing to say but WOW – WOW – WOW.

Of course, being the sportbike riders we are, once we coasted about 10 miles past the really good stuff we got into a coasting race! That was really fun. The road was really tight, twisted and steep so we got up some pretty good speed. I was Valentino Rossi and Adam was Colin Edwards. We were dicing for the lead at the US MotoGP, stuffing each other on corners, going around the outside, showing the other person a wheel in the corners, battling for position. Since the bikes were turned off we could talk smack all the way down. We only passed one car so no traffic to deal with. I ended up beating Adam – twice. Gravity plus weight = coaster race winning. I finally found something on a bike where I could beat Adam . I guess he will need to put on a few pounds to compete with the champion!

At the end of the day we stopped in Sonora CA. 630 miles total, a very long day. Our rear tires are shot, so now we are on a quest for a dealer with tires.