Nevada and Utah

SO WHO KNOWS where the muchachos got to? We rode separately most of the day. Around 2 in the afternoon I was on the side of U.S. 93 in Nevada getting layers off and water in, up rides CCjon asking if I’ve seen Nestor. I haven’t but think he must be somewhere up ahead. CCjon was slightly concerned. It was toasty and he hadn’t seen Nestor drinking water. I know I was down a quart, if Nestor’s not drinking at all that’s not good. Especially if we don’t know where he is.

Quite a weather change as we rode south yesterday. Two nights before my ice-coated tent crackled as I rolled it up and split out of that sawmill camp in the middle of the night.

So CCjon rides on ahead, he’ll try to find Nestor. In the event we all get separated for good, he gives me the address of his condo in Angel Fire, New Mexico. That’s 800 miles east and south of where we are. The plan is to meet up there in two days.

So I ride to Ely, Nevada, now and again watching a fire in the mountains to the north, fuel up and turn east on U.S. 50, the Loneliest Road in America. I’ve been on it before, but never lonely on it. Who thinks up these names? Not Roy Orbison. I’d be good with it if it were Roy. He knew lonely, Mr. dum dum dum, dumdidy-do-wah, Ooh-yay-yay-yay yeah… Since Roy’s gone who’s to say this road is the loneliest, 6 percent more lonely than the second loneliest? I was alone on the loneliest road yesterday, been alone on it in the past, never been lonely.

Most of the time there was no one ahead, no one behind, not in the long straightaway sight lines, seven or eight miles fore and aft. Not lonely, more like… perfect. Up through the passes, 7,000 feet, 8,000, down on the flats and zipping past the salt lakes to the south.

Nestor wanted to see U.S. 50, maybe he’s on the road up ahead. I ride east until Nevada runs out, fuel up again, cross the line into Utah, ride another 100 miles of nothing to the first town, Hinckley. Start riding through clouds of moths everywhere. So many fly up my right sleeve my arm feels wet. Not a one up the left sleeve.  (There’s one flapping around in my pot of cowboy coffee as we speak…)

I ride to the next town up, Delta, see a campground on the main drag, Antelope Valley RV Park.

Lucy, the camp host, lived in Newport, Rhode Island once upon a time, so we have that to talk about. She hadn’t seen a motorcycle with a sidecar go by. I figure CCjon and Nestor are behind me anyway, maybe still in Nevada, Los muchachos evaporato!

Evaporato, that’s not a Spanish word, is it? I made it up ’cause they wuz gone amigo gone, evaporato con mucho disappearamento. 

Anyway, I decide to be here for the night, pick a campsite visible from the road just in case my compadres make it this far. And not 60 seconds later, they do. They ride around the curve and spot the iron piggy.

I had slipped past them in Ely, fueled up directly across the street from the McDonald’s where they were mooching the free wifi.

CCjon and Nestor get a pizza delivered, I cook a pot of pasta with lentils and rice. The pot would have fed us all. I devour it solo after downing two leftover pizza slices as an appetizer.

Breakfast had been a cup of coffee. Lunch, a cup of coffee.

Our day had started in Nevada, on the side of fire-blackened state route 225 in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The road had been closed for weeks, it reopened just when we got there. We set up camp in a staging area firefighters had used in recent weeks. Their wheels had turned it into a dustbowl but it was out of sight from the road, good camp for the night.

Sundown Tuesday… It was hard to cook. The wind was blowing so hard all the heat went sideways. It was cold but not a hard frost like the night before in Idaho.

CCjon and Nestor were Zzzzzzz… Before I turned in I saw the firefighters’ trucks coming our way from quite a few miles to the north. They drive a fleet of white pickups. Working for a contractor, I imagine. Their lights float around out there in the dark. Watch for a while and you start to get a sense of the road they’re on. Thirty to forty pairs of lights bunch up and float sideways, disappear, pop out somewhere else. They don’t seem to be getting any closer, just jinxing around in two dimensions of black space. Then they start lining up and quickly acquire the third. Their tires whine now and they zip past us at speed a few hundred feet to the west.

I saw them converging on a flat spot in a valley a few miles south of us. That was their camp for the night.

Rode a lot of chipseal in Nevada and probably will today here in Utah. The aggregate eats tread fast but there are plenty of edges for your tires to bite into in the curves.

Great riding all day, even in the heat.

Lots of fires still burning…

Needed these in the morning yesterday. Two wool shirts, a winter vest, leather jacket… I was peeling out of them in the heat when CCjon rode up looking for Nestor.

Iron piggy’s odometer rolled over…

Somewhere in Utah, near day’s end.

Headed to Moab now, easy day, 300 miles.

Later…

Tony DePaul, August 30, 2018, Delta, Utah, USA