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| At the bottom of Steens Mountain
Jayne hit a soft
spot
in the gravel, got a wobble that she
couldn't shake, and went down. Besides her pride
she wasn't hurt and the bike was fine too. The coyotetrips.com
panniers didn't even get a dent. Since the bike
was partly over the bank we couldn't get it back
up. So we unloaded the bike and waited for the
next truck to help us. |
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| We headed further south on Rd205
towards Fields, OR.. |
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| We got a late lunch and gas at the
Fields Station.
While we were filling the bikes there was a
sudden flash, immediately followed by the
loudest thunder I ever heard. We knew that
lightning had struck close by. Even before we
had paid for the gas the BLM firefighters, that
were stationed there, took off. A couple of
miles later we saw a
hillside on fire, quickly growing in
the wind, which was obviously started by the
lightning we had just witnessed. |
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| The Nevada road 140 from Denio to
Winnemucca is extremely
boring and hot with no shade at all.
The only interesting part was seeing all the
other BLM fire units heading to the wildfire we
just saw. Due to the heat we opted for a motel
in Winnemucca and then bought a new spare
innertube (the last one) at the local motorcycle
store, just in case. |
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| From Winnemucca we headed east on
Interstate 80 and then took highway 305 south in
Battle Mountain towards Austin, NV. From Austin
we headed east again on highway 50. Our goal for
the night was a state park just past Ely, NV. |
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| About two miles before Ely I felt
a wobble while I was going 65 mph or so. I
slowed down and it got worse, so I pulled over
and stopped. After stopping it was obvious that
I had a flat
tire. Jayne was in front of me and
continued on as she didn't see me stop, but came
back after a few minutes. There was only a small
shoulder and a surprising amount of traffic,
nobody stopped, so I decided it wasn't safe to
change the inner tube there. Since we have
roadside assistance trough Progressive Insurance
we called them to get a tow truck. The woman on
the line insisted to get a cross street for our
location, but she didn't understand when we
repeated several times that there was a rock
cliff on one side and railroad tracks on the
other, no cross street for miles. She kept
reading from a script, which didn't apply to
motorcycles at all, but it was near impossible
to get her off that script. ... |
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| ... After she insisted that Ely
wasn't a town, she finally gave in and said she
would send a tow truck to take me to a Honda
dealership. Great, but car dealerships don't
deal with motorcycles, neither do tire shops,
she had no idea. She then said she was getting
the bike towed to the nearest motorcycle dealer,
which was either in Las Vegas or in Salt Lake
City, both about 250 miles away. We finally told
her to send us a tow truck to take us to a
motel, I would fix the tire there myself. She
insisted that we tell her which motel, WTF? I'm
a thousand miles from home and have no idea what
motel is in the next town. We named a few big
chains until the Ramada matched her list. Once
the tow truck got there the driver was very
friendly and helpful. He dropped me at a small
motel, not the fricking Ramada, and I got to
work while Jayne made a beer and food run. I
finished just after dark with my headlamp. Good
thing we got the last spare tube in Winnemucca
the day before.
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