I'm glad the tequila is gone. Said goodbye to Mike and LuAnn and headed south into the Black Hills: Custer State Park. Rode the "Wildlife Loop" and saw a couple of antelope and buffalo. Rode through the town of Custer: a clusterfuck of tourists, traffic, bikers, and folks dressed up as pioneers. Hah…folks dressed up as bikers. I waited for the same traffic light four times! Glad to get out of there. Gassed up in Newcastle, Wyoming, and took route 450 to Wright, desolate, nothing but antelope for 70 miles, and hot ninety five degrees. Made it to Casper just before the rain.
Had a dream my tooth fell out. Woke up and it was still there. Route 220 out of Casper, lots of antelope, and 287 to Rawlins, where we found I 80 west. Crossed the Continental Divide three times: once on 220, once on 287, and once on I 80. Temps. on the high prairie ranged in the high 80's, but once we descended into Salt Lake City, it felt like a blast furnace in the mid to upper nineties. We got a room on the west side of the city in Tooele, so we can cross the salt desert early, before the heat.
100 miles of salt desert, and we gassed in Wendover. The folks from Bonneville Speedway were gearing up for the next weeks races; I talked for a while with one of the judges. He and his wife were riding an original 1950 BMW, 500 cc, twin cam. Rose and I put on our helmets and headed into Nevada and Pacific Time Zone. There's about 400 miles of desert between Wendover and Reno, and as the day heated up, we took lots of breaks to drink water and gas up. We were traveling across flat terrain, hot clear desert air, mountains shimmering in the distant afternoon. An area of darkness formed, a single hovering cloud, dark diagonal streaks from sky to ground, that raced across the plain, on a collision course actually, with the highway and the motorcycle and we ran right the fuck into it, a mini-micro storm, that sand-blasted us, and pelted us with splashing globules of rain. There was nothing to do except ride right through it, and within minutes, it passed off to our right, continuing along the plain.
In Winnemucca, young miss big swinging hips sways on past, then sits down at our table with a bottle of iced tea. Impressive cleavage. Rose gets up and walks away. "Is it gonna rain?" I ask. There were clouds, there were. And she tells me how she's lived all her life in Winnemucca. And she's never been to the ocean, but last week her and her boyfriend went to Lake Tahoe, the first time she's ever been to the beach, but she didn't have a bathing suit, and didn't go in the water, and on her class trip, she went to Washington, D.C., and the tour guide mispronounced the name of her town. And it makes her proud that Johnny Cash mentions Winnemucca in a song. And the swells of her cleavage heaved moist in the desert heat.
We rolled into Reno at about 5 PM, and checked into the 13 storied Ramada for $34.95 (with coupon). Played the nickel slots: casino, restaurant, everything in one place. Oh, and free beer! There were hookers outside smoking.
California has border checkpoints. A sign says "all vehicles must stop." You come to the booth that looks like a toll booth, stop for the sign, the woman looks at you, waves you through. I felt like I was going into another country. I think they were looking for fruits and vegetables. As far back as the 1850’s the area had earned the name, ‘Hallelujah Junction’, as emigrants rejoiced at sighting the low Beckwourth Pass and the easy trip beyond to ‘California’.
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