My notes for day 3 take up about three lines in my notebook and pretty much consist of departure time/miles/city – arrival time/mileage/city. Actually day 3 was a lot more than that and it started the night before.
After we got checked in to the hotel and got the bugs off our bikes. We retired to Fat Boys Bar and Grill, a rather seedy place inside the hotel, to plan Jason’s return route to Lubbock and enjoy a cold beer.
I asked the waitress what she had on tap because I greatly prefer draft beer to any other kind and she replied “Easy Street”, a beer I was unfamiliar with. I decided to try it, as I almost always do if it’s something new, and asked her if it was a local brew. She didn’t know.
Come to find out it’s brewed not from home at the Odell Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO.
We did not want to eat a big meal since it was pretty late in the evening so we ordered a couple of appetizers to pass around. Then got out the maps and started tracing a different, but still fun, return route for Jason since he had accompanied us as far as his time would allow for this trip. We decided that since he had to go right by it anyway he should run down Poudre Canyon. Then head west from Denver and wiggle down through the mountains again. I gave him my house keys so he could spend the night there instead of a hotel. Then make his way back to Lubbock.
I have to take a moment here to jump way ahead in the story. When I got home the following Saturday there was a 12pack of beer in my fridge that was ice cold and ready for consumption. That was a very thoughtful gesture on Jason’s part especially considering I don’t think he could have just stopped and got it on the way in. He would have to either have unloaded his bike and gone to get it then loaded his bike back up or walked to the store and got it. Either way, it took more effort than you would, at first, think and I greatly appreciated it.
OK. Back to the story. We got the route planned out after much deliberation and then began to wonder where our food was. Shortly after that we began to wonder where our waitress was. She had been sitting with one of the customers and then all of a sudden they were gone. Carlton went to the bar tender and asked if our food order was ready and the barkeep went to check on it. It arrived shortly thereafter and it only seemed like it had been prepared the day before and left on the counter over night. Surely that wasn’t the case. You think? Nah…We had ordered potato skins and nachos and, you know how when you eat something and you think, “this might have been pretty good if I’d gotten it fresh out of the oven…” well, that was what this was like. But the beer was pretty good and I’d just finished my first day of what was going to be a long trip. Life was good and I wasn’t going to let anything spoil it.
In the morning it was time to say good-bye and head west for the long haul to Boise. Jason had really taken advantage of the opportunities this trip gave him to learn the ins and outs of being a “real” biker, as evidenced by his new doo-ragged countenance.
After we got checked in to the hotel and got the bugs off our bikes. We retired to Fat Boys Bar and Grill, a rather seedy place inside the hotel, to plan Jason’s return route to Lubbock and enjoy a cold beer.
I asked the waitress what she had on tap because I greatly prefer draft beer to any other kind and she replied “Easy Street”, a beer I was unfamiliar with. I decided to try it, as I almost always do if it’s something new, and asked her if it was a local brew. She didn’t know.
Come to find out it’s brewed not from home at the Odell Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO.
We did not want to eat a big meal since it was pretty late in the evening so we ordered a couple of appetizers to pass around. Then got out the maps and started tracing a different, but still fun, return route for Jason since he had accompanied us as far as his time would allow for this trip. We decided that since he had to go right by it anyway he should run down Poudre Canyon. Then head west from Denver and wiggle down through the mountains again. I gave him my house keys so he could spend the night there instead of a hotel. Then make his way back to Lubbock.
I have to take a moment here to jump way ahead in the story. When I got home the following Saturday there was a 12pack of beer in my fridge that was ice cold and ready for consumption. That was a very thoughtful gesture on Jason’s part especially considering I don’t think he could have just stopped and got it on the way in. He would have to either have unloaded his bike and gone to get it then loaded his bike back up or walked to the store and got it. Either way, it took more effort than you would, at first, think and I greatly appreciated it.
OK. Back to the story. We got the route planned out after much deliberation and then began to wonder where our food was. Shortly after that we began to wonder where our waitress was. She had been sitting with one of the customers and then all of a sudden they were gone. Carlton went to the bar tender and asked if our food order was ready and the barkeep went to check on it. It arrived shortly thereafter and it only seemed like it had been prepared the day before and left on the counter over night. Surely that wasn’t the case. You think? Nah…We had ordered potato skins and nachos and, you know how when you eat something and you think, “this might have been pretty good if I’d gotten it fresh out of the oven…” well, that was what this was like. But the beer was pretty good and I’d just finished my first day of what was going to be a long trip. Life was good and I wasn’t going to let anything spoil it.
In the morning it was time to say good-bye and head west for the long haul to Boise. Jason had really taken advantage of the opportunities this trip gave him to learn the ins and outs of being a “real” biker, as evidenced by his new doo-ragged countenance.
LolWe went our separate ways, Jason to fun in the twisties and us to the interstate and a long hot day. We can see, of in the distance as we’re riding along that there are some rain clouds in front of us. We can see the rain falling and we can see that it’s relatively clear on the far side. As the Interstate turns and meanders this way and that the clouds are alternately dead ahead, off to our left, or off to our right and I’m thinking, “If we’re really lucky we can thread this needle and get around this little rain storm without getting wet.” No sooner had I completed the thought when out of nowhere, we are drenched. There is not a cloud anywhere near us, we can still see the rain shower ahead of us, and yet it is raining hard and we are on top of an overpass having just passed the off ramp.
Carlton is in front and immediately signals to pull over and I’m thinking, “Where is he going?” He keeps on going with his turn signal on and I’m thinking, “Stop already, it’s raining back here!” Then he slows way down and makes a u-turn to the right and proceeds down the on ramp the wrong way and ducks under the overpass we were just on.
By the time I got my vents closed on my Olympia AST (All Season Touring) Jacket and got it sealed up it had all but stopped raining. It was a little cool anyway and we still had that other shower in front of us so we just left the rain gear as it was and kept going.
We stopped for gas and a little breakfast in Green River, WY. It was starting to warm up and we had missed the rain so I opened my gear back up. I had a breakfast burrito out of the warmer with a couple of packets of picante sauce and a large OJ, topped of the fuel tank and hit the road.
I did a lot of “topping off” on this trip as the range on my bike was not tested at all. Carlton was ecstatic to get 160 miles on one tank while I was happy to use over half a tank before stopping. My tank holds 5.8 gallons and I only put over three gallons in one time on the entire trip. Usually it was two and half or two and three quarters.
We left the interstate after breakfast and took Hwy30 north and west toward Idaho.
Not much happening in this part of Wyoming. Then we crossed the state line.
And (after a while) things started to look up.
We stopped in Twin Falls for a late lunch at what tuned out to be a regional chain I hadn’t heard of called the Artic Circle. Nothing to write home about, but the outfit next door was sure trying to drum up some business:
We had been back on the interstate for a while before we stopped for lunch and continued on it the rest of the way. It was approaching dark pretty fast when we got to Boise and we decided to head up on the north side of down and find a hotel so we didn’t have to fight rush hour traffic to get out of town in the morning. Sounds good in theory anyway.
I had a decent state map and an atlas but neither of them had an inset of Boise. I could kind of see on the map where we needed to be but there just wasn’t enough detail to tell for sure. I rolled up to a traffic light and the car beside me had the window down so I thought I’d ask if we were headed the right direction.
Looking back, I probably should have done something to gently get the attention of the young girl in the passenger seat before leaning over and practically shouting, “Is Hwy55 up this way?” That poor girl liked to have jumped out of her skin. And that was before she saw me. Imagine this poking in your window, in the dark, at a stop light and shouting:
I know her heart stopped and I’m sorry, but I can’t help it, I rode around and giggled for an hour.
We found the highway and rode for 10 minutes in each direction without finding a hotel so we decided to head back toward the interstate where we finally found the Shilo Inn Hotel and after 637 miles, settled down for the night. I walked down the street to the gas station a bought an oversize can of Heineken that I nursed while I cleaned all the bugs off my bike and got ready for the next day which promised to be a lot more fun.
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