The Plans of Mice and Men...and Biker Babes

Did I say I was getting on the road early? Hmm. It's almost 8 now, which is an hour later than I'd wanted to be on the road, but I'm having to wait. For the thunderstorm. To quit.

Did I mention I was going cross country through Woodward, OK and Dodge City, KS? The forecast for severe weather has a big orange swath across the panhandle of OK, and the southwest corner of Kansas. Interesting thing is, there's a red blob in the middle of that orange, indicating strong winds and hail. Right in the middle of the red blob are the words 'Dodge City.' I believe I'll be staying the heck outta Dodge on this one.

I still need to go out and check the bike to see if the tank has any dings from last night's hail. We had a kicker storm around 11:15 that lasted almost an entire hour. At one point, I was thinking the bike might fall over in the wind. Thankfully, it didn't, although it wasn't for lack of the wind trying. I'll post a video in a bit, if I can. (edit - the video's too much of a pain to add. Use your imagination.)

I'm about to go dodge some rain drops now. See you on the flip side.

(and the side has finally flipped...)

Monday morning, I'd hoped to get a good breakfast at IHOP just down the road, but those plans were rained out, and I waited until there was a lull in the rain before going outside, wiping the seat of the bike down and riding it over under the portico by the lobby so I could load the bike out of the rain, if it decided to start up again. After lugging the luggage, I went in to the area where you get your 'Super Start' breakfast at the Super 8, which consisted of a donut, a piece of toast with cream cheese, some coffee and orange juice. Sugar, fat, caffeine and protein, and I was good to go. I put all my rain gear on again, since the radar still showed patchy stuff to the west, and I headed out, glad to be leaving behind the dark blue solid wall of clouds to the east.

Once outside of OK City, the road had a nice section that made me feel like I was in a martini shaker. There've been several sections of construction, even getting down to one lane in either direction on 40, and these lanes were beat up enough, they were beating me up. The suspension on my bike isn't great on any given day, and I think lately it's been getting worse. The last few times I've had to go over speed bumps, just crawling, I've scraped the bottom where the two header pipes join up. Some of the boings in the road are taking an even greater toll on me if my boing avoidance radar is on the fritz. Add 35 pounds of luggage to the mix, and it's even rougher.

I rode on I-40 until I got to Elk City, where I took Business 40 through town (passing by a Route 66 museum), and then hopped onto Highway 6, to 152, to 87, which took me over to Interstate 25 at Raton, NM. When I'd decided to change my route to avoid Kansas, due to weather, I was a little bummed to have to go over to I-25, because I thought the extra interstate riding I would have to do would be a drag, as compared with all of the state highways through Oklahoma and Kansas. However, I was on 6/152/87 for a solid 320 miles, and that was some prime riding. For probably 80% of that time, I was the only one heading west and north on those road, while there was a lot of traffic heading the other way, and especially a lot of bikes.

I learned the importance of the wind on this route, not only for the sake of mpg, but also for whether I was upwind or downwind when I passed some feed lots. The first one I passed, I was upwind, so it was just a big plant with hundreds of cows in the corrals. The next one I passed was on the other side of the road, and I didn't think anything about it until I was getting closer and the smell hit me like a ton of bricks. A very smelly ton of bricks, at that. Yowza!

I went through several little towns (according to the map), but some of them were summarized by a four-way stop sign. I passed one place called Skellytown, and if it had been directly on the road, I would have had to get a picture for posterity, but it was a few miles down a side road, so I rolled on by.

Once I crossed into New Mexico, I finally started seeing some little buttes cropping up more and more. Did see a sign that advised against picking up hitchhikers in that area, since the Northeastern New Mexico Correctional Facility was in the vicinity. Good tip. I stopped for fuel fairly often on this trip, and snacking occasionally (Chex mix, ice cream sandwich, wasabi pea trail mix), and drinking water at every stop. One of the coolest things was coming around a curve in the road, and seeing an opening appear between the buttes, with a view of the snow capped Rockies in the distance. It was their first appearance, and it was a dramatic one.

From there, the road wound down to Raton, which looked like a pretty neat place, and I finally was able to get onto I-25. Once out of town, the interstate started climbing, going past the Colorado border, and the first decent stop with facilities was up in Trinidad, about 12 across the line. Once there, I saw a guy filling up a small Hummer, and he recognized me from the trip across the panhandle of Texas, and we talked for a little bit. I filled up, having gotten some pretty stinky gas mileage for that leg (probably in the 45 mpg range) due to the headwind, and went inside for a bathroom break, and to advise my host for the evening that I was about 90 minutes away.

And that's when the bike started complaining. Nothing terrible, but a little hesitation, similar to getting some bad gas, or some little bit of goo in the carb. He kept running, and I figured I'd push on and see if it would work it's way out of the system. Got to Pueblo, and at the bottom of the exit ramp, when starting up from a stop, the bike died, and I had to rev it up pretty good to get it going. At the next light, it was sputtering pretty good, but I got it going again, and made it to my house for the night without too much more fuss.

Brock and Sharon gave me shelter for the night, along with a chance to meet their six (right?) dogs :) Sharon has worked with show dogs, and has boxers that she shows, along with an old bulldog who sits outside in the sun and barks at what she can't see or hear, and the 'upstairs' dog when I was there was Tickles, a French bulldog and one of the most spastically friendly dogs I've ever met. She was fun and was thrilled to death that there was someone new to meet when I got there. I made decent time, and was in Pueblo right around 6 p.m., so I had a good evening to unwind and chat with both of them, enjoying a large plate of nachos. Bedtime comes early in that house, since they normally get up around a quarter of five in the morning. When 9:15 rolled around, and they both headed off to sleep, I settled in to the couch and dropped off like a rock, looking forward to the next day's ride, which would mark off a major goal from one of those lists that I have...the Big Thompson Canyon!