Nevada

Nevada was always going to be one of the toughest challenges due to the combination of heat, desert sand and remoteness. This is brought home be our first nights stay in the town of Baker.

It is nothing more than a gas station, motel and a casino, one side of the road is Utah the other Nevada. All around is desert and mountains, on a scale that tricks the mind with distance. The valley we have ridden across to get here is twenty miles across , twenty miles of nothing.

We get an early start, all aware that we are going to be on the remotest section and that once houbara on the trail you have to get through to the next town as there is no other route out. The going is slow as we pick our way through the rough bush and decipher the route the GPS is taking us.

As sun rises and the heat buds you realise how exposed you are out here and when we stop I am in awe at the raw beauty of this harsh land. We know we can get out, we have fuel, water and a GPS, you can only imagine what it must have been like on horse back two hundred years ago. Tough men.

We exist the section to the town of Lund which is set on a wide open plan and had little to recommend it. We have lunch and bump in to the family we meet in Wedtcliffe, CO who are traveling in a tricked out F350. 

We decided to take an easier "green" route for the next section to Eureka, NV. This does turn in to a small adventure as we loose Brenton and end up making our own route through the desert for a time. We eventually find him at the end of the valley. Unusually no dust is thrown up by the bikes, so tracing someone through such vastness is incredibly difficult. It's again a reminder that you can't fuck about in this environment. 

In Eureka we meet an English couple who are riding the TAT on KTM690's , we share a dinner with them and get an early night.

We leave Eureka on route to Battle Mountain , NV, feeling pretty knacked we take an easier green route , which is still all dirt and arrive in town around 12 noon. A good coffee stop (yes real espresso) we head tears the nights stop of McDermitt. Now there are one horse towns and I've been to many, but in McDermitt even the horse has fucked off!

At least we have had a awesome ride over, as there is nothing to do in town. A faded motel and a casino run by grumpy Indians ( first Americans is now the correct term) we eat and hit the hay. 

Up early on Friday 17th July, we ride just 50 yards and we are in Oregon, our final state. We have made a tactical decision to miss two section that would have seen us ride sour in to California and back up to tonight's destination of Laje View. We have done this as otherwise we are going to arrive late at the coast and also have to push hard every day, giving us no leyway for error or problems. 

Utah and beyond

With the bikes serviced, laundry done and the riders rested, we leave Moab at 6.30am to try and beat the heat.

The road leads us directly in to the desert, this is where navigating via GPS comes on to its own as the track disappears in to rock and shale , without our blue arrow showing us the way, we would waste valuable time checking maps and trying to follow the myriad of trails that zigzag the desert floor.

The trail leads us from rock to sand and then in to a dry river bed that is like riding along a beach with deep sand and rock slowing our progress. After about two hours , with the sun gaining strength we enter Black Dragon Wash, a canyon that has been carved in the red rock by thousands of years of wind and water erosion.

This section turns in to the hardest challenge of the entire trip, as we fight with the bikes to get them through the rock strewn river canyon floor. Rocks and sand have been thrown all around by the flash floods that happen during the heavy down popes that happen in this part of the world.

It takes us an hour and a half to find our way out and climb to the canyon rim, but there is no let up in the technical riding for the next two hours. At this point the sky's start to darken as a storm is building. You don't want to be in a canyon when it's raining, you are in danger from both flooding and lightning.

We find some high ground and watch the direction of the storm, fortunately is moving away from our direction of travel, however we do a few miles on the tar to avoid any bogging issues, these track turn to glue in the rain.

We arrive in the town of Emery at 3pm, fuel the bikes and take on some water. Simon decided to skip the next section and meet us at our scheduled stop. We are told by the locals that the road will be easy on a bike, ummm I've heard that before! It takes Brenton and I 4 hours to get to the motel, by which time we are both totally shattered after a near 14 hour riding day.

Our accent in to the mountains starts well , the road is rocky but we hold a good pace . Our problems start as the GPS route takes us away from the main track and on to a tiny goat track that climbs straight up for a quarter mile. The soil looks like it should have grip, but recient rain has made the surface like grease and it clogs both front and rear tyres.

As we crest the top we feel like we have seen the worst of it, but as we enter the woods, we find that things have only just started as we face a bog of ruts and mud. We skate around in first and second gear, struggling with the physical excursion of wrestling the bikes at 10,500 ft. 

Finally we find the main path again and are greeted to a fantastic alpine vista, not what I expected in Utah. With a clear road in front of us we make good progress as we wind out of the mountains on a fast dirt road. We finally make it to our rendezvous with Simon at 8.15 pm, that has without doubt been one of the hardest, but best days on s bike ! 

Moab, Utah

Sometimes it's best to let the photos do the talking.........

Colorado

We have in the past two days ridden over two of the most stunning mountain passes that perhaps exist in this world, Engineer and Imogene Pass.

We rode out of Lake City , Colorado on Wednesday 8th July with the thought of riding 130 miles and covering 3 passes in a day. Fat chance! It took us 4 hours to cover 35 miles from Lake City to Ouray and over Engineer at 12,800 ft.

It was an electrifying ride up and a challenging to say the least, ride down in the rain. It's was rocky, wet and muddy, but one of the best rides I have had in my life and a real hoot !

We arrived in to Ouray fatigued from the exertion and altitude and alarmed at the lack progress we had made, so we took the tactical dessiccion to cancel the remainder to the section and spend the afternoon in Ouray, which is a cute old school piece of Americana.

We find ourselves in the Ouray brewery taking in the stunning amphitheater of mountains that surround the town and strike up a conversation with a guy called Dave who turns out to be Ralph Lauren's personal  pilot , then we are joined by a women who is in town for some hiking, who is a pilot for United flying 767. It was a surreal evening and a good laugh.

However though we only had 4 drinks, the day's exertion and the altitude took its toll and we all woke with terriable hangovers.

We leave Ouray at 10am and make our way slowly up towards Imogene Pass. It's a beautiful clear day and the ground has absorbed the previous day's rain. 

We summit Imogene pass at 13,114 ft after a rock strewn a chilly ride , we stop for a quick photo opp, but quickly get our skated on due to the threat of snow, it's already blowing in the air and apparently the pass only opened for the first time a week prior.

We arrive in to Telluride and due to the exertions of the day and slight hangovers, decide to call it a day a spend the night here.

4 States in a day

It's not easy to go claim that title, however we woke in Kansas, breakfasted  in Oklahoma, spent 2 hours in New Mexico and finally came to rest in Colorado! All in a very eventful 200 miles that saw the first off of the trip, with me loosing the front end in mud and ending in the corn field. That was not the end of it and there was another get off for me again in mud, so only a bruised ego and some very mucky clothes.

Simon suffered a similar misfortune but also managed to get stuck in one horrible section and shile we tried of avoid another bad patch, got caught up in some fence wire . 

No harm was done and we continued on in to New Mexico and reached an altitude of 6200 feet. We reach the Colorado town of Trinidad around 3.30pm, as we have gained an hour crossing in to mountain time zone. We are all relived to be taking a break, we have covered 1700 miles, which on dirt bikes is a long haul. We pull up to the Days Inn to find the best motel we have stayed in, raised up on a hill, with a clear view of the snow capped Rockies in the distance.

We dump off our dusty and muddy gear with great pleasure, take a quick shower and head out to a bar for some much needed cd beer and some food. Trinidad is a sleep small town , with not much going on, but with nice chilled atmosphere, perhaps this has something to do with the free and legal availability of marihuana?!

Sunday 5th July - today is laundry and bike maintenance, we also give them a blast with s jet wash to get rid of the mud and dust. Simons CCM is a constant worry, it's only had relatively minor issues, however I'm always concerned about the "what if " as there is no dealer back up or knowledge of this bike in the U.S. The fact that is has a flat battery after so many days of constant use only hi lights this worry. We get it going with jump leads, but the question of why it's flat remains.

During our maintenance the sky blackens and a Thurber storm erupts with tropical like down pour and eventually hail a centimetre across.

With blue skies back again and the bikes all finished, except Simons which he is still working on, we have some large JDs and come around the pool 😎

Oklahoma

Thursday 2nd July - we have a long day in the saddle, 275 miles of long long straight roads on what must be one of the flatest places on earth .

However to break to monotony, we also have a few detours due to flooding . We have been very fortunate with the weather, only a couple of weeks ago there were heavy rains that have left rivers and lakes at bursting point.

This minor inconvenience is however far better than being caught on these roads when it's raining, it would simy be a big and a tourture to ride. I'll take the hot weather and dust over mud and rain.

The conversations with the locals is always a fascinating insight to the mid west mind set, which being from a nation that has no guns, is alarming. Yesterday we had a conversation with three teenage girls in a burger joint , who all own multiple guns. When we said we that we didn't own any, and we aren't allowed, their response was "how do you hunt" and "how do you defend yourself"!

The obsession of gun ownership and their right to bear is to my mind is freighting and mind boggerling . Today we meet a guy in a gas station who was happy to admit to owner 18 guns. Mainly for hunting , but the rest are for personal defence, what ever that means!   

I'll comeback to a subject that is need of discussion later and that is the American fixation with their short history and their insecurity of belonging. For now I am too tiered to continue, it's been a long day.

Tenessee & Arkansas

Monday 29th we leave Batesville Tenessee in the chill morning air at 7am. The flow of cool air through our outer shirts and body armour beneath will be a distance forgotten memory in far to shorter a time. The weather here is stiflingly hot and humid. The TAT thus far has to be honest been a little disappointing, in so much as there has been a predominant amount of tar road. Yet it's billed as a coast to Coast dirt ride, which will all change when we get out west, but it's a fuck of a long way to get there

On the plus side of that we have managed to get a quick bit of touristing done at the Jack Daniels factory in Lynchburg, which as was a welcome break from the heat and the road. I was really struck by how old the factory was, nowadays you expect gleaming stainless steel at such places and there was quite a bit, however you felt like a lot of the plant was as it had been from around 1950.

The roads at last become dirt and we can start to use the bike for what they are designed. There is always a compromise with any motorcycle and my bike is not made for roads. The highways have been an absolute ball arch and even on the back roads  I'm finding the gearing too low. But on the dirt she is a lou lou! Fast agile and sure footed, it's more bike than I am rider, but it's such fun😎

The next two days are in a simalar vain, a mix of around 40% dirt the rest tar, some of the dirt is pretty challenging but mainly as I'm trying to ride it fast and the bikes getting a bit squirrelly. But most of the times it's pretty straight forward riding.

A great highlight is the many strange and interesting folks you meet along the way and as I have discovered on my other joyrides in America, everyone is interested in fact that you have "come all the way from England" to ride across their country. Never more so than than in these remote parts of the South, where most people have never been out of their state, let slone their country.

We are averaging 250 miles a day which on slow back roads and in 96 degree heat, makes for long days in the saddle. The first few hours in the morning are perfect, so early starts are our pattern, with a break at the first two to three hours and then about every hour and a half. You need to just get of the thing, grab a cold drink and stretch a little.

We are now in Oklahoma, having dashed through Arkansas, where two of us needed to get new rear tyres and we rode through the Ozark national forest, which offered great riding and our first impassable object in a land slide across the trail. With the magic of GPS we cod easily re route around it and after a long day in the saddle come to yet another dry county! Honestly, in a state where you don't have to wear a helmet and everyone seems to have a gun, you can't buy a frigin beer. On the other hand may be it's not such a bad idea....