Saturday, September 20, 2008

Back home, safe and sound.




Where to begin? Seventeen days, and 4,488 miles. I left Sept. 3rd, and went around the North shore of Lake Tahoe, which was a beautiful way to start. I went across Nevada on Hwy 50, "The loneliest highway," in near perfect riding weather. It was here that I had my only close call of the whole trip. A 16 wheeler semi passed me going in the opposite direction and hit me with blast of wind that knocked my left foot off the peg, and I stubbed my boot toe on the road at 70mph. That sent the bike into a high speed wobble that scared the daylights out of me. In a second, it stabilized, but it was a heart pounding moment. I jammed my foot harder on the peg every time a truck went by the rest of the trip, but never encountered another wind blast like that.
In Ely, Nv. where I stayed the first night, I met four Dutch tourists on rented Harleys. They had started in New York, and were going to San Francisco. The weak US dollar is attracting a lot of tourists from all over the world. They thought our gas is cheap at $4.00+ per gallon. They were sitting outside the motel, smoking cigars. We took pictures of each other. When they went to dinner, they returned with a very cute little blond lady. Turns out, she was the wife of one of the guys, which is not what I first thought. In Nevada...well, you figure it out.

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