Ride Journal
May 29, Day 17, Leaving Colorado for Home
The sun woke me up before 6 again and I was done with my shower and downstairs for breakfast with Noel. Yvette got up for a good by hug and I was on the road by 6:30 am. It was sad having to leave their house where I felt so at home.
There was not a cloud in the sky and the snow covered Rockies looked as awesome as could be! I rode up to Fort Collins and then took 287 northwest to Laramie, Wyoming. Then back on good old I-80 only west bound this time. I finally got off 80 to the smaller hwy 30 at Granger. A short while later I was feeling something sting my right eye. When I looked down I saw a lot of gas running out of the rear of the right tank. Darn, another vibration leak, probably at the seam. This is the first time for this set of tanks. I grabbed a rag from the side of my bike and held it down at the tank so it would not keep getting on me. There was no place to pull over so I waited for a gas station that was about five miles down the road. I went into the store and bought another plastic gallon gas container, and proceeded to redo the gas lines and drain the right tank completely. It's a good thing that there was not anybody watching me, ‘cause I didn't exactly catch all the gas that was running out of both tanks! It's also a good thing that there was nobody smoking anywhere near where I was. I finally got the left tank re-routed to the carb and the right tank taken out of the system and pulled up to the pump and filled up the new container. There were 6 or 7 bikes fueling up as I pulled over. Not one of them came over to say hi. When they were done they all rode over to the curb and just watched me. Oh well, I guess not everybody is as friendly as I am where ever I go. However, I was not in the mood to go over to them, as I just got done working in the hot sun with the gas sizzling with every drip that hit the hot engine.
I’m back on the road again with only 50% of my fuel capacity. A note to anybody else who has to do what I just did. The right tank has the vented cap and when you plug off that tank you need to make sure that the top cross vent line is open, so the left tank does not have an air starvation situation. (Yes I had to figure that out the hard way many years ago) Now instead of getting fuel every 120 miles or so, it just got cut in half to every 55-60 miles. Only once did I have to use one of the extra containers of gas ‘cause I didn't make it to a station in time. That just added another degree of difficulty to the situation. "Adapt, overcome, improvise", as Clint Eastwood once said. It has to work quite often when one rides a rat bike as much and as far and as often as I do! I wanted to see how far I could get today, but it is now slowing me down a bit with twice as many stops!
Just as I got inside the state of Idaho the skies opened up and rain was coming down all around me, but I was still in the dry. At the next gas stop a guy in an RV asked me if I was going west. I said yes and he told me that he just came through a tremendous down pour that had caused him to have to slow down to be able to see, cause his wipers could not keep up. I said "it is what it is, I'm ready for it!" As soon as I got on the road it was flooded all around with big puddles everywhere. The big storm was rapidly moving south and I could see the rain falling just beside the road! The only wet that I felt came up from my front tire. There was another bunch of rain coming down just north of me as well. It seemed that I was able to 'shoot the middle' and stay in the dry.
It continued to keep me in the dry with rain all around all the way up to Pocatello. Just as it seemed that I would hit the rain head on, I-86 took me south west and I was lucky enough to still be in the clear. Believe it or not that pattern continued all the way to Boise and then to the Oregon border. As soon as I got inside Oregon I got a motel in Ontario. 850 miles in 14 hours was not too bad considering my fuel situation. I was also just back inside my Pacific time zone so it was only 7:30. I spent some time on the phone with my brother, Brion, who lives in South Dakota. I also got a call from Nancy in Illinois asking "where's Milo?" So I called her and talked to her and Gary for a while too. Yes I called Joni and told her that I would be home tomorrow............
