Good Morning World. Actually slept pretty good in my wind sock of a tent. And glad it wasn’t too cold, just right. Good reset.
Heard from multiple sources people were crying about this next section of the BDR, stating that it was really rough. We were planning on using part of it for the morning to move to the east. Maybe we shouldn’t do that with no spare tubes and my rear tire with a slice. We decided to head kind of north/east on good graded roads for the Steens Mountains.
Get about 25 miles and I flatted out again. Family meeting. We discuss our situation. Look at the map to see how far away the truck is…..3 hours. We’ve had a good run. Nobody hurt. Bikes are mostly whole. Stick a fork in it. Leave me here and get the truck. I will try to make it to the pavement 20 miles away. If I get that far, I will hit the pavement to try to make it to the next town to the south towards the truck and closer to the next place we were going to spend the night. Regroup from there. Gary took the below pic and then left a lonely dust trail, rapido.
I thought about busting the tire down after he left, cutting one of the old tubes up to put in there to shield from the cords, possibly patch the tube if it wasn’t toast, put it all back together. I had also been carrying both valve stemless bad tubes. Thought about shoving them both in there, along with the current one for a total of 3 just to give some rigidity. But to what end? Still have a crapped out tire. I need a new tire and 3 tubes to put us back in normal operation. Today is Sunday, nothing open anyway. Play it out further, most motorcycle shops are closed on Mondays. I’m sure I could have pushed this and perhaps got operational enough and/or overnighted (two nights out here we learned) some stuff to a general store in the bush. But between the fan trouble and now this tire obstacle, maybe there was a higher power at work trying to protect us from something more serious. Am I supposed to adapt and overcome or back off. My little voice was tugging at me. It has served me well, ahh, call it. I’m satisfied with our ride experience and the ground we’ve covered. I just slapped some zip ties on it and went slow while standing on the pegs and putting my weight forward. Wasn’t too bad, just took my time and cruised around 30mph.
Saw some pretty horses. Later saw a golden eagle, or the biggest hawk I’ve ever seen. Spaced turning on my GoPro for big bird.
Stopped to check on my tire and see if it was still seated on the rim about every 5 miles. Just so I would know how dumb to be or not to be. Going pretty good I was thinking, dumb stuff.
Approached it like it was part of the adventure and a challenge. Step 1, make it to pavement. That would be way cooler than losing the time to make Gary drive his truck back in here, both ways. Done, I made it, could see pavement in the distance. And the zip ties were still hanging in there.
Step 2. Now what about this pavement. It’s a state highway. I was worried about being run over while standing on my pegs going slow. Still in challenge mode, 44 miles of pavement on a flat with a loaded twin cylinder bike. Accepted.
Left my ear plugs out so I could hear cars approaching from behind. Frequently sat down for a second on long straight aways to check for cars coming up on me. Nobody.
Steady as she goes. Kind of fun. Wind isn’t bad at this speed. Temps aren’t bad at this speed. I was looking around a lot. And this was way more entertaining than sitting on the side of the trail playing tiddlywinks while I waited for Gary.
I made it to Fields Station. Over 60 miles on that flat tire. Not one car came up from behind to pass me, desolate country out here. Felt good pulling in here. Probably the same as Clint Eastwood pulling into Lago.
Zip ties didn’t make the pavement journey. I was surprised the tire looked that good and stayed on the rim. I don’t have any complaints about the tire brand/model looking back on this trip. I had been punishing that tire for over 1000 miles, running lower air pressures and loaded down with gear over really ugly terrain/rocks at speed. Good traction in all conditions and I never went down in all my antics. Only take aways, might run a little more air with that much gear on board and we decided when there is just two of us, we are going to carry 3 spare 18” tubes between us. We also discussed bib mousse stuff. The high speed stuff is such a killer….and they aren’t cheap. We like running low pressures on the harder tracks and yet still run 75 on pavement sections at times. Hard to run that gamut but it sounds like there might be a new mousse product out there for us that doesn’t degrade.
At Fields I had time on my hands. Visited with various travelers, this was quite the busy little hub. Got some hot grub. Stripped my bike down to put in the truck. And just hung out. And decided the young nice looking woman running the show had the manners of a mule. And the snaggle toothed helper woman was really sweet. All part of the experience I guess. It was funny talking to Gary about his experience a few hours earlier when he made a fuel pit stop there. Our conclusions were the same and the nick names they received were both on point.
Was happy to see Bwdmax pull in with the Big White DuraMax. He had a good ride and made good time on the big dumb dirt bike. Thank you Garbear! Felt good to be back together and all our chickens in the coop. We were 25 miles away from our planned overnight spot. Stay the course, we can still have fun and enjoy this zone.
Next thing you know, we were overlooking the Alvord Desert Playa. Very similar to the Bonneville Salt Flats. This is where Jesse Combs had her fatal accident in 2019.
I had reserved a bunk room at the Alvord Hot Springs ahead of time. You can tent camp but I thought we might want a bed when I was planning this a couple months out. And that worked out, dark skies around us. Rain and sage in the air, ahhhh.
We checked in and went over to the hot springs to see if they were hot and would help our achy springs. Temp was perfect. Had a really nice time taking it all in that afternoon. And taking in silver bullets.
Till a squall moved in. We abandoned the springs and made like a tree back to our bunker.
Thankful we weren’t in a tent. Even though it didn’t last more than an hour, would have been a rough hour. Probably would have just stayed in the spring. Our digs….they are old Army “expando vans”. We used these when I was in the Army as our telecom field repair shops. Haul it on an 18 wheeler trailer. Trailer expands out both sides 3x it’s road footprint. I was digging the repurpose of them out here. We had two queen beds, a table and chairs, a couch, heater, lights and 110 outlets to charge stuff. What more you need? I know, I know….XR600 and a poncho.
Rain subsided and we went to the office to get our steaks I reserved. That’s right, ribeyes again. Shut your holes and listen. The owner of the hot springs owns a lot of land here, both sides of the road, and runs cattle. These were straight from his ranch. I like supporting that kind of thing. There was a community bbq pit but it was in the direct path of the category 4 squall. I got my little pit out of the truck that we brought for our road travel days and got set up with our bunker as a wind break. Winning.
It calmed down outside and turned into a really nice evening. It was crazy, the beer started tasting better too. Then a vibrant double rainbow on the playa. As if blessing us for visiting.
This is how it’s done son. Eating rainbow stew with a silver spoon…..
It was a little over cast when we went to bed. But when I went outside to remove some silver bullets, it was clearing out. Oregon has some magic to it, just have to get out there and get dirty.
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