July 5, 2006 – Day 9 - 261 Miles Lovell, WY to Big Timber, MT
Lovell, WY to Big Timber, MT
It’s not 261 miles from Lovell to Big Timber, unless you take a wrong road and add about 30 extra miles to the trip. Left Lovell with the intention of taking the Chief Joseph trail (Hwy 120-296-212) from Cody, WY to Red Lodge, MT. Terry B, calls this the Bear Tooth run (I think). It’s a well-known run locally with the road rising to over 13,000 ft in the pass on Hwy 212. Didn’t get to take it, though, because I saw the, now, inevitable, rainstorms moving over the mountains. I decided to take Hwy 295 to Belfry based on a paper map that indicated a hard road all the way. Guess what, it isn’t. If you check it on Mapquest it just disa-damn-pears. This isn’t totally accurate because it turns into 16 miles of the inevitable pea-gravel. So, I turned around and went back to Powell and headed into Cody.
I’d planned on replacing tires in Helena, but, going through Cody, decided I might as well get it done. Plus, my new horn had stopped working and I wanted that checked into. Frankly, I wanted the horn fixed more, but thought I might as well get the tires taken care of at the same time. The Kawasaki dealer didn’t have the right tires, but he sent me to the local Suzuki dealer who did. They changed the tires but thought the horn problem was caused by a short in the factory-supplied wiring harness to the left handlebar turn-signal switch, and they didn’t have time to trouble-shoot it. So…got the tires (that’s good) and didn’t get the horn fixed (that’s bad).
Now, new tires have a break-in period of 50-100 miles; otherwise they can be relatively slippery. So, what do you think happened? Rain? Nah, worse that that. Hail. I saw that storm and, like most bikers, figured I could outrun it, so I didn’t don raingear as I should have (primarily because when I left the dealer the rain had started to fall and the race was on). Then the big drops turned to hail. I didn’t notice it at first, I was too busy trying to ride through a heavy and very stinging rain. At least that’s what I thought it was. I was concentrating on the blurry road through my rain-drenched glasses so hard I could only notice that this rain stung more than any I’d ever felt before. Then I glanced down at my tank bag and saw these small pieces of ice. Being the brilliant intellect I am, I immediately deduced that rain didn’t sting that badly after all. Nothing I could do about it at that point so I just hunkered down and hit the gas, praying the tires kept their grip. They did, and I outran the damn stuff…told you I could. Managed to don the appropriate raingear finally and that stopped the rain for the most part, though I caught a few sprinkles all the way into Big Timber, MT, where I said, “Enough…Uncle,” whatever, and got a room. This is allowing me to post the previously written journals plus catch up on my latest piece of bad luck.
It’s not 261 miles from Lovell to Big Timber, unless you take a wrong road and add about 30 extra miles to the trip. Left Lovell with the intention of taking the Chief Joseph trail (Hwy 120-296-212) from Cody, WY to Red Lodge, MT. Terry B, calls this the Bear Tooth run (I think). It’s a well-known run locally with the road rising to over 13,000 ft in the pass on Hwy 212. Didn’t get to take it, though, because I saw the, now, inevitable, rainstorms moving over the mountains. I decided to take Hwy 295 to Belfry based on a paper map that indicated a hard road all the way. Guess what, it isn’t. If you check it on Mapquest it just disa-damn-pears. This isn’t totally accurate because it turns into 16 miles of the inevitable pea-gravel. So, I turned around and went back to Powell and headed into Cody.
I’d planned on replacing tires in Helena, but, going through Cody, decided I might as well get it done. Plus, my new horn had stopped working and I wanted that checked into. Frankly, I wanted the horn fixed more, but thought I might as well get the tires taken care of at the same time. The Kawasaki dealer didn’t have the right tires, but he sent me to the local Suzuki dealer who did. They changed the tires but thought the horn problem was caused by a short in the factory-supplied wiring harness to the left handlebar turn-signal switch, and they didn’t have time to trouble-shoot it. So…got the tires (that’s good) and didn’t get the horn fixed (that’s bad).
Now, new tires have a break-in period of 50-100 miles; otherwise they can be relatively slippery. So, what do you think happened? Rain? Nah, worse that that. Hail. I saw that storm and, like most bikers, figured I could outrun it, so I didn’t don raingear as I should have (primarily because when I left the dealer the rain had started to fall and the race was on). Then the big drops turned to hail. I didn’t notice it at first, I was too busy trying to ride through a heavy and very stinging rain. At least that’s what I thought it was. I was concentrating on the blurry road through my rain-drenched glasses so hard I could only notice that this rain stung more than any I’d ever felt before. Then I glanced down at my tank bag and saw these small pieces of ice. Being the brilliant intellect I am, I immediately deduced that rain didn’t sting that badly after all. Nothing I could do about it at that point so I just hunkered down and hit the gas, praying the tires kept their grip. They did, and I outran the damn stuff…told you I could. Managed to don the appropriate raingear finally and that stopped the rain for the most part, though I caught a few sprinkles all the way into Big Timber, MT, where I said, “Enough…Uncle,” whatever, and got a room. This is allowing me to post the previously written journals plus catch up on my latest piece of bad luck.
posted by Minuend | 10:30 PM
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