TAT 2018 Post 03 06/01/18

We finished day 1 of our 9-day race to the finish of our TAT adventure; Salt Lake City (SLC), UT to Port Orford, OR. I had planned on making a post last night as we all arrived in SLC but was entirely too tired so will cover the last couple of days in this post.

The truck left Little Rock on 28 June enroute to SLC with 7 bikes and 4 riders. They made it in 2 days and were able to unload the bikes on 30 June at our hotel. On 30 June 3 riders and the support truck driver flew into SLC from Little Rock and Tulsa. Terry picked us up at the airport and shuttled us to the hotel where we spent the evening getting our gear sorted and packed in anticipation of an early start on 1 Jul (today). Early for this first day was leaving the hotel at 7:30 am with 164 miles to cover to Pocatello, ID.

As we all gathered to load bikes, we learned that Jason had become extremely ill during the night and was in no shape to take on the days ride. We all felt bad and after talking to Jason we decided that the remaining 6 riders and the support truck would depart as planned. We loaded Jason’s bike onto the trailer and started the day-1 ride. Jason would take an uber to an emergency care facility to try and get some relief. He would either fly back home or hook up with us down the trail based on how he felt. We talked to Jason via cell phone later in the day as we met the support truck for fuel. He was feeling much better and Marty eventually drove back to SLC to pick up Jason and they both then drove to Pocatello to hook back up.

One pic shows Terry using WD-40 to make his boot buckles work better. They hadn't been touched since our Aug 17 TAT-3 leg!

Events of the day:

Today’s trail was mostly hilly and dusty with occasional stretches of 2-lane paved road. Some very pretty scenery if you like open plains, no trees and hills all around the valley in which we rode northbound. Temperature was perfect at around 75 degrees.

In one stretch of dusty road we were all riding in trail about 50 ft apart when we noticed a deer running parallel in the wheat field next to us. Several riders passed the deer safely when it decided to do a 90 degree turn and run across the path of Matty. I’m several bikes behind and it looked like Matty was going to T-Bone the deer, but he slowed down in time to let it pass right in front of him. A blurry picture is included.

In another long dusty stretch, we came over a hill and there was a big boat in the ditch.  No trailer or car pulling it, just the boat. It was clearly out of place because there was no water close to our location. Several pics included.

Later we are riding along and a hawk flies right over us with a snake in it’s mouth. We saw lots of wildlife on this stretch and after the deer event, we were all pretty worried that something would run out of the high growth in front of us with no time to react.

The gravel roads weren’t too bad except one stretch that had lots of ruts filled with loose gravel. Three of our bikes have Scott steering dampeners, including mine. We three would tighten the dampener on gravel and loosen it on better roads. This made the gravel so much easier to deal with. The other 3 riders just had to suck it up and listen to us on the intercom saying how much easier it was with the Scott.

This brings me to the Sena 30K Mesh intercoms. We love these units. Connection was a piece of cake compared to the older Bluetooth intercoms. They also worked great even though we were at least a half mile apart sometimes due to the dust. Position of the microphone is critical and if too far from the lips was too weak to hear. Battery life lasted for most of the 8-hour ride for those of us who connected them to a battery back for a quick recharge during the fuel break. Sena says a 20 min quick charge will give another 3 hrs of use. I think they are pretty close. All day we would have riders drop off line due to range or hills but would automatically come back on line when back in range. We all agree they are worth the money for our kind of trip.

Both the bikes and the support truck with Jason arrived at the hotel around 3 pm. The map shows 176 miles covered with a good average of 32 mph. The many paved roads and long straight aways helped with this above average mph.

Tomorrow we continue north through pretty open country with more dust until we finally turn west bound and head into the Saw Tooth Mountains. We end day-2 at Ketchum, ID which is close to Sun Valley ski resort. 184 mile stretch tomorrow so today was just a warm up for rides to come in the next few days. We were all butt sore when new got to the hotel so we know what to expect.  Jason says he will go tomorrow but we will have the support tuck meet us down the trail for fuel and a bail-out point if he’s still not up to full out riding.

Enjoy the pictures and more to come tomorrow night.

Ride Safe!