Bonneville 2012 (Lots o' photos!)
I left the house, heading for the Bonneville Salt Flats, at 5:00 AM, Thursday. I hit the salt at 5:15, that afternoon. After spending the night in Wendover, Utah, I went back out on the salt, Friday, and stayed until the return runs for the Thursday racers were done. Many, if not most, of the racers had already left, so I did the same at about 10:30. Twelve hours later, I was home.
In all, I covered 1310 miles on Thursday and Friday. The Scrambler made the trip without a hiccup, including a couple of hundred Interstate miles at a constant 80 to 90 mph. Through it all, I got 50 to 55 miles per gallon.
The one thing that I really need to do, before I take off on such a long trip again, is to get a more comfortable seat on the Scram. The first 300 miles were fine, on the first day, but then I started having to look for the comfy spot. On the trip home, the comfy spot on the seat was AWOL, pretty much the whole way.
The other discomfort I experience came from wearing the full-faced helmet. I haven't worn it since I got my new glasses, and I found that the helmet touches the glasses. When a wind gust pushed the helmet, the helmet pushed my glasses against mt nose. I have a bit of a black eye, on the right side, from the helmet punching me in the face, repeatedly.
Oh, well. Maybe I will get a new set of lenses for my old, smaller, glasses for riding...
Now, here are the pictures!
Local fauna outside Vernal, Utah...
And, in town...
The Scrambler, on the salt for the first time. Riding on the salt was a bit freaky...the horizon would disappear in the haze, at times and I would almost get vertigo, until I looked at the mountains off to one side.
Side-hack GoldWing...
Now, that looks like a race-car!
Dodge!
These guys are from Denver.
Yeah, I'm a tourist...
Dodge Daytona
Sunrise, Friday.
That is an impressive engine-bay!
The racers were heading out for their return runs, as the sun finally peeked through the early-morning clouds.
Supercharged 4-cylinder in a Studebaker
They hit 162 mph in this beast!
And this is the driver's seat...
The official garbage truck of the Southern California Timing Association...
It was a whirlwind trip, and I would like to go for the early part of the week, next time, so that more racers would be there. But, I got everything I was looking for out of the trip: I got out of town, went somewhere I had always wanted to go, and got to put some serious miles on the motorbike.
The weather was great (although I almost froze going through the Front Range, Thursday morning). The high temperature on the trip was probably in the mid-90s, the sky was blue, the wind mild and I only got a little sprinkling of rain on the way home (for about an hour).
Where to, next...?
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posted by Jon @ 9:23 PM
5 Comments:
my neighbor was telling me about the iron butt ride - it's like 1000 miles a day for 2 or 3 days or something...very apropos I would think
That's a lot of time in the saddle. Pretty cool looking trip though...
Katina: the Iron Butt is 1,000 miles per day (or more) for 11 days! I just read a book by a fellow who finished it on a 1975 BMW R-60 with over 500,000 miles on it...
Chris: I took it pretty easy. I stopped every now and then, whether I needed gas, or not, and stretched my legs. It was a lot more pleasant on the two-lane than it would have been on the Superslab, even though it probably added a couple of hours in each direction.
That is so cool. It looks like a great big frozen lake.
Reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movies, "World's Fastest Indian".
I'm glad you had a great trip, and that you made it home OK.
Really neat looking, those salt flats. That'd be quite an experience.
Was wondering, with all those colourful dinosaurs, sort of reminds me of that scene from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Any connection there?
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