Riinnnnngggg, Riiinnnggg. Who the hell is calling me this time of night! Oh,... I'm in a motel in Childress, Texas and that was my 5:30 AM wakeup call. So began my day after a restful night's sleep. I took my morning shower then followed a routine that would be with me for the next two weeks. This routine consisted of packing everything back in the panniers (hard plastic saddlebags), tail bag and tank bag then taking them out to the parking lot whereupon I would check the bike's tire pressure and the oil level then reinstall the panniers, and the tail and tank bags. Once completed I would hook up my "Electronic Countermeasure" devices, also known as a Valentine One (a.k.a. V-1) radar detector and Cyclecomm CB.

Once we had our bikes packed, we marched over to the motel office to eat at their free continental breakfast. The morning shift clerk was a friendly young woman that was bottle feeding an infant. She directed us to the dinning area where we had a good healthy breakfast of cereal and fruit. This was ideal road food as it was not heavy and prone to put one to sleep. Unfortunately in the days ahead we were not always lucky enough to encounter such ideal breakfasts. After finishing, we shoved off to the west in the direction of Amarillo on Highway 287 to start our second day's journey.

As we headed out of Childress we passed mile after mile of red, sandy fields. My mind began to wander and I recalled driving a car along this very same route in 1970. I had just graduated from college and my roommate and I decided to go camping in Colorado for a short break before the military draft got us or we joined up. As we approached Childress on that trip, we could see on the horizon a very large, vicious looking storm cloud. A large, cylindrical shaped section of the cloud extended from its base and was rapidly rotating. I had never seen anything like it in my life. We stopped for a second as near to it as we could and snapped pictures (with the very same camera I use today). When we began to see tornadoes form in the field in front of us, my roommate decided it was time to get the hell out of there and stepped on the gas. Because of my fascination with violent weather I wanted to stay there and get more pictures but my roommate was having none of that. We later heard on the radio that 5 tornadoes had been spawned from this storm, one of which hit Childress.

On the way to Childress the previous day we had seen very few LEO's (Law Enforcement Officers). Highway 287 seemed to be full of them though. Thanks to Mr. Valentine we managed to remain "ticketless" by the time we turned off onto Highway 207 at the town of Claude, just east of Amarillo. Using Highways 207 and 152 we took a loop east and north of Amarillo through the towns of Panhandle, Borger, Stinnet, and Dumas. Just south of Panhandle we passed a bright red '96 or '97 ST1100 heading in the opposite direction. I thought to myself that this was about the last place I expected to see another ST. At Dumas we picked up Highway 87 for the final leg of our trans-Texas run. We eventually passed through Dalhart then crossed into New Mexico just past the town of Texline, Texas. The state line was also where we crossed from Central Standard Time to Mountain Standard Time.

One of the things that struck me as we traveled the roads between Claude and Dalhart was the amazing number of junk yards and rusty cars on blocks. The only time I have ever seen such a concentration of junk cars was in poverty stricken areas of northern New Mexico. I have never thought of the Texas panhandle as being poverty stricken but maybe that assumption is wrong. The "upstream" oil industry (meaning the sector of the industry that discovers & markets crude oil as opposed to refining and selling the byproducts) is a big employer in these parts but maybe there simply aren't enough jobs to go around.

When we hit the town of Raton, New Mexico we decided to stop for lunch before getting on the long boring interstate highway (I-25) that would take us through Colorado. As usual, I got a few stares at my rather dirty, HiViz colored, Aerostich Darien riding jacket as I entered the restaurant. After finishing, we went outside to our bikes where an old man getting out of a car next to us started asking questions about where we were from and where we were going. When I told him we were on our way to Oregon his face took on an incredulous look and he mumbled that he couldn't even imagine going all the way to Oregon on a motorcycle. He may have been thinking of the motorcycles of his youth which were uncomfortable and very unreliable. Today's motorcycles are light years more advanced than even the motorcycles of my own youth, especially in the reliability department. More than likely though, he probably thought we were just nuts!

Speaking of my youth, we got a glimpse into the past in Trinidad, Colorado where we stopped for gas. A couple of guys had a trailer full of old Vespa and Lambretta motor scooters. They were collectors from San Antonio and were on their way to a scooter rally of some sort in Denver. A scooter, especially a Lambretta was a real status symbol when I was in junior high school. The only thing held in higher regard for the young, neophyte two wheeled enthusiast back then was a Mustang. If you had a Mustang Pony you were definitely "BAD".

After our gas stop in Trinidad, we kept pushing northward along the interstate toward Laramie. At Pueblo the traffic got a bit heavier than we expected and unfortunately it got even heavier the closer to Denver that we got. Somewhere near Denver a woman who was in the lane right next to me tried to become one with me by pulling in to my space. She obviously wasn't familiar with the law of physics that states that two objects can not occupy the same space at the same time. In order to avoid this lady's unconscious experiment with nature, I had to use a healthy dose of brakes. Incidents like this are why I coughed up the extra bucks to purchase a bike with an ABS braking system. Ken also experienced this behavior from another brain dead cager (cager = car driver, for those unfamiliar with the term).

At Castle Rock we got off the interstate for gas and to use the phone. While there a fellow by the name of Sam Lyles pulled in on his BMW K1200LT. He immediately came over to us and started a conversation. As it turned out, he knew a fellow STOC member by the name of Dale Wilson who would be attending the rally in Oregon. All I could think was what a small world. Sam was a very friendly guy who gave us some much appreciated advise on how to get around the madness that was Denver during afternoon rush hour. After Sam left, Ken made a phone call to order a new speedometer cable and worm gear to be picked up in Oregon. Seems the folks who installed his new front tire just before we left home may have screwed up things to the point that his speedometer went out on him somewhere in Texas. From this point on he was dependent on me to set the pace. I secretly gave him and evil grin as I looked at the radar detector on my accessory shelf.

On Sam's advice, we took the toll road that wraps around Denver to the east. Though it was raining lightly, traffic moved along at a brisk pace and was very light. The tolls however were expensive! Every five miles there was a toll booth that extracted $1.50 from us. It seemed like we hit at least 4 or 5 toll booths before it ended. Luckily at the last toll booth an old man that was manning it informed me that the toll road was not finished and that it didn't tie back into the interstate yet. He gave me a map showing how to get back on track. The map made it look direct and quick. It turned out to be direct all right but fast it wasn't due to the massive amount of rush hour traffic. Some of the stoplights seemed to have half a mile of traffic backed up at them. We finally got back on the Interstate, hot, tired and half pissed off from the heavy traffic and made our way to Ft. Collins where we were due to get on 287 for the final 75 mile run into Laramie. It was getting late and we debated staying in Ft. Collins instead but decided to push on to Wyoming.

Our plan for the trip had been to stay at cheap motels to hold the costs down. Short of staying at what I referred to as "roach motels", I was all in favor. I must say that what we got in Laramie, WY. was borderline....VERY borderline and it cost a lot for what we got. As luck would have it, Cheyenne, WY. was having their "Frontier Days" celebration. It is a big deal and Laramie apparently gets a lot of the spillover hotel business from people who can't find hotels in Cheyenne. As a result, prices on Laramie hotels were almost twice what my AAA book said they would be. What I managed to get was a room that had wet carpet, musty odor and a terrible mattress. Since we had booked the only two rooms left, I decided to just live with it since refusing the room would probably have necessitated continuing on down the highway to another town to get a place to stay. The next town was about 100 miles away and we were both beat. I must say that this motel proved to be the only place that I considered unacceptable. All of the other places we stayed in our great cheap motel experiment were clean, neat and comfortable.

  After checking into the "Ritz", we walked down the street to a rather bizarre all night restaurant and ate supper. I returned to my room where I promptly fell asleep, wet carpet, poor mattress and all. After almost 700 miles of riding in one day I couldn't have cared less if the darn place had been on fire. I was tired and ready to sleep. A good night's rest would be welcome and would help me enjoy the following day, which would find us encountering our first beautiful scenery.

Next Day

Previous Day

Back to WeSTOC '02 Main Page