I have to admit that I have used this
same title for an article I wrote several decades ago, about a
Motorcycle ride to California for the Stinger, the monthly newsletter
of the Beehive Beemers, BMW Motorcycle Club of Utah. I used to write
articles fairly frequently and served as the editor of the newsletter
for several stints.. The title of course is a re-phrasing of the
Eugene O'Neill masterpiece, “Long Day's Journey Into Night, a play
that I have seen several times, have on disc with Katherine Hepburn ,
Sir Ralph Richardson, a young Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell, and
and have read several times. In an interview once O'Neill was quoted
as saying “ Happiness, I will write about happiness if I ever see
it.” I have always been partially drawn to that brooding Irish and
Northern climate countenance, but equally drawn towards much of T. S.
Eliot's poetry such as this line from Portrait of a Lady, :” I feel
immeasurably at peace, and find the world to be wonderful and
youthful, after all.” Now back to the journey
This is the earliest in the year that I
have ever ridden from Salt Lake City through the Great Basin, my
great good keep, to California. In mid-March I flew down to Fresno
for a week to assist my sister Kathy in preparing a HABEAS petition
on behalf of a death row inmate. We talked about me coming back to
help her finish it up, but the difference in flying between buying
the ticket two weeks in advance, rather than a month was a couple of
hundred dollars and I told her I would ride my BMW instead
Originally, I was planning on leaving
the morning of April 6th. But in looking at the weather,
and in seeing that it would be Conference weekend for the LDS Church,
and probable rain, I decided, on the spur of the moment to leave the
afternoon of Thursday the 4th of April and my plan was to
ride to Tonopah where I would spend the night. In the morning I rode
Frontrunner to my office at Thanksgiving Point, did office type
things for awhile and I caught the 12:16 train back to Salt Lake
Central. On arriving home, I quickly loaded the bike, Saddlebags were
practically packed for my anticipated Saturday departure and by
about 1:45 in the afternoon I was heading West on I-80 and my turnoff
at Wendover for highway 93A to Ely. It was a very windy day, don't
know what it was on the Beaufort scale, but it was maybe a notch or
two below the issuing of a high-wind warning between Salt Lake City
and Wendover. So with new tires, new riding boots and fresh
spark-plugs and the remains of the day before the candle that lights
the sky would disappear on the horizon, I started the wend towards
California. On a motorcycle trip, I am always like a small boy,
gregarious and eager to experience everything going around me at the
same time. Milking the day for all its worth.
I have written many times, about how
much I love this type of desert riding, I always feel tucked in and
look forward to the isolation, being surrounded by world class
performer's on my i pod and the chance to let my mind go where it
wants to go. I have long conversations in my head, with someone I
have known as long as I can remember, which is back to when I was
about two and a half years old. Most of my sisters have memories
going back to about the same age, so it must be a genetic thing. The
last time I rode almost this almost same route to California was in
May of 2011, and I had opted to wear my lighter, but more stylish
riding suit and did not take my heated jacket or gloves. This year I
took both and wore my winter, heavier and not very flattering, but
warm suit. I looked like a cross between the Michelin man and the
Pillsbury dough boy. At Wendover, after gassing up, I turned the
thermostat, for my jacket and gloves to almost the lowest setting and
looked toward White Horse Pass and the unfolding of my afternoon
jaunt. The first time I remember being on this road was when I was
five or six and I went with my father to McGill Nevada. The mine was
still open then, and my father's company had done some sort of
electrical job there and he needed to go out for a brief meeting. My
then good friend John Mooney went with us and we went out and back in
a long day. I always think about that as I ride through McGill, it
was much more robust 55 years ago than it is today.
At Ely, after gassing up again, I
turned on to the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, what a nice
sounding name, so much better than Bangerter Highway. This is of
course, Highway 6 and I would be on it, till its junction with
California Highway 395 at Bishop California.
As always I think about Jediah Smith
and the other early explorer's of the American West and the Mountain
Peaks in the distance, that may to this point in time, not have been
climbed by anyone. The Great Basin at its most extreme. I thought as
I rode along, the hum of the bike giving me an OMMM sound and
whatever music was playing about the majesty of the Great American
Desert. The little outposts along the way, where people have tried
and usually failed to etch out a living and live a life. I pulled
into Tonopah a little after 6:00 pm Pacific Daylight Savings time and
got the last room at the Tonopah Motel where I have stayed a couple
of times.
When I got up the next morning at
O-dark thirty, there was ice on my bike and sheepskin cover for my
seat. After gassing up at the Chevron in Tonopah, and eating a
muffin and drinking some grapefruit juice, I have always preferred
traveling, feeling a little hungry, I headed West out of Tonopah
towards Boundary Peak and the California border just before Benton
and then on to Bishop, Big Pine, Lone Pine and eventually the
junction with 178 through Lake Isabella, which has some fairly sharp
corners, listed 25mph turns, that I take at 35 or 40 and eventually
towards its junction with Highway 99.
Highway 99, I have decided is an
unloved major artery in the San Joaquin Valley of California. There
are places that have new pavement, but much of it is I am sure the
same road that I rode my BMW R90S on in the late 1970's on my way to
Fresno. Instead of listing railway stops as Eliot did in a poem I go
over from way-points on my GPS , Delano, Pixley, Tipton and Tulare,
but can't come up with a good or decent rhyme.
Once I had parked my bike at my
sister's house, I did not pay any attention to it at all, except to
move it into her garage, that she does not use, because in my haste
in leaving SLC I neglected to pack my motorcycle cover.
The next eight days were 12 to 14 hours
a day seven days a week on the Habeas Appeal. Imagine if you can,
working on the most complex jigsaw puzzle you could imagine, and not
having the benefit of looking at the cover to see what it will look
like. That is pretty much what it was. Thanks goodness for a
search-able trial file and hard copies as well, looking for this and
that. You tell a story relating to the subject of the appeal and
almost every other sentence you have to reference either a defense
chronology done by an expert, witness interviews, which need to be
redacted; what an ominous word, it conjurers up visions of secret
records kept by seldom mentioned governmental departments, and the
trial transcript itself. It ended up being about 1500 pages of
exhibits and the HABEAS Appeal is another 400 or so pages. This all
needed to be bound with red covers and margins of X and 9 copies
prepared. All the other major courts in California to my knowledge,
accept electronic submissions on cases, but the Supreme Court Of
California does not, although they did want a CD of the exhibits.
I left early Monday morning on the
15th of the month for my ride back. A friend called me and
said that I should consider delaying my departure because of storms
both in Salt Lake City and Nevada. I quickly pulled up the Weather
Channel on my phone and Tonopah was still warm, but windy and I
headed towards there. I told myself, that if I got to Tonopah before
3:30 in the afternoon, I would continue on the additional 170 miles
back to Ely. At Boundary peak the pass is called Montgomery Pass and
it reminded me of my friend Randy Montgomery who died in a freak
motorcycle accident in Wolf Creak about 14 or so years ago. He had
been involved in planning for the Olympics, and more importantly he
had young children he did not get to see grow up. Such a pity.
Needless to say, I got to Tonopah a
little after 3:00 pm,but before 3:30 and started back towards Ely
knowing that I would probably run into rain before I got there. Eliot
again, “Time and the bell have buried the day the black cloud
carries the sun away.”
Just before I got to Ely is started to
rain and just as I got to a motel in Ely it started snowing. Not a
good omen, for Tuesday morning.
My bike was completely covered in snow,
and I had to chip ice around the ignition so that my key would go in
and do the same with the gas cap, so that I could fuel the bike. I
decided to wear my glasses, rather than contacts and had planned on
eating a hearty breakfast, to building up fodder to keep me warm, at
a cafe in Ely, but the one I usually go to, is out of business. Again
a muffin and juice at the Shell Station. I turned the heat up, for it
was cold in the mid twenties and after talking with some people in
the service station decided that I would still head back on 93and 93A
to Wendover, rather than the longer route to Delta. It was snowing
lightly when I left Ely, but it was not really sticking to the roads.
Just North of McGill the snow picked up and my face shield was
fogging and icing up. That means that I had to crack it enough to be
able to see, but then my glasses got covered with snow and actually
froze. There were several places where I could only go about 25 to 30
mph and I thought once or twice about turning back, but was worried
about going down in the ice, if I tried to turn around. The bike made
a couple of fish tale motions and I found I was better off riding in
a lower gear towards the top of the rpm band, than trying to up-shift
and keep the rpm low. I promised Pig Bodine, that’s my bike's name.
Its the name of a character from a Thomas Pynchon novel, that if it
got me through, I would instead of my annual coating of Zymol wax, I
would do it twice this year. That seemed to do the trick and a ride
that usually takes a little less than two hours, ended up taking
almost three. White Horse pass that I had been dreading the whole
ride from Ely was completely clear and Wendover was windy, but not
too cold. At the Wendover Chevron station, I rewarded myself for
having withstood the ordeal with a snickers. My boyish demand for a
daily dose of excitement, temporarily satisfied I contemplated the
rest of the ride home.
To make up for the slow time between
Ely and Wendover, I rode the 120 miles home from Wendover to Salt
Lake City at 85-to 90, figuring after my harrowing morning, a
speeding ticket would be a small price to pay, but I was fine, the
radar detector chirped a couple of times and it was windy, but I was
toasty warm.
Pig looked unloved, uncared for and
somewhat abused, and after unpacking, my somewhat wet gear, I gave
him a bath.
