This pure white abyss was at the top of my list for locations I wanted to ride on this trip. Lawless square miles with an open throttle and an itchy trigger finger brings together all the ingredients that we are looking forward today under these open blue skies. The salt has a personality disorder where it thinks it’s a mirror for the sun with one goal: to turn the skin under our jaws bright red.
There’s only one road going in and we have long since passed any signs with instructions on where to turn so without hesitation I lean left off the asphalt. My tires eat salt only to regurgitate it out behind me. I failed to let the other two know what the plan was, primarily because I didn’t have one but it’s always a pleasure to see that they tagged along without question.
We head for an open area, away from the sorry looking brushes that seem like they are struggling to survive out here. Settling into the environment, we cut the bikes off, begin unloading, and move on to prepping camera gear. We still plan to cover some miles today so we can’t shoot for more than a few hours. The following is what we come up with:
Needless-to-say we had a bit of fun, which by now is well deserved given our issues. We commemorate our by leaving behind Gomes’ sword, but not without leaving a bit of us behind.
With the bikes repacked, we head towards the road that brought us in. The asphalt sits a bit higher than the salt flats and being that the salt has the consistency similar to mud we try to coast smoothly through. Yea right. My handlebar cocks right and my front end sinks, kicking me off and over the side of the BMW. My helmet smacks on I don’t even know what and the camera that was strapped around my shoulder proved it’s developed some of my characteristics from hanging out with me this long as it spitefully decided to take a huge bite of salt on our way down. Like most vengeful acts, it wasn’t well thought out because salt and electronics don’t mix. I curse profusely, as if that’s enough to get the bike back up. Regardless, the other two swing back around to help push my bike out of the salt once we got her up as with all the extra weight on my bike and the tires’ threads drowning in excess salt, traction was non-existent.
Back on the road we go with a trajectory to hit Reno before the day is done. Fresh gas tanks should take us another 130 miles but that would be too easy. 70 miles in and yesterday’s demon strikes again. My bike dies on route 80 near Elko, NV. Funny how we decided early on that we probably wouldn’t be riding at night yet when the more dangerous scenarios come to fruition, not only are we riding at night but one bike is towing another. That orange ratchet strap saves the day again, tying my bike to Gomes’ for long enough to get us over to the Motel 6.
Back to the drawing board; I pull the battery and get it on a charger for the night. The math says we can do an average of 100 miles before the battery is too low and our charger happens to have a fast charge feature. The closest BMW service center is in Sparks, NV just outside of Reno and 285 miles away. So the plan for tomorrow is to ride for 100 miles, stop to get gas and plug in the charger for about 20-30 mins then go another 100 miles, and so on.
At this hour there’s nothing we can do so I let the stress settle while I try to fall asleep.
😉