Day 20: The Lonely Highway.

Kev Says:

Crossed over into Nevada and things got lonely. After passing through the first town we went into a 200 mile (320km) stretch with no gas! About 50 miles in Willow decided to have a complete electrical failure and quit. I looked her over, thinking maybe the main ground wire had vibrated off as it did before. Nope, second place I looked was her main fuse. It was blown, but I had spares. Replaced it and continued on. 10 miles later. Quits again. Scan exposed wiring for shorts, find that the ground from the right rear signal had pulled out. Fixed it, replaced fuse, continued on. 10 miles later dies again. I have only one fuse left and 130 miles more to go to ANYWHERE. This time I inspect the wiring harness with a greater degree of scrutiny. Find a wire going to the taillight in behing the license plate that had been rubbed bare. Fix this and with fingers crossed that it was the problem, we continue on. Seems to have been the ticket!

We rode west on the lonely ET highway all after noon. Every single sign was riddled with bullet holes. You could tell the pace at which various beer consumers liked to drink based on the frequency of their brand of empties along the road. Our only company was long horned cattle that stood in the ditches and followed us past with their heads in unison. At 179km Willow ran out of gas. Despite me keeping the rpm under 4K and keeping my chin on the handlebars for two hours. Fred and Trav went the last 20 miles into town to fetch a jug of gas while I checked out big beetles and little lizards in the desert. When they got back we headed for town together directly into without question, the most gloriously dramatic sunset and impressive lightning display I had ever seen. It is exactly for days like this that I wanted to do this trip. I could not be happier.

Trav says:

Goodbye Utah, hello Nevada. Nevada is divvied up by a bunch of mountain ranges, with long long valleys between them. It's typical to enter a valley, see the mountains on the other side and think "OK, I can get there in 10 mins", but not actually get there until 35 mins later. Something about the vast open landscape which has no reference points except for the perfectly straight road makes you underestimate how far distances are. I like deserts, so I find the whole thing fascinating.

We rode on Route 375 which goes by the Air Force Range which contains Area 51, as well as where a bunch of nuclear bomb testing was done during the cold war. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Willow ran out of gas, and even though we had an extra liter of regular gas at her disposal (specifically for this purpose), apparently Willow is too good for regular gas and premium is demanded. Kev made me drive 20 miles to go get premium and then come back. What a jerk-face. It all worked out in the end, since we were rewarded with a wonderful sunset and lightning storm ahead of us in the distance.