Across the Desert

I was looking forward to this ride all week, but when it finally came, I wasn’t looking forward to it at all.

I wanted to get the Sportster back in Colorado. I suspect it’s my favorite bike. The idea of motoring across the desert in August—damn the heat—seemed pretty wild, so when some University office sent out an email with the subject line “Summer’s Over!” I bought a one-way ticket on Southwest to LA.

The I-15 closure on Friday and Saturday (due to a lithium truck catching fire) really deflated me, not because I stayed in LA another day—that was quite nice, actually—but because it raised the specter of desert traffic.

Hauling through the high heat in the desert is tough, no doubt, but you can ride it out. It falls into the category of “foolhardy motorcycle adventure.” There is simply no way to survive desert traffic on a bike. You have to keep going in the shoulder until you can find shade, and there is no guarantee of that. Desert Traffic falls into the category of “significant trouble.”

I spent much of Friday and yesterday perseverating about alternate routes. I charted a way back up through Yosemite to no avail, because I didn’t have a park reservation in advance. I imagined going down I-10 through Phoenix…Phoenix?!?? in the summer?!?? I planned a loop around Flagstaff but abandoned it when I saw googlemaps had I-10 and I-40 pocked in red—all those Vegas Holiday makers short-circuited by the lithium truck were going that way too.

In the end, I got up at five this morning, checked my phone and found I-15 was open. I was still worried—the fire had been put down and flared up once before—but it seemed like the odds were in my favor.

And they held.

The ride from LA to Vegas was busy with Harleys. Everybody was chatty. In Victorville, I exchanged travel notes with a father & son team on matching CVO Street Glides (~$40k a pop). A solo guy two pumps down had the same bike as I. He didn’t speak English, but when we both started up and I shouted out “Sportster!” he broke into a wide smile. In Baker, I got the The L.O.W. Riders (“Ladies on Wheels” Their slogan? “Badass Women Ride Badass Women”) to give me a group picture of them on their way to Sturgis.

It all felt positive.

The LOW Riders. I didn’t get their names, but I liked their style.

Somewhere along I-15 I passed a fire truck parked next to a smoldering cargo container, which I took to be filled with lithium slag.

The bikers all disappeared in Vegas. Off to find windowless air conditioned gambling caverns, no doubt.

Construction on I-15 rerouted me onto the city streets, which put me in the frying pan for sure. By the time I got back on the highway, things has started to heat up.

It was a long ride through to Mesquite and after that up Virgin River Gorge. I broke my rule and ate something—a banana—which put me into a daze. On a phone call from Cedar City, Richelle gently nudged me to the Best Western in Richfield, UT, where I got a room with a window right next to my bike, and then walked downtown to the Little Wonder Cafe for the Chicken Fried Steak Dinner and Blueberry Cobbler.