Trip Report for the Laughlin River Run 2000 meet
Its 6:45am Friday, the clouds are thick over head and the air is heavy with the
potential for rain. I finish loading the T-Bag on the back of the bike and
check the straps on the saddle bags and plug in the cd-player (new addition
from the night before), its time to roll. I head over to Tom's
place, alerted to my impending arrival by the quiet rumble from my DG slash
cuts, he is already pulling on his jacket and helmet as I pull in his drive way.
After a quick exchange of hello's we hit the road. As we pull up on to highway
85 I hit the play button on the cd expecting to hear a big of Santana to start
the journey with, instead I get... silence.. not a good start. After poking
at the buttons for a bit more I decide that its probably not a wise move to
try and debug this while riding. It can wait till the first gas stop.
So off we go into the wild grey yonder, wondering if we will stay dry or not,
traffic is light and the going is easy. Merge on to Highway 101 south, then over
152 to get to I 5 and our our first gas stop of the day.
As we are filling up the scoots, a large group of bikes pull up to the pumps,
amongst the bunch is our Bob Payne, another local VROC'r. Turns out he is
heading out to Vegas with a bunch of Yamaha riders, and then plans to head on
down to Laughlin from there. While he and Tom are making plans to meet up
at the Thunder tent in Laughlin, I poke at the CD player some more and discover
that somewhere along the line I had hit the 'hold' switch on the side, flipped
it back to normal and MUSIC fills the air, or at least my ears. By this time
the scoots are filled and its time to roll again. This time with an
accompanying sound track, or at least until I hit 60mph, at that point the
vibration of the bike overwhelms the CD players anti shock system and the
sweet sounds of Carlos Santana's guitar work starts to resemble the latest
pop rap song. So much for that.. Next time.. More Testing I tell myself.
About another hour down the the road, we pull in for breakfast, I mention my
lack of success with the CD player and learn Tom's secret.. a large sponge
sitting under the player to absorb some of the vibration. Of course he has
a slightly different problem, his pipes are so loud that he can't hardly hear
the music over the thunder of his machine.
Over breakfast we review the route we are taking and discuss gas stops
and fuel economy and the usual B.S. With a little caffeine in me now, I am
actually almost awake finally. This is when I remember I packed the camera in
the T-Bag so it would be easily accessible on the ride but have so far
forgotten to take any. Time to mount up and hit it again.
More highway and gas as we cross over 58 to Bakersfield and then over Tehachpe
where the temperature must have dropped down to the low 50's as we froze our butts
off going over the pass. Once we finally drop down into Mojave, the clouds go
away, the temperature rises and the WIND starts blowing like a banshee. We
get a little practice riding at an angle until we get heading with the wind.
(TECH TIP: Strong tail winds equals good gas mileage!) Fortunately the wind
was mostly from the west and was at our backs most the way to Barstow where
we were supposed to meet my brother Scott at the McDonalds there.
What he didn't say was that there were two of them in town. We of course
went to the wrong one. After hanging around for a few minutes, and asking the
person behind the counter if there was another one around, we quickly determine
the error of our (ok ok.. my) navigation, and head over to the correct one,
where, sure enough, there is Scott and his Beemer waiting for us. Its 2:30pm.
After grabbing some coffee and food, we
hit the road and head off in the heart of the desert on highway 40. There are
a lot of bikes now, mostly harleys, we only see a couple of dead ones on the
side of the road going out. The map says that there is no gas between Ludlow
and Needles (90 miles) so we stop at Ludlow and pay even more for gas there
then we do here in the Bay Area. Turns out there is a new station about halfway
between Ludlow and Needles now. Don't know what they charge but its worth
keeping in mind. The CHP starts to make its presence known as we get closer to
Needles and the Truckers are playing games with the bikes, changing lanes
into the middle of groups or pretending that they are going to. But we make
it through unscathed and arrive at my Dad's place in Lake Havasu City at
around 6pm. Almost 600 miles in about 11 hours. Not too bad.
Dinner, chat and finaly some sleep mark the end of a good days run. Tomorrow we hit the main event.
