Soo my last post I was in a camp ground Wyoming, I'd just fixed some kids bike. A karmic thing I'd I've come to know as trail magic. More on that later...
Also I don't know what the hell is going on with the dates because I just checked my last blog post and there never was a monday the the 25th.... Wierd. I'm totally fucking confused.
6/26/13.... I think.... the day we left the Lazy River Camp Site.
We got up, gassed up and hit the road. About five miles in I noticed a wierd wobble and realized my rear wheel bearing was going. Luckily I had a spare kit, ( I learned ) and we replaced it at a random DOT buildin'. A statey pulled up and asked us what we were doing, we explained and he told us we could use some wood from the scrap pile to prop the bike up. Techinally we were trespassing but he was cool about it.
We got maybe fifteen miles into a journey and our plotted GPS track brought us to a gate. This is in the middle of the Wyoming tundra desert. The gate was going across a public road and that pissed me off. I spent about ten minutes fiddling with the locks and considering unbolting the gate. There was a company sign on the gate, I googled it and called them but got no answer. Ultimately we decided to not trespass.
We followed the fence west and and then north along a ridge line. I thought we should drop down and bushwack, joe wanted to continue towards though road. After several miles I convinced joe to drop in on this pretty steep shit. It was kind of sketchy but it worked. We found a gate and bushwacked through the tundra-desert another 5 miles. We came to a abodoned farm. There was a horse skeleton just outside it. Also a no truspassing sign. We rolled through real slow. No one shot us and we continued. The road out was very well maintained and kind of like a dirtbike track, winding and flowy. Then our gps's took us onto some 4 wheel trailes. Called two track out here. No one had been there in ages. We got a great lunch in rawlings and drank a shitload of water. The waittress was this cute mexican chick and she told joe he had beautiful eyes. They reminded her of her fathers.
I'd crashed in the desert and busted the valve of my water pack, I put a large screw in it and while in rawlins and we continued. There was more tundra desert and single track. We encountered our first continetal divide trail racer. They have a GPS route they have to follow, its most dirt road. These dudes and dudettes ride from Canada to mexico. I gave the man some water and he told us "trail magic" was legal. Its like 1500 miles and some do it in under two weeks. Nuckin Futs. I'll keep the motor thank you very much. We rolled into a little town called atlantic city around 8 30. Population 600? A great place to hideout.
There were two bars, we picked one and parked. I walked right in and ordered two beers. Joe started talking two these two cute chicks outside with there friend. I brought out the beer. Tatiana and Bille. The group grew then we moved inside, there was this old guy dancing with all the girls. We drank more and the dancing continued. The owners of the bar offered up this massive tepee outside the bar for joe and I to sleep in. The girls left but not before giving us there numbers and telling us to call when we got to Jackson. We stumbled out to the tepee and hit the hay.
6/27/13
The bar was also a diner so we aight breakast there. We were debating on taking a 20 mile detour to get gas ( the town had no gas station) when a guy at the bar told us he 'd sell us premuim at 4 dollars a gallon. We followed him back to his place. Turns out he had planned on doing a round the world trip on his 1150 gs but had canceled when his wife died. It's hard to put in words how compassionate I feel for him. Losing a signficant other is who is the love of my life is probably one of my biggest fears. It fucked him up pretty good - as it would anyone - but he said to give him a shout when we do our round the world trip. He wants to come. What started as a simple fill up turned in a several hours of maintenance and friendly verbal abuse while he welded up a brace for my gas tank. Trail magic. We baded Gordie farewell and headed north but not before stopping at the Diner/bar and buying him his next breakfast.
The rest of the day consisted of some awesome dual track riding up to jackson. We even did some horse trails. We arrived in Jackson and looked for a camp ground, there was none. Rv parks, but they wouldnt rent to campers, even if payed them the full RV rate. It was fucking wack. There was one KOA camp site but they only had one "biker spot" and it was taking. Bullshit. One of the RV places gave us a map and there was a creek running through town, next to it was a park. I started to formulate a plan. We went and checked out the park and there was a small clump of trees right next to the creek that some had a cut a clearing in for camping. We set up tent and went into town, but not before bathing in the creek. In town all the bars wanted a cover. Rip off. Finally we payed it and went into the cowboy. There was an old guy killing it. He was dancing with all the beautiful women in the bar. He was wearing the biggest grin I've ever scene and had some neat moves. Eastern swing is what he called it. Sail came on and I hit the dance floor. Everyone else stopped dancing and and I couldnt even finish the song by myself. The old guy danced with this gorgues brunette who was obvoisly the trophy of a rich millionare middle age man at the bar. She loved it then went back to him. She looked really bored and I wanted to go talk to her but couldn't get up the nerve. We headed back to camp. I'd called bille and tatiana earlier but to no avail.
6/28/13
Rather unimpressed with jackson we broke camp and hit the road. I'd been really excited for it just seemed rich and unfriendly when actually there. I'm sure my experience would have been different had I couch surfed or been there in the winter. We had a 300 mile day planned but only made it 200. The riding was ok. Idaho is beautiful. Also Tetons. Gotdamn. We pulled into a camp ground and the payed thirty bucks for a spot, it was expensive but we needed showers. The mosquitos were horrendous. Joe went and got beer, I cooked a colon destroyer chile.
6/29/13 My dates are off but I can't figure out why.
It was a Friday and we packed up camp and started heading for bozeman. I overshot a corner and narrowly avoided a barb wire fence.We stopped at a camping lodge for breakfast. Initially they were kind of unfriendly but they warmed up. We were getting on our bikes after breakfast and I had a text from Tatiana, they said they were camping down on jackson lake and invited us down. I immediately mapped a course while joe was deliberating. We headed south. We got into the camp ground just before they did. Its time for a little background on Tatiana and Bille.
Tatiana said she was from michigan.... maybe minnesotta. But now resides in Nebraska, she and Bille are geologists and are/were on a six week geoglist college camp thing. This was their final week and sort of vacation. There were fourtish other people in the camp from all over the country. Bille was from north western New York. She wasn't really the outdoorsy type before this trip but now she's realized what she's missing.
We ended up getting a camp site a couple hundred yards from thier groups site. It was ideal really. Joe's ankle was still bothering him so we decided to take a few days to rest it. That night we cooked up an awesome dinner and the girls came over ate with us. Then they washed our dishes. It was awesome. We went down to the beach of Jackson lake and started a bonfire, some of thier campers came down too. Also I'd started talking to a couple other motorcyclists they came to the fire and drank with us. They started in Toronto and were headed to cali. Cool dudes. Lithuana maybe? Can't remember... The party did its typical bell curve and of people and Tatiana was bouncing around being the life of it. I started to think I didn't have a chance. Finally it boiled down to Tatiana, Bille, another girl Sarah, Joe and myself.
Also skinny dipping. Tatiana is trying to take credit for it but its totally bullshit, it was my idea, not only that but I built the fire up to raging size to encourage it. I don't want to skinny dip again with out a bonfire.
Here is a photo:
We decided to sleep on the beach. I hesitant to put this in and while its an interesting experience if you get offended at all you should just skip the next paragraph.
Nope... I wrote it then deleted. Sorry Grandma.
I'm trying to take a page out of Bukoski's Women by telling the whole story minus the being a piece of shit part but I guess I just give slightly more of a fuck then he did.
6/30/13
Waking up on the beach next to a beautiful blond after very little sleep with the view of Tetons really is the life. I'm going to have to do something very good for humanity because I feel blessed to be able to live they way do. I need to pay for it somehow and there's two ways it can happen. Either I can voluntarily enact good change or life will take its payment kind of like in the merchant of venice. I can feel it, the more awesome my life gets and the more I indulge the bigger the price I have to pay. Its looming and ephemeral, kind of like credit card dept. But just to be clear, I dont have credit card dept.
We cooked a massive breakfast which joe and I destroyed then went to sleep. It was to hot in the tent so I slept outside in broad daylight, I had to keep moving my pad into the shade.
The girls had gone kayaking with their crew, there was an unofficial race which Tatiana and her partner won. Joe and I probably should have competed but we felt we were on thin ice with the male population of the camp anyway. We went down to the beach and I swam out to an island, it was much farther then it looked. Google says its about 1200 feet, I dont know. It was good. We went back up to camp and Tatiana tried riding our bikes, she road just fine but she couldn't stop and fell off both of them when trying to. Here is a photo:
We took a ride into yellow stone on some two track then bushwacked up and got an awesome view of the sunset over the tetons. Good conversation, it was a blast. Even a little romatic. Then we took single track along some power lines and, it was tough with a second person but fun nonetheless. Came back and hit the hay.
7/1/13
Tatiana and her crew were moving on and it was time for Joe and I to head to bozeman. We decided to take 191 up through yellowstone. It was a fucking terrible idea. It was hot and all the drivers were bad and doing 10 under the speed limit. I wanted to kill people. I made many illegal passes. We kept on chugging and I almost fell asleep as we came into bozeman. It was scary. A certain Honeybadger hooked it up with a list of people to stay with. I'd been in contact with one of them but had zero service in wyoming so I hadn't told them about the Jackson lake detour, they were super cool about it. We stayed with a dude name Rusty the first night, he's Haleys friend and his house is called that Chateau. He said we were welcome to use it as a base camp. Super nice guy, laid back, straight forward and funny.
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