Day 2 - Green River, UT [under construction - pics coming]

After 'Chollo and I had about 4 hours of sleep, Bigdog was already moving about - so we followed his lead. We geared up and made our way up the boulevard for breakfast, and they were still closed (why do these breakfast joints not open until the sun is hot in the sky)..... After making some coffee back at the Sleepy 'Holler, we tried again and got there right when they opened up. We loaded up the camelbacks with ice, ate a marginal meal, and took off north. 'Chollo had a grand total of about 10 miles on his bike since he got it, so we opted for an easy, paved route to start the day to let him get used to the bike.

In the back of my mind, I though we'd best go back down to Snow Flat Road and play Sink or Swim.... We rolled up US6 until I couldn't take it anymore (about 30 miles), and we veered off up into Carbon Canyon. Many, many moons ago, I did some work for the East Carbon Development Corp folks, but had never been to the 'receiving' area. They bought up the town, and made a landfill, hauling millions of tons of eastern origin putrescible waste, and filling an old strip mine with it. The place was all but dormant, but a single locomotive, a rotary dumper, and hundreds of flatcars and containers adorned the horizon. Perhaps they are already in the remediation stage? We droned back out of Carbon Canyon and back onto US6. This won't do.

"Chollo, you've had enough time to get acquainted with your bike..."

And we turned up Nine Mile Canyon - a seventy five mile dirt escape from the staggering mediocrity of the two laned strip of asphalt known as US6.

The BigDog, deciding to let a bit of air out of his tires.

I say run 'er 'til she blows.....

The trip up Nine Mile Canyon was fun - very, very lightly traveled, and full of old west history. There are some petroglyphs up there, too.

About 30 miles up Nine Mile Canyon, we hung a left, and climbed back up onto the arid plateau above.

The natural gas and oil exploration gig has caused the area near Myton to be studded with wells and pipelines, aimed at extracting a waxy oil residue, as well as the natural gas by using hydraulic pressure. The extraction process is relatively inefficient, but energy prices are driving the industry forward.

As we rolled into Myton for fuel, we came across a unique individual. I swiped this pic from BigDog, as for some reason, I was so intrigued I forgot to take one myself ..... This fellow built up this rigid springer, and has been touring the States. He'd been stuck in Vernal for a week waiting on parts, but was just now back on the road.

There's a six gallon steel jerry can on the back of that bike, on a 3/4 rebar sissy bar, ingeniously plumbed into the main tank (complete with a brazed in sight glass). The lever on the right side of the bar actuated the rear brake (no front brake), open 3" primary belt, and there was a foot clutch and a hand shifter with a crystal door knob. Perhaps the coolest thing was the lack of paint and the typical bling. Just a desert rust patina that you'd see on a '34 Ford left in the desert decades ago. Waaaaay cool. Ride on dude.

Nine Mile Canyon and the run north up to Myton was the conclusion of the Honeymoon on the 950. No crashing was involved, but it and I figured each other out, and we pledged to get along. The commonality in our relationship is the desire to ride dirt, with occasional bursts of great speed. The 950 doesn't much care for slow technical terrain, nor droning down the asphalt. I don't much care for asphalt. So we each have to make some sacrifices to get what we want - so we endeavored to persevere in the dirt. We got gas in Myton, and headed up to Vernal to get something to eat. As we sat in a Wendy's, we decided to ride north up to Flaming Gorge and see what we could see.

We ran into a fellow on a Soft Tail who was working in the oilfields we just traversed - and he was from Chihuahua, MX. He asked me if I'd ever been to Copper Canyon. We chatted a bit about it, and headed over to the dam before we each went our seperate ways. Dang, the world is a small place.

We climbed back up to the canyon rim to get a look at the river below. Flaming Gorge dam, built in 1958, stands about 500 feet above the canyon floor, holding back 90 miles of the waters of the Green River - which evetually flow into the Colorado River just outside Moab, UT - close to where BigDog and I were yesterday. It took John Powell months to traverse the same terrain. Amazing, but we need to get into the mountains again.....

A few miles up the tarmac, we turned off the pavement and headed into the Ashley National Forest. We quickly gained altitude, and were soon near the treeline on a fantastic road, albeit a tad dusty.

The ride through the Ashley National Forest was a pleasant surprise, as we more or less randomly went that direction to avoid another mile of paved roads.

The weird bizzarro-world thing was on the exit from the Forest. Some dude in a beat up old Dodge pickup was pulling a fifth wheel camper, with a double axle trailer full of quads behind it. A recreational road train, if you will. And the dude was ripping it up, skidding that mess around corners and adding cubic yards of particulates to the atmosphere. I braved the dust cloud one time, tried to pass, and was almost smeared into a wall of igneous rock. This guy was running for cash or something.

As we decended into Mountainview, the 950's needed gas, but both gas stations were closed.

We had two options - get on I-80 and head west a few miles, or take our chances and run 40 miles north to Kemmerer. A trainload of empty TTX intermodal spine cars crossed our path headed west, presumably to accomodate another load of Sam Walton's Great WalMart of China load of goods to haul to waiting proletariate consumers.

As you'd guess, we opted to take our chances. Forty miles later, my 950 ran out of gas rolling down the hill into Kemmerer. Can you imagine that luck? I should have been buying lottery tickets.

We found a cheapo motel with three beds, so no one got the floor that night.

As the sun set, the temperature dropped fast. There was snow on the ground here just a few days ago. After a lackluster dinner at Pizza Hut, the only restaurant open in town, we drank a few beers, watched Napoleon Dynamite on the idiot box, and dozed off....dreaming dreams of sweet jumps, inexpensive time travel and chickens with large talons..... Tale of the tape on Day 2 - about 350 miles.

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