The Long Road Home

Having decided that I was ready to go home I packed my gear. I finished a few jobs my uncle had me doing for him, said goodbye to my aunt and headed out.

Before hitting the freeway I wanted to see my uncles new business. He runs a retirement home in Glenwood, and opened a new on in Monroe, another little town just outside of Richfield. I had heard lots of things about the new building, but hadn't had the chance to make it down there myself, so I went.

I didn't take any pictures, but I should have. It is a really nice facility, open, airy, and just really classy. He gave me the grand tour. My Grandpa and Grandma (his parents) lived there in their own little apartment, and I wanted to see their pad and say goodbye. I sat and chatted with them for about an hour, it was nice to catch up and relax.

About noon I took off and headed back to I-70. The ticking noise that had started a couple days earlier was still there, but since I had decided to ignore it until I got back to Salt Lake, I just put in my headphones and turned up the tunes.

I had a full tank of gas, and I had determined that I could easily make 90 miles on a tank before I even need to worry about finding a gas station. After about 60 miles I decided to stop in Scipio and stretch a bit, plus I wanted to check the oil level. I pulled into the station, drank some water from the bottles I was carrying, filled up the gas, checked the oil which looked fine, reset the odometer to 0's, and took off. As I gunned the engine to merge onto I-15 I was anxious to be home and relax, but also enjoying the memories of all the great miles I had ridden on this first really big trip.

About 12 miles later I felt the bike hiccup, but just assumed that it was a cross breeze or something, and continued riding. A minute or so later I started losing power fast. At first I thought it was an electrical issue as I'd had problems with them before, so I tried giving her more throttle while I figured out my best course of action. More throttle didn't do very much and I was continuing to lose speed very fast. I must have thought about the oil leak coming from my oil pump because I looked down at my left foot and saw a huge geyser of oil coming out of my left sprocket cover. Figuring I had blown the oil seal around the pump I quickly pulled off to the shoulder where the bike died before I could hit the kill switch.

As I was quickly contemplating my options and wondering what damage the engine had suffered I pulled out my cell phone and called my mom, hoping I would be able to get a hold of her. My phone was on the last bit of battery as it connected my call, and the reception was spotty. By the grace of heaven or something the line cleared up long enough for me to give her my location and ask her to pick my broken down butt up.

Even though her and my little brother were on their way to go camping, she agreed to come pick me up, just as my phone started making the noise that means it's about to die.

Having arranged a ride I got off my bike and started pushing it toward the off ramp. I was .4 miles from exit 202 (Yuba Lake). Fortunately the uphill was pretty gradual so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. As I was pushing a truck pulling a toy hauler trailer pulled over in front of me and the man driving got out and started walking back. I don't know if anyone else is this way but I was embarrassed and part of me was hoping that people would just ignore me. But at the same time I was really grateful someone took notice of my predicament, even if I'd already made arrangements to get home.

As he approached he called out asking if I'd ran out of gas. Man, I wish that was the problem, but since it wasn't I explained I thought I had blown an oil seal so gas wasn't the issue. He offered me a ride into Nephi, and I think he could have fit my bike in his toy hauler trailer, but since I'd already made arrangements to be picked up, and my phone was dead so I couldn't call my mom to let her know what was going on (I don't have numbers memorized, accursed speed dial) I thanked him for the offer and for stopping but said I was just fine.

He pulled away as I was pushing my bike up the exit ramp and he honked his farewell. This is one more example of why I still have a little faith in humanity.

With the bike on the exit ramp, and no shade in site, unless you were the height of the Roaming Gnome, my choices of where to stay were pretty easy. I figured I had at most 3.5 hours to wait before my family would be there with my pickup truck, so I just put the bike on the center stand and proceeded to wait.

I was in the blazing desert sun, and I really should have grabbed my hat out of my sissy bar bag, but it was in the middle of the pack and I didn't want to unload the bike. I was half expecting a Highway Patrol Officer to come by and tell me I could stay there and to move, and I didn't want to have to repack everything. So I just sat there, wondering if my balding head would get badly burned. It's been nearly a week and I was super fortunate, I just got a really nice tan, no burning or blistering, so woohoo!

After a while, sitting and watching cars go by got pretty boring so I pulled out my laptop and typed for a while. It was mostly just stream of consciousness stuff as I tried thinking through my life and my goals. After the battery on the laptop drained out I put it away and just sat at thought.

Should I fix this bike, or should I call it quits and buy a new one? I finally decided I had so much time, money, and soul into this bike that I would fix it. Even if the engine was seized and needed to be rebuilt, it would still be cheaper than buying a new bike.

Normally I'm a rather pessimistic person, unfortunately I tend to focus on the bad things, but as I sat there I made a decision. I was ok, I had the skills and knowledge to fix the bike, I had a network of family and friends to help and support me, so there is really nothing to worry about. I would get the bike fixed and enjoy many more miles of touring.

Luckily I had made it a habit to carry water with me, mostly because I didn't want to have to buy drinks everywhere I went, but in this case it was a life saver. I had made it a point to stay very hydrated while riding around, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. There was a decent breeze, so all in all it was pretty tolerable.

I decided to take some pictures of where I was stuck at.

Here's a couple pics I snapped of the bike. Notice the oil covering the lower part of the engine an the back tire. This could easily have ended with me laying the bike down at 75mph.

For some reason that no one is really sure of it took my mom and little brother a little over 5 hours to get to me. After a while I was getting concerned that something may have happened, and since my phone was dead there would have been no way for me to contact her to find out. I knew my truck had a coolant leak, and I was worried that it may have overheated or worse and stranded her.

While these concerns were running through my head I noticed a lot of things about my environment. There was a large hawk or some other bird circling that was probably disappointed when I turned out to not be dead. There were a couple birds that were either fighting, or may have been trying to distract the hawk from their nest. Someone had scribbled Communism under the STOP on the stop sign. And why were there 2 grasshoppers that were both missing their left hopping leg?

The sun was beginning to go down and I started thinking of what I should do if my ride didn't get there soon. I was in the boy scouts and learned how to survive in the wilderness so I wasn't really concerned about that, and Yuba Lake was only 5 miles away, so I could always hike over there if I needed too, there was bound to be a ranger station or something.

Another person pulled over to see if I needed help, but I told him I was ok. Not long after that I saw my mom and little brother pulling off the freeway and heading over to me. We loaded up the motorcycle and headed home. We stopped in Nephi to get some food and water and more radiator fluid for the ride home. It took over a gallon and a half of radiator fluid to make it back to Salt Lake. Turns out my water pump had failed. Oh well, it wasn't too hard to fix.

All things considered, it was a great trip and the bike breaking down is just one more story to tell!