I awaken while it is still dark out and I am confused. My iPad says 0621, but my iPhone 0521. We do not have internet access so I trust the iPhone as I know it has connected to a newtwork, and prolly updated itself. That is good news! With a 0800 departure time, that leaves several more hours in the rack! I turn the AC back on, and go back to bed.

I sleep on and off until about 0720, I am ever mindful of the clock as I promised Bill I would turn over a new leaf and be punctual. Apparently it is a Dechant trait to be late, not one I wish to perpetuate. My Father always said, if you are not 15 minutes early, you are 5 minutes late, but that never rubbed off on me!

Loading my bike takes 5 minutes, I have become very good at it over the past 2 weeks. I either have compressed my stuff or maybe left something behind along the way but the bags needed to be forced shut in the beginning, now there is room in each. Maybe for some Duty Free! I have found over the years when you leave your wife at home alone for weeks on end, it is best not to come home empty handed. Alcohol and Bon Bons are a good choice!

We wanted to go and see some caves just west of The Border, the Lehman Caves. The nice bartender lady said they are usually booked up on the weekends, but we go anyway. They are booked, and not open to letting stragglers tag along. I ask if there is anything else to do if you don't go into the caves?

The super friendly and over eager Park Warden Lady, we'll call her Bouncing Becky, tells us they have a very unique species of Aspen Pine Cone that merits a 35 mile drive on a poorly maintained road. Seriously, I am not making that up, and while I am prone to frequently making things up, this is not one of them. She highly recommends the scenery in the area is spectacular, trees and mountains and vistas. Well, we have had over 2 weeks of all that stuff, so we're not impressed, and we depart.

I was in those caves years ago, mid week if I recall. What was really kewl was that they used to hold dinners and weddings in this one chamber, but the roof was only about 6' high, I had to duck. It was in the days before 'lectricity and all the guests had candles, and they wrote their names and other graffiti with the soot from the candles on that ceiling.

We depart the area having not seen the sooty graffiti, nor the Aspen Pine Cone.

It is an hour Westbound to Ely, NV, a pretty boring road, even the ancient landscaping flanking the highway has gotten old. We fuel up in Ely, then turn Northbound on highway 93 for a run to Wells, NV. The day before we had a stretch of 106 miles with no services. There is 124 miles between Ely and Wells without services. Wintout towns, without anything really.

I do the math in my head based on my current odometer reading, and go for it. See, I don't have a gas gauge, I have a resettable trip odo that I zero each time I fill up. I know in the city I get about 250 kms on a tank, highway 375 kms. It is also based on average speed, if I am heavy handed it lowers my range. If I keep it at the sweet spot of about 75 MPH it maximizes range.

So we set off, the posted speed limit is 60 MPH, 100 kmh, which I think is ridiculous, luckily everybody is doing 80+, so do we. Years ago driving this same stretch I got pulled over by a Nevada Statie for doing 97 MPH. I remember that day, there was a fast following wind. Luckily he was also a Triumph rider, he had a Triumph America and we had a pleasant roadside chat for 10 minutes.

It was only after he left that I realized other than telling me my speed, we didn't discuss the speeding at all, and no ticket, not even a warning.

The run is just a bit under 200 kms and it is my intention to stop halfway for a break, but there is nowhere to stop, no rest stops, the shoulders aren't even wide enough to park in. Ultimately we drive the entire distance in one blast, the longest single drive of the trip, the previous record being 188 straight kms.

We drive through Twin Falls looking for the TriFecta, but only get a BiFecta, but safe in the knowledge we are in a town big enough to have a cab company. It was a short day today, only 6 hours in the saddle, but we also are finally back in the Mountain time zone, so we lost an hour.

We have DustBusters on the patio, but no Dollar Store Popcorn! The Front Desk guy who was extremely talkative during checkin is out watering the plants and talking up a storm, and Bill is egging him on for some reason? We also talk to some motorcycle enthusiasts from Virginia for a while, turns out they shipped their bikes to Salt Lake City. I dunno, I have a hard time respecting that.

The one guy tells us his bike has a feature that will kill the engine if it is in danger of overheating. Sounds good in theory, but it will do that when he is riding, no matter at what speed. If he is within 10 degrees of an overheat, click, dead bike. There is an aftermarket kit that adds rad fans to prevent this. That sounds like a feature designed by a guy at a desk with a pocket protector and a slide ruler, not a guy who has ridden a bike in the real world. Just another sign HD is losing its grasp!

He also tells us his motor has cylinder deactivation. I know Cadillac experimented with that technology for years on its NorthStar V8. At cruising speeds it would shut off 2 and then 4 cyclinders to improve fuel economy. Makes sense in a V8, but a V-Twin? Harleys run like cheap alarm clocks on a good day, what do they run like on only one lung?

Super talkative front desk guy gives us a card with the address of a steakhouse in town, we take a Uber to it. The Uber lady drives a Zion, looks like a shoebox on wheels, but gets the job done. We book her to comeback and get us. The nice bartender lady is just that and their ribeyes are good. Back to the mo'tel for the evening we have a night cap, and turn in.

I am several days behind on my blog due to poor internet the last 3 days so I do some catching up. I have a call tommorow morning with a colleague in the Pacific time zone so we won't be leaving until 1030 or 1100. Just like the old days! We are about 1500 kms from our various homes, and 1000 kms from our split up point, so we're gonna do them in 3 easy days.

Day Seventeen

The Border Inn, NV to Twin Falls, ID

458 km