I barely slept the night before leaving. Between excitement for the trip and apprehension about taking a largely unknown bike to some really remote areas, I probably got about an hour or so of actual rest.
The first part of my trip, down to Bonneville at least, would be with a group of three friends from the Portland area. We met up at 6:30 and quickly set out eastward. We hit a little traffic leaving the city, but all open roads after that. About 100 miles later, much to my disappointment, my bike’s fuel light came on. I’d really been hoping the highway range would be about 40 miles more, but worst case, I had a bunch of extra gas with me so getting stranded in some of the upcoming desert sections was extremely unlikely.
The guys I was riding with were all on sport tourers and seemed to want to cruise in the 85-100mph range. I’m generally fine doing quick bursts to extralegal speeds on a bike, but sitting there near near 100 for hours at a time is incredibly taxing. The wind noise, wind buffeting to your helmet, and the engine noise are all significantly greater at 90+ than at say 75 even with my windscreen. With my bike only having 5 gears, it was revving higher than I’d have liked at the speeds we were doing (no doubt contributing to the shitty fuel range). We had planned to make it to Boise that day, but decided to press on and extra 50 miles making for a grand total of about 480 miles for the day.
Overall, I hated this day. There wasn’t anything visually of note, hence the lack of photos, it was tiring, hot, and uncomfortable. The wind noise was too great to hear each other with our helmet communicators, and I was getting a steady stream of wind noise from someone else’s mic the whole time. We stayed at Mountain Home for the night and I seriously considered cutting my solo trip out, I wasn’t enjoying myself.
Total Miles: 473
Total Miles for the Day: 473
Highest Elevation: Just over 4000
Lowest Elevation: Portland, Sea level.
Killer Piece of Gear: Earplugs
Best part of the day: Getting in a pool at the hotel after we were done for the day
Worst part of the day: 470 miles on I-84
A fairly negative start to the series, but it was all uphill from here! Day one was far and away the low point of the trip with every other day being far more enjoyable (even the day I rode through a sandstorm in the great basin)