Day 4 – Plans Changing

Well, the best laid plans are only that – plans. In reality plans don’t often come off without a hitch and today was our turn.  The original plan today was to stop by Bonneville Salt Flats to pay homage to the hallowed ground where many have committed and sacrificed to the gods of speed. Really expansive and really flat pretty much sums it up. Mark tried his luck with lady speed and live to tell the tale another day.

  

   

 

The ride from Bonneville to Tooele was awful. Extremely strong side winds and 80+mph sustained highway speeds do not make for a comfortable ride. Long, straight, flat, boring, fighting with a 20-30 degree heeled over bike into 80+mph headwind was not the highlight of the trip. As if to mock us, there was one of those orange wind socks you see at airports in the middle of nowhere – as if a plane or helicopter would ever try to land in these conditions – and it was completely out straight and fully inflated. Like it was saying “of course it’s windy stupid, what else could you possible be thinking”.

From Bonneville we were set to make a quick stop at Miller Motorsport Park for a quick photo op and continue into Salt Lake City to find a BMW dealer for Bong’s clutch problem which is getting much worse.  Well, we never got out of the Miller park. When we arrived we found there was a big track day going on so we decided to stay and eat an early lunch and watch the bikes ride by.  After lunch we started walking around checking out many of the riders and their machines, pit setups, trailers, etc. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves on the back side of the park where there were go karts and a motard course. we watched that for a short while then some of the guys decided to drive karts. Of course Mark and Bong were at each other the whole time. I think Mark set a new record for most spin-outs in one session.

We ended up staying almost 4 1/2 hours before we finally left for one last stop at the track’s Cobra museum. Note that no cameras are allowed in the museum so I have absolutely no idea where these came from

 

We filled up in Wendover. Total route for the day was only 150 miles. On route from Miller to Salt Lake City, a distance of 27 miles, Greg ran out of gas…. again.  So why are you carrying a spare gas can if it’s always empty Greg????  It must be a fashion statement of some sort.

 

Mechanical Problems.

As mentioned earlier, Bong’s clutch is going south quickly. The master cylinder is now leaking fluid and getting worse. We’re not  going to be going far no matter what until that gets fixed. Being Memorial Day no place is open and there is no one to contact so Bong left a note on the door of the BMW dealer in Salt Lake City and will be heading over there bright and earlier tomorrow morning begging for emergency priority service. We made a decision to stay together as a group even though Bong insisted we moved ahead and he would catch up with us.

Bong’s not the only one having problems. Steve’s Honda seems to be losing voltage somewhere. His battery is slowly but steadily discharging. Fortunately there’s a Honda dealer down the street from the hotel so Steve will be heading over there in the morning as well.

So tomorrow we’ll be visiting the BMW dealer for Bong’s  clutch. Steve will be visiting the Honda dealer down the street to see if they can figure out why his battery seems to be slowly discharging. Hopefully none of the  repairs require special order parts and we’ll be on our way late in the morning. If not, we’ll be revising our plans again.

We’ll figure out a new route once we get the problems resolved, but it looks like we’re going to head for Tropic tonight if we can everyone on the road by 11am.

 

Here’s today’s track – 150 miles