Day 18

Day 18 got off to an early start after a restless night.  Not sure why I was so restless as we stayed in a quaint, quiet little Inn that likely had the most comfortable bed and pillows we've seen this trip.  About the only thing I can think of is I had a lot on my mind after the previous days clutch issue.  I can't say I wasn't somewhat concerned about trekking across the isolated desert with a questionable clutch in my bike.

Char and I had talked about getting on the road a bit early to beat some of the desert heat.  Well we accomplished that with the temperature being 5 degrees Celsius in Mammoth Lakes at 7:30 AM.  Kind of forgot to factor the 8,000 foot elevation into the equation.  By the time we were 40 miles down the road in Bishop, CA it was already closing in on 30 degrees.

As we headed east away from Mammoth Lakes we saw less and less snow covered peaks.

Lot's of this en route to Vegas, long stretches of isolated straight riding, kind of like Saskatchewan plus the desert, some hills and a lot less bugs.

Our route took us down I-395 to California 168 and the US-95 to Vegas.  The 82 miles of California 168 may be some of the coolest (as in fun not temperature) that I have ever ridden.  Some great scenery with a couple of 16 + mile serious twisty sections with large climbs and descents.  The length of the climbs worked out for me as I had pretty much zero clutch left by the top of each climb but it recovered on the descents enough to keep us rolling.

We stopped 40 miles out of Vegas to take a break and get out of the heat.  I'm not sure of a better way to state this so I'll go straight to the point. Riding across the desert in 42 degree Celsius temps was pretty much miserable in my opinion.  The last 40 mile push I figured would be no problem as it had no major climbs and was only 40 miles so I figured I'd won the battle of the clutch.  So much for that thought, by the time we hit I-15 I had no clutch play left again and we were rolling onto Las Vegas Blvd on our way to the Stratosphere.  It was a challenge trying to shift and pop the bike into neutral and I'm sure there was a few folks wondering if I'd ever ridden before as I stalled the bike at almost every stop but we limped into the parking lot and shut it down for the day.

I contacted both local kawi dealers and neither has any clutch parts in stock and based on the conversations it may be a challenge to get me back on the road by our planned Thursday AM departure.

This will be the last blog until we are on the road again as I'm sure you all don't need an update on my gambling losses.  If we get rolling Thursday there will be a blog Thursday night, if not I'll update what our repair status looks like at that point.

Mileage covered today was 517.1 km for a trip total of 5862.3 km.