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| Manride Part 3 |
| Wed May 26 09:04:09 2010 PST, by Testcase |
| [email] [webpage] |
(To go along with Trailer 2, here's the next chapter a little early)
ENGINEERING, GO. MEDICAL, GO. NAVIGATION, GO. WEATHER, UM....
In the days leading up the Manride, the biggest problem that we faced was weather. It was still winter in Salt Lake City. Rain, snow, hail fell almost daily. I was facing increasing pressure from people to either cancel or postpone. Except that wasn't really an option. The timing of my time off and Kevin's time off meant this week was the week if we wanted at all to go ahead with the ride as envisioned. I dreaded the phone call I thought I would have to make telling Kevin the ride was off, or, more likely, that I was going to push the date by a week, which would mean he was out. By this point, I knew he was looking forward to the ride as much as I was. I was probably getting the most pressure from my dad. Which was expected. He hates motorcycles and would be pressuring me to cancel the ride and sell all my bikes even if it was sunny and the roads were paved with gold. Sometimes, I think he sets aside quiet moments during each day where he can think of new reasons on why I shouldn't be riding a motorcycle.
Even without that, the weather itself was giving lots of good reasons to not go. I was consulting various forecast websites every day and checking the long-term forecasts for various points along the route. Going into the week of Manride what became most clear to me was that I needed to get out of Salt Lake City and that would put the worst of the weather behind me. What was going on was a large storm system was traveling east and would be right over Salt Lake on the day we scheduled to leave. If I could get a window of opportunity and get out of SLC, then we were looking at relatively dry but cold weather for the rest of the trip, with significant warming coming as we continued to head west. Icy roads concerned me most and I made my first concession to the weather and plotted a change to my solo route. The original plan was for me to head south, getting off the Interstate and heading along the western edge of Utah Lake and catching US 50 west at Delta, Utah. The weather wasn't looking favorably there and, for a contingency, I plotted a route simply heading straight west out of Salt Lake along the 80, crossing the salt flats, towards Wendover with the idea that I just get out from under the storm as fast as I could. The downside is the wind, which would be really strong across those featureless salt flats. Plus, the ride didn't look really as interesting to me. I've been across the flats. And I don't gamble, so reaching Wendover wasn't holding any real appeal to me.
If I were to simply wait a week, I would have warm sunny weather the whole way through.
Two days to Manride, I started packing the bike. I had finished all my prep and mods to the bike by this time. About the only things missing from my planned gear list were solar chargers for the myriad gadgets I was bringing on the trip. However, since the weather forecast was predicting night-time lows in the 20s for the trip and I had only geared up for 30s, I was thinking we'd probably be hoteling it more often then not. I think we'd hold out for at least one night of camping, but I wasn't pinning my hopes on it. I was bringing all the camping gear with me as I had already planned on the packing for it. The one thing I ditched was the folding chair for camp. If it was cold or raining and we did camp, I didn't foresee me sitting out in the open much. I had the whole bike packed that first night and the only thing that was left for the night before the trip was to pack clothes, toiletries, and food; which were small enough to pretty much all fit within the two saddlebags.
I took a special pleasure in packing the bike. It was probably right up there with mapping routes fun-wise for me. Packing a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and various gear into a small, tight pile on the bike was like putting together a puzzle. I was especially pleased to see that the o-rings that I had riveted to the saddlebags came in handy as mounting points for the elastic straps. I had spent several idle moments in the days before visualizing the pile on the bike and how it would be all secured down. I'm a pretty messy person in ordinary day-to-day life, but when it came to packing the cruiser for the manride, the results ended up being photo-worthy. I'm kind of weird that way.
The weather was still looking crappy. If I were younger and in a different place in life, I don't think this weather thing would bother me as much as it did. Yes, riding a motorcycle is risky. Yes, going on long trips on one is risky, too. However, I've always felt I was doing my best to mitigate risks by getting the training, wearing the protective gear, and doing my best to ride conservatively. I love my family and never want to think that my little girl would grow up without her dad around. If the weather was going to look too risky, I think I would make the call on that. It was just really depressing to do is all.
The night before Manride, I made the call to Kevin and laid it out: we might not be doing this thing. The weather Wednesday night was pretty bad. Cold and wet. Canceling the trip was now a very real proposition and it was killing me because I could see on the weather map that all I had to do was get out of the valley and it would lighten up. The only problem was if those roads out of the valley were wet, icy, and/or snowy, well, I don't think the cruiser was going to handle that very well. I planned the call ahead very carefully. If anything, I thought of it the way I thought of difficult decisions made at work and when I got on the phone to Kevin that night, I put it all in those terms. He would understand it as we'd both worked together in the IT industry before. The plan was simple. Manride was in doubt. We'd have a call in the morning after I checked all the latest weather reports and make a go/no-go decision then. I could tell that Kevin was taken aback and deflated by the prospect then. I think he might have even given up a little at that point. I think I had.
I didn't sleep very well that night.
to be continued... |
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