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Event Report

West Country Boys go State Side
Jul-2005

Fraser, Reuben and Pete Anstey went state side earlier this year, the story starts here....
 

India 2005

 
One beer too many and yet another crazy plan was hatched. This summer we are going to ride in the Himalaya only we ended up in the USA. The clever plan was to freight the bikes to Houston by sea, then by road to Albuquerque New Mexico, where the friendly customs officer had agreed to let us import them. Well, if you don’t have a plan it can’t go wrong. Ours did and we ended up driving from Albuquerque to Houston to collect the bikes. The 2050 mile round trip took 3 days including the customs formalities, extraditing the bikes from the bonded warehouse and assembling them. Our transport for the trip was a Chevy Cargo van - 75mph in second gear and a speed limiter that cut in at a ton.
 
 

 
After the detour to Houston we headed by bike to Trinidad, Colorado, and arrived in a cloudburst that was rather like Niagara Falls. That got the bad weather out of the way for the rest of the holiday and washed all our kit in one go.
 
From Trinidad we set out on a 10 day 2250mile blast on dirt roads through the Rockies to Carson City before dropping down into San Francisco. The route came from Sam Correro and can be found at www.transamtrail.com. Each day took us into new terrain and each night into a small town with its own unique atmosphere. The first night we stayed in Westcliffe with its Irish bar and draught Guinness. The second night we booked ahead to stay at the Best Western Inn, Lake City. We drove straight through Lake City, Colorado, and out the other side without realising. “No Best Western Inn in Lake City” said the man with a dog. So we rang central reservations to be told “Yes sir you’re booked in at the Best Western Inn in Lake City FLORIDA”. Well, if you don’t have a plan it can’t go wrong so we gave up planning.
 

 
The riding in Colorado was high and cool with snow on the ground and not much oxygen in the air. Both bikes and riders were misfiring above 12000 feet. As we dropped down into Utah things started to warm up in the land of canyons and strange rock formations. Moab with its slick rock road blew my mind and is worth a trip all on its own. Fraser introduced us to the delights of on bike air-con. It’s simple, see a hose or a stream, just get in there and get wet. I soon conquered my English reserve and asked for the hose at garages and restaurants. Utah even has ATV tails mapped by the National Geographic Society and graded from ‘picnic’ to ‘impossible in a day’. The last day in Utah saw us re-fuelling at Kanosh (population 386) “last fuel, water and habitation for 140 miles” it said in the road book. We headed out by Black Rock Volcano, up Beaver Bottoms, over Black Rock Pass and into – well nowhere. Someone has even taken the trouble to find imaginative names for the landforms. We passed the Wah Wah Mountains, the Confusion Range, Horse Heaven, Shotgun Knoll, Snake Pass, Middle Mountain (?), and Crystal Peak before crossing the Ferguson Desert to a town called Boarder (population 23) where we stayed the night drinking beer with a trucker and his dog.
 

 
The next day saw us navigating through the barren wastes of Nevada and running out of trail in another place called Nowhere or was it Nothing? Out came the GPS, map and pencil. Yes that’s right we are definitely at a place called Lost. Why worry when you are surrounded by eagles, wild horses, antelope, jack rabbits and, no doubt, the odd native american in the hills. We headed west (because it sounds good and looked easier) until we crossed a jeep track and Eureka yes that’s the name of the town we stayed at that night.
 
Nevada was hot and dusty, and you had to make sure that the hotels did not charge for the rooms by the hour. A sheriff pulled us over for a minor traffic violation but decided that the paper work was beyond him as he wiped the dirt from our number plates and said, “You boys not from round these parts then”. All too soon it was time to head home but not before the immortal words “Just one more lane” were muttered. The last lane was about another 250 miles long and included a large element of ‘make it up as you go along’ and ‘if it looks good ride it’.
 
From Carson City we drove on tar roads to San Francisco and the shipper’s warehouse where we exchanged our bikes for a sheet of A4 paper and the promise that our bikes would be at Thamesport in 5 weeks time. That was the plan and it actually happened.
 
 
Now for the statistics:
·         Planning - 6 cans of Guinness and 2 bottles of red wine
·         Maps – Can you have too many?
·         Punctures - none
·         Offs - a few each; Gold award R Alcock (Greatest drop off the track)
·         Bike failures – one set of split panniers – one smashed rear light- one headlight bulb
·         Smiles – too many to count
·         Cross words – only in the newspaper I think
·         Road kill – not enough for a good pie
·         Best day – each one I rode my bike
·         Worst day – stopping for the night on the way back from Houston in Childress, a dry town on the road to Amarillo ( but we found the local still)
 
 

 
 
 
 
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