(Day 17) I crossed eastward out of Utah and rode the 225 miles to Gunnison, Colorado, before the changing sky urged me to check in with NOAA once again. There was no panic in the afternoon update, but my area was definitely in the caution zone for evening snow. Forty-five miles ahead of me to the east of Gunnison, sitting high on the Continental Divide, eleven-thousand feet up in the Sawatch Range of mountains my trek along U.S. Route 50 would take me through Monarch Pass.
I’ve already described my cowardly approach to risk-taking, so you won’t be surprised to hear I sought some local knowledge. Squarely facing the prospect of an early end to the riding day, I was sitting in the parking lot of tidy looking motel with an attractive room rate posted on its marquee. I went into the office, and the cheerful proprietress looked at me, she looked at Scarlet and then back to me. “You headed east or west,” she asked. “East,” I told her. “I was hoping to make it to Salida.” That was another twenty miles beyond The Pass.
She clenched her teeth and looked me right in the eye. “I wouldn’t make that run this evening,” she told me. “And I drive a jeep… with four snow tires.”
That’s local knowledge. She gave me five bucks off the room rate and a coupon worth ten percent off at the diner down the street… she owned that, too.
My 8 AM wake-up call didn’t come through as scheduled, and after I had dressed and packed up for the road, I walked out to the front desk. Before I could even ask, she said, “You told me about your two cold nights on the ground at Arches. You looked like you needed the sleep. And there was no point in waking you up.”
My face must have asked the obvious. She said, “The pass took a blow last night and won’t be open ’til noon.” I got there at 12:30.
I covered the remaining 145 miles back to Pueblo in a little under three hours and got there in plenty of time to take Mary Colletti out to dinner.
And with that final adventurous event safely recorded in this saga, I will without hesitation or shame exercise the right and privilege of the exhausted writer to fall back on previously reported data to bring us the full 360 degrees of this “circle tour.” The following summation was written in just these words way back in the opening segment of this seven-part account (The Ride of a Late-lifetime,) and I repeat them here:
In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that it was never my plan to ride my motorcycle from Georgia to California and back again. I didn’t have the time, the money, or the geographic curiosity even to consider it. Therefore, I remain deeply grateful for the generous hospitality of a friend. Mary Colletti provided a base camp at her home in Pueblo, Colorado, from which I could launch a long circle-tour of the southwest. So, for the first three days–1,500 miles outbound from Atlanta to Pueblo–Scarlet O’Honda and I traveled in relative comfort. The Gold Wing rode on my motorcycle trailer, which I pulled behind my Chevy van through parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.
We returned–another two days and 1,500 miles–from Colorado to Georgia the same way, but by a more northerly route that included Kansas. The van’s odometer recorded 3,142 miles over a total of five travel days. Interestingly, Scarlet O’Honda’s odometer clocked a similar 3,022 miles during seventeen days in the mountains and deserts of the southwest. That’s 6,164 miles in twenty-two days. About as close as I can come to my “three week” plan without slam-damn nailing it.
Thank you for riding with me. I would love to hear from you with any questions or comments about this important period in my days as The Late-Life Biker.
Late-life Biker 