Trip Report Day 18: Las Vegas, NV to Burbank, CA

Date:  Sunday, September 5, 2010
Start: 1130 (1000 wake-up)

Finish: 1900

Travel Time: 7.5 hrs

Distance: 276 miles

Total Distance Covered: 5215 miles

The last day was upon us.  We woke, some of us foggier than others, and made our way through the typical morning motions of clean up, pack up, eat up, maintenance checks, followed by fuel up, followed by Cowboy up for your last day on the road, all the while Goda and Timmy had the unenviable task of recounting what actually happened only a few short hours ago.

This was a surreal sort of morning.  We left only 18 days ago, but it might as well have been a year ago.  It felt like our lives had become redefined by these morning rituals, and these hours spent on our bikes with the hum of the road, or the crunching dirt and rock sound of the trail beneath us.  Our sole focus: making our miles for the day in one piece.  Some nights were in tents with the cool rocky mountain breezes, or the tapping of rain on our fly.  Others were in road-side motels with air conditioning and rerun sitcoms playing on TVs as we drifted off.  Each day was its own mission, its own purpose, and that purpose was simple, yet entirely involving.  We moved without thinking, and often without words, it was routine at this point. 

That started to change when we fueled up.  The last stretch of road was mere moments away from us and we were a mix of excited, and regretful.  On one hand, we were 276 miles from completing the largest undertaking of our lives, on the other, we'd be back to reality, back to jobs and bills and responsibilities...  back to stresses and problems that pale in comparison to "not riding off a cliff", or "not flipping your bike, breaking a leg, or dying in a fiery crash"  Life was about to happen to us again.  Not necessarily "Living", but life... 

BLEH !!! 

Having been through what we had, though, this last paltry 276 miles was meant to be a breeze.  It was a trip I’ve made a dozen times, and there was no navigation and no uneven trails or hundred foot drops to deal with.  It was a straight shot of highway from here to home.  Simple. 

This was our first mistake of the day.  The road out of Vegas was crowded with the typical Sunday morning traffic.  You had your local folks getting to and from, and you had your Angelino’s retreating back to LA, either entirely defeated by the house, or perhaps up a bit and feeling good…  Either way, they were leaving with a weekend’s worth of memories, and no desire whatsoever to be on the road for 4 – 6 hours.  Overall, they were a lot like us.  Save for one small detail.  They were obliviously plodding along in the aerodynamic, cabin-cooled comfort of a car, and we were being blown in all directions by inexplicable gale-force winds.  Did I mention it was hot as hell again?!

That’s right for the third time this trip we were leaning 30 degrees into crazy strong winds that made high speed navigation a pipe dream.  AND for the second time this trip, we were sitting in the middle of the Mojave desert covered from head to toe in moto armor.  It was meant to be quick, simple and sweet, but it was turning out to be another adventure.  We wouldn’t have it any other way.  We exclaimed over our helmet comms and pushed on, head to wind, for the next hour and half. 

The winds were whipping things in every direction, trying their damnedest to whip us off of our iron horses.  They failed at that, but if you were tracking us on our website, you might think otherwise.  About 40 minutes out of town the wind loosened up the top of Goda’s tank bag, and our spot tracker took a dive at about 60 mph on the freeway.  It disintegrated into pieces, and with it, our progress online abruptly ended.  If you were following our tracking site, you’d see that we made it a few miles out of town and then disappeared from the map completely.  Only a last known position would be displayed…  No updates showing our inchworm like progress across the map.  No more stalker like moments of realizing that we’d gone another 10 miles and were travelling at “x” miles per hour…  The whole trip ended in a dot on the side of the 15West…  ?!  We thought it’d be good to send a quick update to a few loved ones so as not to panic anyone, and we pushed on. 

After about 90 minutes, the winds died down and we could ride like normal human beings again.  We endured more heat, but for better or worse the next 200 miles or so would be largely uneventful.  When we saw the last highway connection coming up we decided to play it safe and stop to fuel up.  We had done this 45-50 times in the last 18 days by my calculations, but this was a stop unlike the others.  It was the last one of the trip.  We ran through the motions of ripping off our gloves, dismounting our tank bags, producing credit cards and pumping gas like a couple of robots.  Before getting back on the road, we stopped for a quick snack and Chris looked at me and said, “ This is it dude…  a few more miles and were done…”  I looked on with not much to say.  What could I say.  He was right, this was our last stop.  In about an hour or so, we’d be right back where we started 18 days and 5,215 miles ago.  It was at once an enormous relief, and an equally enormous let down.  I was excited to see Britt again, to sleep in my own bed, and shower…  regularly…  but the colors were starting to dim a bit.  The tastes were beginning to dull…  we’d been living for these few days in the moment, and that long and wonderful moment was about to die. 

We chatted a bit more, finished our snacks, plugged in the tunes and hit the last stretch of road for the last time on the trip.  In no time we found ourselves in the infamous LA traffic as we tore down the 210 freeway.  It was all ending so fast, we wanted to savor it just a bit more.  I popped on the helmet comms and broke through to Goda's headset interrupting his steady Mp3 stream. 

“Dude…  wanna take a detour?”

“Yeah man, let’s do it.”

We took the exit for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and weaved our way through the neighborhoods and to the hills for our last taste of moto-bound scenery.  As we wound up and over the Pasadena/La Canada/Flintridge hills, the sun was just starting to hover over the horizon.  The air was cooling and a mellow light permeated the sky.  We crested to see a gorgeous pre-sun-set view and began our decent into Glendale.  We didn’t say much.  We just leaned into the turns a little too eagerly, and shot down the straights maybe a little too fast.  It was a tiny reprieve from the inevitable, but it was enough. 

Two or three turns later, we pulled into the driveway where it all began.  The door kicked open and Brit was smiling and ready to greet us with hugs and a cold drink.  We laughed and told her about the last day’s adventure.  We snapped one last picture, and sent one last tweet that the trip was officially over.  In a few minutes we’d be sitting in a restaurant recounting our favorite moments, trying to put it all into perspective.  Who knows… Maybe a year from this day we’ll still be doing the same thing. 

Roads to Rockies had officially come to an end. Of course we'd always have the memories of the trip, but this seemed to go a little further than that.  It seems to me that each of us had left some part of ourselves out there in those miles of road and rock.  And so, a part of each of us will always be on that trip.

Here's a final summary of our actual route.

/s/ Yobo