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August 12, 2014
Day 25 - Vancouver, B.C. to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (Tue 8/12/14)
(Tue 8/12/14)
Update: I am alive and well and resting peacefully in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
Starting Odometer: 23,333
Ending Odometer: 23,784
Miles Driven Today: 451 miles
Miles Driven This Trip: 9,131
Miles from Home: 1,072
Here's a map of roughly where I drove today.
In the morning, I wake up and look outside, and it's raining. Like, we had such spectacular weather for the last 3-4 days, that I'd forgotten about rain. But the parking lot looks like a suicide hotline of pain and dull grey days. This is the Pacific Northwest. The most dreary weather on the planet.
Check the forecast for Vancouver, Seattle, and Spokane. Everything says rain, rain, rain. But the forecast is the same for the rest of the week. The nice thing about riding a bike all day in the rain is that you realize it can be done. Depending on how hard it's raining, of course. But in a light rain, sure....you can drive in it all day if you have to. Plus, at least it's warm now. It's not 37 degrees F like in Coldfoot, Wiseman, Deadhorse, and Prudhoe Bay.
This is sort of a warm, damp Pacific Northwest type of day. Like...ok....I'll get wet, but I won't melt, and I won't freeze to death.
I program my GPS before I leave the parking lot. I've learned this little trick. Once you drive 15 miles the wrong way right out of the gate, you learn to set the GPS before you even start the engine.
Roll out of the parking lot in a light rain, gas up at the corner, and now rolling towards the USA border. Smoking hot chick with a blonde pony on a little Suzuki motorcycle pulls up beside me at a light. Smoking hot. It's a little Harley clone I've never seen before. I compliment her on it. She's clearly not interested, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right?
So now we're rolling south towards the U.S. border...there's signs that we can cross at the Pacific Crossing, or one further west. The delay at the Pacific Crossing is 40 minutes. The other one is an hour.
"We should take this crossing, right? The wait is shorter, it says?" I offer.
"Oh...well....I don't have to wait. I'm a 'Trusted Traveler', so I drive right across," she explains.
Just my luck, of course. I'll have to wait for 40 minutes in the rain. That's going to suck. But it is what it is. It will be nice to be back in the USA, where you can actually pay at the pumps again.
The border guard tells me to take off my helmet. Asks me my plate number. Like...trust me I have no clue what my license plate number is. Like...you're telling me you don't have a camera that shows it to you? That's hard to believe.
"Why did you go to Canada?"
"I drove up to Deadhorse, Alaska."
"Why did you do that?" he wants to know.
"Because I could?" Like, I get this question a lot. It's not like there's any real reason that I did it, but it was something I felt like doing, so I did it. That's the best reason I can come up with.
He laughs, and waves me through. Now that I'm back in the USA, gas won't cost an arm-and-a-leg anymore. So that will be nice.
I really don't know where to go next. Part of me wants to wander down the Pacific Coast to San Francisco. I've done this ride many times. It's beautiful, but also, part of me feels that I need to wrap up this endless road show. I feel like it's time to go home. I talked to Ben about this. He's sort of of the same opinion. We've both been on the road for about 3 weeks. It seems like it's time to wrap this thing up.
I consider eating lunch in Seattle, but I really don't know Seattle. Like, I couldn't find the waterfront without a compass, and the traffic on I-5 is a nightmare, so I make an audible and decide to shut this nightmare down, set the Garmin Montana 600 GPS for Morrison, Colorado and start making tracks. My best estimate is that I'm about 1,300 miles from home, meaning I can be home in 3 days if I run 500 miles a day.
The guys I met on the road convinced me that I should be able to drive 500-600 miles a day without much difficulty, and now it's time to make tracks.
I'm wandering east across Washington on I-90, through the Cascades. I don't even take any pictures. I've packed away all of my cameras except for my iPhone and my GoPro. Now, we're rolling down out of the Cascades and down into the arid deserts of the Columbia basin.
This is where my buddy Mark was buried...in Wilbur, Washington. He was a good guy. Knew his wife and kids. Then, he was working out at a gym about 20 years ago and he had an aneurism just let go, and that was that. One minute he was pumping iron, and the next minute, they were saying he "couldn't have any visitors at this time", which is code, apparently, for "the dude you're asking about it deceased". So, Fritz and I flew out here for his funeral. We watched his kids let balloons go in the sky when they buried him...as a way of releasing their father...of letting go. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen.
Fritz and I drove to the Grand Coulee Dam. But that was 20 years ago. And now, I'm back, driving across the deserts of eastern Washington, amped up on a shot of 5-Hour Energy, making audio recordings on my iPhone in the "KTM Studio". I stick my iPhone inside my helmet, and record voice memos while I'm driving down the road. I hold it against my helmet with my chin. So, I'm making these recordings, driving across the desert, when I look behind me and see the most massive storm approaching that I've ever witnessed in my life. An enormous thunderhead climbs 10,000 feet into the sky - dark, ominous grey wall rises into the stratosphere, and before the storm, a massive cloud of dust races across the desert like a scene from the rapture. I'm expecting the 4 horses of the apocalypse to come riding down at any point. It's bearing down on me at an unbelievable speed, and I'm trapped before it....pinned to the desert like a laboratory insect. I'm going to have to outrun this thing if I'm going to live. I put away my cell phone and get ready to make a run for my life. Fuck the police. I want to live. And I open the throttle, running triple digits up the interstate, surfing the storm's winds across the desert.
Interstate 90 runs north-east into Spokane. For some reason, the storm is coming in from the south, which is hard to understand. Their weather should go from west to east. I checked the forecast for today, but everywhere I looked said rain. So, when I made it out of Canada with only a very light rainy mist, and got through Seattle without a drop, I started to think I was home free.
I'm driving down I-90 heading east across the Columbia Basin when I first noticed the storm forming to the south. I'm stopping, and taking pictures of it at first, not realizing that my life is in grave danger, initially. At first, it just sort of looked like a rain storm, but I'm thinking that I'll skirt it to the north. Storms move east here. I'm fine. But, as I continue across the Columbia Basin, I realize that, for reasons I'm having a hard time understanding, the storm is, in fact, bearing down on me at something like 70 mph.
Now, probably you've never been caught out in a massive storm on a motorcycle, but it's not fun. I mean, sure...I have rain gear, but if it's raining so hard you can't see, then you can't drive down the road.
So I pack away all of my electronics, and then start racing down I-90 east-bound like a low-flying plane. Like....seriously...fuck this....this storm is death on a hairy biscuit. If the cops want to write me a ticket, then I'll demand he let me in the back seat to ride out the storm. This is survival at this point. I'm not joking. This is the worst storm I've ever seen in my life with my own eyes. Like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster movie.
As I'm racing north-east down I-90, it starts to rain. Somehow, it's overtaking me ever an 100 mph. I pull under a bridge/overpass to collect my thoughts. I really don't want to die today. I've had 2 near-death experiences in the last 2 days. It's starting to look less-and-less likely that I'll ever live to see my home again.
I dunno how I get myself into these situations....I really don't. I checked the forecast. I set the GPS straight for home...take me home to Morrison, Colorado. I got up early....got rolling at about 10:30 a.m. Got 100 miles in before noon. I'm doing everything right.
I stop every 100 miles for gas, and to stretch my legs. This is what you're supposed to do. I am, in theory, a seasoned motorcycle adventure rider, if such a thing exists. And yet, here I am, stuck under a bridge, riding out a massive storm.
The safe play is to sit tight, wait for the storm to pass, and then limp into Spokane like a whipped dog in the night.
Then I have another thought. I'm think I'm still ahead of the storm, but just temporarily under a very light band of rain. I think I can still outrun it. So I break out from under the bridge, hell-bent-for-leather. Running like a scalded dog up the interstate towards Spokane.
After I've gone about a mile or so, the rain lets up and I drive out of the rain band. I was right about the storm. I am still ahead of it. I'm so excited to be alive. I'm shaking my fist at the sky, and the guy in the truck beside me doesn't get it. He looks at me like a lunatic. Fuck him. Like I give a crap what he thinks. Freaking moron.
Now, I roll into Spokane, glad to be alive. Stop for gas. Gas up. So nice to be back in the United States where you can pay at the pumps, without having to go inside 14 times to sign your life away, guessing at how much the gas will be, and then praying that the pump refunds your money they way they claim it works. All lies and scams I'm sure.
Now, some guys here at the gas station are pouring gas into little red fire extinguisher-looking canisters.
"What are y'all doing there?"
"We're taking samples of the gas they're selling for Conoco," they reply.
"Aha. Sort of an audit of the process. Let's see what it is that they're selling here. Clever."
It's only like 30 miles to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which is sort of arguably my goal. I want to get as far down the road as I can today. And if it's still daylight, and it's not raining, then I'm moving on.
Back out onto I-90 heading east...ever east...Now rolling across the border into Idaho. So strange to be back in the United States. To be back in civilization with Wal-Marts and motorcycle dealers and car dealerships and urban sprawl. I really don't like riding on the interstates, but I've been on the road for so long. And the speed limit is 70 mph on the interstates so...
Now, as I come into Coeur d'Alene, it's about dusk-thirty. Ahead of me looks like something...rain? I can't say for sure. Looks like the same storm might be coming up from the south. I really, really, really don't want to drive into that storm. Pass by a few hotels, and a Motel 6 with a rate posted outside. I pass a few other hotels, and now the rain starts. Do a quick exit, cross over interstate, now backtracking west-bound...running from the rain again. Roll into the Motel 6 parking lot as the rain starts. The winds blow my gear off the bike. I struggle to get it all out of the rain and on a bench under the overhang.
Check in for the night. I get the last room in the place. The next people that pull up are turned away. She says that she was on the same interstate as me, and got caught in the storm. She couldn't even see outside her car windows once the haboob hit.
"I was trying to pull over...to get off the interstate and just park....but I couldn't tell if I was off the road or not. I couldn't see outside the car windows. I was afraid we'd get hit from behind. Once it cleared though, I realized I was off the interstate at an exit ramp. We couldn't see outside the car. There were a ton of wrecks all up and down the road."
Somehow, I came through this nightmare smelling like a rose. We'll call this "Near Death Experience #3", in as many days. I really don't like how this return trip is shaping up. I clearly should have just shipped the bike home from Alaska, and flown back to Denver. But no...I wanted to be tough and drive it back.
I feel like someone up there doesn't want me to make it back home. The trip back has been harrowing.
Every time I stop, I check my tire pressure with my hands, scared to death that my tires will fail again and send me careening all over the road. I cringe every time I drive through an intersection, deathly afraid some housewife will turn in front of me. And if I never see a haboob again, it will be too soon.
Eat dinner next door at JB's. After the storm passes, I'm walking around like a rape-crime victims. Like a soldier with PTSD. I still can't believe what happened. I'm walking around wearing my riding gear, because that's who I am. I'm a motorcycle soldier. I should carry my helmet with me also, for the full effect. I love the riding gear because, it makes you feel like the most bad-ass dude to ever walk the planet. You're wearing all this gear with pads in it...you can't help but puff out your chest and walk around like a pigeon. Dressed like an astronaut, of course. It gets attention, for sure.
Instead of people thinking you have gas, they see the riding gear and ask "which bike is yours?"
"Mine's the little pink one hiding under the stairs there in the corner."
It's becoming increasingly difficult to see these last 3 days as a series of disconnected events. That's 3 days in a row that I had a near death experience. Like...this storm...you really can't imagine what it was like, and how close I came to getting caught up in it. I shot video with my GoPro while I was running from it. I'll post the video after I quit shaking.
I'm wandering aimlessly around in the parking lot. Shaken. Stirred. Grieving. Lost. Gnawing on my fingers like a psychopath.
A church group pulls up in two buses, spilling kids into the parking lot. They were in the storm, camping, near Ritzville, when it hit. Blew away all their tents. Put a 40 foot tree down on their campsite. It's a miracle no one was killed. They packed up their shit and rolled into Coeur d'Alene looking for shelter.
I'm just wandering around like a meth addict. I seriously question whether I'll survive this journey. I feel like this one is a bridge too far. Every day seems to hold another catastrophe. I'm not sure I want to know what's behind door number 4.
Videos of me running from the storm:
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
http://www.khq.com/story/4927996/dust-storm-takes-north-idaho-by-storm
http://www.krem.com/news/slideshows/Storm-drums-up-giant-dust-cloud-in-Ritzville-270999841.html
Posted by Rob Kiser on August 12, 2014 at 8:28 PM
Comments
Dust storm a blowin'
Helmeted mirthless rider
Eat MY dust, haboob
Posted by: tlr on August 22, 2014 at 7:29 AM
That's right! This was between Ritzville, WA and Spokane, WA. I beat the storm to Spokane, and then made it as far as Cour d'Alene, Idaho (another 30 miles) before the storm caught me and I got a room for the night. People were coming into the parking lot asking, not if we had rooms for the night...they were asking if we had electricity.
Posted by: Rob Kiser 
on August 22, 2014 at 3:06 PM