28.08.10 Yeehah - I'm in Cowboy country

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According to all the weather reports last night, it looked like I was in for a wet ride. Turned out to be spot on, with the rain coming in at about 100 miles into the ride. Somehow I manage to miss the worst of it. According to the guy at the outdoor shop, the rain they had the previous night is the hardest that he's seen in 13 years of living in Pindale.


Even though I missed the most of it, I did get a bit wet. Then I had about 10 miles of roadworks, so the bike's looking a bit dirty. Gotta love having a rental! I have to go back over the same roadworks tomorrow morning, so I guess it'll look worse yet.


When I walked into the hotel this afternoon, I noticed another motorbike rider in the lobby, so said G'day. He said to watch out for the water as he had just dropped his bike. His bike was pretty much OK, just some bark off, but he banged up his knee pretty bad. So much so that he rang his wife to come pick him up. Thing is, his wife is in Colorado which he reckons is 500 miles (800 kms) away - he had a bit of a wait in front of him.


Pinedale is a small town - very much a cowboy town - ratio of SUV's to normal cars has gone up from 1:1 to 3:1 (according to my educated estimation). At one stage I saw a Prius and thought he must get a lot of grief from his mates, then I saw that it had Kansas plates on it. Didn't thnk he'd be a local.


One other thing I forgot to mention, both Idaho and Wyoming have interesting safety requirements for motorcycles. It basically consists of bandana (or cap), sunglasses, jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. ie. no helmets. It's one of the weirder things I've seen. I don't know how they go with all the rain that's been around. The rain would have to sting if nothing else.


There's a mega store here in Pinedale. It's a full on supermarket, a deli that serves hot soup and sandwiches, a drug store (Pharmacy), bottlo, hardware store, sports store and gun shop - all under the one roof! Had a bit of a squiz at the guns, but didn't want to look too closely in case I got tempted :)


Overheard this guy talking to a shop owner about his mountain bike ride from Canada to Washington. He's riding a dual suspension mountain bike with only a bivvy bag for sleeping in (A bivvy bag is basically just a cover for the sleeping bag - no tent). He's aiming to do 100 miles per day. Pretty good going, given a portion of it is off-road!


One last thing for the day. When I spoke of the twisties on the second day, I should put some perspective around it. One of the roads is called Rattlesnake Grade. It has something like 200 corners in 10 or 20 miles. Pretty sweet stuff.


'nuff for now, Cheers.