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Jake and Omar
- , by Eagle Leather
- 5 min reading time
Jake and Omar
August 12, 2011
DAY ONERoad trip start about 830, we head into Sumner to fuel up then took the back roads to the valley freeway until we reached highway 18 cutoff although Gary was riding right past it when I hollered over the CB (we have headsets)… I asked him where he was headed he said he looking for the highway 18 exit, DUH!
As we traveled towards Kent we hit some low clouds so I was glad I pulled on my leathers at the house… by the time we got to Tiger Mountain the sun was shinning again, it never stopped until sunset here in Libby MT…
The route as noted was really an excellent choice with the weather right around 85 degrees until we dipped into the valley just before sulfur spring at that point someone turned up the hear, I could have used a cooler jacket, something other than my denim jacket to keep the sun from baking my red-haired-pale skin... also puffy pants to the list of thing I would like to have to keep my junk comfy.
We rode through Coulee City, in to Spokane then up the 95 to Bonner's Ferry, took a hard right towards Libby when someone turned heat way day... although I could feel the heat radiating off of the back of my neck the coolness brought some relief...
I found myself struggling with the tunes most of the day... i have XM radio which worked fine outside of the tall trees, valley's and mountains... i had my ipod wired to my AUX port but the head set just wasn't close enough to my ears to give me good quality sound, I wonder if a 3/4 helmet with a face shield to keep the rain off of my face would work better?
Funny thing... I found myself making comments to Omar about this and that, his rebuttal was almost always ''Yes it is!'' so I started counting, I'm up to 33 of those for the 473 mile stretch... I'm guessing these at least that many a day for the rest of the trip! Diggin' these headsets...
Day TWO
We left Libby the home town of my racquetball partner Steve Hartmann, born and raised there… took the horse shoe championship rating right from under his pop at the age of 17…
The temperature at the bank was showing 54 degrees I opted for my leather coat and jeans from the start but an hour out of town I pulled over to put on my chaps and heavy gloves… along the route we pulled over to stop for the rain clouds as it seemed we were chasing them into Kalispell… the roads were damp but not soaked.., you could smell the road… Happy to have Rain Gear once again...
Just outside of town was a small restaurant called ‘Bo jangles’ so we stopped there for some grub… it was still pretty cool so I left the garb on for the time being… while we pondered the ominous dark clouds east of us we asked the waitress if any of them knew what the conditions at Logan’s pass were… one little cutie suggested dialing 511 so we did so… overcast with rain… I left the decision to Omar since I had ridden over the road to the sun, he opted out… we followed the 83 out of Kalispell along flathead lake, it was a nice ride, sunny skies… too many bugs, I think if I had that ½ or ¾ helmet with a face mask I would have needed peel-offs due to the spattering of insects on my glasses! Gear Bucketlist addition noted...
By the time we got to Seely lake it was warm enough for denim jackets only… meaning we removed the leather not all of our clothes ‘except’ for our denim coats… oddly the honies young and old were thick in this little tourist trap like town, I talking 8, 9 and 9.5’s of all ages, it was a shame to leave…
Further down the road we hit the outskirts of Helena when the O-Man spotted a place for a cold beverage… it was good to relive the keester for a spell while we had a couple of beers… we finished there about 1pm following the 12 out of town towards Harlowton… about 10 miles from Helena we ran into construction, a pilot car we had to follow for miles at which time Omar said ‘’I have to pee, bad!’’ a few more miles of that before we took a right onto a dirt road… I stepped behind a tree while he kept lookout, then it was his turn… about mid-stream some old grandma type rounded the corner and spotted Omar wang-chunging on the tree… she snickered, hooted then drove by at a slow pace laughing out loud...
After we fueled up in Townsend I followed my GPS (from my cell) when all of a sudden we were headed onto a dirt road… so without further ado I made a decision, good, bad or other… miles later were ere on the 90 headed east dodging some big clouds… somewhere around reed point I downloaded the weather channel app… spied a dark rainy cloud the size of Washington headed our way… roughly 6 showers later we were idling into Billings to get a room for the evening…
That’s the day in a nutshell…
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