Day 1, 415 miles. My plan was to leave around 9am and go to St. George. It's a 6-hour ride, but I also lose an hour because of the time zone change. I was on the road a few minutes after 8:30, and rode fairly continuously to the Mad Greek. I was well past my limit for dealing with the extreme heat- it was about 106 degrees at that point. I was also fighting drowsiness.

I pulled into the Mad Greek and then laid down in a booth in the restaurant. I ended up napping for about 30 minutes. It was a great opportunity for me to cool down and get rid of the drowsy and sick feeling.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, even though I was miserably hot- the temperatures hit at least 112 degrees. I went to Tim's workplace and he showed me around. They grow Germanium ingots using the Czochralski process, which took a while to wrap my brain around. It's an impressive operation.

Day 2, 311 miles. I left Tim's place just after 5:30 Mountain time- that's 4:30 Pacific time, which is what my brain was on! The jaunt was incredibly cold- I wasn't prepared for the extremes in weather, and I never really warmed up.

I got to the rally location before the rall checkpoint closed at 10:10am. I saw some riders loitering and working on their bonus work, then saw that Ken had texted me and went up to the room for a nap.

It was nice to see Ken and see that he was happy. In fact, he was suspiciously happy and sane- I think he was into his second wind, mentally speaking. After napping, I went out and changed oil on both his DL650 and mine. I'd brought very fancy synthetic oil and filters, and Tim had stopped with me the night before for containers and a oil pan stand-in. I was glad the front desk had given me many rags- I probably got as much oil in the collection container as not. Next time: get a funnel.

I also took a look at Ken's chain. He said it was crunchy for most of the rally, and after looking for a while I found the problem- a link was missing its bushing. It still had the inner pin, which held the chain together, but the missing bushing meant the link was significantly longer than the rest of the links. That means it would crunch on the sprockets, especially during changes in speed. Ouch.

Much of the pre-banquet time was taken up with a good BS session out by the bikes. It's one of the things I love about motorcycling- the stories are consistent and the riders are always friendly.

At the banquet, many great stories were told. It was announced Ken was one of four riders who rode over 10,000 miles in 10 days, and he also rode the most miles (10,505.0 miles). Steve then went on to announce the finishing order. Ken was thrilled to win, with a significant margin of points (7%) over Wendy Crockett, the second-place (and very competitive) rider.

Day 3, 704 miles. I knew I had a long day ahead of me, and it was going to get warm. I was on the road just before 5:30 Mountain. My first stop was about 75 minutes into the day when I stopped for breakfast and to warm up. The mesh gear was a poor choice in the pre-dawn Utah weather. I ate a large breakfast, then bought a trashbag style poncho to wear under my gear. At least I wasn't shaking anymore.

My next major stop was outside Scipio, Utah. The sun had come out, and I enjoyed a 30+ minute nap on the side of a country road. Laying in the morning sun helped warm me back up- again, the goal was to eliminate the drowsiness and also to quell some of the body shaking. It worked.

The first major improvement in ambient air temperature occurred as I-15 dropped into the St. George area. Roughly, the state goes from 5000 feet to 3000 feet, and it helped. South of Utah, the interstate drops even further. By the time you cross into Nevada, the elevation is about 1600 feet. It was finally getting warm enough for me to be uncomfortably warm. I stopped for a couple of wikiphotos and removed all of my extra layers of clothes, including the emergency poncho.

The rest of the ride was HOT. Again, it was well over 110 degrees when I was in the Mojave. To make it worse, there were miles of stop-and-go traffic, though it was more stopped than anything. The cause might have been an onramp (it backed up in Primm and again in Baker and Barstow), but I don't know. I lanesplit my way through it- even though I spent dozens of tense miles going 20mph, it was better than being stopped.

The temperatures became reasonable as I got into Los Angeles proper, being "only" in the 80s. That was a welcome change over the 110-116 of the Mojave.