We only had 175km to cover to a little place called Rachel from Tonopah.
I had spent the previous day at Tonopah messing about with Megan's bike. It's developed an issue with the chain that had been a problem of sorts since British Columbia.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think the chain has a stuck link in it, and it's making a crunching noise as it goes through the front sprockets. I tightened the chain, loosened the chain, tightened the chain again. Flooded the chain with 1/2 a can of WD-40 on the side of the highway. (so I wouldn't make a mess of the hotel car park.)
I bought a scrubbing brush and ran the bike in first on the centre stand to clean off a lot of the black gunk. It cleaned up pretty well, but still made the crunching noise. I even went and bought a tape measure (in stupid inches of course!) and measured the distance between the axle bolt and the swing arm bolt and they were identical on both sides. This meant that the chain was definitely running true. Exhausted, pissed off and filthy, I flooded the chain with more WD-40 and let it sit overnight.
Next morning I took the bike for a ride, and it still wasn't sorted. I backed the chain off a little which lessened the grinding sound, and then got cleaned up to ride. We're going to have to make arrangements to get a new chain and sprockets somewhere.
We packed up the bikes late, as we only had a two hour ride to a place called Rachel at the start of route 357 - The Extraterrestrial Highway.
We rode through the "'burbs of Tonopah" (if you could call them that) and then it felt like we had finally arrived in the desert proper. The vegetation dropped to tiny bushes, and the land opened up flat and wide, with dead straight roads that went on and on for kilometers into the distance. We passed a turn off for the "Tonopah Test Range" which had a cool looking rocket on a pole out the front of the turn off.
Pretty soon we were only 20km from Rachel, and we topped a small ridge and rode down the biggest straight we had seen yet. about 5/8th of the way down I could just make out a few buildings - and that was Rachel.
Rachel was put on the map by films like 'Independence Day' and 'Paul', especially the little diner there called the Little A'le'Inn (little alien). There is a time capsule there marked with the Independence Day logo (ID4) to be opened in 2050 (at which time a pile of 'old shit' will be tipped out on the ground), and loads of Alien, UFO, and Air force 'skunkworks' photos and merchandise around the place.
The SR71 Blackbird features heavily, with signed photos of the test pilots to the owners of the Inn. Rachel is right on the door step of Area 51, where the US air force develops its top secret stuff, like the blackbird and the U2 spy plane.... and where alien technology is studied from the crash - if you believe all the evidence.
The Little Alien also has simple cabins out the back, and we checked into our after some lunch and a beer. It had been really hot that afternoon, and it finally felt like the desert.
At about 2:00pm, the cabin suddenly shook and we heard a tremendous low-bass rumble, like distant thunder on steroids. I had just heard my first Sonic Boom. Going outside, I head and saw Jets flying over, one looking like it was performing evasive manoeuvers. The jets were really high and hard to make out. Rachel sits approximately 40 miles from the Area 51 strip, and so it's easy for them to get some altitude before flying over the general populous.
In any case, the jets (about 4 of them) seemed to be pissing about in pairs, and we heard 4 more sonic booms before I decided to go and find what is known as the 'Back Gate' to Area51 about 20 miles away.
Leaving Rachel, you turn south for about 2kms and then turn onto a dirt road called 'Back Gate Rd' in google maps, or 'Nellis Range Rd' in a Garmin GPS. It's loose gravel for about 12km, and then it runs to Tar. Just before I hit the tar, I saw a white van in the distance up ahead, and I sped up to 90 on the dirt try and catch up to it. I'm not sure why I did, but I had some weird though that maybe I could lookup the rego plate or something... but I grew up watching X-files... so not surprising really. Anyway - he made it to the tar before me and flogged it, and by the time I rolled up to the back entrance, he had already passed through the boom gate and I didn't want to get too close - fearing a .223 round from an AR-15 might ruin my bike jacket.
I did a U-turn at a non-threatening distance, took some photos, (even though the signs say not to). I spent a few moments looking up at the Jets, as they were a bit lower here, but I still couldn't identify them. One looked like it had a delta wing and a T-tail, but I only got a glimpse of it.
Feeling I had pushed my luck enough, I jumped back on the bike and got out of there.
The ride back was un-eventful, I did not lose any time, black out, see strange beings, helicopters, a solitary man smoking in the shadows, non-descript vans, black goo, shape shifters, or a one handed Agent Krycek. (unfortunately)
The temp steadily climbed in the afternoon, and we headed over to the Inn for a couple of beers with dinner, before retiring early to our shit hole- I mean cabin.
About 11 that night, the Jets came over again, this time there were at least 8, with 4 of them breaking off in pairs with their Nav lights on, and 4 others with no lights which were hard to make out, except when they bumped the throttle into the re-heat (afterburner) range, and you could clearly make out the engine blast in the sky.
I guess they were running missile drills or something, because both the aggressor (lights off) and non-aggressor aircraft dropped flares, which looked amazing. After a while, they buggered off somewhere else and I went back to bed, only to be woken up by more sonic booms around midnight.
Next morning we left early to ride the rest of the extra-terrestrial highway, and our next port of call to a place called St George in Utah.
I had spent the previous day at Tonopah messing about with Megan's bike. It's developed an issue with the chain that had been a problem of sorts since British Columbia.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think the chain has a stuck link in it, and it's making a crunching noise as it goes through the front sprockets. I tightened the chain, loosened the chain, tightened the chain again. Flooded the chain with 1/2 a can of WD-40 on the side of the highway. (so I wouldn't make a mess of the hotel car park.)
I bought a scrubbing brush and ran the bike in first on the centre stand to clean off a lot of the black gunk. It cleaned up pretty well, but still made the crunching noise. I even went and bought a tape measure (in stupid inches of course!) and measured the distance between the axle bolt and the swing arm bolt and they were identical on both sides. This meant that the chain was definitely running true. Exhausted, pissed off and filthy, I flooded the chain with more WD-40 and let it sit overnight.
Next morning I took the bike for a ride, and it still wasn't sorted. I backed the chain off a little which lessened the grinding sound, and then got cleaned up to ride. We're going to have to make arrangements to get a new chain and sprockets somewhere.
We packed up the bikes late, as we only had a two hour ride to a place called Rachel at the start of route 357 - The Extraterrestrial Highway.
We rode through the "'burbs of Tonopah" (if you could call them that) and then it felt like we had finally arrived in the desert proper. The vegetation dropped to tiny bushes, and the land opened up flat and wide, with dead straight roads that went on and on for kilometers into the distance. We passed a turn off for the "Tonopah Test Range" which had a cool looking rocket on a pole out the front of the turn off.
Pretty soon we were only 20km from Rachel, and we topped a small ridge and rode down the biggest straight we had seen yet. about 5/8th of the way down I could just make out a few buildings - and that was Rachel.
Rachel was put on the map by films like 'Independence Day' and 'Paul', especially the little diner there called the Little A'le'Inn (little alien). There is a time capsule there marked with the Independence Day logo (ID4) to be opened in 2050 (at which time a pile of 'old shit' will be tipped out on the ground), and loads of Alien, UFO, and Air force 'skunkworks' photos and merchandise around the place.
The SR71 Blackbird features heavily, with signed photos of the test pilots to the owners of the Inn. Rachel is right on the door step of Area 51, where the US air force develops its top secret stuff, like the blackbird and the U2 spy plane.... and where alien technology is studied from the crash - if you believe all the evidence.
The Little Alien also has simple cabins out the back, and we checked into our after some lunch and a beer. It had been really hot that afternoon, and it finally felt like the desert.
At about 2:00pm, the cabin suddenly shook and we heard a tremendous low-bass rumble, like distant thunder on steroids. I had just heard my first Sonic Boom. Going outside, I head and saw Jets flying over, one looking like it was performing evasive manoeuvers. The jets were really high and hard to make out. Rachel sits approximately 40 miles from the Area 51 strip, and so it's easy for them to get some altitude before flying over the general populous.
In any case, the jets (about 4 of them) seemed to be pissing about in pairs, and we heard 4 more sonic booms before I decided to go and find what is known as the 'Back Gate' to Area51 about 20 miles away.
Leaving Rachel, you turn south for about 2kms and then turn onto a dirt road called 'Back Gate Rd' in google maps, or 'Nellis Range Rd' in a Garmin GPS. It's loose gravel for about 12km, and then it runs to Tar. Just before I hit the tar, I saw a white van in the distance up ahead, and I sped up to 90 on the dirt try and catch up to it. I'm not sure why I did, but I had some weird though that maybe I could lookup the rego plate or something... but I grew up watching X-files... so not surprising really. Anyway - he made it to the tar before me and flogged it, and by the time I rolled up to the back entrance, he had already passed through the boom gate and I didn't want to get too close - fearing a .223 round from an AR-15 might ruin my bike jacket.
I did a U-turn at a non-threatening distance, took some photos, (even though the signs say not to). I spent a few moments looking up at the Jets, as they were a bit lower here, but I still couldn't identify them. One looked like it had a delta wing and a T-tail, but I only got a glimpse of it.
Feeling I had pushed my luck enough, I jumped back on the bike and got out of there.
The ride back was un-eventful, I did not lose any time, black out, see strange beings, helicopters, a solitary man smoking in the shadows, non-descript vans, black goo, shape shifters, or a one handed Agent Krycek. (unfortunately)
The temp steadily climbed in the afternoon, and we headed over to the Inn for a couple of beers with dinner, before retiring early to our shit hole- I mean cabin.
About 11 that night, the Jets came over again, this time there were at least 8, with 4 of them breaking off in pairs with their Nav lights on, and 4 others with no lights which were hard to make out, except when they bumped the throttle into the re-heat (afterburner) range, and you could clearly make out the engine blast in the sky.
I guess they were running missile drills or something, because both the aggressor (lights off) and non-aggressor aircraft dropped flares, which looked amazing. After a while, they buggered off somewhere else and I went back to bed, only to be woken up by more sonic booms around midnight.
Next morning we left early to ride the rest of the extra-terrestrial highway, and our next port of call to a place called St George in Utah.
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| Tonopah Test Range Sign. |
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| Looks like the kind of road where you might see a UFO right? |
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| The long straight down to Rachel |
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| The Little Alien Cafe/Diner |
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| My trusty steed at the Area 51 back gate. note the cameras, lights and other 'stuff' on poles |
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| Extraterrestrial Highway Sign. |
thats one flightpath i would love to be under!
ReplyDeleteit was pretty awesome
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