Day 9 – Idaho to Salt Lake City.

Inside my tent at the campsite, I awoke to 25 degree temperatures! Brrrrr!


Actually, “woke” is not the correct term. It was more like, “came to a gradual awareness of my surroundings that included more than thinking, “this is the coldest I have ever been in my life, and trying to sleep in all my clothes including a sweater wrapped around my head is futile” sort of “awakening.” Trying to break down tentpoles while wearing mittens proved to be a challenge. Trying to do it after removing the mitts proved to be a different kind of challenge as I raced to break one down, then put them back on long enough to get some feeling back in my fingers, and repeating the process.

Don opened a new bottle of water, and it froze the moment he opened it.


I found where a bear had been snacking nearby:




Anyway, after a campsite breakdown that took three times longer than normal, we were on the road south again. The temps were, ahhh, brisk and soon I was thanking the ghost of Thomas Edison for electric grips and jacket liners. After only minutes, Don’s voice came over the radio saying, “Something’s wrong—my bike’s only running on one cylinder again.” We headed on into the town of Mackay to grab some breakfast, and do some troubleshooting. My latest technique for picking a place to dine involves looking for a reasonable number of cars or bikes outside a local mom & pop type of eatery. As we pulled into Mackay, the most obvious spot was Amy Lou’s Steakhouse. I poked my head inside to ensure that they served breakfast, and was assaulted by the most wonderful smells. Don and I got inside as soon as we could. The photo on the menu was a little … strange, but we dealt with the strangeness and had a great breakfast.



Out front, afterwards, we poked and prodded but couldn’t figure out the problem.




All we could tell was that exactly opposite the bad spark plug wire symptoms, the bike idled fine, but ran on only one of its two cylinders at any higher rpms. We decided to press on to the nearest big BMW dealer, in Salt Lake City.

The sense of humor of the Idahoans:


We made it to Salt Lake BMW in late afternoon. They didn’t have a part for it, but they did agree to give Don a Loaner bike he could keep until the part came. Reeee-sult! Traveling Utah on someone else’s bike! (Even if it is only a F650CS (cs=city slicker?))


We checked into a Best Western and I started catching up on the blogging.