There’s really not that much to tell about my last day. I slept somewhat fitfully that night and every time I got up checked the weather. Rain – thunderstorms – and a lot of yellow and red on the weather radar. I got up around 6:30 and grabbed a quick bite to eat at the fine hotel breakfast (included with room!) and decided that there was a small window of little to no rain coming and that I’d make a run over to the local WalMart for better rain gear. And anti-fog stuff for my helmet face-shield.

Well, ran over to the store in light rain, wandered around for a while and got what I thought was a pretty decent rain suit in a large enough size to fit over my regular cool weather riding gear. Grabbed two kinds of anti-fog junk and when I went outside the rain had stopped. Nice – applied the anti-fog stuff and went back to the hotel.

Packed up, put my new rain-suit on and… it was about the size of a tent. Turns out that “XL” at WalMart means EXTRA LARGE, but that was OK. Started off – the rain was taking a bit of a break and, hoping to avoid the mass of storms in Utah and eastern Nevada went straight west towards Iowa City.

Got most of the way there before the rain hit me. Ran through some very heavy downpours, staying reasonably dry. Stupid visor was fogging up pretty bad so I had to keep it cracked open – chilly. Made it to Iowa City cold, out of fuel and hoping for clear weather.

Thinks improved for a while. Started south from there, headed to Nevada and was between storms.

There were plenty of dark clouds where I’d been and where I was going but for a while things were pretty good.

I’d never been through the northern part of Nevada and it is kind of neat. A lot like the rest but with a bit more interesting features. Pretty.

I made it all the way to Wells, Nevada, did not stop (for historical reasons – I hate that place) and things were still clear. This was about 4 or 5 hours into my day. It wasn’t until I was just a few hours from Reno that the rain started again. Wind was terrible, shredding my lovely new tent – I mean rainsuit – but I left it on since the front was still intact. I was probably looking pretty homeless but wasn’t caring all that much.

The trip through Reno was pretty unpleasant. High winds, heavy rains and quite a bit of traffic. Passing a truck in those kinds of conditions is quite an adventure, and not a very fun one.

Made it through Reno alive and reasonably well. Last gas stop was in Truckee and then I hit the very coldest part of my entire trip which was Donner Pass at 42 degress. 42 is very, very cold at 70ish mph. Rain had let up quite a bit by this point, for which I was quite grateful.

By the time I got down to my starting point in Colfax things were warming up. It wasn’t long before I got off the freeway in Rocklin, fully understanding how a drowned rat feels. Got home and was welcomed by… my dog. No one else was home, but that didn’t make me any less glad to be back here.

The End (for that one)

(“let’s do that AGAIN!”)