Day 58 September 1/14 Okanogan, Washington 14385 kms

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SOME RECORDS ARE JUST MEANT TO BE BROKEN!

Yes just 58 days into our 60 day journey we set a new distance record at 794 kilometers. Helli just would not ride around town so we could hit the 800 mark. We also set a new record for the coldest day this trip at 5 degrees this morning. So bundle up, turn the grips up and put the hammer down. We left Butte, Montana this morning at 6.30 and didn’t stop till we hit Missoula almost 200 k’s later. Helli has told me that a horse always picks up speed when it can see it is returning to the barn. Since I don’t have a horse or a barn I will just have to trust her. Anyway Helli picked up the pace as we flew down the I-90. I know we said we were going to stay off the interstates but today we had to make an exception. The weather that has been following us all over the states is still right behind us. We seem to be making headlines with the weather everywhere we have been. We hit record heat in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Flash floods in Palm Springs, El Paso, Dodge and Hot Springs, Arkansas. There were major thunder storm warnings throughout the south in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kansas and Texas. We also had heat advisories in several states because of the humidity and temperatures combined. So last night there were tornado warnings posted for the upper Midwest and that’s just where we happened to be. So as the saying goes “it was time to get out of Dodge”. Even though it was extremely cold this morning, we were able to cope quite well. It’s a good thing we carried our heated vests, heavy gloves and extra fleece jackets with us through the first 57 days of above 95 degree heat. Actually we did assume we were going to need everything we brought with us. Without all the gear we would not have been able to complete the trip. As much as we were tempted to leave a lot of it at home we reminded each other of what happened last year in Newfoundland when we hit a snow storm. The down side of packing all the extra gear is the wear and tear on the bikes. Our tires are totally worn out. Especially mine. It might be because of all the extra pancakes or the extra 40 pounds of tools, parts and the laptop. Other than tires and oil though, the bikes have been champs. They haven’t missed a beat. I will say though they run much better in the cooler weather of the northwest. We had set our sights on making it to Spokane by the end of the day but arrived around 2.30 in the afternoon. So it was decided to just keep going and see where we would end up. Well we ended up in a small town called Omak in Central Washington. Not much here except a hotel and a casino. ……..What else do you need, right Carol? So we had dinner, took the casino for 9 dollars and called it a night. That’s 8 states in 7 days. So we had better spend an extra day here to even things out!

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