Wednesday 5/27

I’ve decided to stay in PST to keep myself from getting too confused! We woke up around 7am and were ready to ride about 9:45. No matter what, it takes us 2 ½ to 3 hours to get up, eat breakfast, pack, load and go. But we’re getting more efficient every day!

Brian called and found a replacement wire at a shop about 2 miles away from where we are staying for the next few nights. God continues to watch over our every step – or wheel turn, as the case may be! The shop is called Motorcycle Repair & Rendezvous – or Motorcycle R&R for short. A small shop with BMW expertise and nice people who own and operate it. We’ll be back for new tires for my bike tomorrow, since I found I need a new set of tires, not just the back that we planned for.

Our route took us around the west side of Bear Lake. Lots of little resort towns and fancy houses. We saw an amazing number of Big Fancy Houses hereafter referred to as BFH.

Started the day @ 65 degrees and about 4200’ altitude and arrived at the motorcycle shop around 5pm and it was too warm. B’s bike started to overhead – not a good thing, so they put some coolant in for him and we got that cable for the communicators. It’s so much nicer to be able to talk. It’s safer too, since we can warn each other of impending dangers or radical lane changes and stuff.

We arrived at the Hansen House B&B in Sandy, UT around 6pm, hot and tired. Fran & Ed are our hosts, a bit elderly – Fran a little scattered and Ed recovering from a stroke. Fran tells us that everything we need is right on State Street. We actually never found anything we needed on State Street, but the GPS to guided us to grocery stores, a post office, a cigar shop, a laundry mat, a liquor store (strange liquor laws in Utah… more on that in a sec) and everything else we needed.

We decide to go find some groceries, beer and wine. We found a Super Target that has a grocery store in it, so we go there and wander around looking for beer and wine, the top priority for the grocery shopping event. We can’t find anything. We ask the kid who works there. He’s not sure, but thinks beer might be on the beer isle. So, you know, we just had to ask – where is the beer isle? The beer there is basically Bud Light and Coors, not any where near good enough for beer snobs, and no wine at all. Oh yea, this is Utah. The Morman Morality state. All beer is 3.2% unless you visit a State run liquor store. So we skip the beer and wine and ask about getting a sandwich made at the deli, but they don’t make sandwiches there – just pre-packaged. They have a lunch counter, so we go there, and they advertise sandwiches, but they don’t actually have any. I was ready to explode, so I started singing the Clash song, “I’m all lost in the Super Market. I can no longer shop happily!...” We left and went to Fuddruckers for dinner. Fed, we were able to think more clearly and found a state run liquor store where they sell real beer and wine. Screw it, we’ll find groceries tomorrow!

Our room at the B&B was actually a guest house with a full kitchen, 2 bathrooms (one with a Jacuzzi tub) and a loft. Once we determined that THE air conditioner was upstairs in the loft, and that the bed in the master bedroom downstairs was way too soft, we decided to put the two twin size mattresses in the loft on the floor and pull them together with the king sized sheets. Ah! Firm bedding with cold air! And a good night sleep.

SKF: high elevation of 9,000+ feet todaty, low temp 55, hi temp 82 – mostly around 68; saw 72 bikes, 8 brown heron-like birds; 1 Great Blue heron; 8 egrets, lots of snow. We got sprinkled on, but avoided heavy down-pour all around us. 51.1 MPG, 49MPH, 302 miles.