Lost and Found, Found and Lost

SO ON THAT first night in Wyoming I was camped just 30 or 40 miles from CCjon and Nestor, we found one another in the morning and rode together for a day and a half in Wyoming and Montana. We were los hombres libre! Free men on the Earth, using up our machines on another glorious ride.

Then, in Wheatland County, Montana, at my initiative, we parted for what I thought would be a day or two. Now it looks as if we’ve lost phone/internet signal and will go our separate ways.

At least we had that ride up along the Beartooth Range in Wyoming. CCjon claims to be the slowest so he rode point to set the pace. I usually had sight of him a mile or two up ahead, and I checked now and again for Nestor’s headlights a mile behind me, make sure he was still with us.

On that first morning’s ride, two whitetail bucks came charging up out of the scrub to my left. It wasn’t a close call—we’ve all had closer—but at 65mph things happen fast enough, you want to keep your eyes peeled. I had time to roll off the throttle, downshift into 4th and get on the brakes and the one buck crossed the road just in front of the iron piggy, the other just behind. At a dead run they split up to get around me when I was going 45 instead of 65.

Nestor remarked on it that evening, in camp. I hadn’t thought he was close enough to see it.

I’m in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada. CCjon and Nestor are somewhere north of here, up around BANFF by now, but I don’t know if they went up the west side or the east, which is to say through British Colombia or Alberta. When we camped at the hot springs in Thermopolis, Wyoming, CCjon had talked of the advantages and disadvantages of each, given that Nestor’s on a deadline for getting to Prudhoe Bay and home to Colombia, with a stop in Miami to boot. He plans to air freight his bike out of there.

I have no idea what they decided. My pay-as-you-go Tracfone turns off at the border and I haven’t seen email from the compadres yet. Meanwhile, precious daylight’s burning…

The internet in this campground is 1G, maybe Pre-G, so I’ve been trying in vain to move photos off my phone and onto the Mac. There’s a way to do it by wire but I have no idea.

I have nice pics of the Lode Ranch in Montana. I stayed there with my friend Robyn, met her significant other, Dan. Over breakfast yesterday I met Bonnie and Russ, Robyn’s parents, and her brother, Brad. Really wonderful people, I’d love to stay for a month, gab with them non-stop and just in general interfere with their ability to get any work done.

Got this pic off my phone somehow… my camp near Robyn’s house.

Robyn took me on a tour of her family’s 12,000 acres, lovely meadows, canyons and wooded hills, fields of wheat, barley and alfalfa. You’ll see them when I get near decent internet.

Robyn and her mom raise sheep on the ranch, 800 between both herds, I think. I heard their massive guard dogs working around 3 a.m., the big WOOF WOOF WOOF of them running off coyotes. Brad raises cattle on the ranch but I didn’t see that part of it. Drop me off anywhere on the Lode Ranch and it would take me a week to find one of the houses.

There’s no sense chasing CCjon and Nestor with nothing to go on. I think instead I’ll ride west through the Crowsnest Pass, then north and up along the Yellowhead Highway through the Fraser River Valley. I camped up there once, a little town called McBride.

Won’t be going that far this time, not beyond Tete Jaune Cache. I want to finally meet Bob Weeks in person. We’ve been acquainted electronically for some time, first started yakking at each other on the DR650 site. I’ve followed his thumper adventures in the Arctic and South America. In a few weeks he’s headed off to ride Australia for six months. I’m in the neighborhood so… might as well take him up on his standing invitation to drop by whenever.

Here’s Bob in Death Valley this past spring, May I think it was. A motorcycle gal from Germany snapped the pic.

I just checked email again… no word from CCjon on his whereabouts, and iron piggy’s giving me these plaintive oinks. She gets bored watching me type.

Will hail you from British Colombia next.

Tony DePaul, August 6, 2018, Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada