All is well after two days and lots of dirt. The small issue I was having with the KTM not starting ended up being a non-issue. When we rolled out of SLC on Saturday, we stopped at The Edge Motorsports in Draper, Utah. Cody the technician took one look at my clutch lever and offered an explanation: I had replaced a bent clutch lever with an aftermarket lever and the aftermarket lever wasn’t engaging a small switch in the clutch assembly. In a nutshell: it starts every time as long as it’s in neutral. No worries.
After the first day, we landed in Baker, Nevada, at the Silver Jack Inn (which will warrant a longer post later). Hooked up with an old friend from Park City, Mike, on a tour on his Moto Guzzi.
Second day was scheduled to be an all dirt route from Baker to Eureka. Before getting rolling, we all rode to the top and back of the paved road into Great Basin National Park, a twisty climp up to the summit of 10,000 feet. After gassing up back in Baker, Hans Solo split off from the group and took his own path back to SLC. Darth, Obi-Ben and Moto did about 240 miles in the dirt, saw some ghost towns, an amazing sunset, then rolled in to the Best Western at 9:00 PM local time. No cell phone service the whole trip, so no road posts. Today’s route takes us to Battle Mountain, Nevada, where we expect to have cell.
All is good.