Today started out promising, sunny skies in Battle Mountain. The boys had high hopes of getting to Lakeview, OR, but the start was delayed a bit when Baok's bike would not run. It turned out to be water in his gas plugging the carb. That created a late start, then off into the wilds north of town. The day provided some amazing vistas.





If you aren't prepared on this trip, you could end up next to Joe, amongst the bones of the TAT riders who did not make the trip!



Initially things seemed to go well, then we hit a snag when the trail disappeared into a huge field of sage brush. The GPS indicated a trail, where none appeared to exist. We had heard stories of such a spot, and here we were.



After an hour of chasing around this area, we located a track that got us to the other side. Mind you that this "field" was probably 2 miles wide and about the same across, not flat and pocked with ditches and holes.

We ran into a number of locked gates, requiring a re-route, the last of which resulted in a complete halt for the day. Vinnie was in the lead down a fairly normal trail, a couple of small water crossings, and at the end, on a small patch of sand, he caught his wheel wrong and crashed. When DEET got to him, he was on the ground, in severe pain. He rode his bike back out a short off road track to the semi-paved road about 12 miles to Golconda which had a mini mart and bar but no Gas.



They were very kind and got us some ice and cold drinks and then gave Vinnie a ride to the hospital in Winnemucca.



The picture above is he X-ray taken at the Winnemucca, NV hospital which was the closest medical facility we could get him to quickly.

Diagnosis: Broken Collar Bone.

Vinnie is bummed and will be catching a flight from Reno home in the morning. Anthony has decided to call it a day for personal reasons, and Robert, our modern bike companion and Honorary TATGruppe Member, is riding his KTM 990 to Salt Lake to catch a plane home. (He is doing us a favor as we do not have enough room on the trailer for all the bikes if he were not to do that!)



After we got Vinnie's bike loaded up on the trailer (that is a picture you have never seen before!) Joe and Mako took off from Golconda headed for Winnemucca on some back roads. After the first turn to the gravel, and over a cattle catcher and Mako's rack self-destructed, requireing some innovation to get all of the crap on his bike to the hotel!



It spit out it's tailpipe, broke the rack in three of the 4 places it was welded, but it was still hanging on!

After fixing said rack and the boys doing some other basic maintenance, Joe, Makotosun and Dman will be continuing on west in their quest to ride parts of the TAT and reach the Pacific Ocean. The will be accompanied by Nick in the Chase truck. Lakeview will be tomorrow's goal, and an undetermined route after that. We anticipate much of Oregon will require re-routes due to snow and closures, but we will make the Beach regardless.
__________________
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."