Not every trip is a trip. This was the second of the club's retrieval runs: the motorcycles had been sitting in a garage in Idaho Falls since the end of July, seventy-four days, and in the middle of October Ray and Jerry went back for them. Two riders and two bikes — no passengers, and no Justin. The same pair had brought the others home from Las Vegas three years earlier, so a pattern of sorts has established itself about who ends up doing this.
The difference between this one and the December run out of Las Vegas is the geography. There is no interstate from Idaho Falls to Texas. The sensible line goes down the Snake River, through Star Valley, across the bottom corner of Wyoming and past Flaming Gorge into Utah — and then, the following day, over the top of the San Juans on US 550. Two of the four days run through country the club would happily have gone out of its way for, and neither of them was a detour. They were simply the way home.
The first forty miles were the last forty miles of the previous trip ridden backwards: the Snake River canyon and Swan Valley, which in July had been the run in to Idaho Falls and in October was the run out of it.
Day two put the club back on the Million Dollar Highway for the second time. The first was the ninth of September, 2021, on the very first trip, going north from Durango to Montrose. This time it was the same road southbound, three years and a month later, in the other season.
After Durango it became the job it had always been going to be. Down through New Mexico to Albuquerque, out along US 84 across the plains to Lubbock, and then the long familiar drop off the Caprock and down through the Hill Country into Austin. One thousand five hundred and seventy-nine miles in four days, and both bikes were home.
There is no recording of this trip and nobody took a photograph. What is written here comes from the route as it was drawn and from the trip plan, and is deliberately thin on anything that would have to be remembered rather than mapped. The picture on this trip's card is a stock photograph of Austin rather than one of ours — the right end of the road, at least.
