Smithy1 > Smithy1's Blog Posts > Vegas to Reno - the Road trip!

August 25, 2008 04:52

Vegas to Reno – the road trip

Somehow I had the great idea to drive 3 days across the US to compete in a desert race. My lovely wife was really excited about seeing the whole country. After many months of me talking and preparing for V2R we finally had the truck packed and hit the road Monday 5am.

Road trips are interesting, lots of interesting sights and people. From the gentleman in West Virginia driving an old pickup with a bumper sticker that read “diesel fumes make me horny” to the guy in Ohio riding the touring motorcycle on I-44 with his dog enjoying the scenery from the top box and the armadillo that was meandering around at the rest stop in Missouri. We finally crashed at a parking area about half way through Missouri.

Our main tourist attraction for this trip was to experience some of old Route 66. The current interstate overlaps and parallels this old nostalgic road that brought many families across the country. It must have been quite an adventure to travel this route in the “old family wagon”. We pasted many abandoned gas stations and general stores.

Our official historical stop was the Route 66 museum that is part of the National Park System. At this museum is a recreation of the small gas stations, stores, eateries that once marked the trail across the country. It also has lots of memorabilia from the era including a huge Popeye exhibit! Good fun but we needed to get back on the road.

We continued through Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. The landscape from the interstate is surprisingly similar from Pennsylvania all the way to the panhandle of Texas. We stopped for the night grabbed dinner at an original Route 66 diner and a hotel in Santa Rosa, NM.

Wednesday morning we left Santa Rosa and needed to make it to Las Vegas by the end of the day. Our surprise attraction for the trip came when we finally crossed Arizona into Nevada over the Hoover Damn. What an unbelievable engineering marvel this is! I think the damn alone would be worth the trip!

Now for the good stuff…

We arrive in Las Vegas, get our directions ironed out and head towards the Vegas to Reno host hotel. I was not expecting much. The few prior races that I have competed in began at a gun club or fire house. In Las Vegas we spot our hotel from about 2 miles out! It is huge and very high class! I pull into the entrance and drive between about a dozen 18 wheelers that are unloading the big trophy trucks and buggies! We park and approach the grand entrance…

One inside we get in the check-in line and start up a conversation with the guy behind us. He is getting rooms for his 22 person support team and asks about our team! Well, its just Jen and myself plus my brother Loren flying in on Thursday. This guy is very nice and offers up his entire support crew if we land in a pit and need extra help or tools. Very nice and eased up our stress a bit.

Thursday was a big day. Yes I was a bit nervous among all these big $$$ teams. First on the agenda was competitor registration. In this line we met a couple of low-level guys like ourselves from Idaho and also some big team guys. Once again every one of them offered up support at any pit that we needed. These are some really good guys. After registration I needed to get through tech inspection. There is this huge line that snakes its way through the contingency booths. All million dollar vehicles in line at this point… and me pushing my bike!

After asking a bunch of people and getting conflicting directions I finally find a very board man at a little “motorcycle/quad tech booth”. He pretty much just writes down my bike number and gives me a “passed tech” sticker for my helmet and bike. I noticed that they are really combing over the trucks and buggies at tech but the bikes seem to be a breeze.

Now that tech and registration are over Loren arrives and we wait for the 6pm mandatory riders meeting. The host hotel is a resort, spa and casino. The “uniform” of the cocktail waitresses is quite interesting to say the least! Yes, this is definitely Vegas! A short trip in the afternoon to pick up race day drinks and ice plus fuel up the truck and gas cans causes my credit card to be put on “credit fraud hold”! This is all I need but a few phone calls and I am back in business. Riders meeting was held in a huge ballroom with probably 500 people in attendence. Early in the meeting, Cassey Folks (event promoter) introduces me to the entire ballroom as the guy that drove all the way from PA to compete in the 2008 V2R! By this point a lot of people are starting to know the “guy from PA riding the BMW”. The rest of the meeting was uneventful and takes about an hour. We realize that we must get up at 2:30 am in order be ready at the start line in Beatty by 6 am! We hit the bed as early as we can.

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