Birthday Trip To Laughlin

So we get an invitation from Harrah's Laughlin for a return stay at their fine establishment - we get 3 free nights' accommodations, $85 in cash and $50 food credit. Sounds GREAT for Tracey's birthday. Tracey says, "Let's take Ruby." I say, "Of course, it'll be cooler this time of year." ---- and so begins the first of many miscalcuations, close calls, not-so-close calls, and everything else that can possibly go wrong. Exaggeration? Please keep reading, but know that this is only the first installment of this dissertation and it will be done without photographic support (when you read on, that also will make more sense).

PRIOR TO DEPARTURE: I discover that the high temp will be 107 in Palm Springs, 107 in Needles, 108 in Laughlin. I tell Tracey maybe not a good idea to ride Ruby as she's physically heat-intolerant (not her fault, just a fact of life). She insists - and inside I'm happy because the same trip in the car is BORING!!!). We will just leave early and be in Laughlin before the heat of the day which, according to the weather gods will not happen before 1:00pm. We'll leave at 7:00am and avoid all but the very worst heat of the day.

DAY 1:
We leave the house promptly at 7:00am because, yes, we're just that damn good. We get to our friend (Mike Crowley) house in LA at 7:30am and, after doing a walk-through of his new home, hit the road promptly at 8:00am - still looking good.

We get to the 60/10/5 freeway split, and because of miscommunication, end up going different freeways...I watch him take the 10 as we exit on the 60 - DAMMIT!!!! We pull over, as does he, and via good ole' cell phones finally rendezvous 20 minutes later and hit the road again - a little behind now, but not bad.

Fifteen minutes later, Mike pulls up alongside and motions that something's wrong with Ruby. We pull to the shoulder to discover that the left saddlebag has "jumped without a parachute" directly onto the busier-than-it-should've-been-at-this-time-of-Sunday-morning 60 Freeway. We can't see it from where we've stopped, but a lot of our stuff is in that bag and we need it!!! So we ride to the next exit, circle back beyond the debarkation location, so to speak, and exit again to head back east on the 60. Mike takes the right shoulder and I agree to pick it up from the left shoulder. Well, we had no plan of attack for it being in the middle of the freeway, which it still was. We got to the right shoulder about a quarter mile beyond it and started walking back to hopefully salvage it. The first sign of futility came when the head of my toothbrush came bouncing off the freeway directly between my feet - and we weren't even in view of the bag yet!!! When it came into view (in the 3rd of 4 lanes), we were able to witness if being hit 3 times by cars/trucks and IT WAS STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMNED HIGHWAY. The bag was a total loss except for 2 cloth cases that hold our helmet electronics that were blown by freeway wind to us. Oh well. And now we're a good hour behind schedule and we know the heat's coming..... more later, I gotta go eat. Oh, by the way, cell phone chargers were in that saddlebag too - now you know why no pictures right now. :-)