Cannonball day five: Salida, CO to Garden City, KS

Day five started as the chilliest morning of our trip so far, which isn't too surprising for the Rockies in mid-September. We were also greeted by a gorgeous full moon setting over the Rocky Mountains. I set off behind most of the group as I have every day so far (no matter how I try, I just have a really hard time being an early morning person), although I wasn't the very last one. Patrick realized he left his torque wrench in his room after he was about 15 minutes down the road, and he pulled up at the hotel just as I was heading out. Rich was sidelined with a bad fuel injector, which quit right after he gassed up before the ride, and he couldn't get the bike started. Thankfully though, Joel allowed Rolf & Rich to scavenge the injector off his wrecked GTS, and after some roadside surgery, Rich was back on the road. One good turn deserves another, and when the drive belt shredded itself on Bobo's bike, which Joel was riding, Rich offered his spare to Joel. Karma's a great thing, isn't it? :)

I rode solo most of the way, evenually catching up to some of the slower riders. The first part of the trip was gorgeous, passing along steep rock cliffs and tree covered mountains in central Colorado. I was very tempted to check out some of the diversions to take in more of the scenery, like Skyline Drive and the Royal Gorge Bridge, but I really wanted to make good time since I got a late start, so I opted to pass on them. I wish I cold have though, Patrick said the wooden plank suspension bridge was absolutely breathtaking to ride across.

The eastern foothills of the Rockies eventually gave way to the high plains of eastern Colorado, which marked the end of the most scenic part of our trip, but there were still some interesting sites along the way. One of our checkpoints was Bent's Old Fort, just outside of Bent, CO, which is a small but well preserved fort from Colorado's frontier days. However, being under time pressure, I was only able to see it from afar, instead of taking the time to have a good look around. Hopefully someday I'll have a chance to go back and spend more time there. Another interesting sight was the small town called Wiley, which I passed through after fouling up the directions. The people there are friendly and pointed me in the right direction when I stopped to make sure I was going in the right direction. It seemed like a nice place, even though it's way out in the middle of nowhere.

Being in the middle of nowhere, I soon crossed the border into Kansas. The road was mostly straight and flat, with a couple of curves and hills thrown in once in a while. Most of all though, there were a lot of bugs and we got splattered pretty good. Several of us made good time and arrived in Garden City in the early afternoon, but we had to wait around a while before the support trucks arrived. Once they did, a bunch of us went out to dinner at the Golden Corral for a steak buffet dinner. Let's just say that there were many folks there who fit the stereotype of corn-fed middle America. The food was so-so, but we had fun taking over one whole side of the restaurant, and we kept both the waitresses and ourselves amused.

After returning from dinner, it was time to wrench, because my bike had been losing speed every day since day 3. I pulled off the belt cover to take a look, but the belt seemed ok. Rolf and I then pulled off the variator, and he knew something was wrong as soon as I pulled off the outer pulley. Sitting in between the pulleys, dangling from the output shaft was what appeared to be an oil seal of some kind. Rolf asked me who had worked on the variator and I told him that nobody had since he installed it just a week or so before we left. He said he didn't put it in there like that. We pulled off the back half of the pulley, and took a closer look. Aside from the roller weights having some very pronounced flat spots, we discovered that the bushing inside the pulley had worked itself loose and it had pushed out the grease seal from inside the center of the pulley! Apparently the Polini variator is designated as "for racing use only", and was never intended for long distance high speed riding, so it did not hold up to the beating that had been administered by the first five days of the Cannonball, and it was finished. Thankfully I had brought along my J Costa variator, so I installed it and replaced the belt with a good used spare I brought along. After taking it out for a test ride at 11:00pm once it was all back together, I was satisfied that it was able to get back up to full speed again, although it didn't have quite the same peaky power curve that the Polini had. At least I was ready to ride and I could feel confident in my bike again, so it was time to get some much needed rest, even if there weren't nearly as many hours left in the night as I would have wanted. So it goes on the Cannonball!