Named after his daughter Irma, Buffalo Bill Cody's hotel is the centerpiece of Cody, Wyomi
Cody lies just in the distance at the edge of the yellow stones, and it's there I must rest, plan another day's ride, have a beer, watch the sunset, do some laundry and smoke a cigar. Hard to ask for more than that. Maybe another beer (Snake River Lager, Jackson Hole, Wyoming). The Irma Hotel (1901), named for Buffalo Bill's daughter, is the centerpiece and retains a century's worth of cigar smoke, whiskey dreams, wild times and cowboy lore within its walls. Yellowstone, the world's first national park (est. 1872), is the West at its geologic wildest, with volcanic fissures still percolating after two million years. Active seniority.
My own senior moment puts me next not at Yellowstone's western gate as intended, but at the northern entrance. So the Tetons can wait for another ride, and I head north through Gallatin National Forest to Livingston, then west for Bozeman, Montana. Below Butte, Highway 43 kicks west into Idaho, over the Big Hole River and Lost Trail Pass, to 93 south along the north fork of the Salmon River.
Home for two days, it was time to head to a Red Shift track day at Mazda Raceway Laguna Se
Glorious. The valleys are lightly fogged with smoke from a forest fire to the north in the Bitterroot Range, but the road is mostly mine at mid-afternoon, following the river through the mountains. Some places, as writer Jim Harrison has noted, "seem to demand consciousness." Music is playing in my head (through the iPod), "Ride The River" by J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton:
"Floatin' down that old river, boy, leaves me feelin' good inside.
Floatin' down that old river, boy, tryin' to get to the other side.
Yesterday slowly fades, I been waitin' now forever for this ride."
Sometimes Motorcyclist test rider Thad Wolff was on hand at Mid-Ohio, riding a Yoshimura S
At the Wise River Club, a fisherman's motel/way station, I pull in for a snack and a bottle of Moose Drool Brown Ale (Big Sky Brewing, Missoula, Montana). Back on the road to Salmon, fly fishermen cast into the afternoon shadows, and barefoot boys drop lines from big rocks. The river's contours command the rhythm of the road, and the abiding majesty of the wilderness settles the soul.
Salmon's layover status is confirmed by the appearance of Bertram's Brewery in the middle of town. The brew pub offers an excellent ration of fish 'n' chips and a beer sampler of seven. (Try the Summer Ale.) Day next, southward bound, the river narrows into its east fork as the road swings west to the Sawtooth Wilderness, then south again over Galena Summit (elev. 8700 ft.) and into Ketchum and Sun Valley.
This old man goes rolling home
Crossing Ebbett's Pass south of Reno, I'm back in California to the delights of Highways 4 and 49 through gold-rush country. In Murphys, I pull in to make sure the E Clampus Vitus Wall of Comparative Ovations remains in place, which it does. The club, a lampoon of early fraternal organizations, posts plaques at historical sites throughout the state, and tries to maintain its original credo of providing for the "welfare of widows and orphans, especially widows." The Murphys Hotel bar serves Apricot Wheat Beer (Snowshoe Brewing Co., Arnold, California.)
Jon Schultz tries to work up a smile after a rough day of practice. Just about everything
Down in the valley so low, headed for the coast, the BMW's info screen posts an ambient temperature of 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit. At the last gas stop, a fellow elder fellow is surprised that I've ridden all the way from New Jersey. "Ain't you a little old to be goin' that far on a motorbike?" he asks. "You tryin' to relive yer childhood or sumthin'?"
Nope, just trying to prolong the first one. Which reminds me of another old high-school chum I was unable to visit near Chicago; said he and a partner were launching a high-end hot dog, made with prime grain-fed beef from their own spreads. Plans to call them Good Dogs. I recommended they use the line from the old Johnny Copeland blues song:
"Every dog's got his day,
And if he's a good dog,
He just might have two days."
And if it's a good day, you just might have two dogs. And a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.