the time had come for me to leave. it was a sunday and my riding buddies were cool enough to escort me out of town. we gathered in the alley by kimmie`s garage. that`s mike and reiner in the foreground.

we stopped at Lotsofsky`s horse ranch, south of reno, before we took off. here`s a photo of his pristinely reconditioned BMW r75/6 that he keeps in his bedroom.

here`s a photo of my buddies, chris the famous sculptor and kimmie the famous bmw motorcycle mechanic. we had just climbed the old, dirt Toll road that was replaced by the paved Geiger grade. this was one of the roads the frontiersmen used to cross the sierras. hard enough on a GS, I can`t imagine how they did it back then in covered wagons.

From the Toll road we entered the old gold-mining town of Virginia City. It still has the same feel from those days with real cowboys still lingering and saloons with swinging doors.

We then headed to Dayton, NV where we took more dirt roads. we found a ropeswing and had some fun.

At Fort Churchhill outside of Dayton, I said my goodbyes to Kimmie and Chris.

Reiner and I camped out that night outside of Hawthorne, NV.

The next day we started off in good spirits. The day was beautiful, the bikes were running great. Here we stopped to take a cool looking photo of a dusty, dirt road with the grand Sierra Nevada mountain range as a backdrop. It was at the end of this road we made the mistake of going left (to try to find the ghost town of Bodie, CA) instead of right to breakfast in Bridgeport, CA.