Road Less Traveled - A Documentary by James Beatty

Day-28

August 3, 2006

Feathers are ruffled; Beauty of Wheeler Peek brings peace...

So now we find ourselves at the Border Inn – on the State Line of Utah and Nevada. The crew was a little worn thin by our push through off-road adventure with the chase vehicle the previous night. Luckily today was a scheduled day to relax and take in the scenery of the nearby Great Basin National Park and allowed our crew some down-time to catch a breath. After finding my bike had a crack in the sub-frame, Chris and I set out to find a welder for the repair. In a town of only 50 people we didn’t expect to find much. However, in Eksdale, the next town over, there was actually a welder named Jonny, so we swung by and dropped off the bike. The place was littered with old junk. But if junk can be interestingly beautiful, this junk was.

It seems that all of our snags are building up on us and making it more and more difficult to make it to the Pacific Ocean by August 12th. But one thing I can’t do is push my crew too hard, and I’m afraid I’ve been doing that as things got very edgy today between crew members.

Next, Michael and I had a chat about riding through the night. It was something he (and all of us) rightfully was very uncomfortable with and I didn’t want to make anybody uncomfortable at all. We came to an agreement that the project was well worth the effort and that we had to do everything possible to keep ourselves safe in the process.

Then as we were doing laundry, feathers were ruffled between Chris and Michael over how the "day off" the bikes was being spent. I don’t understand exactly what or why it happened, but when we realized the laundry was done, we moved on and things cooled down.

When we got back to hotel, Steven complained about our film project to me in a way that I felt was completely unhelpful… too little too late. After that, I felt I’d had enough, that I needed a break - I needed to get away. So I put my bike gear on and loaded up the camera and a tripod on my back and rode up to Wheeler Peek to get away from the crew. I didn’t want to take out my frustration on them. So instead I took in the beauty of Wheeler Peek, and it is truly amazing. It stands over 10,500 feet tall and is considerably cooler than the low laying hot desert plains at its base. From the top of the mountain looking over the Great Basin, you can see so much earth that it boggles the mind! While I was up there I caught up on some video diaries and came to peace with what I was doing with this project.

On the way down, I had my eyes on the trail I was hiking and almost walked right into a deer before I saw him. Seeing that buck up close and personal was a perfect way to end my time to myself. I came down the mountain, found the crew at a great little restaurant called the Silver Jack Inn and we all carried on. I think today was just a breaking point where we were bound to test each other... and we made it through.

Photography Copyright © 2006 Motorrad Media. All Rights Reserved.

<< Back to Travelogues main page