KRATZMC

21 June 2008 Saturday

Well the 7th Annual FPD ride began as we met up with the other riders from California on Friday, at the Peppermill Hotel and Casino in West Wendover Nv. Bob Hole and Mike Reeves covered the 600 plus miles in one shot, while the others Tony Delgado, Gary Cooper and John Flynn did a day and a half two leg ride, stopping in Reno Nv along the way.

Peppermill, West Wendover Nv. A great place to Carbo load for 8 bucks, with the all you can eat Spaghetti dinner.

Milky and I were lucky to secure a personal tour for our group of the Air Field by the Air Port Manager Chuck Wiles and Wendover Airfield Project Manager James Petersen. The tour was scheduled for 1030 hrs, so I had to come up with something to do to burn up some time. This was an opportunity not to be missed and was something you couldn’t buy. So before the tour and after breakfast at the Hotel, we activated B.O.B. and I took the crew to the Bonneville Salt Flats for a look see.

The Salt Flats are located about 5 miles east of Wendover Ut off of I-80 and is clearly marked. You will take a paved road North then East for 3 miles which dead ends at the Salt Flats proper. You can then drive onto the seemingly endless field of salt which is compact and solid but can be a bit crunchy in the a.m. when the salt is still moist from the previous night. If you are on a Low Sodium Diet, I would skip visiting Bonneville or just don’t tell your Doctor.

The Machines on the Salt Flat

Riding the Flats

After posing and playing on the Sodium Chloride flats we headed back to Wendover Air Field for our tour. Tony and I decided to open up our GS’s in the spirit of Bonneville. We rolled on the throttles leaving the other guys behind. I was able to reach 118 MPH indicated on my heavily laden GS with actual speed of 113 MPH. The bike had a little bit more but I had my fun for the moment.

There was an extra treat for me as we headed to the Air Field. I had located an old Air Force buddy Steve Daniels, whom I tracked down last winter. Steve, a fan of British Motorcycles and resident of Roy Ut, would meet us at the Air Field. I haven’t seen Steve for over 24 years, so it would be a great reunion. Steve had purchased several antique motorcycles when he was stationed in England in the 1980’s, so I wondered what he would be riding these days.

Steve Daniels and his Triumph Bonneville

The Boys getting ready for our tour near the Ops building. Steve in the foreground with his English riding boots and Triumph T-shirt.

Gary “Larry” Cooper climbs the Ops tower

Wendover Airfield is a little known historical site and the best preserved of the 600 plus Air Fields that were in use or built during WW2. The Air Field was used to train WW2 bomber crews and was the home of the 509th Bomb Group, the first and only unit to drop nuclear weapons in war time. Still present is the “Enola Gay” hanger, which housed the famous bomber which dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. This hanger is scheduled for a multi-million dollar restoration if enough funds can be raised.

Exterior of the “Enola Gay” hanger

Mock ups and practice bombs of the first Atomic Bombs were loaded by separate teams of ground crews at special loading pits and moved to the flight line where the crews would board the aircraft and do practice bombing missions in the desert. The actual bombs were shipped as individual components by various means and later assembled at Tinian Air Field, South of the Island of Saipan, where the B-29’s of the 509th launched their historic raids. Everyone during the initial and training phases of the planned attacks only knew small pieces of the logistical picture in order to maintain secrecy.

Atomic Bomb Loading Pit today

The pit being used to load a test bomb, circa 1945?

Since the tour covered a lot of ground an interesting facts, I will highlight it later on its own page. Long story short, we spent about two hours at the Air Field before heading off to our next stop. Our plan was to ride 148 miles to the Hill AFB Museum and to head for Milky’s home in South Jordan, for a BBQ. Total mileage for the day would be 211 miles.

We headed off to SLC and was pretty much boring as the ride is almost perfectly straight for 100 miles. I did make a observation about the old power lines which run adjacent to I-80. The power lines have been down and out for years and there are hundreds of glass insulators on the wooden poles ready for the taking. Someone with some fortitude and a ladder could make a killing on Ebay following a late night mission to snag those things. I am not advocating any form of theft but it seems that there is little official concern about their existence.

We made a quick stop at the Flying J Truck stop near Salt Air, an abandoned resort along the south shore of the Great Salt Lake for fuel and a quick bite. Chinese food was the fare as we prepped to hit the SLC traffic and make our way to Ogden and the other Air Museum.

E/B I-80 from Bonneville

Gary Cooper was expressing some concern with his 1988 GL1500 and his poor fuel mileage of 25 MPG at the 80 MPH cruise speed on I-80. Many theories were brought up but the most likely is he needs new vacuum hoses. Gary’s mileage seemed to be better at lower cruising speeds, so his range was a consideration during the rest of our ride.

We arrived at the Hill Aerospace Museum around 1530 hrs, giving us an hour to visit the museum before it closed. To learn more about the Museum, click the link above. I will cover more of our trip here in a later post as with Wendover, there was a lot to see.

One of the many outdoor static displays, the C-124 “Globemaster”

After the Museum, some of the guys checked into their Hotels near the airport as the rest of us headed to Milky’s to unpack and prep for dinner. We decided to BBQ, so I ended up cooking dinner for 9 consisting of T-bones and some other fixins’. With full bellies, we decided on our B.O.B. time and to get a good nights rest. With record breaking temperatures expected in the 100’s, we laid to rest anticipating our next few days of riding and the sites we would soon see.

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