Snow in May??

Our traveling season has officially begun! Yesterday we motorcycled to Boise, Idieho and after getting of off the bike at the hotel I felt like a mailman - I made it through rain, sleet and hail and still survived.

We left our CA home around 7am (which, to those of you who know me, is a very early hour for me to be awake) and met a couple of other guys from our chapter to ride part way up with. So at 8am kickstands were up and off we went. It was cold, but wasn't raining. We had put on our heated gear so the temperature didn't bother us. For those of you who don't know where we live in CA, we are near Sacramento and the only way to get to Boise is over the Sierra Nevada mountains, about 80 miles away and about 7,000 feet high. If you 've ever studied western history you may recall an event that involved the Donner party that had to revert to cannibalism to try and survive in the Sierras during the winter of the 1800's as they tried to get to CA. Well we have to travel over what is now called Donner Pass and it is about 7,200 feet above sea level. Now please remember that if you look at the calendar you will see that it is May 28 when we left. That's May - springtime, almost June, almost SUMMER!!! We get up to the mountains and there is about 3-4 FEET of new snow! I have to admit that it was one of the prettiest times I have ever seen the mountains like this. It was a picture postcard sight. Everything was covered in new snow, but come on-it's May already!

Anyway, we make it through the mountains with no problems, just wet roads. As we get to Reno it starts to rain. Not bad - not anything hard where we would need the rain gear - just bothersome. We arrive in Winnemuca,, Nevada where the rain stopped and we stopped - for lunch. After lunch we said good bye to our travel companions and they headed to Elko, Nevada for the night and we continued on. Maybe we should have stayed in Elko too. Almost as soon as we leave Winnemuca the rains started. Luckily (?) we had put on our rain gear before leaving this time - just in case. Well, the rains came and didn't let up. As we passed into Oregon the rains changed to hail - and not small hail either. We wore our heated gear along with the rain gear the whole time and as we were pelted by the hail you could feel it hitting us through all our gear! That went on for almost 30 minutes and then rain again. But along with it came the winds. And what winds! They were coming from our left side and were so strong that the bike was leaning almost at a 30% angle. My neck was so stiff after that I thought for sure I would end up with one of my bloody headaches. But didn't happen, thank God. Now as we entered into Idaho the rain (which is still falling) changed into sleet. That made for a little tense ride as it was staying on the road a little. Finally we made it to our hotel at 6:30 that night and were very glad to get here. Now we can rest and enjoy our time here with other Blue Knights.

Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend. But please take a moment sometime this weekend to stop and think about the veterans that made this weekend possible. God bless us all.