did a little warming up, determined that i had forgot to let any air out the back tire after airing it up to put it on the rack. Yep, 7 PSI is way too much! i let it down to my normal 3–1/4 or so; ah, much better traction and bite! Then i went back to the truck to figure out how i was going to deal with this fuel issue, as i have no aux tank my bike, and i had no fuel bottle. ah, well, here’s a big plastic sack, i’ll just wrap my 1 gal jug in that and carry it in the day pack. With that problem solved, I completely forgot about carrying any extra water or snacks in my day pack, and headed out without either. The loop was what i call a ‘lollipop’ loop: ride a longish trail ride to the start of the sections, ride all 10 sections 3 times, and then ride the longish trail back to the pits. This means you get back to wherever you dumped the daypack every loop, but not back to your vehicle. It wasn’t until the end of the first loop that I realized the I was going to run out of water, and had no snacks or other nutrition whatsoever. argh.

Oh well, section 1 was a pretty easy traverse of a pile of sharp rocks, but I got through OK, so that’s a good start. In general, I rode pretty well, but I had some inconsistent moments: stalled the bike in one section, a really stupid mistake, and didn’t plan an adequate safety margin into my line in another section the 3rd time through, and wound up skydiving off of a 10-foot high rock into the bushes below. I rolled to a stop, picked the bike up, and when asked if the bike was OK (yes, they asked if I was OK first), replied, ‘of course: it’s a Sherco, you can’t hurt these things!” Got through three loops with little drama, picked my pack up from section 1, and headed back down the mountain. Got back to the pits, and drank about a liter of water, right then. had lunch, and went to collect my punch for my afternoon observing assignment, I had section 3. About 1pm, I head back up the mountain, find section 3, and am then informed that there’s been a switch, I’m to observe section 4, a bit farther up the hill. Normally, this would be a trivial change, except that I’m already tired, and seperating the two is about 1/4 mile of some of the nastiest trail at walker valley. winding through the trees, over the roots, and really, seriously steep uphill. sign at the bottom reads “up, turn, up, up, turn, turn, up, up, up”. ha. you a funny man, Ron! But I climb the mountain and find my section: a really interesting combination of sharp turns and a variety of paths, depending on class, over a rock the size of a small cottage. The experts in particular, I thought, had a nasty challenge: a really sharp left u-turn followed by a rock climb with little run at the bottom, and only about a 6″ wide line. I spotted for quite a few folks there during the day, but had to catch surprisingly few bikes.

All in all, a very enjoyable day, great fun to watch folks like Max and WIll do absolutely amazing things with a motorcycle. I can’t wait to head out to Funny Rocks for our next event.

keep those feet up!
blackdog

our faithful steeds, in Ellensburg, after JC had an in-flight disagreement with a bee. A quick stop to remove the stinger, and treat the sting, and we we’re back underway.

at just a touch before 6pm on wednesday, i rolled home. happy, if somewhat road weary:

final stats:

26 days
6784.1 miles
moving average speed: 58.8 mph
115:22 hours actually travelling.
7 of the 26 days were spent not moving: visiting with friends or attending the World Superbike Races at Miller Motorsports Park, in Tooele, Utah.

here are some fron saturday:

and here are some from today:

I did manage to find the helmet service guys and get the vents on my Helmet fixed: yay Robert!
I also took a few pictures (hover over thumbnails for captions):

keep on ridin’!
blackdog

and they had some of my Biker Scum friends’ favorite creatures:

I then pulled a trick that Lara and I call ‘GPS Touring’: ask the GPS for a direct, shortest distance route to somewhere. In cities, this gets you routes through interesting neighborhoods, in the wilds, it leads to partially, once-upon-a-time-paved goat trails like this:

and scenery like this:

A perfect KTM road, it was awesome! many smiles/mile on that leg of the journey!
I made two observations during my travels that i’ll share today:

The first is about hotel-room coffee; nearly every hotel room these days has a little 4-cup coffee maker. and most of them use the same 1 or brands of prepackaged coffee grounds. I *NEED* my coffee in the morning, especially when I’m on the road, so i’ve been making coffee in hotel rooms for about 3 weeks now. I can tell you this: the water makes the difference. Even if the hotel buys high quality coffee, if the have crap tap water, the coffee will only be mediocre. If the place has good-tasting tap water, the coffee will be acceptable, no mater what coffee they buy. I learned to make sure i had at least 4 cups of bottled water left in my hydration pack when i checked in, that way i could make good coffee.

The other observation is about restroom air hand dryers. Most public restrooms that you run into on the road have those awful warm-air hand dryers. They suck, we all know that. In one restroom I used, I think in New Mexico, I ran into a device called a Dyson Air-Blade. This is an air-hand dryer that really works. Flash tells me that they are everywhere in Japan, and it’s just because were a country of idiots that we still have the lame ‘World Dryer’ brand that we have. Hopefully, these things will take over the market, and one more source of petty inconvenience will be removed from our travelling lives.

Tomorrow, day 1 World Superbike Racing from Miller Motorsports Park!

keep the rubber side down,
blackdog

Flash finds me a credit union, and then we hit JAX: a combination surplus store and REI-level outdoor store. I look for a windbreaker to make sure I will be warm enough in SLC. They have a couple, but they are REI-level priced: $80 and up! We ponder running to a real REI, then flash says, ‘hey, there’s another JAX in town, a farm and ranch store’ so we head out. Another huge store, combination western wear, ranch supply, and feed store. Wow. But I find a nice Columbia windbreaker, on sale for $30. Cheap bastard for the win! Times 2: flash also found a new straw hat ($7.95):

Then we head to someplace called the Swetsville Zoo. 30 years of fanciful animals and vehicles, all created out of discarded auto and motorcycle parts. Its wonderful. I’ll be putting up an entire photo gallery as soon as I’ve had time to sort them all! Then back to Fort Collins Brewing to fill up one of Flash’s growlers (it’s ½ price growler day!). and I of course sample a few more fine brews. I could get used to this town.

Thursday was schizoid day; the first ½ was beautiful. From Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs. Rist Canyon, Poudre canyon, CO-14… wonderful roads, wonderful riding.

The second ½ of the day was difficult: high altitude rolling terrain, and viscious wind. At one point I was climbing a steep pitch at 6800ft elevation, into a 45mph headwind (yeah, I stopped, pulled out my geek weather gizmo, and measured it!) and the best the Giraffe could manage was 76mph. wow, I never expected that! Still as soon as I got back down to 5000 feet or so, the poor bike seemed to get it’s wind back. But it was a long couple of hours fighting to keep the bike on the road. Finally made it Utah, and motored up to Dinosaur National Monument. Really interesting place, it’d be cool to have time to hike around the entire thing.

One of the cool things to do with a GPS is to get to some out-of-the way place, and then ask for a ‘shortest distance’ route somewhere. This tactic lead me from Dinosaur NM to Vernal via this beautiful little valley.

Final win of the day: on the way into Vernal UT, I spotty ‘The Quarry’: steakhouse and brewpub: yay dinner!

Tuesday dawns clear, beautiful, and actually chilly, for the first time in days. I haven’t really been chilly since I left Lubbock, TX. I head west on I-80, actually using the grip heaters and jacket liner. Here is a pic of my cockpit:

GPS on the top, a Garmin Streetpilot 2720, old but it get’s the job done. Below that is the KTM dash. The left-hand knob is the heat control for my jacket liner (plus pants liner if its really cold). The LED next to it flashes to tell me how far i’ve got the heat turned up. The KTM digital speedo and ODO is next. It has two trip meters, I use #1 to track miles on the current tank, and #2 to track total miles for the day. I use the trip computer in the GPS to track total miles for the trip. The tachometer is obvious, the LED above it is a voltage monitor: green is good, yellow and red means that voltage is dropping. So far, I’ve not had an issue with alternator capacity. The right-hand knob and LED is a similar control to the one on the left, but this one controls the heated grips. And on top of my tankbag, a paper map of the state-of-the-day. That give me a way of seeing an overview in addition the detail the GPS gives me. It works out pretty well.

I cut northwest up to Scottsbluff, NE to visit my parents gravesites and to have lunch with my favorite uncle, Mike. I get to town and ring him up. Well, it turn out that the same storm front had been through the panhandle of Nebraska the day before, only it had dropped golf ball to baseball-sized hail. My uncle is in the roofing business, so he was way busy, and 45 miles south, in Kimball. So I drive out to the cemetery, wondering as I approach the gate, how hard it will be to find the grave sites. But my mind has a picture of the site, and I know which way they face, and I ride right to them. They are well kept and just as I remember. A few minutes reflection on everything they gave me and did for me seemed appropriate; dad taught me the value of hard work and integrity, and mom taught me the value of belief in yourself and careful planning. I miss them. But I leave thinking that they’d both be pretty happy with the son they raised.

I blast down the road to Kimball, and find my uncle walking around on top of the town bakery. We have lunch and a nice chat. I gotta keep in better touch with him. Resolution #625!

From there, it was an uneventful couple of hours to Fort Collins, to visit Flash and Beth. I get to the address in the GPS, and have a sudden memory problem: I remembered the address as 1516, but the GPS is programmed for 1416. But at 1416, I run out of road. I slowly ride around the corner, thinking the patio on the place looks familiar, then I see an old white Alfa Romeo in the driveway: yep that’s the place! (Beth is a rabid Italian car and motorcycle fanantic). There’s ducati’s (and cagivas and guzzis and.…) in that there garage.

Quick unload, change clothes, and I help myself to a beer from the beer fridge (as instructed: “there, now you know where it is, get yer own damn beers” – flash), a Fat Tire ale, from New Belgium brewery. Flash comments that I chose well. I say that Fat Tire and 1554 are staples of our beer inventory at home. He says ‘you wanna go visit the brewery’. Sure, I say. So we go off on a short brewery tour. I forgot my camera, so here are a couple of cell phone shots that flash kindly took.

You will notice that i’m holding the growler with both hands. There’s two reasons for that; it’s really good beer, and therefore important, and i’ve been sampling beers with some amount of abandon and am now somewhat drunk. That also explains (at least partly) the stupid grin.

It’s a ’55 caddy hearse chassis with a custom camper built on the back. It’s been sitting in a pasture for the last 20 years. Shawn bought it cheap and plans on putting it back in running and camping shape. Including restoring and redoing the flame paint job. Awesome!

Started looking at weather forcasts for Monday: hmmmm, whaddya mean tornado watches through most of central Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas?!. Guess I’ll get up early and make tracks west before the atmosphere get’s all hot and bothered.
So Monday dawns clear and warm in Des Moines. H head west on 44, taking 44 and 30 all the way to Grand Island. Warm and humid, with the unrelenting south wind, but no rain or thunderstorms. Some classic rural scenery on the way west:

I proceed on west to North Platte, NE without too much incident. By the time I get to a North Platte hotel, the wind is blowing 35mph and gusting higher. One of the desk clerks looks and me and asks “how’d you get here on a motorcycle, today?” “ at a 40-degree angle”, I mime. We all laugh. But I’m beat, sore arms and hands and lower back.
So I’m sitting here in a hotel room, watching thunderheads grow outside, and clouds race by at 50mph. getting’ nastier by the minute. Hopefully all this blows over tonight and I don’t have to ride through too much more of it tomorrow. Another evening of exciting Weather Channel TV!

Be good, y’all!
blackdog

As I drew near KC, I noticed a waypoint on my GPS. it says ‘Garmin’. What the heck does that mean…. HELLO! It means I am approaching the center of the navigation toys universe. So I stopped for the obligatory picture.