Nonfiction

WAY More Epic Than Usual
Tour 2021: An AeroMoto Odyssey in Seven Parts

Part 1: Nada 3 Reprise

I never expected to do another cross-country ride on Nada 3.

Why would I ride a bike built in the last century, a '93 BMW R1100RS "Nada 3" with over 130,000 miles on it, across the continent to a place where my newer and more powerful K1300S "Therese" was already parked?

The "fly-and-ride" mode I'd begun in 2017 had been working great; I was riding a lot less every year, but the absent miles were all ones I tended to spend more time complaining about than enjoying. I wasn't missing the flat straight roads of the Great Plains.

Then came COVID-19.

When travelling west to see my family finally started to seem like a possibility, the idea of getting there by sitting for hours sealed in a metal tube with hundreds of potentially infectious fellow passengers was less than appealing.

By contrast, Nada 3 was as excellent a motorcycle as she's ever been. She had no known mechanical problems and was even sporting a relatively fresh set of tires. A timeline-cleansing moto-camping trip during which I could maximize social distancing seemed like it could be a winner on a bunch of counts.

It was.

Here's the story:

American Can Dispatch

Bluff View Dispatch

Lake Fort Smith Dispatch

Canyon Dispatch

Buckboard Cabins Dispatch

Moms House Dispatch 2021-04-30

Part 2: Ride And Fly

You read that right.

Since 2017 I've done "Fly And Ride" tours in which I'd take an airliner from Michigan to Arizona and then ride around the west on my BMW K1300S "Therese", which I'd decided to park in Mom's garage in Phoenix.

This year I did things rather differently, riding my venerable R1100RS "Nada 3" to Arizona (see Tour 2021 Part 1 "Nada 3 Reprise") and then...

Glider Pilot Training - Day 1
Glider Pilot Training - Day 2
Glider Pilot Training - Day 3
Glider Pilot Training - Day 4
Glider Pilot Training - Day 5
Glider Pilot Training - Day 6
Glider Pilot Training - Day 7
Glider Pilot Training - Day 8
Glider Pilot Training - Day 9
Glider Pilot Training - Day 10
Glider Pilot Training - Day 11
Glider Pilot Training - Day 12 - 1st Solo Flight
Glider Pilot Training - Day 13
Glider Pilot Training - Day 14
Glider Pilot Training - Day 15
Glider Pilot Training - Day 16
Glider Pilot Training - Day 17
Glider Pilot Training - Day 18 - The Written Exam
Glider Pilot Training - Day 19
Glider Pilot Training - Day 20 - The Oral Exam
Glider Pilot Training - Day 21
Glider Pilot Training - Day 22
Glider Pilot Training - Day 23 - The Check Ride

Part 3: Reunion at South Fork

Please see: Reunion at South Fork

Part 4: Destination Unknown

A randomly-generated tour of Colorado on Therese.

Dispatches:

Destination Unknown
- Featuring CineMusicalMotoEpic Destination Unknown, music by Missing Persons
Delaware Hotel Dispatch
Lakeview Campground Day 1
Aspen Dispatch
Grand Mesa Dispatch
Gateway Canyon Dispatch 1
Gateway Canyon Dispatch 2
Flagstaff Dispatch 2021-06-13

Part 5: Thermal City

Back to Phoenix for a couple more weeks...

Please see:

Thermal City

Part 6: Son of Return to Malfunction Junction Revisited

Please see:

Son of Return to Malfunction Junction Revisited

Part 7: Return To Michigan

Dispatches:

Red & Green
Tour 2019

As reported in Truth or Consequences Dispatch, over lunch in Las Cruces Larry had proposed "Red or Green?" as the name of this tour. The idea was that virtually everywhere we'd eaten on our jaunt through southern New Mexico, waitstaff had asked that question in terms of what color chile should smother whatever entree we'd ordered.

Indeed, since long before I belatedly finished my most recent epic's concluding dispatch, "The Red or Green Tour" has been featured on Jana's fb page.

But I was slow to warm to that notion, and as always I reserve my final editorial decision until a trek is over and all the events and experiences it contains can be evaluated for headline-worthiness.

My tour extended several days, and well over a thousand additional miles, from the point at which Larry & Jana & Gary parted ways with me in Alpine Arizona. Who could know what might happen by the time I'd made a visit to see dad and Cathy in Colorado, spent Saturday night in Telluride, and taken advantage of Eric & Jen's spare bedroom in Flagstaff before returning to mom's house in Phoenix?

To be certain, I was asked, "Red or green?" at least once more, at the El Ranchero on historic Rte. 66 in Grants.

As usual I replied, "Christmas!"

By the time I'd returned home to Michigan, I hadn't thought of anything more appropriate, and had pretty much settled on that theme.

But I didn't really need to decide even then; I still had a bunch of dispatches to write, and it was quite possible I'd invent something catchier while doing so.

I've enjoyed writing those final dispatches from the comfort of my new office.

After returning from Arizona I was able to resume work on the project begun before I left. It had started with Laurel's getting new flooring installed in the dining room and new carpeting in what had been, until earlier this year, my son's bedroom.

The next priority was to bring my desk up from the basement. It's a 3x6 foot Techline that I could have made a lot lighter by fully removing the dual drawer stacks. But I was too lazy to do that when I could just impose on my friend Dave, who also had a much beefier hand truck than mine. That was important as my truck proved to be on just the wrong side of completely inadequate during my quickly aborted attempt to move the monster myself.

With Dave's help we moved it up and set it in place. He needed to get back to his life then, so he packed up his hand truck and departed with my profound thanks.

A couple minutes later he reappeared with two fresh jalapenos that had been plucked from his garden earlier that day. He set them ceremoniously on the empty black expanse of the desktop.

At that point I knew the question of the tour's name had indeed been settled.

And oh yes, those were excellent peppers that, after taking the photo I knew I'd want for this post, I immediately ate raw.

Both of them.

Dispatches from the Red & Green Tour:

CineMusicalMotoEpic playlist (construction in process): 2019 Tour: Red&Green

Gs Pizza Dispatch
Silver City Dispatch
CineMusicalMotoEpics

Night Ride Across Phoenix
- Music: Blade Runner by Vangelis
A PH.A.S.T.R. Ride To Payson
- Music: Time Machine by Joe Satriani
Mogollon Rim
- Music: Friends by Joe Satriani
Colorado Plateau (of Arizona and New Mexico)
- Music: Timelessness by Rhythm Mystic

Inn Of The Mountain Gods Dispatch
CineMusicalMotoEpics

Close To The Edge
- Music: To The Edge by Lacuna Coil
White Sands
- Music: The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades by Timbuk3 (pat mAcdonald)

Truth Or Consequences Dispatch
CineMusicalMotoEpics

Journey To Cloudcroft
- Music: Nobody by The Doobie Brothers
Rest and Ricklaxation
- Music: Alligator by Of Monsters and Men

Tal-Wi-Wi Dispatch
South Fork Dispatch
Telluride Dispatch
Flagstaff Dispatch
Mom's Birthday Dispatch

Also written and published was this rather special blog, not directly (but certainly indirectly) related to this tour:
Nada One Year Forty

Moving Pictures
Tour 2018

Image courtesy of Larry Haruska

Last year on the way home from California I decided to park Therese, my BMW K1300S, at Mom's house in Phoenix.*

A consequence of this is that my "fly and ride" tours no longer have big long boring stretches of Great Plains to map out.

I don't miss them.

I picked up a GoPro Hero5 on the way to the airport.

A consequence of this is my tours now generate more content** than my traditional dispatches.

Here are the links to all the various kinds of content:

CineMusicalMotoEpic Playlist: Tour 2018 - Moving Pictures

Flagstaff Dispatch
Video: Yarnell Hill (music: Flying In A Blue Dream by Joe Satriani)
Video: Prescott National Forest (music: Surfing With The Alien by Joe Satriani)
Video: Mingus Mountain (music: Summer Song by Joe Satriani)
Video: Oak Creek Canyon (music: Love Thing by Joe Satriani)

Bryce Canyon Dispatch
Video: Flagstaff to Bryce Canyon (music: Where The Streets Have No Name by U2)

Monument Valley Dispatch
Video: UT-12 / The Hogback (music: Secret World by Peter Gabriel)

Ouray Dispatch
Video: Riding With Gary (music: The Pass and Bravado by Rush)

South Fork Dispatch

Valley Dispatch
Video: Wolf Creek Pass (music: Red Barchetta by Rush)
Video: The Ride South - New Mexico (music: Even Better Than The Real Thing by U2)
Video: The Ride South - Arizona (music: Fall Away [v.2] by My Brilliant Beast)
Video: Return To The Valley (music: Hell Hole by Spinal Tap)

Still photography: www.flickr.com/photos/visualize-rivendell

*My '93 R1100RS Nada 3 is available for my East-of-the-Mississippi riding pleasure.

**Entitling this tour Moving Pictures, in addition to the obvious allusion to the fact that I took a lot of moving pictures...motion pictures taken while moving... as well as the allusion itself... are all homage to my favorite Canadian power trio Rush. The song Red Barchetta is spun from their album Moving Pictures... which cover art is of moving pictures being taken of moving pictures being moved...

For why Red Barchetta has anything to do with anything let alone me or this blog, see Valley Dispatch, and then watch Wolf Creek Pass.

Ride on, ride well, ride safe,
Manfred von Blitz
Lake Orion, Michigan, USA
July 4, 2018

I Can't Believe They Let Us Do This
Tour 2017

Dawn at Pacific Grove

This time around I did a new (for me) thing, posting my dispatches to my personal website blog.

I even did a fairly good job of putting them out in a timely manner and publishing the links via various methods.

Here they are in a way I think is a bit easier to navigate than the blog page itself.

Tour 2017 Itinerary
Sure Enough, Dad and Cathy Might Not Be Home When I Get There
Beautiful Noise
Updated Itinerary
Council Bluffs Dispatch
Fort Collins Dispatch
Dad's House Dispatch
Riding Gear Dispatch
Military Sinkhole Dispatch
Mom's Birthday Dispatch
Laughlin Dispatch
Death Valley Dispatch: High Noon At Badwater
Pacific Grove Dispatch
Berkeley Dispatch
Larry And Jana Dispatch
Vacaville Dispatch
Auburn Dispatch
Napa Valley Dispatch
Ahwahnee Dispatch
Ahwahnee Dispatch 2
Montecito Dispatch
Laughlin Dispatch 2
Flight 404 Dispatch
Tour Statistics

Boonedoggle Dispatch
PowerPlex 2017

Until (if ever) I get around to translating the ride report into this crude web composer...
here's a Dropbox link to the PDF:

Boonedoggle Dispatch

More Epic Than Usual
Tour 2016

This year's tour is presented in your choice of Flickr slide shows.
The ten minute version, with the map laid out on Google Earth, is at More Epic Than Usual

Play time of More Epic Than Usual (Long Version) -- essentially what I published in installments during the trip, with a bit added after my return -- depends on your reading speed. For viewing it I recommend:
Use the biggest monitor you've got.
Pour a glass of your favorite beverage.
Put on about an album's worth of good "road trip" music.
Remember you can pause if needed to read the more verbose slides.

I hope you enjoy it. I know I will always treasure these memories.

Good Timings
Tour 2015

Until (if ever) I get around to translating the painstakingly-formatted ride report into this crude web composer...
here's a Dropbox link to the PDF:

Looking Back

Riding Between The Raindrops
Tour 2014

June 29, 2014
Glen Echo Resort, Poudre River Canyon, Colorado

There’s no cell phone service here, just as there was none last night at Grand Mesa. Nor is there Wi-Fi, which last night at least enabled me to send off some email.

It’s not really coincidence I so often end up in places that, even in this age of ubiquitous connectivity, are all but cut off from the outside world.

I seek out such places.

They’re so often points along the best roads for riding.

They’re where the best views are.

Where the stars are the brightest.

Where the best ambient noise is.

* * *

Sitting on the deck of East Duplex Cabin, listening to the susurration of the Cache la Poudre River a few yards away, I reflect on the only real complaint I have about this year’s tour: that tomorrow morning I’ll ride out of the mountains and back down to the Great Plains.

With no outstanding challenge having been overcome (like 2013’s multi-bike mechanical troubles which earned that tour the title Return to Malfunction Junction), this year’s sunny and bucolic moto-trek still doesn’t have a name.

Of course, there’s still another 1500 miles to go.

Maybe that’s where the name lurks.

But I hope not.

Anything that might happen on the plains which would be worthy of memorializing this tour couldn’t possibly be good.

For a while I thought this tour would be named something like Missed It By That Much.

On day 1, a huge storm ate Des Moines and proceeded to move northeast toward Madison, Wisconsin…my destination for the day. But the storm stayed north and west – as my friends told me usually happens – so the worst effect I felt was a stiff crosswind that made the last leg of the ride feel as much like surfing as motorcycling.

I’d detoured to Madison to see my friend Charlie Johnson, who had just had a very close call himself, of a far more serious nature. He’d had a very large brain tumor removed just a few days earlier. It was great to spend a couple days with him and revel in the facts that he’s still very much himself and his prognosis was good.

John and Charlie, June 15, 2014. At the time Charlie's prognosis was very promising.
Unfortunately over the course of the year the cancer was not defeated and he passed away on December 2, 2014 at the age of 58.

I left Madison and rode to western Iowa the same day that double tornadoes wreaked havoc in Nebraska. But the twisters remained a few horizons away so
again, strong crosswind was about all I encountered. A brief rain shower actually felt good on that hot summer day and I didn’t even bother putting on my
rain gear.

On my first day in Colorado my last leg was south on CO-149, the “Silver Thread”. I’ve come to consider this road my back yard, as its southern terminus
is essentially my dad’s driveway. Unlike in Iowa the rain here was not welcome – it threatened to spoil my enjoyment of the twisty road. Also unlike in Iowa, the weather was cool so my rain gear came out of the tank bag. But on at least three occasions after riding through small patches of light showers I turned to see sheets of torrential rain sweeping across the road I’d been on just moments earlier.

Again I’d “missed it by that much”.

The next day I buzzed up and down the Silver Thread in perfect weather. I kept thinking, “If this isn’t the best ride ever, there’s no reason to think it’s worse than any other I’ve ever had.”

Since then there haven’t been any more near misses, with weather or much of anything else I can think of.

So that name fizzled.

* * *

Maybe this tour is A Few New Lines.

For decades I’ve been maintaining a map of the US that shows all the routes I’ve ridden on a motorcycle.

As the map reveals I’ve spent many years riding motorcycles around the West, and it’s gradually getting harder for me to ride to places I’ve not yet been.

Not that there aren’t a lot of such places; even in Colorado, my preferred stomping grounds of late, a number of inviting routes remain untraveled by yours truly.

The bulk of Wyoming is “unexplored”, as is Nevada, northern Utah, and most of Idaho and the interesting part of Montana. There are still a lot of opportunities in California, of course; one could spend a lifetime there and not find every good road. Oregon and Washington are also mostly blank, though I’m not really inclined to spend a great deal of time in those last two given the inevitable likelihood of rain, Oregon’s absurd insistence on a 55 mph speed limit, and numerous sour experiences in Washington that caused me to swear, as I crossed the Idaho state line one day in 1980, that I would never return.

But there are certainly lots of places I could go, and would like to, someday.

It’s just that these days I tend to concentrate on routes that take me places I need to go, like to visit my family.

Enroute to those places I pick roads I like, because I know them to be guaranteed great rides -- never mind how many times I’ve done them.

On last year’s tour there were just a couple routes taken I’d never been on. One of them, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have…though it made for an interesting story with only short-term ill consequences (see Rim of the Valles Caldera).

But this year I made a concerted effort to take some novel routes.

* * *

There are a lot of new lines in Madison. Most were made by accident, stumbling around in the dark in what even locals agree is a difficult city to navigate.

US-151 from Madison to Cedar Rapids was a curvy and lightly-trafficked alternative to my usual I-80 grind.

In Colorado I took US-50 west from Cañon City for the first time, stopping at the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas River...

and then (not for first time) the delightfully inexplicable oasis of the Thai Mini Café in Salida.

After riding to Flagstaff to visit my cousins Eric and Lori, I made the descent into hell I mean Phoenix to hook up with my mom (sorry about the terrible low-light selfie!) and sister and my PHASTR* riding buddies.

*Phoenix Area Sport Touring Riders

On the way to Larry and Jana Haruska’s house I traced a really new line: AZ-202, a cross-town freeway that didn’t exist back when I lived in the Valley of the Sun.

Larry and I then took off up to the high country and repeated much of the same ride we took last year, namely the highway formerly known as US-666
that winds along the spine of the White Mountains.

Unlike in 2013, this year we actually completed our planned itinerary, adding new lines to my map that thankfully weren’t “red”: an alternator failure last year
resulted in a line representing travel via flatbed from West Boondocks, New Mexico to Albuquerque, and yet more red lines in the form of great circle arcs
of airline flights from ABQ to DTW and back.

From the traffic-snarled broiler of Clifton-Morenci Larry and I headed east to Silver City, New Mexico, then jogged north and up the mountain to Piños Altos.

After checking in to our cabin I had to ride up the road 0.5 miles and back.

That was necessary in order to turn Therese’s odometer to the magic number of 18,551.

That meant I’d ridden (according to my rather fanatically-detailed records) 300,000 miles on BMW motorcycles.

In celebration (or maybe because we were hungry) we walked down to dinner and local open mic night at the Buckhorn Saloon, its décor largely unchanged since 1870 when it was both the local opera house and the local cathouse.

The next day Larry and I continued east to the Rio Grande, then north on I-25. A “new stretch” of interstate hardly warrants much mention; but it will still make a bold new line on my map.

A bit of the Enchanted Circle that loops around Wheeler Peak behind Taos was new to me. The next day’s ride from Red River took us along a stretch of US-64 I’d never been on…and then a section I had been on, last year, but might as well count as new: last’s year’s ride through Tierra Amarilla and Chama, then west to Pagosa Springs, was done in a driving rain that greatly dampened my mood as well as my ability to appreciate both the road and the scenery.

Near Dulce, New Mexico, Larry and I had brunch then parted ways. At this point I was again in my back yard. Some leisurely period of time after he left I finished my coffee and then actually followed his route west from Dulce for quite a while, just to see what was there (not much) and hoping for a grand vista (not found).

On the last leg, coming down the north side of Wolf Creek Pass, in no hurry whatsoever, I stopped along the South Fork of the Rio Grande and took a nap.

1st Street in Pagosa Springs counts for a new line, though it won’t be visible on any reasonable scale of my maps.

The day after I returned to Dad’s house in South Fork, I got a text from Mary Lipe, my Plex colleague. Mary was with 630 of her closest friends, riding the Tour of Colorado. She texted to ask me if I’d been to Colorado yet this summer. Soon after it was determined she was a mere 50 exquisitely scenic and twisty miles away; so I popped back over Wolf Creek Pass, had a beer, and met her husband and some of her riding companions.

I was later than I’d planned getting out of Pagosa Springs. First was the delay of “the endless conversation” with one of the riders, Bonneville motorcycle speed record holder Simon Edwards. Then when I was finally ready to go I discovered Therese had a burnt out headlight low-beam. I should have known better than to drive all over Pagosa Springs trying to find a replacement bulb long after the sidewalks had rolled up, and I ended up riding back over Wolf Creek Pass in the dark. Therese’s high beams are very effective (oncoming traffic will attest); but still, that trip certainly seemed a totally different ride than the one to which I’ve become well-accustomed.

Later I figured out why my attempt to swap one of the two high beam bulbs into the low beam socket (all three are the same H7 bulb) appeared to fail, but actually just needed an engine restart to clear the fault.

After a couple more days hanging at Dad’s house I headed east into the flatness of the San Luis Valley.

Normally I would never have taken that route, but I wanted to try CO-114 northwest out of Saguache. I’d never ridden this particular highway as it doesn’t take me anywhere I want to go that I can’t get to via more entertaining roads, but I’m really glad I finally did. Most of the route wasn’t notable in any positive way; a lot of straight road, a lot of tar strips, mostly less than magnificent scenery…but then it crosses the pass and descends toward Gunnison, and that is a simply fantastic twisty route along Conchetopa Creek that winds through scenic canyons. I still can’t recommend the ride from Saguache; but next time I’m riding along US-50 west of Monarch Pass, I’ll be very tempted to ride up CO-114 to Conchetopa pass…and then turn around and return to where I left off.

The town of Gunnison is just a few miles west of where CO-114 joins US-50. There I took a right and headed up to Crested Butte, another novel destination. The road was nothing all that special, and had way more traffic than I would have preferred (why I try to avoid riding on weekends in June; I tend to hang out
with family on the weekends and do my touring on work days, and ideally, school days).

But the mountain scenery at the end of the road was well worth it, and would have been even if the Ginger Café wasn’t there to offer a superb Tom Kha Gai soup and Pad Thai accompanied by a draft Stone IPA.

Crested Butte is a dead-end unless you’re in dual-sport trim, which Therese definitely isn’t (again, see Rim of the Valles Caldera). I returned to Gunnison and headed west to one of my favorite rides, CO-92 along the north rim of the canyon of the Gunnison River. I love this road for the views and its delicious twistiness, both virtues borne of the steep cliffs along which it winds. Those cliffs tend to discourage drivers who have problems with heights, and so I usually have it almost all to myself, even on a pleasant Saturday afternoon in June. Anyone else who might be out there is quickly relegated to my mirrors by virtue of Therese’s superabundant power, superb handling, and sophisticated brakes.

I’ve done CO-92 many times in both directions but had in every case, until this year, always taken the route through the very BMW-friendly town of Paonia, longtime host to the annual Top of the Rockies rally, and over McClure Pass. But this year I continued west toward Delta, still as uncomfortable as usual in that invariably sweltering valley, then turned north up CO-65 to Grand Mesa.

This “new” road was a real find! Views of the valley are spectacular when climbing the eastern face of the mesa.

Then there’s a delightful meander between the deep blue lakes on top of the mesa.

And then…from the vertiginous north-west face…a completely unexpected vista that rivals the Grand Canyon.

Normally I’ve only had reason to ride between Glenwood Springs and points east, but I had ridden this more western section a couple times. But that was westbound from Glenwood, and this was the first time I’ve ridden I-70 eastbound toward Glenwood.

A magnificent ride it is, travelling toward and finally along the base of a giant eroded massif that is like a snippet of “Grand Canyon” as viewed from well below the rim. What I saw of it before this was mostly in my rear view mirror; I can now highly recommend the alternate view.

From Gypsum I rode a few miles of the Grand Army of the Republic Highway: old US-6, the precursor to I-70. Lots of cars parked on the shoulder; lots of anglers out in the Colorado River enjoying the fine day just as much as I was.

Finally, today’s last “new” road, a little connector south of Steamboat Springs called CO-134 that links CO-131 with US-40 via Gore Pass.

CO-134 is nothing special…by Colorado standards.

There are no roads in Michigan that are as much fun as that little jaunt.

Sigh.

Tomorrow I’ll head down Poudre Canyon, my usual route out of the mountains. This time of year there shouldn’t be much traffic in Fort Collins, and I should be through it long before the day gets warm. Then the long stretch to Sterling…I-76 to I-80…then way too many hundreds of miles of Nebraska and Iowa.

But even so, at Grand Island I’ll start making new lines again. I’ll bail off the freeway and work my way northeast toward Sioux City and beyond, to Orange City, Iowa, where I have a business meeting. The next day I plan to take mainly back roads across the rest of Iowa, and I hold out hope for a pleasant crossing.

In the past I’ve found the plains much more enjoyable when off the interstate; I just normally don’t have a good reason to sacrifice vacation time to dilly-dallying along Great Plains back roads when I’d rather spend it in the mountains. But these next couple days more or less demand – or at least accommodate – a shunpike crossing, which I haven’t done in many years.

The last time I had connection to weather maps I saw there’s another big batch of big storms out there on the plains.

But they looked like they’ll stay ahead of me, and there didn’t seem to be any chasing me.

Epilog
Last year, the second time I crossed Nebraska the temperature hit 106 degrees F.

This year I never saw it exceed 84.

Still too warm for my preference, but I was thankful it wasn’t worse.

What I’d hoped would be tailwinds were, unfortunately, more strong crosswinds. But they’d pretty much subsided to a light breeze by the time I took the exit toward Grand Island.

Riding diagonally northeast on US-30 I enjoyed watching the giant silage complexes appear in the distance until I was riding right into their towering shadows. An experience denied to those on the interstate.

I also enjoyed the view of a rather hazy but definitely enormous cloud bank out there on the eastern horizon. Fortunately it stayed there, always far enough away that though there were still puddles on the muddy shoulder of the highway, the pavement itself was dry.

The next morning, as I departed my customer’s plant in Orange City, Iowa, things were looking good. The temperature was 69 degrees and the forecast (which was accurate) predicted it wouldn’t rise above the mid-seventies – perfect for the gear I was wearing. The strong wind was back, but now it was from due west: a tailwind to push me the next five hundred miles eastward.

But I was surprised to see there wasn’t only wind coming out of the west.

So was rain.

Still, this was Iowa after all. The rain was sharply defined, and dozens of miles away.

“Instead of going south, then east”, I thought to myself, “I should go east, then south.”

It was almost that simple.

Recall my musings from that last night in the mountains?

When I’d written, “Anything that might happen on the plains which would be worthy of memorializing this tour couldn’t possibly be good”?

Now, having dodged the storm to the southwest and aligned myself to the tailwind, I found myself thinking that by gosh, the name of this trek had finally revealed itself to me, and indeed that revelation had occurred on the plains, and that it was good after all.

The name of the trek, I was certain, would be A Cool Dry Tailwind in Iowa.

This had been a fantastic tour, and that name was about as favorable as such a trip could possibly garner when the rest of it had been too uniformly pleasant to generate any other notable accolade.

Alas, it turned out to be not quite accurate.

By afternoon, though I’d long since left the rain squalls of the morning receding in my mirrors, I had now caught up with one in front of me.

One that was probably not actually responsible for the massive flooding I’d been riding past on a regular basis: corn four feet high completely submerged, the waters of new lakes nearly lapping at the shoulders of the road.

Still, this was Iowa after all.

Whenever US-20 headed into the rain I’d just take the next exit, drive a few miles south until the road was dry. Then I’d resume my eastward course.

Iowa was an exercise in riding around the rain.

Once I crossed into Illinois at Dubuque, that kind of option no longer availed itself. Fortunately the road took me away from the rain. East of Galena along US-20, much of which was newly resurfaced as it wandered across rolling hills, the evidence of recent destructive storms, probably even tornadoes, was disturbingly common.

The penultimate destination of the tour was my friend John Chuey’s house on the northwest fringes of Chicagoland.

The next morning we’d ride back to Lake Orion together, and the forecast (which was accurate) was as nice as I could have asked for.

The day after returning home I rode Therese to work.

I encountered more and heavier rain in the first five miles than I’d experienced in the previous 5,500.

At that point, this year’s tour had definitely earned a name.

John Perry Dancoe
July 6, 2014
Lake Orion, Michigan

Return to Malfunction Junction
Tour 2013

There is no value in recounting last summer's tour using anything resembling a traditional travelogue.

It was a motorcycle trip.

And a bit more.

And perhaps a bit less.

The usual, as well as some rather more noteworthy but by no means unique, elements were drawn from the common palette of such endeavors...

Hours of wind and sunshine and rain and the dark of night.

Chilly alpine passes and sweltering summer heat.

The delectable playgrounds of serpentine mountain roads. The drama and spectacle of desert crossings. Two more drones across the interminable expanse of the Great Plains.

Challenges to the synergy of the rider's skill and and the machine's technological capability.

Reunions...some carefully planned, some utterly unanticipated, with family and old friends.

The sheer delight of a magnificent new motorcycle on her honeymoon tour.

The bitterness of mechanical problems which, for the first time in my entire motorcycling history, brought my tour to a full stop.

What ultimately emerged from my keyboard were these three episodes.

Rim of the Valles Caldera is the particular event which firmly cements the category of this ride as "adventure".
Woody Creek Dispatch is a rather reverential exposition that was all but impossible not to write, if what I wrote there in any way resembles Truth.
The SaddleSore 1000 is, alas, that very travelogue I deemed not worth writing. But as an important component of the paperwork required to claim a particular prize of minor distinction -- the level of importance of which is best summarized by "Since I'm doing it anyway, I might as well get an award for it" -- the story got written despite its literary uselessness.

John Perry Dancoe
Lake Orion, Michigan
January 26, 2014

The SaddleSore 1000

Zero dark thirty.

That’s what time you start when the object is to ride a thousand miles in a day.

You want to maximize available daylight.

Do it right and you’ll be watching the sunset while sipping your celebratory beer.

Mike Feekart and I almost did it right.

* * *

My first stop was someplace I could count on for a “Start Witness”: Mannie’s Bagels in Lake Orion, where indeed the lights were ablaze.

I only held up one customer while Sam signed the form, filled my thermos with Kona blend and sold me an onion bagel for the road.

“No cream cheese, thanks, my tank bag’s not refrigerated and I don’t know when I’ll actually get around to eating it.”

Official start time was 2013-06-08 05:38 EDT. That was per the wall clock, since the cash register claimed the date was 11-10-0000; clearly useless as any kind of evidence.

I took a picture of the form next to the odometer, reading 6,234, and then a shot of my bike in front of the shop. Then I cruised six tenths of a mile south on M-24 where I topped up my tank. Another evidence photo, and a good one, although it wasn’t until the next day I realized displaying the date and timestamp on images from my camera has to be done at shoot time – not that it matters since the camera clock can be reset at any time. The receipt’s a bit out of focus but the station address and time are clearly readable, and in excellent agreement with the dash clock (which again, means nothing) and the odometer reading (which is considerably more difficult to forge).

Then it was west on Heights Road, the very same stretch of pavement where I took my first ride on a BMW back in 1977, and right past the house where I grew up. Cruising south past the library on Joslyn Road, a high band of clouds was a blaze of orange across the dawn sky.

Clarkston Road…one of my favorite local roads, and at this time on a Saturday morning not a single car to impede my enjoyment of the swooping curves. At the end of it, Mike was already at our appointed rendezvous, the Shell station on M-15. A couple more snapshots and we were on our way.

We went north on I-75 to I-69, then west until merging onto I-96 north of Lansing. I’d chosen that route over I-94, which might have been shorter but is always crowded with truck traffic. The route from Flint to Grand Rapids to Holland, by contrast, generally has little traffic of any kind, and today that rule held.

The temperature was in the 50’s, a promising start. I like weather on the cool side when I’m riding, it makes wearing tons of protective gear actually comfortable. Last year it was a hundred degrees by the time I was crossing Illinois and Iowa. Predictions for this day were for highs in the mid-70s and little chance of rain until western Iowa – about as nearly-perfect a forecast as I could have hoped for.

But I was wishing I’d zipped up the vents in my jacket before leaving.

My BMW K1300S has significantly less fuel capacity than Mike’s R1100RT, so I’d carefully planned gas stops based on my bike’s range. I’d used GoogleMaps to scope out stations with uncongested, easy exit/easy entrance locations, using 150 mile intervals which would provide a solid 20 mile buffer before my on board computer would claim I had zero remaining range.

I don’t know how much farther my bike will go after that, and I don’t plan to find out.

I also picked stops located on the approach to metro areas, rather than on the far side. That ensures a break to clear away fatigue and roadshock, an important edge when dealing with increased and often aggressive traffic, and highways that are more topologically akin to spaghetti than to airport runways.

My planning paid off.

We made very good time, hitting stops as planned (until it was clear that as we gained elevation my range was improving significantly, and we could safely stretch out the last couple intervals between stops). We did have some trouble with credit cards. In Geneseo Illinois the pump didn’t want to take my card. I immediately regretted that one of the items on my pre-launch checklist – putting in travel alerts with my card companies – hadn’t been completed. At the register the attendant, apparently per instruction, wanted to see my license. I’m used to out-of-state pumps asking for my zip code, but clearly JP Morgan Chase now suspected foul play. I don’t know why; after all my profile should have told them I’ve made trips like this, at this time of year, for the past several years running. But after the attendant checked my bona fides, I was apparently green flagged.

Mike’s luck wasn’t so good. At the end of the day one of his card companies was still convinced his card had been stolen.

Nonetheless we had resources that permitted us both to pay various oil companies for the privilege of easy passage across the Great Plains, and were pleased to see prices steadily drop the further west we travelled. The temperature gradually rose into the 60s, then the 70s, and peaked at 75.

We even had a tailwind.

In Grinnell Iowa we stopped for gas and had lunch at the Subway next to the station. I was a good boy, resisting my usual reflex to pig out. A 6” veggie sub with an orange juice was the right amount of the right food, with a cup of Mannie’s Kona blend for dessert serving much more for the purpose of sensory gratification than any need for caffeine-induced stimulation; the only fatigue of the day had hit me after clearing the traffic and confusion of Chicagoland. Recognizing the symptoms, I’d feared that if I was tired already it was going to be a long and dangerous ride. But the deep breathing that comes along with loud singing snapped me back to alertness, and my second wind stayed with me for the rest of the trip.

By Des Moines, the sky ahead had taken on the telltale gray cast of rain. A few drops bounced off my Rain-X-treated face shield, and I signaled Mike to pull into the next rest area.

My standard riding gear is all lined with Gore-Tex (or equivalent), but it was time for us to either change course, or for Mike to “get yellow”.

The very first, and one of the very few, apps that I’ve loaded on my phone is The Weather Channel.

What a difference that miracle of modern technology has made to motorcycle touring!!

TWC showed there was clearly rain ahead, from where we were at the moment to well past Omaha. Some of it looked fairly severe, but it was drifting north. If we were lucky it would be out of our way by the time we got there.

An option was to hook south and improvise another route; by doing that we could ride around the rain completely.

I’m almost always willing to revise my route plan on a whim, let alone for a good reason. Diverting around the rain wouldn’t have seriously affected our ambition to accomplish the Saddle Sore 1000; we were already well on our way to that and swinging south simply would have changed our destination for the day to a different place, probably in Kansas. We likely wouldn’t have ended up as close to my dad’s house in Colorado as we’d planned, which might have affected our secondary goal to also bag a Bun Burner (1500 miles in 36 hours), but that wasn’t really a major consideration.

I took another look at the radar.

“It doesn’t look that bad”, I concluded.

And we are, after all, from Michigan. Were we going to let a little rain scare us?

Mike suited up (more purple than yellow) and we forged on.

The rain immediately intensified, but frankly it wasn’t all that noteworthy. As expected we eventually rode out of it, but didn’t bother stopping to change out of rain gear – there would be more ahead, from the looks of it. As we approached Omaha, an ominous pall ahead promised heavy rain. It started…then the highway curved south, clear of the roiling dark mass. Three or four more times this happened. I don’t know if Mike noticed, but for dozens of miles I was looking to the north at what was obviously a fairly ferocious deluge, and with a stiff wind too from the looks of it.

We popped up over another rise and once again there was heavy rain ahead, but this time the highway didn’t bend. Suddenly we were in some of the heaviest rain I’d ever ridden through.

But it only lasted a few seconds.

The sky brightened.

Then another torrential downpour.

But again, though it seemed longer, perhaps no more than a minute elapsed and we were out of it, this time for good. The sky ahead was clear and bright to the distant western horizon.

We rode on. There was still no need to stop and change out of rain gear, as the mild temperature kept Mike from sweltering and I felt no need to unzip any vents.

At mile marker 372 something significant happened: I rode my 300,000th mile on a street bike.

Ok, maybe that didn’t happen at mile 372. It might actually have happened a hundred miles before that, or maybe a hundred miles later. But I can say with confidence that somewhere out on the Great Plains that day, I hit that 300,000 mile mark.

I know this because when I started riding street bikes as a teenager, I used to keep a log of every single ride, to the tenth of a mile. I’ve still got that steno pad somewhere. I’ve also got a piece of C-sized graph paper with those rides plotted as a graph.

I love graphs and charts. Always have.

Eventually, when I was no longer borrowing my parents’ road bikes, I realized I didn’t need to log every single ride. I could just record the odometer reading on my current bike at the end of every month, and I’d know how far I’d ridden on a timescale I considered sufficiently granular.

Now, of course, spreadsheet applications have made possible graphs I never could have imagined back in high school. As of this writing I have 432 months of data that generate several different views of my riding experience.

This is my favorite:

John's Monthly Riding Activity, 1977-2013

A few dozen miles after riding my 300,000th lifetime mile, I rode this day’s 1000th. The highway was straight and empty so it was safe for me to watch as my trip odometer progressed from 999.7 to 999.8 to 999.9 to 000.0, near mile marker 233. My on board clocks read 21:45 so my personal time, which like my mileage was slightly different than Mike’s, was 16 hours and 7 minutes.

I’d done it.

Just not “officially”.

Yet.

Iron Butt Association rules don’t accept un-calibrated odometer readings as evidence; there is too much error (as much as 4%, or 40 miles in 1,000, according to their explanation). Photos are easily spoofed these days; timestamps are meaningless as the camera clock can be reset any time. So the IBA requires “Start Witnesses” and “End Witnesses” and supporting evidence like gas receipts, and finally corroboration against map-derived mileages.

Once upon a time someone had to go after Rand McNally with a magnifying glass and an adding machine. Whoever has to evaluate Saddle Sore applications these days must consider GoogleMaps just about the best thing ever.

I know I do...because in addition to graphs and charts, I’ve always loved cartography.

So although my bike claimed we’d ridden a thousand miles since leaving Mannie’s Bagels, Mike and I weren’t done. We continued riding into a glorious sunset, remarkably similar to the sunrise I’d seen that morning, until we reached North Platte. We’d followed my planned course to the letter, which per GoogleMaps is 1,048 miles, a comfortable margin against any variances. My bike’s odometer claimed 1,057.

I have to admit I was getting a bit tired and less than 100% attentive by this point. So I managed to completely botch the picture I took at that gas stop – I had the multi-function display switched to “range” mode so the clock isn’t shown, and was displaying the trip meter not the master odometer reading. But at least the receipt displays the location and time the picture was taken, and the receipt matters far more than the image.

Mike and I then proceeded to look for a room – and found the entire damn town was booked up, for some kind of baseball tournament. We were advised to continue on to the next town.

Which in Nebraska, of course, is never close by.

We were outside my plan now. As the last daylight oozed from the sky we rolled back on to I-80. Stopped at Paxton, where there was one motel at the off ramp, no vacancy, and no evidence of an actual town.

On to Ogallala. The motel at the exit had a No Vacancy sign up but the desk clerk told me, “There’s one motel I’d recommend. A couple I wouldn’t. But I’ve just sent 3 people to the Pump & Pantry. They might still have a couple rooms.”

We thanked her and saddled up once more, rode into town and hung a right at the light. A few blocks down, I never would have found the place if I hadn’t been told where to look.

Booking was done at the gas station/convenience store counter; Nicole advised that yes, “There are two rooms left, if you like them.”

“We’ll split one, and it will be fine”, I replied. “Would you mind signing a witness form?”

Of course, an explanation followed. Nicole was happy to be our witness and seemed fairly amused by the idea.

I’d felt surprisingly good while riding this last stretch; the K1300S had proved itself a fine platform for long-distance riding. I’d seriously considered if it might make sense to simply quit the apparently Quixotic attempt to find a room and just ride through the night. Although I dislike riding at night simply because of the risk of hitting deer (or even larger animals that are known to roam the prairie), if Ogallala had turned into another fail I would have simply shrugged and got on with it, with little ill feeling.

But once we had a room, and no need to ride further, my brain turned to mush. I managed to do another incredibly poor job of staging “evidence pictures”, completely overlooked the fact that Nicole hadn’t entered the time on my “End Witness” form, and couldn’t perform basic arithmetic quickly or well anytime Mike asked.

By the way, this wasn’t my first thousand mile day. I’ve done at least two and possibly three others, but this is the first one I bothered to document with the intent of applying for certification.

My first thousand mile day was in early June of 1980, when I rode from Thompson Falls, Montana to Jamestown, North Dakota on my 1974 BMW R60/6. It took me 22 hours and 10 minutes – those were the days of 55 mph speed limits – and I chronicled it in the diary of my first long distance motorcycle tour from Phoenix, Arizona to Michigan, via the west coast. Without the luxury of portable radar weather maps I spent hours riding through two violent thunderstorms…in the dark.

Long before Ewan McGregor usurped it – hell, maybe before he was born – and done on a somewhat smaller budget (I didn’t even have a proper tent), that travelogue was entitled The Long Way Around, and the chapter for my first SaddleSore was called The Day I Rode My Brains Out.

I suppose it’s arguable I never got them back...

John Perry Dancoe
South Fork, Colorado
June 12, 2013

Woody Creek Dispatch

Last year, the evening before starting my ride Into the West, I happened to watch Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven.

As is often the case, Scott’s unique ability to capture the sweep of epic journeys across foreign and sometimes wholly imaginary landscapes stayed with me long after the closing credits had rolled. The reverberations of Kingdom were particularly apt for me, as the deserts of ancient Palestine were not unlike those of the American West toward which I was bound the next day. Although I don’t miss living in the desert, where I spent most of my 20s, I do get a hankering to return there now and again…to stand on a high place and absorb the vista, to soak in that peculiar and ineffable quality of late afternoon or early morning sunlight falling upon the walls of distant mountainsides, canyons, cloudbanks or cities.

When I began this year’s trek I had no such visions to pursue. To the extent I felt I had a mission at all, it was focused entirely on what was getting me there: a new BMW K1300S, which I’ve named Princess Therese in honor of the Bavarian maiden whose wedding party became the original Oktoberfest. I’d purchased Therese, my first new motorcycle in nearly twenty years, after returning from last year’s journey. Therese had never been to the kind of places where she really belongs, and my sole ambition was to rectify that sad situation.

Ultimately (and I use that word with a touch of irony, the basis for which will become apparent), my new machine would indeed prove her quality and fulfill that mission. On a morning in mid-June I chased my oldest riding buddy and mentor along the Coronado Trail, a magnificently serpentine course that winds precipitously along the crest of Arizona’s White Mountains. It’s a ride Larry and I had done many times in the past, but I hadn’t been there in the past two decades and never on a machine as astonishingly powerful and competent as Therese.

On that Monday morning the weather was perfect and we had the road virtually to ourselves. It was one of the most memorable rides of my life. And for icing on the cake, the ride offered up more than a few of those grand desert vistas.

Later that day…”ultimately” in a very real sense…Therese experienced an alternator failure that left her dead on the shoulder of US-180 in New Mexico. My motorcycle tour was unexpectedly supplanted by a genuinely terrifying midnight ride in the passenger seat of a flatbed transporter, days of idle frustration and alcoholic overindulgence in Albuquerque, and a bitterly undesired airline flight home. Then a couple weeks back at work but not entirely, as far as my mind was concerned, on the job.

Last Tuesday I began this dispatch while sitting in a Mexican restaurant in the McNamara terminal, sipping Two Hearted Ale and awaiting the arrival of my next conveyance – a Delta 757 delayed by same the ferocious rainstorm that had made the drive to the airport a white-knuckled ordeal for Laurel.

As I wrote I realized that with my restart of this year’s journey, I found I had a mission.

Anyone who knows me well is familiar with the high regard in which I hold the work of Hunter S. Thompson.

On my office wall are three framed passages that I consider the finest examples of English prose that I know, lauded for both the skill of the authors’ wordcraft and for their eloquent expression of some of my most fundamental beliefs.

Two of those passages were written by Thompson. One is the last page of Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. Those few paragraphs capture the essential thrill of motorcycling better than anything else I’ve ever read. The other passage is what’s commonly referred to as “The Wave Speech”, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.

During my interlude at home, while BMW found an alternator somewhere in the eastern hemisphere and shipped it to Albuquerque, Netflix had delivered The Rum Diary to my mailbox. It’s one of Thompson’s early works, but was the last of his novels to be published.

Despite the book and shortly afterward the movie both having come out several years ago I’d successfully remained almost entirely ignorant of them. I’d especially avoided reading or watching any reviews. Years ago the utter uselessness, not to mention spoiler factor, of film reviews was proven quite convincingly by the legions of critics who unanimously skewered Fear and Loathing…and who in doing so clearly demonstrated they had not the slightest clue what they were looking at.

So I sat down and watched The Rum Diary with keen anticipation, not least because I understand exactly how well Johnny Depp understands and venerates Hunter’s legacy. That other slightly more famous Johnny D, who is almost exactly my age, read Fear and Loathing in high school, exactly when I did. And in perhaps exactly the same way, reading that book changed our lives. Years later he starred in the movie (he would have been my first choice for the job, had anyone asked my opinion) which was directed by Terry Gilliam (who would have been my first choice for the job, had anyone asked my opinion).

The claim that reading Fear and Loathing changed my life is a fairly dangerous thing to admit. I imagine most people would consider the book absurd and baffling at best, and more likely deeply offensive; the movie would only be more so. Only a very small (and continuously shrinking) percentage of the human race will ever be capable of fully appreciating and understanding Fear and Loathing; I suspect even many scholars who recognize and teach college courses based on the book’s literary merits probably don’t actually grok it.

I’ve heard Thompson referred to as “the voice of his generation”, which might be accurate in some respects but I’d say is rather an overstatement. Regardless, Depp and Gilliam and I are among that tiny demographic sliver who know at a visceral level what Fear and Loathing means, and just how important it really is. That’s why they very carefully delivered, and why I recognize, what I feel is the best screen adaptation I’ve ever seen. Having written two feature-length adaptations, I have some idea of the challenges involved with accomplishing that.

Depp, who became a close friend of Thompson and who found The Rum Diary manuscript in Hunter’s basement, brought both the book and movie into the light of day. Depp has expressed that he wants to continue making movies based on Thompson’s works, and I hope he does.

The Rum Diary sucked me in immediately, taking me to a time before I was born and to a place I’ve never been: San Juan Puerto Rico, 1958. But unlike the psychedelic chaos of Fear and Loathing, which film I admit would be all but incomprehensible and certainly cannot be fully appreciated without having read the book, The Rum Diary has an approachable and readily understandable story arc, and characters possessed of dimensions that more or less commonly exist in what most of us seem to agree is an objective reality.

Was the film an inflection point in the annals of motion pictures? No. But it was well-crafted and I enjoyed it so much I watched it again the next night, and the day after that checked the book out from the Orion library. The next day, the fourth of July, was the perfect day to begin reading it. Carefully choosing time, lighting, mood and location, with an appropriate drink at my elbow, I put aside the Steve Jobs biography and sat down with The Rum Diary.

The introduction transported me to the same place the movie did, spinning the tale of Al’s Backyard, a local patio where the newspapermen of Thompson’s fiction swilled cheap beer and rum when, often as not, they should have been working. My morning was made; it was great to discover “new” Thompson, and I’m glad there are still more of his works of which I’ve yet to turn the pages.

But I soon found the film was not a faithful adaptation of the book. In fact it’s not even really the same story, and a central character in the film is actually an amalgamation of two from the book. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the episodes that appeared in the film were ideas that had been edited out of the manuscript, or perhaps anecdotes verbally related to Depp by Thompson. But I suspect most of the spurious scenes were inventions of the filmmakers.

As a screenwriter I understand why this film departs so greatly from the book, and I don’t – entirely – disagree with the choices to do so. I’d say the film captures the spirit of the book while providing the kind of story arc that makes for a good movie. For a work like The Rum Diary I think that’s good enough. There are other adaptations to which I’ve granted the same license, though I certainly could list many more where deviations from the source material have been unnecessary, inexcusable, and often utterly unconscionable. This book is fiction, but like a diary it echoes the fits and starts, random intersections of fate, and ambiguous outcomes of real life. That’s not really a good recipe for most films, but it’s OK in a book, especially when the prose is as well-crafted as Thompson’s is here.

At this point you should be condemning my hypocrisy.

After all, what I’ve just written has all the characteristics of a critical review, despite my vilification of such things.

But there’s more to it than that. This wasn’t just a few hundred words somebody paid me to scribble. This is really important to me.

That’s why I’m here at the Woody Creek Tavern, on what I’m told is the same stool where Thompson used to sit.

John Perry Dancoe
Woody Creek, Colorado
July 12, 2013

Rim of the Valles Caldera

Before departing for New Mexico I’d used GoogleMaps to plot an itinerary from Albuquerque to my father’s house in Colorado. My 2nd favorite cloud app had of course proposed a route along the most boring roads possible, but it didn’t balk when I dragged the blue line across the tortured landscape of the Valles Caldera, the crater of an ancient volcano on whose eastern slopes lies Los Alamos, birthplace of the atomic bomb.

My high school friend and Albuquerque host Wade Thornhill, a desert racer of formidable skill and experience, chauffeured me to Sandia BMW and stuck around as I reattached luggage to Princess Therese and then put on my gear. That done I couldn’t afford to hang around for more chat; it was already getting warm.

I needed to get moving.

I zoomed north on I-25 where traffic was light and moving at a reasonable and prudent speed. Therese was running beautifully. Almost too beautifully, I realized, as I rolled up behind a sheriff’s cruiser a bit faster than I should have, but he ignored me and I soon exited at Bernallilo. As I crossed the Rio Grande I reflected that I’d do so once again at the end of this day’s ride, hundreds of miles from here but only a mile from my dad’s house.

I proceeded up the commercial strip but soon I was out of town and US-550 became a well-paved two-lane headed toward Farmington…a place where I would never arrive.

That’s because I had no intention of going to Farmington. I turned right at San Ysidro and began weaving up the arroyo grande where dusty hamlets like Jemez Pueblo offered the occasional tavern, art gallery, and back yard full of junk. Soon thereafter I was where I really wanted to be: alone on a deliciously twisting strip of pavement that had finally climbed into the ponderosa, weaving along cliffs of basalt columns.

This was one of those roads the BMW K1300S was designed for.

And then I came to point “C”.

GoogleMaps hadn’t given me any indication I’d find a “Pavement Ends” sign there. I got out my reading glasses and studied the ten-year old paper in my map pouch. Sure enough, NM-126 was not a continuous solid black line.

I pondered my options.

One would be to return the way I’d come. Not entirely objectionable, as it had been a fun ride up to the rim, and would be a fun ride down…at least until I got back to the desert basin which by now would be at least ten degrees warmer than when I’d left. The idea of riding in the heat was a much greater disincentive than the idea of adding least sixty miles to my ride this day.

My second option was to accept the unknown challenges of the road ahead. I estimated the unpaved section to be ten, perhaps fifteen miles long before the pavement would resume and descend into Cuba.

I would not have hesitated had I been riding Nada 3, my venerable R1100RS which has on uncounted occasions performed remarkably well in places I should never have gone. Nada 3 is after all a very close sibling of the legendary R1100GS, which has been a commodity of the adventure riding scene for the past two decades.

But today I was riding Therese, and had no illusions about her being anything resembling a dirt bike.

Still…I grew up riding dirt bikes and what I could see of the road ahead was far from intimidating.

I elected to go forward. I’d give it a shot and trust I had the wisdom to recognize conditions that would dictate a retreat.

The first mile or so actually looked like it had once been paved, but had simply been left unmaintained. No problem at all.

Then it turned into what had clearly always been a dirt road. But it was actually in far better shape than the two tenths of a mile of Indian Lake Road that lies between my neighborhood and the pavement of M-24…or for that matter, the ostensibly “paved” subdivision roads themselves, whose decrepit condition has been on the agenda of every homeowner’s association meeting of the past ten years.

I continued winding through the woods, past more fascinating rock formations, working my way up the pass. Occasionally I’d need to weave around particularly large potholes or exposed rocks or washboard ripples, but no quarter-mile stretch was any worse than what I negotiate on my daily commute.

A few miles in it became clear I’d made it over the crest. The road leveled and straightened out, frequently coming out of the woods and traversing the open parks along the bottom of a valley where the occasional cabin or ranch sat beside the stream. I increased my speed, running confidently along at 40 and sometimes 50 miles per hour. At that speed I overtook a Chrysler 300 that was sightseeing at perhaps 30.

Shortly after that a light rain started.

I grumbled. For the first of many times during the days that would follow, I cursed the misfortune that had me riding in the monsoon season.

Whenever possible I start my tours on Memorial Day. The primary reason is purely to do with weather. In late May and early June temperatures are relatively cool (important for someone who wears All The Gear All The Time), and rain in the West fairly infrequent. When early summer rain does occur it’s usually in the form of isolated showers which are often easy to avoid or punch through in a matter of minutes, even seconds. But by July and August the annual monsoon has usually arrived. Especially in Colorado, large dangerous thunderstorms can then be expected every single afternoon, and they sometimes blanket entire regions; they often cannot be ridden around or quickly pierced, and unless there’s some compelling reason to ride through totally crap conditions they must be waited out, sometimes for many hours.

This year I was unable to leave Michigan until June 8, much later than I’d have preferred. But the weather had still been pretty close to ideal…until Therese’s alternator failed in rural New Mexico. Long story short, my tour then experienced a hiatus which didn’t end until this day, July 10. And now here I was, riding in the rain.

I’d been cruising along at about 45 miles per hour, irritated that the droplets on my helmet visor were degrading my view of the scenery.

And then I realized I was completely out of control.

Yeah, just that quick.

It suddenly felt like I was riding on snow.

What happened next didn’t feel sudden at all.

It took a very long time.

Or at least seemed to, because that’s how time always behaves during a motorcycle crash.

Irrespective of any objective temporal rate of change, I do have a pretty good recollection of what I was thinking. It went something like this:

OH SHIT!!!
I AM ABOUT TO CRASH!!!!
Saved it!!!
Don’t know how…
trying to slow down…
brakes aren’t working at all…
I’m GOING DOWN for sure this time…
saved it again — still don’t know how…
brakes still aren’t doing squat…
this is IT for sure…
phew…
to hell with the brakes, feet out…
oh shit…
how did I not just crash?
I wonder if this side of the road will be any better…not that I have any say about it…
slower now…
still about to fall over…
saved it again…
man I’m going to be pissed off when I smash this fairing…
saved it…
oh no…
saved it…
spoke too soon…
saved it…
holy crap this stuff is slick…
almost stopped…
oh come on, it’s just not fair to have got this far without dropping it and now it’s gonna happen for sure…
saved it…
oh shit not now…
and…
and…
and…
and…
and…
...stop.

I resumed breathing.

I didn’t know how I’d managed to avoid a crash, but somehow I’d just done a fairly impressive bit of riding – or at least had complied with the most important rule of motorcycling: to keep the rubber side down.

I had to give some credit to the machine, and acknowledge I’d finally been saved by BMW’s antilock brake system which had probably kept me from dropping the bike in those first few seconds (or milliseconds). I recalled the early 80s when BMW was the first motorcycle manufacturer to offer ABS. Their engineers rigged a bike with wheeled outriggers so test riders could ride on slick pavement and fall over without actually hitting the ground. Then they shot video of the tests. With the ABS switched on riders could hit the brakes on a slick patch, and remain upright; with the ABS switched off they would fall over. Or at least those are the takes BMW used to show.

I removed the ABS system from Nada 3 because of its unpredictable behavior on bumpy roads, of which Michigan has more than its fair share. I’ve never regretted that decision, in fact I still think it was the best modification I’ve made to the machine. But BMW motorcycle ABS has come a long way in the past twenty years; Therese’s ABS behaves very well on patchwork pavement, and I suspect the system saved me from a crash this day.

Either way, credit was all mine after I’d decided brakes weren’t doing any good and I quit trying to use them.

Enough about getting stopped. I needed to think about moving.

I throttled up carefully and the rear wheel immediately spun and kicked sideways…despite Therese’s ASC (Anti-Spin Control), yet more of BMW’s technological wizardry.

Uh-oh.

This severe traction deficiency was a phenomenon I’d experienced before. Some unpaved road surfaces out west are fine when dry but when wet become a nearly frictionless slime. I was now on such a road, ten miles or so from the pavement behind me, and some unknown distance from pavement ahead.

I pondered my options.

One would be to return the way I’d come. This would have the advantage of being a known distance, but I didn’t know if that section of road, which had now been soaking in rain for quite some time, would be any better than where I was now.

My second option was to accept the unknown challenges of the road ahead. My estimates of how far I’d travelled off-pavement, and the total length of the unpaved section, were rough. It was possible the pavement resumed right around the next curve. It was also possible my outdated map was completely wrong and there was no macadam between here and Cuba, which I figured was about another twenty miles on. But my best guess was that another three to five miles of this snot lay ahead of me.

A third choice would be to sit and wait for things to dry out. But I was in the middle of nowhere with a thermos of coffee, a few liters of water, two protein bars, no cell phone service, and no reason to think the rain would stop soon. Conditions were only going to get worse for quite a while before they would get better.

One factor in the decision was that simply turning around wouldn’t be all that easy. It wasn’t even going to be easy to get back to the right side of the road; while slowing I’d ended up at the very edge of the eastbound shoulder.

I elected to go forward. I eased on the throttle and paddled until I was creeping forward at some low single-digit speed. I still constantly felt like I was about to fall over, but there was a slim chance I’d be able to hold the bike upright with my leg and avoid hundreds of dollars in damage, which on modern bikes can happen at a standstill.

Time dilated again; it was a slower-motion version of the near-crash, with even more “oh shit/saved it” cycles.

The road surface didn’t improve.

I stopped at one point to get off and look my machine over. It was a bad place to do it and I very nearly got stuck in the mud. The Chrysler motored past. The driver looked like he was going to slow and offer assistance, but I waved him on. If he’d been in a pickup truck or better yet towing a flatbed trailer he might have been able to help.

I continued on.

Therese’s cooling fan came on. I was moving very slowly and, I knew, mud was accreting on the radiator. I kept my eye on the temperature gage, which kept climbing.

On one of my gage checks, I noticed the yellow caution triangle and brake failure indicators were on.

I’d seen that brake failure warning before; it was what had lit up when the alternator croaked back in June.

“Oh crap, what have I done to my bike now?” I wondered, dismayed.

One thing I had learned from June’s experience was not to stop on the shoulder of a remote road just because I had a brake failure warning; I was going to ride this motorcycle, if at all possible, to someplace with services. Ideally a gas station adjacent to an auto parts store adjacent to a motel adjacent to a brewery.

Finally a cattle guard appeared and on the far side, blessed pavement. I did some careful slalom maneuvers, hoping to scrub the slime off my tires, and rode carefully down to Cuba. At the T intersection I turned right and rode to the city limits, then reversed and went south until I’d seen everything the place had to offer. There was no brewery but at least there were a couple auto parts stores, a few restaurants and bars, and at least one motel.

I pulled into motel parking lot.

Switched off the ignition.

Switched on.

Damn! The idiot lights were still on. And I certainly felt like the idiot they were named after.

I took a breath and pushed the starter button.

Vrooom!

Huge sigh of relief. At least I apparently didn’t have another alternator issue, and the motor seemed fine. I was not, at this point, stranded. The idiot lights were still aglow, but sometimes they don’t go out until the bike moves.

I moved.

Damn. The lights still didn’t go out.

My hope now was that both indications were a result of the same problem, and that the problem was mud fouling the ABS sensor. With that in mind I headed directly to the car wash I’d spotted during my survey run.

I wish I’d taken pictures at the car wash before I started, because these snapshots I took up on the dirt road barely hint at what Therese eventually looked like.

Both wheels had an inch of mud caked 360 degrees around the inside of the rims, and it was surprisingly difficult to blast the crud off. It was not surprising that the ABS signal generator ring was completely clogged as well. The radiator wasn’t too badly blocked but I spent most of at least $5 shoving the wand under the front fender where an astonishing number of dense clay chunks nearly as big as my fist kept dropping out.

When I figured it was as good as it needed to be, I put my gear back on and saddled up.

Ignition on.

Idiot lights.

Engine start.

Idiot lights.

Clutch in, first gear, clutch out and move.

Lights out.

Sigh of relief.

Out to the road and on to the next adventure...which would prove to be not far ahead.

John Perry Dancoe
Lake Orion, Michigan
July 21, 2013

Into The West
Tour 2012

PART 1: Across the Great Plains...Again

Impending Storm - Western Iowa

Thoughts:

These kinds of rides leave one with a lot of time to think.

The Rider observed those around him driving in air-conditioned comfort, listening to their favorite music on high fidelity audio systems
instead being bombarded by the literally deafening roar of wind noise barely thwarted by earplugs crammed in as deep as he could shove them.

"Why do I do this?" the Rider wondered.

He continued to question why he should continue to ride. Motorcycles are often uncomfortable. Frequently impractical. Always dangerous.
And there really seemed to him no good reason to be in this particular place on a motorcycle. Though he had crossed the Great Plains many times, the Rider is not someone who enjoys long straight roads. He was going to Colorado because it was the opposite of the Great Plains. It was simply his misfortune that thousands of miles of plains lay between his home and the mountains where he most loved to ride.
But that was not a reason to stop riding altogether. He also knew this part of the ride was merely a necessary evil. Perhaps in future it should simply be made with the bike on a trailer or in a pickup.
His mind tried to properly position him into the grand epic of his imagination, but that was hard to do while riding through mile after mile of countryside that looked essentially like southern Michigan.

Beers:
Sunday May 27 (Omaha, NE): Lucky Bucket IPA (La Vista, NE)
Monday May 28 (Estes Park, CO): "Rochefort 10" Trappist Ale (Rochefort Abbey, Belgium)

Map
Photos

Omaha Jazz

Finally!!! A Curve

________________________________________________________________________
PART 2: The Mountains

John Over the Edge (Trail Ridge Summit, Rocky Mountain National Park)

Thoughts:
"Why?" was now "Why."

Beers:
Tuesday May 29 (Steamboat Springs, CO): Mahogany Ridge Alpenglow Amber Ale (Steamboat Springs, CO)
Wednesday May 30 (Montrose, CO): Horsefly Brewing Co. Highland Scottish Ale (Montrose, CO)
Thursday May 31 (Telluride, CO): Smuggler Joe's Rocky Mountain Rye, Engineer Ale, Road Rash Red, Two Plank Porter, others... (Telluride,
CO)
Friday June 1 (Flagstaff, AZ): Lumberyard Brewing Co. Red Ale, Raspberry Wheat (Flagstaff, AZ)
Saturday June 2 (Flagstaff, AZ): Lumberyard Red, Four Peaks Kilt Lifter Scottish Ale (Tempe, AZ)

Map
Photos

John and Jack at McClure Pass, Colorado

_________________________________________________________________________
PART 3: Desert Crossing

Mojave Deseert from the Angeles Crest

Thoughts:
Crossing the high plains and desert from
Flagstaff to Laughlin was mostly comfortable, with only the last few miles descending to the river serving to remind him of the main reason he'd left Arizona two decades before. He hid in the air conditioning of the typically seedy gambling-strip hotel until it was cool enough to venture out, fuel the bike for the next
morning's run, and grab some dinner.
Arriving back at the hotel, the Pro Superbike race from Elkhart Lake was on the monitors in the casino. He stayed up later than he'd intended, watching the race, never once dropping a coin in the slot at his elbow.
Nevertheless he awoke before his alarm the next morning, with pre-dawn glow silhouetting the mountains to the East; the sun peaked over
the ridge within the first mile of his ride away from the casino strip. The temperature outside fluctuated from cool to warm and back as he rose and fell
over the undulations of desert washes. For a while feared he might have dallied too long.
But when he entered the freeway, heading finally west instead of south, he found himself at last in the epic desert journey of his imagination.
The temperature remained comfortably cool, and he moved at high speed across vast peneplains between mountains cast in dramatic relief by the low angle of the morning sunlight.
It was perfect, the most enjoyable desert crossing he could remember.
By the time he reached the foot of the Angeles Crest Highway, where the first sign he saw after exiting the highway was "VEHICLES BLOCKING SNOWPLOWS WILL BE TOWED", he stopped to put on more layers and knew that he'd succeeded.
When after riding a few dozen miles of that magnificently twisted (though littered with rockfalls) stretch of pavement, and was definitely ready for brunch, he came across Newcomb's Ranch. There was a Ducati parked in the gift shop and yesterday's Pro Superbike race on the monitors.
He knew then he'd not merely succeeded, but scored.

Beers:
Sunday June 3 (Laughlin, NV): Pints Micro-Brewery Golden (Laughlin, NV)
Monday June 4 (Granada Hills, CA): Dos Equis Amber. Yep. Mex restaurant had NO local brews :(

Map
Photos

Signs We Like To See (Angeles Crest Highway)

Sunset at Cambria

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PART 4: The Coast
Thoughts:
Back in the 80s, the Rider had often come to California and had gained a respect for California drivers—especially in contrast to Arizona drivers of the time. On the freeways and in LA drivers were at least competent and predictable. On the country roads they were even polite. There was no need for the signs “SLOW TRAFFIC USE TURNOUTS”, which are ubiquitous now; self-respecting California drivers wouldn’t consider holding up traffic.
But he found that the quality of typical modern California drivers, especially in Southern California, has declined drastically. Cars in LA are commonly battered; as the Rider was trying to escape from LA some bozo in an old green sedan pulled away from the curb with no signal and stopped halfway
through a U-turn, completely blocking the Rider’s way. Fortunately the rider was alert and had no problem stopping in time, but had he been distracted or less alert his tour might have come to a sudden and violent end.
As he worked his way up Highway 1 north of the Golden Gate, the Rider found many drivers are the typical obliviots one might find anywhere else in the country; lacking the wisdom to avoid roads which they have neither the courage nor skill to drive on properly, failing to even approach the speed limit they would plod along with half a dozen or more cars stacked up behind them, passing one turnout after another, utterly ignorant.
Farther up along the coast highway, they continued to be ignorant of the fact that large signs “SLOW TRAFFIC MUST USE TURNOUTS TO ALLOW PASSING” meant THEM. At one point on a beautiful sinuous stretch of blacktop along the shore of Tomales Bay, the rider found himself behind a pair of Harley riders. The road and conditions were perfect for the Rider to have proceeded in a sporting fashion, but the Harleys were unwilling and perhaps incapable of even riding at the posted limit and it was unsafe to pass them given the continuous double-yellow lines. The slower rider, a woman, had the sense and courtesy to move aside. But the turd ahead of her continued to wallow along until the Rider, in frustration at having been denied the opportunity to enjoy the road properly, pulled a U-turn and headed south riding it a total of three times...but only once without spending it putzing along behind slow traffic.

Thoughts:
   Coming down Page Mill Road, one of the tightest, twistiest, roads he’d ever ridden, he frequently encountered bicyclists.   Usually they were coming up the hill, in the opposite lane, but the Rider was increasingly concerned that he might come across a cyclist going downhill and might fail to avoid a collision. On a road where virtually every corner was blind and shoulders generally nonexistent, where the rider was concerned that even a motorcycle might be likely crash into a bicyclist, he wondered why cyclists would consider riding that road to be a reasonable thing to do.
The Rider considered that what the average California bicyclist should be thinking would make his own ruminations on the dangers of riding motorcycles seem nothing less than utterly paranoid ravings.
As both a motorcyclist and a bicyclist, the Rider knows bicycles have all of the disadvantages of a motorcycle, but none of the advantages.
And that’s without adding cars to the discussion. When on a bicycle the Rider does not want to be anywhere near motor vehicles.
As a motorist he does not want bicycles anywhere near his vehicle. A couple years previously he’d come across the aftermath of a car-bicycle collision less than a mile from his office. He’d seen the cyclist on Giddings Road often. He’d ridden that road himself on his bicycle a couple of times, years before, but immediately discontinued the practice because he’d never felt more imperiled.
He’d wished the cyclist good luck every time they’d passed each other. But those wishes didn’t prevent the cyclist’s death.
It was one thing, the Rider reflected on this day, for cyclists on Highway 1 to trundle up the shoulder trusting their Day-Glo green windbreakers would be adequate to save their lives. How they could possibly enjoy the experience with cars constantly zooming by, inches away with a fifty mile per hour or more speed differential, the Rider could not fathom.
As for the cyclists on Page Mill Road…the Rider concluded they must simply assume that miracles will occur every few minutes.

Page Mill Rd. Map

Thoughts:
Just before Highway 1 turned inland the Rider stopped for a last look at the ocean; it would be many miles before he would be back to the
coast. As he took in the view, a couple on a BMW R1200GS went by.
The Rider decided catching up with the couple on the GS, who now had a couple minute head start, would be a good challenge. Catching the GS would prove nothing; the playing field wasn’t level. But it would say something if the Rider couldn’t do it.
What a ride!
The road was a fantastic undulation of flawless pavement, with virtually no traffic. The boxer's motor was running beautifully; his throttle cable adjustments had done the trick. The brakes and suspension, thanks to the Rider's customizations, were better than when the bike was new. Even after all those miles on the coast highway he hadn’t had so much fun, or felt so completely in tune with his machine. It had been years, in fact. It was times like this that he wondered why he’d want any other motorcycle.
But every once and a while he'd get a reminder. The annoying 2nd gear lurch was still there. But he kept out of that regime as much as he could and the road generally permitted it.
In time he came up behind the GS and enjoyed following for quite a while.
   Zooming through the redwoods was like the Endor hoverbike sequence in Return of the Jedi, and the Force was indeed with the Rider this day. Ultimately the GS pulled into a turnout and the RS took the lead; but after that the GS was never very far behind.
When they reached Highway 101, the GS headed south. A shame, the Rider thought; having seen the others’ skill, he would have enjoyed
riding with him for a while.
The Rider continued north. US-101 was almost crowded with Harleys. Ready for breakfast now, he took the exit to Garberville. At the top of the ramp he saw a sign pronouncing the town “Harleyville” and groaned; the last thing he wanted at that point was a bunch of noise and bad(ass) attitude.
But the Rider was glad they were all hanging out on 101 and in “Harleyville”, instead of farting and scraping their way up and down Highway 1.
He continued on a couple miles to Redway and found a small diner without any motorcycles parked in front.

CA-1 to US-101 Map

Beers:
Tuesday June 5 (Cambria, CA): Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Chico, CA)
Wednesday June 6 (Palo Alto, CA): Gordon Biersch Marzen (San Jose, CA)
Thursday June 7 (Gualala, CA): Boont Amber Ale (Anderson Valley Brewing Co, Boonville CA)
Friday June 8 (Veneta, OR): Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve (Hood River, OR)
Saturday June 9 (Eugene, OR): Ninkasi Brewing Co. (various) (Eugene, OR)
Sunday June 10 (Veneta, OR): Ninkasi Total Domination IPA (Eugene, OR)

Map
Photos ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PART 5: Not This Time
Thoughts:
Only once before, in 1980, had the Rider ever ventured near Yellowstone. At the time, and while sorely tempted, he had not taken the
exit from I-90 in Montana, because a) he was committed to riding his first 1,000 mile day, and b) he was living on pennies plus his dad’s Unocal credit
card. In 2012, a) there would be no such silliness, and b) he had his own credit card.
There was no real excuse for him to have saved a few dollars by staying in the worst hotel he’d ever seen, at the bleak crossroads called Arco, Idaho (the first city in the world to be electrified with atomic power). But he found it amusing and rather just that luxury should be foregone that night.
The ride from Arco the next morning was another epic yet comfortable desert crossing, a cool sunny zoom across a basin ringed by distant
mountain ranges, and sprinkled with the nuclear reactors of the Idaho National Laboratory. That such a remote and desolate location had been chosen for these proving grounds attested to the dangers lurking behind the promise of nuclear energy. At the Snake River, the landscape changed to verdant croplands spread across rolling foothills. Suddenly he crested the ridge into the Swan Valley, one of the most beautiful alpine vales he’d ever seen. This was a place to which he wanted to return. Then it was up and over Teton pass, a crawl through tourist-choked Jackson, and then a ride blissfully free of traffic north through Grand Teton National Park...
...until he was finally at Yellowstone.
Unfortunately it was not the Yellowstone experience anyone should have. In the first place it was really just a ride-through. He arrived at Old Faithful just in time to miss it, and waited there for the next eruption…until the rain started. The rain followed him through the park, falling most heavily just when he’d hiked down the 800 foot descent to the platform on the Brink of the Lower Falls.

Lower Falls Video
Lower Falls Video

The rain and abbreviated visit notwithstanding, the awesome and vertiginous experience at the falls was a true Yellowstone moment. But not more so than his last stop in the Park, where on the north shore of Yellowstone Lake the rain had stopped and sun was falling on the distant snow-capped peaks to the south. He pulled into a deserted turnout and stood watching the surf roll in. Then he poured coffee from his thermos and raised the cup in sincere thanks to Whoever’s In Charge.

Beers:
Monday June 11 (Bend, OR): Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Silver Moon Hopknob IPA (Bend, OR)
Tuesday June 12 (Arco, ID): Drinking anything in Arco seemed rather hazardous.
Wednesday June 13 (Crossed Sabres Ranch, WY): Madison River Hopper Pale Ale (Belgrade, MT)
Thursday June 14 (Keystone, SD): Another dry night in consideration of another Great Plains crossing.

Map
Photos
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PART 6: The Mad Dash
Thoughts:
As the Rider sat in the quiet comfort of his friend's living room, he thought, "This concept called freedom is a pretty cool thing."

Beers:
Friday June 15 (Madison, WI): Bell's Two Hearted Ale (Comstock, MI)
Saturday June 16 (Madison, WI): Capital Maibock (Middleton WI), Point Black Ale (Stevens Point, WI)
Sunday June 17 (Lake Orion, MI): Bell's Amber Ale (Comstock, MI)

Map
Photos
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Epilogue

   The Rider returned home to find his dog had been severely mauled by a Great Dane the day before. He'd been expecting a warm and very physical welcome from his favorite lap-Husky. Instead Chelsea was so doped up she barely wagged her tail as she lay on the cool wooden floor.
Two weeks later, she seems well on the road to recovery.

Map

The Rider's most ambitious motorcycle tour ever had spanned 22 days, 16 states, and 7,146 miles.

His machine, which was more than 19 years old and by journey's end had traversed more than 120,000 miles since he'd rolled it out of the dealership, had required only one minor repair--the oil level sight glass had popped out on the very last morning of the trip. The repair took a couple of hours, almost all of which was spent having one last unexpected breakfast with his hosts while he waited for the Permatex to set.

The next day he rode his still bug-splattered machine to work.

On the way home he found himself thinking, "This is a really great bike."

Red & GreenTour 2019

Moving PicturesTour 2018

I Can't Believe They Let Us Do ThisTour 2017

Boonedoggle DispatchPowerPlex 2017

More Epic Than UsualTour 2016

Good TimingsTour 2015

Riding Between The RaindropsTour 2014

Return to Malfunction Junction Tour 2013

Into The West Tour 2012