Moab, Utah

Moab is a cool place.

I've had a special place for Moab since the 2003 Iron Butt Rally, when I hit an oil spill a few miles out of town and had a nasty crash. Starting with the tow truck driver to the great folks at Moab Off Road I managed to get the bike all fixed up and was back in the rally the next day. I'll never forget hearing the phone ring at the shop and the owner getting a funny look as he said "it's for you". It was the tow truck driver telling me that while the town was too small for him to actually tell me his name, a gentleman named Clayton Stokes had the motor seize in his Econoline Van three miles up the road from where I crashed. Turned out Mr. Stokes had just left the local quickie lube after an oil change and his new oil was on the apex of my turn.

A few years ago I went back to Moab on the Crazy Uncle Tour and my buddy Dave suggested we visit the Arches at Sunrise. This was such an experience I wanted to share it with Dillon.

We left Howard without ever meeting the few soreheads and headed west on US 50. Up and up we went, cresting Monarch Pass at 13,000 feet, absolutely amazed at the people riding touring bicycles up the pass.



West side of Monarch pass

After Monarch we stopped in Montrose for some fuel. When I was planning the trip I wanted to see if we could do some high altitude camping or ride Emmegrant Pass which I did on the CU tour. It's a jeep trail with dramatic drops and incredible views, but I decided after riding the bike for a few days that the chances of making it up and down without smoking the clutch would be pretty tough.

I had a fall back plan for some remote riding. Thanks to my friends on Adventure Rider I was able to confirm that route 90 west from Montrose would give us a good taste of the wild without putting too much abuse on the bike.

90 is a forest road, graded dirt and gravel with just a few choppy sections. We took it easy and had a great time, Did I mention Dillon loves trees? He loved this road and all I sad was "you just wait till we get to Northern California."

We both enjoyed 90. I liked it because it was easy and accomplished part of our primary mission which is to get away from pavement, billboards and wal-marts. Dillon liked it for the adventure and the middle of nowhere feeling.

What's a ride in the country without encountering animals? We came around a turn and found a good sized cow in the road. Good thing Dillon had the camera ready.



While the woods were a lot of fun I was ready for pavement and Dillon was ready for Utah.

Howard Colorado

According to the sign there are 1201 residents and a couple of soreheads living in Howard.

Fortunately the owners of the Sugarbush campground are not soreheads, plus they have wireless. We had considered going further west and camping at 10,000 feet but we don't have the right gear for anything under 40 degrees which is the forecast for 6,500 which is right about where we are.

We had another great day, if you can call riding Kansas great. I've done Kansas a few times and this was the first time it started to get to me, perhaps it is the constant push or pull required to keep a hack going straight for a few hundred miles. We've covered almost 2100 miles since Friday afternoon and I'm a bit sore up top, it's time to start the Advil routine.

We both have been ready to spend a night outdoors for a few days now, we're even ready to give up wireless. While our original route was a bit ambitious, no matter how you slice it 10 days is not a tremendous amount of time to go from Bristol to Portland when you want to avoid interstate, see stuff and stop to smell the roses. We're starting early and ending late with little energy to cook.

After dinner down the road we had a sunset discussion about the rest of the trip. The original itinerary was based on the three points of interest I got out of Dillon last winter. I've tried to make it clear that this is his trip, we can go any direction except east and of course we must get to Reed (college in Portland) on schedule. My only request is that we be in Marin Friday night to visit one of my best buddies and his wife who has hit little rough patch with her health. I can't bear the thought of not seeing her and making sure they both know how much they mean to me, plus I want to show off my son. Dillon doesn't know about the show off part but he knows I want him to meet my friends and he's game for the visit. We're going to cut out the Sequoia National Forest and General Grant's highway. This will give us three sub 300 mile days to Marin and a chance to relax the pace some. I'd like a couple of nights where we get to camp early enough to enjoy happy hour and cook together, that doesn't happen after a 500 mile day although with a plan to visit the Arches at sunrise a room in Moab is in the plan.

Before heading west from Pueblo on US 50 the most interesting sight of the day was either a few massive wind farms in Kansas or the sign on the back of a semi that appeared to be a hog taking a dump along with some slogan about not eating chicken or beef. That's a photo to be posted when we have the bandwidth. I'm psyched at how much better it will be from here.

It's apparent that Dillon loves the outdoors which is no surprise, he and his buddies have been camping in the woods behind the house for years. At one point I couldn't find him at the campsite until he told me to look up. My hack monkey is a tree climber too. I'm looking forward to sharing Northern California with him, after Marin we have three nights and four days to get to Portland and I'm looking forward to every one as well camp "for real" after Marin.

Just so long as he doesn't try to scale a redwood.

Great Bend, Kansas

The interstate is great for covering ground efficiently, seeing strange billboards (Colt 45, works every time, as seen in Saint Louis) and blowing by big stadiums. We agreed that the Colts have a much more attractive house than the Chiefs.

Dillon is a great traveling partner and the perfect monkey (sidecar passengers are called a monkey). I had no idea how he would do in the hack and I am delighted with how well it is going. After Hamburg we hit it pretty hard to Effingham, IL covering a little over 700 miles in some 90 degree heat.

I took a tiny jog off route so we could go through St. Louis and see the arch. Dillon took three years of American History (and aced em I might add) which is great because I slept through AH. A good part of my current knowledge came from reading markers on the Iron Butt rally; In 07 I strung all sorts of Lewis and Clark sites together so we had some stuff to chat about.



The arch as viewed from the chair.

As we went west from St. Louis we got our first weather event of the trip. The sky started to get very dark and I started explaining the thought process that goes into dealing with storms. Do we stop now and seal up? When we do we'll get all steamy in our gear if we get lucky and miss rain, if we don't we could get totally soaked with can lead to hypothermia, even when it's 80 degrees out.

While I was explaining to Dillon that I might have blown the call we created a hill and I pointed out that what you see up there is a wall of rain, we're going to get very wet unless we make it to that exit before we meet rain.

I was off by about three minutes. We got under cover at a truck stop as it got really hairy, horizontal rain and lightning all around, good times! We literally just made it and I learned how tenuous the ME 880's tires can be in the rain as I broke the back end loose off the exit ramp. A decision was made to enjoy a truck stop lunch of hot soup and a sandwich. Meanwhile we could see the interstate get choked up as there were a few accidents to clean up. We passed on the pies as they were "boxed" i.e. not made on the premises.

In the 05 IBR I had an epic last day, a big part of which was a forced march from St. Louis to Denver on I 70. We stopped at a TA (truck stops of America) which brought back a flood of memories. I had a big fueling problem at the same stop four years ago next week, when the auto shut off on the pump did not work. I had my back turned and discovered this when I heard the hissing of fuel vaporizing as it ran down the tank and onto the motor; my training kicked in and rather than touch the handle I hit the emergency pump stop. Did you know that if you hit that button you stop every pump in the truck stop? Now you do. :)


We continued west to Kansas and the "tour du corn" as we like to call it. Did you know Kansas really is flatter than a pancake?


Entering Kansas (photo by Chacifer)

There's not much to say about Kansas, except to say the Best Western Angus is a wonderful surprise, especially the Angus part as I had a great KC strip for dinner. We said goodbye to Chace and took 159 south, not quite sure what we would find. I had wanted BBQ for lunch. When in New England eat Lobster, when in Missouri, try BBQ. This doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out but our rain delay and truck stop lunch pushed a pulled pork sammich off the menu so to speak but I made up for it with the KC steak.

Now all that stands between us an a night camping in the Rockies is the rest of Kansas and some nasty weather. Our plan was to get up at six, it's now 7:15, it's raining hard and the time between the flash and boom is under six seconds so Dillon is still sleeping and I'm blogging. I'm not opposed to getting wet but hard visibility cutting rain and lighting makes me happy to be in a hotel room vs on the bike.

Once the weather breaks we'll be taking 56 to US 50 and heading to the hills.

Right after I find some pepper spray.

Hamburg Pa.

Our first day went very well. Departure was bittersweet for Dillon. He admitted to thinking about 'being strong" but got a little tender when he was hit with the reality that he was leaving home.

It isn't like he'll never come back or won't be welcome with open arms but this is different. He is on his way to start writing the book of his life and by choice he is doing it where his family is an all day plane ride away.

Life isn't about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself.

Being somewhat of a nomadic sailor boy, a motorcycle traveler and having been packed off to boarding school by the 7th grade feeling sad at a departure is not something I am used to experiencing. Watching Dillon drove home the magnitude of what lies ahead for the dillmeister. Fortunately he is a very smart kid and makes friends easily. I only hope that after breezing through High School with little hard work and great grades he doesn't fall too far behind before realizing that the Game is On.

The bike is running great and all systems are working remarkably well for being finished at 8am on the day of departure. I have one issue with an electronic stack on the shelf, it wants to bounce and launch off the bike, only the safety cords are keeping it all in place. I'll sort this out before we get going today. It is great to have a good intercom system and the Autocom I had installed at the MOA National is working great. We can chat with little effort up to 75mph which is great.

While I am New England born and bread and I love the area getting in and out of New England is getting to be more and more of a pain in the ass. No matter when you leave it will suck, leave at night and you have construction and lot's of idling behind trucks, leave during the day and you get grid lock and lots of time idling behind trucks although often not as much as in the middle of the night, only because of all the idiots in their cages.

Regardless we pushed on through, going over the Tappan Zee bridge and down 287. It added distance but made for a less painful experience than the GW bridge on a Friday afternoon. My SO, Chace is also heading west on her GS. She left three hours ahead of us and had to sit on the side of the Cross Bronx when her bike overheated. I joked that we were riding sweep but as we took a different route we would have seen her.

For our first night it worked out that Chace got us all a room in Hamburg at the lovely Dutch Motel. It shows the pervasiveness of the Internet that a dump like this has free wireless. Two beds and a cot for $80, chains can't or won't touch this plus we have an exterior door which is great for traveling with a bike.

Our goal for today is westward ho! I'd be pumped if we could knock off 700 miles but that may be unrealistic. Chace is heading to Boulder and we're heading to Colorado Springs so at some point we'll part company. Could be sooner than later as she wants to be in St. Louis tonight which is 835 away. One thing I got to say about Dillon, our stops yesterday were very quick to perhaps we can throw down a monster day. The sooner we get to the Rockies the sooner we'll be camping in the woods, eating meat and doing things best not put "on the record" :)

Two years

Two years ago this week I was deep into the tunnel preparing the RTP for what as we all know as a less than satisfactory run at the Iron Butt Rally.

My last post was just about one year ago. I put the RTP back together for a Bun Burner Gold (1500 miles in 24 hours) to the IBA National Meet in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a fine ride and last fall the RTP won a major prize at the Larz Anderson Classic European Motorcycle Day.

I put it away and three weeks ago pulled it out and went to the BMW RA National Rally in Canaan, West Virginia. 600 down, sleep, party, ride 200 twisty miles in WVA and 600 back was a wonderful three days.

I was selected in the drawing for the 2009 Iron Butt Rally but along the way something more important and hopefully much more rewarding happened.

My oldest son Dillon was accepted early decision to Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Now I've always wanted to take my son to school in a sidecar but various reasons always prevented me from getting the right rig. Somewhere around January I woke up and realized that if I didn't do this now I never would, plus what could be better than a little father son bondage on three wheels for 11 days? You can bet that for some time Dillon would say anything would be better but after seeing the construction of the rig and a few rides Dillon is with the program.

While financially painful it was easy to blow off my fourth IBR for a chance to go cross-country with Dillon. He'll only be a 17 year old freshman once and luck willing I'll get in the 2011 rally so it will all be good. Chances are it won't be on the RTP but that's a whole 'nother post.

Right now it's game on as we leave in 24 hours.

More to follow.. Or not.