ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH

The BMW Club of Colorado each year does a 100,000 foot ride, where over the course of a long day you end up going over mountain Passes that have a cumulative total of over 100,000 feet. I have always wanted to do this ride. Several years ago Jeff Stokes and Ed Rosco did it and I was envious at the time and even thought about crashing their ride but did not. 2020 was such a bust because of locking down for the continuing Covid mess, that I was determined to try and ride as much as possible over my beloved Great Basin and the West as a whole. So far this riding season I have gone to Yosemite via two passes, Southern Utah on the Ducati with DeVern and Ed Rosco on his S1000RR, the MOA rally in Great Falls, and Paonia with DeVern and the last time I checked I have ridden my three motorcycles a tad less than 12,000 miles with at least two months, weather permitting, of the riding season left.

DeVern and I, along with our friend who lives in Gunnison, David K Haedt, decided to do this ride and made plans to meet him in Meeker Colorado on Thursday August 5^th, so that we would do the ride to the start of this adventure in two days. He had stayed in Meeker at a nice motel and we made reservations there. Several weeks previous to this, when we went to Paonia, we had gone by Way of Meeker, had lunch at the Meeker Cafe and then down to Glenwood Springs, so on leaving Salt Lake early Thursday morning, we met as we usually do at the Conoco Station in Kamas and then proceeded over Wolf Creek to Duchesne and then Highway 40 to Dinosaur Colorado where we would turn down to Rangeley and then East to Meeker. We decided to save the Meeker Cafe, which is in an old historic hotel, for breakfast the next morning so we ate at another place along the main highway.

This was my second outing on my 2021 Tiger 900 Pro GT, bought for a long trip that DeVern and I have signed up for on the Routa 40 in Chile and Argentina in January of next year, where you take your own bike, which will be shipped from Houston and after the 33 day ride, returned to Houston in the Spring. Unfortunately at this juncture it looks like Covid will postpone it for 2022. The Tiger is a great handling and very smooth and quiet engine and gets fantastic gas mileage and holding 5.3 gallons a range so that DeVern doesn't have to stop sooner than he needs to because either my Ducati or BMW RS needs fuel. On one stretch of this trip I got over 62 mpg.

The Tiger has an off-road mode and we had decided to do a stretch of about 80 miles on dirt, a few miles East of Meeker (Country Road 8) that ends up near Phippsburg and from there we would wend our way on Friday afternoon to the maelstrom of traffic in Denver, we planned on stopping by BMW of Denver to get some last minute instructions on the ride that would leave from there on Saturday Morning about 7. DeVern's wife Cathy is a wiz at making reservations and found us a nice Hotel near BMW of Denver which is actually located in Centennial Colorado.

The dirt ride was through some really beautiful scenery even with smoke in the air for much of the weekend and we stopped for a rest on the dirt part and there was an informational plaque with information on the surrounding topography .

Earlier on Friday the 6^th my newest grandson was born and I told both DeVern and David K I wanted to take them out to dinner to celebrate and we ended up taking an expensive Uber ride both ways, the place we went to was close enough so that David could walk over, but after the dinner, we gave him a ride back on our way to the Hotel.

BMW of Denver was a madhouse Saturday morning with a 180+ motorcycles getting ready for this ride. We completed the registration, got our Tee Shirts and found someone with a file for the GPS that they transferred to DeVern's GPS and he then transferred it to both David's and Mine and just before 7 am we left Denver and did not return till about 5:30 in the afternoon to Prospect Park where the end of the ride and dinner and the prize drawing were held. The only bad thing about the GPS file is that it was turn by turn and not Waypoints, and if you missed a turn you had your GPS, till you adjusted it repeatedly telling you to make a U turn, at one point this went on for 25+ minutes and I finally turned off my Sena Unit just to gain some sanity. You would think that with 180 bikes, it would almost be a mass group ride, but honestly they got spaced out a lot and some people who had done this before, did the ride in reverse, once in a while we would see a fair number of bikes either a head or slightly behind, but most of the time it was just the three of us.

David K lives in Gunnison and he had promised us lunch when we got to his house, but low and behold no one was home and instead we had coffee, and tea for me and left after about 15 minutes for the next mountain pass. After Gunnison we did Cottonwood Pass which is over 12,000 feet, but the road was great with beautiful scenery. I know I should stop more and take pictures, but being a very verbal person I take mental notes of the surroundings. We ended up loosing sight of David just before Buena Vista and didn't see him till Sunday morning, when he dropped by our hotel for the continental breakfast in the lobby area, before we took off for the ride home to Salt Lake.

In my youth, when I had a full head of hair, I had the opportunity to drive vehicles one summer in London, Paris, Rome, Athens, the Mulsanne Straight at LeMan's and along the Amalfi Coast and I will tell you here and now, I have never driven or ridden in worst traffic than just before and through Leadville Colorado, more than bumper to bumper , even the sidewalks were completely inundated with people, a large part of the way, I just pulled in the clutch and move both feet to move the bike 2 or 3 feet until traffic stopped again. Several of the small towns we drove through in Colorado had a lot of tourist traffic and it didn't help that the mud slide around Glenn Wood Springs had recently transpired and the road was still closed.

Some of these passes, I have ridden before on previous trips to Colorado or on my way to New Mexico and Santa Fe, my favorite's of the new passes, were the last couple of passes, Juniper and Squaw Pass. In this politically correct era, for good and bad that we live in, I am surprised it has not be renamed, liked several areas in Utah and California. Thinking of Mollie's Nipple and Squaw Valley. Squaw pass was up at the top near Mt. Evans the highest peak in Colorado and had wonderful twisties for much of its length, a tad less than ten thousand feet in height. I always think of a quote from the John McFee  from Basin and Range. “Basin and Range, Basin and Range, A mile in height between Basin and Range”. All you need to know to find your way around the Western United States.

From there, as the early evening started its approach we headed to Prospect Park and the meal provided by BMW of Denver and the drawing for prizes. David K was behind us, and elected to head back to his hotel and did not stop at the dinner.

I would certainly consider doing this ride again, and supposedly they vary it slightly for year to year.

The next day we returned on highway 40 the whole way to the Wasatch front so that I could meet my newest Grandson. I ended up from Thursday to Sunday riding almost 1,800 miles.

The Next of Kin to The Wayward Wind

The Next of Kin to the Wayward Wind

I was telling my sister Kathy in response to an article on a backpacking trip she wrote for the Fresno Bar Newsletter, that when I was a little boy I thought that the wind spoke to everyone, and it was only as I got older that I discovered that was not the case. The wind has and still does speak to me, it is one of the things I love about my long motorcycle treks around the West. Its sound is muted between the ear plugs I wear, the buffer of the helmet and the blue tooth music, radar and GPS but none the less it is there.

We took a lot of car trips as a family in the 1950's and early 60's with all of us piled into a massive station wagon, and much later a VW Micro Bus, we were a lot smaller then, but none of these vehicles had air conditioning and I remember a massive burlap canteen strapped to the front for drinking water. All of us still have world class bladders, for you can imagine the lack of progress with 8 people in a car if rest stops were not well planned in advance. In the summers of 1958 and 1960 we spent the whole summer traveling by car throughout Mexico and we drove all the way to Yucatan where in some areas, the road was not only not paved, it didn't actually exist and I have a fond memory of our then white Station wagon crossing a river on a crude ferry made up of a couple of row boats with planks for the car. Also on that same trip the gas tank fell off in the middle of the Jungle and the car had to be towed hundreds of miles to where it could be refastened to the car. In 1967 my Parents took my two younger sisters and me to Europe for the summer and I did all the driving throughout England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Italy, the ferry to Corfu and then to Greece where we left the car and took a cruise to several Greek Islands. And then returned to France and the flight home. My sister Julie who was studying in Europe was with us as well and she chastises me to this day for staying in the car to talk with my father rather than to go in to see the Bayeux Tapestry. I knew I would have another chance to see it in my life and also knew I would not always be able to talk with my father Bob. We grew up calling both parents by their name, it was something my father Bob insisted on, although we did lapse with my Mother and she was both Mother and Louise. Seven years later Bob died in my arms and I did go back to see the tapestry, after I had read Churchill's “History of the English Speaking Peoples.”

My father from his business of building Power transmission lines around the West had an encyclopedic knowledge of roads in the West and laid out for all of us how mountain passes differed from State to State.

It has been almost a year since my awesome fast BMW S1000RR was totaled when a woman who was late picking up her children at school turned in front of me with no time to stop and totaled the bike. Eighteen days later, still black and blue all over from the accident I replaced it with a less extreme BMW and in that time period mainly over 7 weekends long and otherwise, I have put over ten thousand miles on it. It is a wonderful and comfortable touring bike and while it is not a breathtakingly fast as the RR, few bikes are, it handles extremely well and almost brakes as well and is more suited to long trips. I now ride with a Helite air bag vest, and all the gear all the time and so over the last year I have tended to ride my bike less day to day and instead have focused on out of town trips. I don't feel comfortable not being in full riding gear no matter how short the ride.

I ended up riding this year to five BMW rallies around the West in five Different States, and to Long Beach for the motorcycle show, years ago it would have been possible to spend every weekend going to a BMW rally somewhere in the country, but as baby boomers and motorcycle riders are aging, the numbers are lower and in the next five years I suspect more and more rallies will disappear because there aren't enough people attending to cover the cost of putting it on. Most of these rallies I went to I have previously attended, but not for many years.

For only one of the rallies did I ride to it alone, and even that at that rally I knew I would see friends once I got there. I also rode with new people and there is a learning process when riding with new people and you quickly learn the shorthand of how they organize their riding in the morning and how often if at all they like to stop for myriad reasons. I try to be an easy person to ride with and really over the decades have not had too many complaints and no one has refused to ride with me a second time.

Chief Joseph Rally in John Day Oregon.

I have been to the Chief Joseph several times over the years but never since they moved it to John Day. I rode alone and this rally has the most Interstate miles and although you can make good time on the Slab, it isn't always the most challenging way to get to a rally or anywhere, and only after I left I84 and go into Oregon itself was I on secondary roads with corners that actively call for being at one with the bike. Numbers wise, the Chief Joseph was the largest rally I attended and while there I upgraded my Sena Helmet Blue tooth device to a new model and got an adapter to convert the output from my Valentine Radar detector to direct noise in my helmet. I rode the little over 500 plus miles back from John Day in one day and in time to pick up my Great Pyrenees at the kennel. This season I spent more on boarding her at the kennel over these weekends than I did on gas.

Top of the Rockies

The Top of the Rockies has been in Paonia Colorado since 1989, I attended that first year and for years I went to this rally every year, but had not attended the rally in Paonia for at least twelve to fourteen years, On the spur of the moment or almost, I decided to go with my long time riding friend DeVern, it had been years since he went as well. We met in Kamas Utah , he lives near Logan Utah, and after a brisk ride over Wolf Creek we finally go onto highway 40 for the ride to Vernal and eventually Rangeley Colorado, where we turns South over Douglas Pass to get down to Grand Junction. Earlier this summer DeVern rode an R100GS he had purchased well past the Article Circle and all the way to the coast of the Arctic Ocean and back.  On this trip he was on his K1300GT and it was well over 105degrees by the time we got to Grand Junction. We then headed for the ride over Grand Mesa so that so far very little of this ride was on the Slab. For some strange reason, his bike started to overheat and we ended up once we got to Paonia, in pulling off the fairing adding some coolant and even then the bike continued to overheat. Since then DeVern removed and flushed the radiator, and checked the valves and it appears to be fine now. The rally was smaller than the last time I attended and I would certainly consider go back next year. While there we met a man who was born and raised in Salt Lake but has lived most of his adult life on the East Coast and now resides in Gunnison Colorado. I suggested to David that he may want to go to the Stanley Stomp and some other rallies and he did. He also ended up riding with me from Salt Lake City to the Beemer Bash in Quincy in September.

Stanley Stomp

This is the third year in a row that I have attended the Stanley Stomp in Gran Jean Idaho, a destination rally, off the grid where they feed you well each day and on Saturday night there is a feast of Steak, bake potato, corn on the cob and various other sundries. I went for many years at the previous site. There are hot springs in all this area and there is also a pool at the small lodge at Grand-Jean, which is at the end of about a seven mile dirt road. The lodge has a generator for power, but you are completely off the grid. As usual I had a nice time. DeVern's father in law died a few days before so he was not able to attend, but I rode up with Alberto who had never been up in that direction and we ended up stopping at EBR1, the site of the first nuclear reactor to generate electricity. My father's company did the transmission wiring from the EBR1 to Atomic City and most of his Crew had stayed around Arco during the construction. It was fun stopping again and also riding up with someone new to the area. The control room of the reactor looks like something out of an early 50's science fiction movie. We turned off at Arco and headed towards Craters of the Moon which does indeed have an other world look to it. The traffic was fairly heavy the closer we got to Sun Valley but was not too bad going over the pass and we stopped briefly in Stanley before heading to Grand Jean. My friend David from Gunnison was there for part of the rally, he had to leave early and fly out of Boise for a meeting somewhere and informed me that he would be heading to the Beartooth rally the next weekend and I told him I would see him there.

Bear tooth Rally

I haven't been to the Beartooth rally, which is held near Red Lodge Montana and gives you the opportunity of riding over the Beartooth Pass since 2014. I rode up with DeVern who we met in Logan and my longtime friend John Merrick and we purposely rode as little freeway as possible, at least once we turned off from I-15 at Brigham City for the ride over Sardine Canyon to Logan. I had a chance with both of them to ride some passes and ride through some towns that 15 or 20 years ago I use to visit almost every summer. At West Yellowstone we entered the park and there were places in the park where the traffic was horrendous and we were worried about getting to the rally before they stopped serving dinner for Thursday night. There was construction on the Beartooth and we had to wait a few minutes waiting for a pilot car. The ride of the balance of the Pass was spirited to say the least and there were still snow fields to the side of the road at the summit, and we ended up getting there about fifteen minutes after they stop serving dinner, but they did have some still fairly warm leftovers and since we were staying in cabins instead of tenting, we could relax for the rest of the evening. The next day we rode into Red Lodge and then to Absaroka where we we stopped for Coffee and internet access and then returned back to the rally site later in the day. It rained for much of the day on Saturday and John Merrick decided to go back a different way so it was just DeVern and me who rode back over the Bear tooth pass on Sunday morning and back through the park. We arrived at West Yellowstone just after Twelve noon and I was home by around 5PM, but most of the ride back was on I-15

Beemer Bash

The last time I attended the Beemer Bash in Quincy California was 2009. My new friend David was in town for his 50^th High School reunion and we had arranged to meet up on a Thursday morning for a ride to Fallon Nevada. The first part of the ride was the slab to Wendover, where after gassing up we headed South on 93A to Ely Nevada where we would pick up Highway 50 for the ride to Fallon. I have ridden 93A probably 25 to 30 times over the last 40+ years but still enjoy it. We stopped for a late lunch in Austin Nevada and in Fallon we met up with my friend Jan Peterson who had ridden a different route for part of the ride from Logan. Friday morning after breakfast we headed towards Reno and the Truckee Turn off for secondary roads up through the forest primeval to Quincy. David was heading towards Tonopah on Sunday morning and eventually visiting family in the St George area so after he turned off it was just Jan and me on I-80 East Bound. I ended up riding back to Salt Lake in one day on the slab a total of about 598 miles. The Beemer Bash was substantially smaller than in 2009 and its future are in doubt, last year the club that put it on, lost money doing it and if they didn't break even this year, were seriously considering dropping the rally. This is going to start happening more and more as riders cease going to rally's and are not being replaced with younger people. Thirty years ago, when I first started going to BMW rallies, the people who took me where a tad younger than I am now and I was in my mid to late thirties. I know no motorcycle riding people to take to a rally that are in their thirties at all.

Long Beach Motorcycle Show

Two years ago DeVern and I rode down to Long Beach California for the Motorcycle Show and a Long distance riding community meet at Pink's Hot Dogs on LaBrea Avenue and we decided to go again. It was Freeway till we got to Mesquite on I-15 and was cold enough on Thursday morning that we both had our heated gear on. On getting up Friday morning it was warm enough that we jettisoned the warm gear and a few miles South on I-15 we turned off of I-15 for Overton, Valley of Fire and eventually Lake Mead Boulevard to Henderson, so we were able to avoid Los Vegas completely. The ride through the Mojave Desert from here to just west of Palm Springs was on Secondary roads and we decided Saturday that we would return the same way. The dryness and emptiness on the horizon was mesmerizing, my favorite type of riding and we went long distances with almost no traffic, We had to wait for a train to pass at Kelso Junction and then after the deserted town of Amboy, we turned towards Twenty NinePalms and West from there we hit the maelstrom of California traffic. We stopped briefly in TwentyninePalms for a snack and a few miles down the road from there, one of DeVern's saddlebags opened up and the contents hit the road. I stopped as quickly and safely as I could and was able to retrieve his bag liner and all of his things. I have barely secured them to my bike, when he returned, after having to hunt for a place to turn around on the divided highway. Later on we got separated in traffic, it was late afternoon and he was more daring in lane splitting in heavy traffic that I was, and somehow I ended up getting to the Motel before he did by about 5 minutes or so. We spent most of Saturday at the Long Beach Motorcycle Show and saw many new models of bikes. It is so refreshing to see all ages of people and families at the show, instead of the over 60 and mostly male people that I see at BMW rallies and the Utah BMW club activities. We didn't go to Long Beach last year and at this year's get together at Pink's there were 54 riders from all over the US. About 23 were on various BMW's and there was one other person I had not met from Utah that was on a hybrid 3 wheel Honda. We retraced our route back to Twenty Nine Palms, Amboy, Kelso junction etc. A few miles West of Searchlight Nevada, Nevada Power has three giant towers that are actually solar converters for power generation they look like something out of either Star Wars or Close encounters of the third kind and I kept hearing the musical refrain from Close Encounters. We got to Mesquite around 5pm , staying at the same hotel we had stayed on Thursday night. The rest of the ride home on Monday would be interstate and it was a little colder than the ride down on Thursday had been. That will probably be the last trip for me this season. We have discussed going to Death Valley for a get together in February, but depending on the weather we may end up loading the bikes on DeVern's trailer to Mesquite and then off loading them there for the weekend. We have also started looking a motorcycle trips in other parts of the world and talked to a touring company that is doing a 42 day tour in 2020 from Central America all the way to Patagonia. I would need to purchase an off road bike to do it, but if I am healthy enough in two years, I am sorely tempted. Motorcycle guided tours all over the world are a growth industry with lots of different tour company. DeVern and his wife went on one in September to Eastern Europe and we have talked about doing one in the Alps, South America and even Viet Nam. I would also like to do one in Greece and in France.

Catenary Curve

Since my last posting in September 2017, several things have happened. On the afternoon of October 24^th. in anticipation of going on a much longer ride the next day, I decided to ride my S1000RR to a service station not far away and to fuel up for the next day's ride. I had been going on mid week rides to ride the various mountain passes that would soon be closed for the season. There is a lot of construction going on down the road from my house, and the road was closed so I headed North on a country lane that then turns East, crosses the Jordan River and then at the next major intersection allows me to go North or South. I noticed a fair amount of oncoming traffic so I did not increase my speed after crossing the bridge over the Jordan river. There were a fair amount of vehicles turning into a charter school. I got about 25 feet before the driveway to the charter school and a woman suddenly turned in front of me in a big SUV and I had neither time or distance to stop. Luckily, I did not go over the hood of her SUV and instead went to the side and was almost immediately up. My bike had hit between her front fender and the quarter panel near the passenger door. I knew nothing was broken and that I would be very sore the next day. After checking that she was okay, I asked an onlooker to call the Police and sat down on the curb. I had a cut on my right hand, and got up and grabbed the small medical kit I carry in my tail bag. I also took off my helmet, knowing that my neck was fine. The police came and also the Paramedics. They took my blood pressure, listened to my heart and offered to take me to a hospital. I told them there was no need that I could see. A tow truck had been called for both my bike and her SUV. Insurance information was exchanged and I called my insurance company to report the accident and notified my family of the accident and that I was okay. A kind woman at the school, the headmistress I was later told, offered to drive me back to my house which was less than two miles away.

I later went online and found out that the other driver had been cited for failure to yield. At first I was not sure how bad the bike had been damaged, but it didn't take long for the insurance company to total it. They did let me remove the after market exhaust and heated seat. That first night I really started to hurt all over and got a little worried that I might be bleeding internally, so the next morning I ended up going to the Emergency room of a major area hospital. I was black and blue everywhere and that continued for the next couple of weeks, but there was no internal damage or bleeding.

At first I thought that I would wait to replace the bike till next spring, that I would consider buying my bike and having the repairs done by someone qualified or that I would immediately replace the bike with another S1000RR. The dealer were going to make me a very attractive offer on a brand new 17 model because they were just starting to receive the 18 models and there were no major changes. There will be major changes with the 2019 model. After several weeks I decided to test ride a couple of other models at the BMW dealer and even thought about buying a used MV Augusta that I saw at a repair shop. The S1000RR is an incredible bike, but after putting on 22,000 Miles and having replaced one chain and had an expensive 18,000 mile check up, I realized that I didn't need and never really used all that power and the insurance premium on the bike was incredible. I ended up purchasing a 2016 R1200RS with a little over a thousand miles on it, that someone had traded in after owning it and never really riding it . While it is not quite as fast at the RR, it handles very well and really is a beautiful and well appointed bike with all the bells and whistles. I have put over a thousand miles on it since I got it in Mid November and will be taking my first trip in the next couple of weeks. It came with hard bags and I have added a nice Tank Bag and it came with a factory mounted GPS. While it will not do 0 to 180 in eighteen seconds like the RR, it will certainly do zero to 140 or fifty in a respectable amount of time should I choose to do that. It also has ESA suspension , clutch less shifting and cruise control and key less ignition.

The insurance is a lot less and I took the savings on the insurance and purchased a Helite Air Bag Vest.

It has a lanyard that hooks on to the vest and the bike and if I were to go off the bike , the vest would inflate and protect my head , neck and backbone from damage. A friend of mine from the BMW club was in an accident about a month after mine, and ended up dying a month later. He had been President of the BMW club and it was a blow to everyone who knew him.

My sister who lives in Fresno and who I rode down to visit on the 1000RR in September flew up for the weekend to visit me and her two sisters who live in Salt Lake. At dinner on that Saturday day night in response to a conversation regarding a niece's current job, my sister divulged a remembrance from childhood that I did not know. . She is about eight years older than me. My father Bob until about mid 1957 had been a power line contractor and built transmission lines all over the Western United States. Kathy recalled road trips during this period when Bob would comment that on this or that power line that we were driving by they either had or had not got the Catenary Curve or the dangle of the line correct. Being much younger I did not remember this. I do remember playing at the yard where his neat equipment was kept, he had half-tracks and big trucks and the symbol on his trucks was a bolt of lightning . Bob died almost 44 years ago and yes we grew up calling our father by his first name he insisted on it and most of my childhood friends have told me that my father was the first adult they called by name.

The Great Basin

Since I was unable to make this year's BMW 49er Rally in Mariposa because of snow in the Sierra's I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to make a ride across The Great Basin through Nevada to Tonopah and then onto Lee Vining and then over Tioga Pass into Yosemite and then on to Fresno California to visit my sister Kathy. After checking with her that she would be home and would welcome a visit, I picked my weekend. I actually rode this same route last year, except I ended up at the 49er Rally in Mariposa and I rode with friends. I have ridden this route many times and up to about five or six years ago I was till riding the 767 miles from Salt Lake to Fresno in one day. The last few years and indeed last year, I rode from Salt Lake to Tonopah, spent the night there and then the rest of the way the next morning and partial afternoon.

I left on Thursday morning and made the somewhat boring Interstate ride on I-80 from Salt Lake to Wendover Utah where I then turned off on highway 93A. After gassing up in Wendover it was nice to be on a two lane road with little traffic. I looked for wild horses on White Horse pass, but was not lucky enough to see any this year. Just before I got to the junction point between 93A and the main Highway93 there was a sign about road construction. They were chip sealing the road, and also for a distance of several miles there was a pilot car, there ended up being two pilot cars on the ride to Tonopah on this Thursday. After the pilot car , I picked up speed, passed the several cars ahead of me and then proceeded for the rest of the ride to Ely, my next gas stop. After gassing up in Ely, I turned onto Highway 6, one of my favorite roads and the 167 mile ride to Tonopah. At this juncture I was all ready 240 or so miles from home. I have developed a habit of oiling the chain at every other gas stop on a trip. Highway 6 runs roughly 20 to 30 Miles South of the Route that the Trapper and Explorer Jedediah Smith took in the late 1820's when he was the first White person to walk from California through the Great Basin to Utah. Hard to imagine what I pass through in a couple of hours taking days and days and not knowing if and where you would find water and other sustenance.

I have always considered the Great Basin to be my backyard and as I looked forward to playing in my back yard and the enumerable Mountain ranges on either side of me for as far as you can see on the horizon. There is something about the vast emptiness of this landscape and the tenacity with which the flora and fauna of the area cling to life that is thrilling to this other wise secular soul. In the 167 mile ride I see about 4 cars heading the opposite direct and pass about 3 cars. I carried a gallon of extra gas with me, because I have been traveling about 85 to 90, but the bike makes no tell tale notion of running out of gas, even though the computer tells me I have zero miles left. I have ridden my S1000rr a little over two hundred miles on a single tank of gas, but that was at a constant 80 mph for almost the whole way and included heading down the Virgin River Gorge to Mesquite. After filing up my bike, and checking in to the Motel for the night, I head up back up into the center of town of Tonopah and have a quick dinner at a Mexican Restaurant and settle in for the night.

I had planned on having the continental breakfast at the motel the next morning, but they were not ready or open by the time I was ready to leave and since I was burning daylight, I opted to hit the open road for the ride to the California State border and to pick up highway 120 at Benton and the roller coaster road and ride to Lee Vining. Lee Vining always has the most expensive gas on almost any ride I take and at over $4.59 a gallon is certainly did not disappoint . I had a nice breakfast at Nicely's cafe, where I have eaten many times and headed East the couple of miles to the turn off for Tioga Pass and Yosemite.

Tioga this year did not open up till after the first of July and it seemed like the end of the season and certain services never opened up this year. The traffic was not particularly bad, but the lower I got and the closer I got to El Portal, the more smoky it became. I normally at Mariposa, turn to take highway 41 to Oakhurst and then on to Fresno, but that road was closed and I kept going to Merced and then got onto highway 99 for the ride to Fresno and my sisters house. Highway 99 has always seemed like an overused but unloved thoroughfare to me, it really hasn't changed much over the last 40 some years I have been riding it in one direction or another. I have owned 7 BMW's over the last 41 years and I have ridden each of them to my sisters house in Fresno at some time or another for a visit.

I had a nice visit with my sister, met her newest granddaughter and saw all of her daughter's but one. I left early Sunday morning, and the road from Oakhurst to Mariposa, had opened on Saturday afternoon so I headed that way rather than returning to Merced and then up the hill. The closer I got to El Portal and the entrance to Yosemite, the more traffic there was and it ended up being almost bumper to bumper traffic till I was in the Park and made the to get back to Crane Flat and the turnoff going the other way to Tioga. Once I got to Crane Flat there was much less traffic and I made decent time through Tioga to the gate and then the ride down the spectacular pass to again Lee Vining, where I once again filled up the bike with expensive gas.

By the time I got back to Tonopah on Sunday it was a little after 1pm and I had all ready decided that I would at least ride to Ely, which would leave me a mere 240 Mile ride on Monday morning to get home. After checking in to a motel in Ely, my plan was to change out of my riding gear, and walk to the nearest restaurant for dinner, what I ended up doing was lying down to have a quick nap and instead I fell asleep and never did have anything to eat. I have always preferred riding a little hungry. I did have some juice and a sweet roll the next morning before leaving Ely.

I left Ely the next morning for the ride back on Highway 93 and 93A to Wendover and then the sprint ride from there to Salt Lake City and was home by 11:00 am on Monday the 11^th. It had ended up being a ride of a little more than 1,534 miles.

I may end up doing an additional ride somewhere before the season formally ends, and probably by the time I take the next ride, I will be using some of my heated gear and will have also turned on my heated seat. Last Year in November I rode to Long Beach and the Motorcycle show with a friend and we met some other Long Distance Motorcycle rider's, at Pink's Hot Dogs in Hollywood, my friend has ridden the Iron Butt several times and this year did the Three Flag's Rally in his sidecar rig with his wife.

2016 Rides

In 2016, in addition to my Sunday morning rides, for the most part with my sister and brother in law, in a different canyon each week and a good hearty breakfast, I did go on three trips. In years past I used to go on a lot more trips and although my current bike a BMW S1000rr is not a touring bike in any sense of the word, it did just fine and although I am unable to pack as much as I could on previous bikes, I had what I needed. The first trip in April I rode down to Mexican Hat via highway 6 and then on to Hanksville, and highway 95 and after the turn off I rode the Mokie Dug-way down to Mexican Hat where I spent the next two days. On Saturday, I spent the windy day, touring Monument Valley. I took a tour in a jeep with a family from Israel, and finally after the guide telling us the names of all the formations in Monument Valley, I asked him what they were called in Navajo, and after that he would tell us the Indian name as well, I think he enjoyed that. I was very windy and tough with contact lenses. I had a hearty meal at the San Juan Inn that evening left the next morning for the ride back to the Wasatch Front. Very little traffic on Highway 95 and I went very fast by anyone's standards on several sections of the road.

My second trip of the season was to the 49er Rally in Mariposa California over the Memorial Day weekend, I went with my good friend DeVern and his wife Cathy. They have a side-car rig and over the last couple of years they have done a fair amount of traveling and participated in the 2015 Three Flag's rally. We met Wednesday morning on the on-ramp near my house and proceeded West on I-80 to Wendover where we got off of the slab and rode towards Ely Nevada on 93A. They can run about 75-80 and still get decent mileage so I just tucked in behind them and enjoyed the scenery. At Ely, we gassed up, had a snack and proceeded on one of my favorite roads in Nevada, Highway 6 towards Tonopah and our days end. It is a 167 mile stretch with very little traffic and mountains, mountains, mountains, wherever you look. This part of the Great Basin is after Afghanistan the second most mountainous area in the world, with peaks that have still probably not been climbed. I find something new each and every time I have ridden this road. We had reservations for the night at Tonopah Station. After a breakfast the next morning at Tonopah Station, we continued West on Highway 6 till we turned off towards Benton Station and the California border. From there is the roller coaster road to Lee Vining, where before turning off for the ride through Yosemite Park, we had a lunch at Nicely's Cafe which has been around since about 1954.

I have ridden from Lee Vining through Yosemite countless times on every BMW motorcycle I have owned, it never gets old and the scenery is all ways breath taking. This was on a Thursday and the holiday traffic was not bad and it didn't take all that long until we were fast approaching the fairground in Mariposa and the site of the 49er Rally. This rally was the first BMW rally I ever attended back in 1989 and its site was Mariposa back then. It has always been one of my favorite rally sites. The crowd was lot grayer than the last time I attended a rally and somewhat smaller but I did have a nice time. My sister who lives in Fresno and is an attorney drove up after appearing in court in Merced, abut 45 miles away and we had lunch the next day. On Saturday we road up into the mountains and had lunch and then I didn't ride my bike again till early Monday morning as we left for the ride back through the park. Thankfully most of the traffic was going out of instead of into the park. We again ate at Nicely's and instead of spending the night in Tonopah again, we road back across the Great Basin to Ely Nevada. It was nice to go to a familiar rally and to be out on the open road .

In August, again with DeVern, but not Cathy, I met DeVern at the Utah Idaho boarder off of I-15 on the ride to around Stanley Idaho and this year's Stanley Stomp. I have been to this rally many times, but this was the first at this location and the first one in many years. The resort where it was held is at the end of a seven mile dirt road. The Stanley Stomp is noted for its good food and coupled with a spring fed hot swimming pool and hot springs at the side of the river, it was a nice and relaxing time. We stopped in McKay Idaho on Sunday morning for breakfast, which took forever, and had a windy hot ride all the way back to Zion.

On November 18^th I met DeVern at BMW of Utah , for a ride to Victorville California. We had a quick ride through the Virgin River gorge , and I made it to Mesquite, on even less than fumes, the computer showed no miles left in the tank, but it did not sputter. After putting more gas in the tank than I ever have before, even more than it supposedly holds, and after a brief lunch, we started the ride to Las Vegas and the worst traffic you could imagine, it took us 45 minutes in Vegas traffic to go less than about 25 miles, We ended up getting to Victorville, with gaining an hour with pacific time, a little after 8 pm and the room at the La Quinta inn was a welcome site. We had tickets to the Long Beach Motorcycle show on Saturday and also a commitment, and the reason for the trip, at Pink's Hot Dog emporium for 10pm Saturday evening and an annual get together of Long distance riders. I had never been to a motorcycle show and it was slightly over whelming with not only all the vendors but the mass of people. We parked in about a 4 acres parking lot completely filled with motorcycles of every make and description. After that we rode back to Victorville, a mistake and a chance to rest, before heading back to the Los Angeles basin for the get together at Pink's . During these jaunts around LA, we did our share of lane splitting and although I picked up the hang of it, I always was a little daunted by it, which was probably a good thing.

I did not know any of the people we met a Pink's, DeVern from DeVern's long distance riding and several Iron Butt's, about 38 people showed up ,and after having a famous Pink's Hot dog, smothered in chili, and a Lemonade, after DeVern said his good bye's we started the ride back to Victorville, We arrived at the La Quinta about 1 am in the morning and were on the road for the ride back to Salt Lake by 8 am.

DeVern is an easy person to travel with; I hope he says the same about me, and after 27 years we have ridden thousand of miles together. The tank on his K1300GT is larger than on my bike, but he was very good about filing up on my timetable rather than his. It got cold, once we were in Utah on that Sunday morning and I was glad to have my heated gear, seat and heated grips.

I am pleased with the bike and its touring potential and have a lot more trips planned for 2017. I purchased some Hebco Becker hard bags for the bike, and also to accommodate the bag on the exhaust side, I purchased a new exhaust system and up graded the lighting on the bike by buying LED lights for all the turn indicators. I can't wait to take my first trip next spring.

An Old Man's BMW

A lot has happened since my last posting, after coming home from the BMW Rally in New Mexico.

About a week after my return, on my way home from the Beehive Beemers club breakfast, after coming over Trapper's loop, my bike all of a sudden started running poorly and would not idle. I thought that maybe it was because I was possibly low on fuel, the light had come on and also I knew that the spark plugs were old. I stopped at a Chevron Station on highway 89 and it was really hard to get the bike to start again. Needless to say, I spent the next couple of weeks trying to figure out why the bike was running so poorly, replaced the spark plugs, bought a bunch of diagnosis equipment, cleaned my K&N air filter and even bought new cap coils, after reading on line that it could be part of the problem. Finally on a ride home in mid October, about two miles from home, the engine made a big pop and there was a solid oil sheen coming out of the exhaust. I decided to ride the bike as far as I could and was able to get to my front gate, before, having to stop to open the gate, I was unable to keep it running or to get it started again and had to push my bike the half mile or so to the garage where I park it. For the first time with any motorcycle, it appeared that I had a major engine problem.

Over the next little bit, I determined that it was one cylinder causing the problem and my the time I tore the engine apart, I determined that the bike had sucked an intake valve on the right side and done major damage to that piston. I decided I would take the bike apart and once I got to the technical part , I would have someone else actually put new valves in a new head and do the piston work etc. This was going to be my winter project and I was not in any hurry to get it done, just wanted to get it done right.

In late December I caught cold and nothing I did, seemed to get me over the cold. I finally went to the Doctor's in early January, and he put me on some antibiotics to kill whatever I had, but after the first round of those, it made no difference. I didn't feel well, was tired all the time and was loosing weight.

We tried another round of antibiotics, some even stronger ones, and that made no difference. Needless to say, the last thing I wanted to do was to spend hours in a cold shop, taking a motorcycle apart.

My Doctor got me an appointment in several weeks to see a lung expert, but I questioned whether I could last that long and finally went to an emergency medical clinic and the observant Doctor there within 5 minutes figured out it was a heart issue and not a lung issue.

In the next several weeks after that I had every heart test you can thing of and even had angioplasty again and was sad to find out that the stents I had in 2005 had become all clogged up and I have some fairly major heart issues to deal with from now on.

Even before all the tests were in , I knew I did not have the energy to deal with a broken motorcycle and started to look at my options, and I even questioned whether it was time to put my helmet away for good. I found a place that would give me X for the bike as it sat, and at the same time I put an ad on the Internet BMW riders forum and ended up selling the bike as is to a man in Kansas, who has the know how and time to rebuild it.

I am feeling much better now, thanks to modern medicine and ace inhibitors and beta blockers etc. and decided in late April that I did feel well enough to think about another bike. Even before then I had been lusting after a new BMW S1000rr and I ended up ordering one and picking it up on the 20^th of May. It is the sportiest BMW I have ever owned and the fastest by far. With almost two hundred horsepower, 450 lbs and clutch less shifting both up and down it is incredible to ride.

So far I have only ventured on rides in the surrounding canyons, but if I continue to feel well, I may plan a getaway to either Southern Utah or somewhere North. Its nice to have a new cutting edge bike to ride. I am also going to take a refresher riding course from the Motorcycle Safety foundation. In my fuelly account for the new bike, where I store my gas stops, and keep track of my mileage, I have named this new bike Lord Acton, because absolute power corrupts.

From Cell service at the Little Bighorn to the Festival at Santa Fe.

For many reasons it has been four to five years since I last went to a BMW Motorcycle rally somewhere in the continental United States. I decided earlier this summer that I would try and make at lease two rallies in 2014 and I did. This is a far cry from a decade or so ago when I would routinely go to four to six rallies each summer, starting with the 49'ER in California and usually ending up with either the New Mexico rally the weekend after Labor day or the Autumn Beemer bash somewhere in California the second or third week of September. In 2004, I went from the New Mexico Rally at Sipapu one weekend to the Beemer Bash in Mariposa California the next week. I doubt I will ever do back to back weekend rallies again. I remember I got home from Sipapu on a Sunday evening. Went to work the next couple of days and left Thursday morning for the ride across the Great Basin to Mariposa and returned the following Sunday night. It ended up being somewhere between 2,500 and 2,800 hundred miles in those two weeks. That is of course, a far cry from what I am thinking about doing next spring sometime, which is to try and ride the Iron Butt Association's 10-48 where I would ride through 48 states in 10 days. That would be well over 8,000+ miles.

The two rallies I ultimately decided to attend this year were the Bear Tooth Rally near Red Lodge Montana and the Sipapu Bavarian Mountain Weekend near Taos. It would mark about my fourth time attending the Bear Tooth and my 10^th or 11^th time attending the Sipapu rally.

The Bear Tooth Rally started August 14^th. I asked my sister Valerie and her husband Larry if they wanted to go with me, and while Valerie bowed out, Larry said he would like to go. It would be his first motorcycle rally. We left Thursday morning and proceeded to spend most of the morning on the Interstate riding North until we turned off of it for the ride to Island Park where we had lunch. After that it was a short ride to West Yellowstone where we both bought our geezer passes for National Parks, an incredible deal at $10 a forever pass to get you into any National Park. Just as we pulled through the gates of the Park, the promenade from “Pictures at an Exhibition” started playing on my I pod. What a beginning for the ride through the park to its exit at Cook City Montana. From there is was a short ride to the beginning of the Bear Tooth Pass. Larry found the pass a little over whelming with its decreasing radius turns and I slowed down several times for him to catch up to me. The site of the rally is an Old Boys Camp that is currently used during the summer for outings for Special Needs Children. Rather than camp we had elected to pay an additional $10 a night to have a bunk in one of the many cabins that dot the hillside.

The next morning we rode via another road to Cody Wyoming and spend a couple of hours, far to brief a time at the Buffalo Bill Center for the American West. We only ended up getting to go through two of the wings of the museum and I plan on going back and doing two more. Our original plan was to ride back towards Red Lodge, but to turn off and take the Chief Joseph Highway to where it meets the beginning of the Bear Tooth so that Larry could ride it again, and we agreed we would stop so he could take some pictures. There are some incredible views from the Bear-tooth . When we were about 20 or some miles from this junction , it started to look pretty black and bleak on the pass , and we decided to turn back. We hit a brisk rain on this return ride and by the time we got back to the original junction , I was low on gas and had to actually ride in to Cody again to fill up.

I have always wanted to visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield and it is only about 120 to 130 miles from Red Lodge. We mentioned our intention of going there on Saturday to the other person in the bunk and he asked if he could ride with us. His name is Paul and he has houses in both Colorado Springs and in North Carolina and he spends his winters in his cutter rigged sail boat in the Caribbean. We left the next morning and had a nice ride to the Battlefield. It is very much like what I have read about and viewed in books, but somehow the fact that there is cell service at the battlefield and its only a couple of miles off an interstate exit, I found difficult to wrap my head around. We elected, on advice from an old fried of mine to take the Indian Bus tour of the battlefield. I felt the story that the guide told was very balanced, much more than if I had been telling it, I have always thought the Custer was a complete blow-hard and egoist. Because his Indian guides told him the truth, rather than what he wanted to hear, he and several hundred other men were slaughtered in a brief period of time by a large group of braves. The cemetery like all military cemeteries was peaceful, but most of the soldiers have long since been removed and reburied somewhere else with Custer's being at West Point.

On the return trip to Salt Lake , rather than going back through the park, we again rode to Cody and then from there to Mettesse, Thermopolis, Lander and then through historic South Pass and Atlantic City , which served as a crossroads from roughly 1828 to the coming of the rail road in 1869. It is the most gradual slope from east to west on the continental divide, and you almost had to cross it and it was only after that, that you realized you were now heading down a gentle slope. After Kemmer we ended up picking up the Interstate just before Evanston, but when we got to Echo, rather than heading towards I-80; construction meant one lane from Wanship to the junction with highway 40 to Heber City, we headed down Weber Canyon, turned off at Henefer and came over East Canyon into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. It was a fitting way to end this trek filled with beautiful and historic places. I enjoyed thoroughly riding in some different environments and was looking forward to the ride to New Mexico .

My sister Valerie has been to the New Mexico BMW Bavarian Mountain weekend three times before and we have talked about going again, and while she did not accompany us to the Bear tooth, she did go with us to New Mexico. We actually left Wednesday afternoon and rode to Monticello, rather than doing the whole 625+ mile ride in one day, at least on the way down. Our typical Sunday morning ride runs roughly between 125 to 175 miles by the time we return home. We ended up having dinner in Moab and arrived in Monticello, on fumes and just at Sunset. The next morning, after a good breakfast at the Peace Tree Cafe, we proceeded to the Utah/Colorado boarder and wended our way towards Dove Creek and Cortez. Just before Cortez we took a short cut I have taken before, that lets you avoid the traffic on the main street of Cortez, there was some road construction on this route, and I am not sure that we save any time. Actually on this trip, we ran into a fair amount of construction but the delays did not amount to a great deal of time. After gassing up in Pagosa Springs, we turned South towards Chama. I mentioned to Valerie at the gas stop about Dulce and the Mud people and she had her daughter do a web search concerning that. Once you turn of the main road from Chama to Santa Fe, the road gets interesting, although much of Northern New Mexico has absolutely beautiful vistas and beautiful skies, and I noticed on this twisty and climbing road that the pass was over 10,000 feet. There was some gravel but all in all the air was crisp, there was very little traffic and after a little over 9 hours and 45 minutes of riding time from Salt Lake, we arrived in Taos and checked in to the motel we had reservations for. I have mentioned before, that as a child, we visited Taos and Santa Fe several times, my parents had friends that owned an ran an art gallery in Taos and life long friends that worked Los Alamos, I remember as a young kid, visiting Los Alamos when it was still a closed city and we had to go through Security and that my parents had to apply for the visit a month or so in advance. Even then, it was not as bad, as the security we sometimes now are subject to when we fly.

After checking in and relaxing for a while, we rode , with Val on the back of Larry's R1200RT up to the Sipapu Snow and Summer resort where the New Mexico BMW club has held this rally for 30 Years. I first when to the rally in 1994, which means I was at the 10^th anniversary. The week before they had a fire at the main lodge building and part of it was blocked off and they put up a large outdoor tent for some of the rally activities. There was not much going on at the rally that did not really start until Friday and after riding back to Taos, we had a nice dinner at a restaurant close to where we were staying. Our plan was to go down to Santa Fe on Friday Morning. That weekend was when they have the annual Festival in Santa Fe, and every-time that Val has gone to Sipapu, we have gone down to Santa Fe and spent some time walking around, looking in shops and having a nice and fairly expensive lunch before heading back up towards Taos and Sipapu. We did all of those things, and Valerie and Larry decided to just head back to Taos, I elected to turn off from the main highway and to take a secondary road back to the Rally. I registered and got my pin and spent a few minutes talking with Paul, who we had shared a cabin with at the Bear tooth. He had actually volunteered to help at the rally in exchange for a free room Friday and Saturday night.

When I first started going to these BMW rallies it was about 25 years ago and I was in my late 30's. The people I rode with where for the most part in their late fifties. I have observed at both the Bear tooth Rally and Sipapu, that all you now see at these rallies are people from their 60's to 70's and I am not seeing younger people. This does not bode well for the continuation of these yearly events or for that matter for the motorcycle industry as a whole. I would like to think that I may purchase at least one more new BMW before I hang up my helmet and gear for good. Rally s that once had x number of people come every year are getting smaller and smaller, because people are either ceasing to ride, or dying off. Not camping or staying at a rally is a lot different than I am used to and after careful thought we decided instead of doing some day trips on Saturday around the area, we would start home the next day and if Valerie was up to it, we would ride all the way home on Saturday, if not, we would probably again stay in Monticello.

Valerie got her sea legs back and we ended up riding the 600+ miles back to Salt Lake. We rode back the same way we came, but somehow we lost her husband Larry, who made a wrong turn in Cortez and ended up almost to Shiprock before he stopped. We ended up getting back to Salt Lake a couple of hours before his return. As a joke, I bought him a map of the Western United States and a compass.

While I will still ride my bike both during the week and on our Sunday rides for at least a month or more, this is probably it for any distance rides. Next year I hope to do a few more rallies and to once again spend at least a couple of weeks during the summer in a tent.