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 50th 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.
