West Coast USA 2005

Our current plan is to leave August 2nd from Bowling Green and interstate it to Grand Junction CO, where we will join up with a magazine sponsored ride into Sturgis, SD (sometimes it's nice working in the MC industry).

From there, our plan is to ride west to / through Yellowstone, Montana, Idaho, Washington, hang out in Seattle for a day or two, south on the Pacific Coast Highway, through the Redwoods, over to Yosemite, through NV and UT back to CO, hit the Rocky Mountain National park, and then ride home.

I lost a good friend - my ex-father-in-law- to cancer last fall, and never made the time to go elk hunting with him. It was always "next year". A few other changes and incidents provoked what I guess is a mid-life crisis. The stars aligned and the opportunity came for my father and I to take a month long trip to the west coast. We've enjoyed motorcycle riding with each other in small doses and wanted to do something more.

With the Big Trip on the horizon, we decided to rendezvous on Memorial Day weekend and spend the weekend riding. After much arm twisting, I persuaded my friend Mark to come with us.

Dad rode interstates up from Perry, Ga to Hazard, KY. Mark showing up gave me a reason to get out of work slightly early and we headed out on the state highways from Bowling Green to Hazard. We had beautiful weather and some nice winding country roads all the way over. The section through the Daniel Boone National Forest was excellent.

A Gathering Storm
OK, so it’s a little melodramatic. But it ties in with the gathering of the personnel and equipment, and the clouds that we ran into….

Our actual departure date from Bowling Green isn’t until Tuesday the 2nd. But after my last day of work on Friday I couldn’t just sit around until Tuesday, now could I? So I fully packed the bike for a trial run down to meet Dad on his way up from GA. This way I could get some riding in, check how well I packed, etc.

If you’re bored then you’re boring - Harvey Danger

Get up and do something
Your time to chose it
Do it, do it, do it, do it
-Soul Asylum

And that is the thought for the day. Stop sitting around waiting for life to happen, go grab it!

554 miles on the day before set us up for an easy run from Denver to Grand Junction. Good thing, as we knew it would be raining and the roads would be more challenging. The prior two days of hard running paid off with a laid back third day run to Grand Junction.

Sorry for the poor photo quality on some of the shots - still tweaking.
I'll probably go with embedded full size images for better quality when it gets interesting...

We rolled out of Bowling Green on a beautiful Tuesday morning at 7 am

and had smooth sailing up to Evansville IN.

America is big.

Really, really big.

Huge, gigantic, colossal, enormous.

It is hard to grasp the sheer enormity of the country until you spend entire days at 80 mph trying to cross portions of it. Today’s convenience of cross country flights belittles the vastness of the American countryside by reducing it to a couple of security checkpoints and several hours packed in a cattle car with mouth-breathing bottom feeders.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health - Carl Jung

This pithy little statement comes from a page torn from my Hog Log. The Hog Log is a little notebook or journal for the motorcycle enthusiast, of a convenient size to place in a saddle bag or tour pack, and keep notes on the events and happenings of the motorcycling life. There are little quotes at the top of each page, to give a rider a touch of philosophy or poetry to meditate on. I use mine to track mileage, gas, and take little notes for these updates.

We woke up and rolled up 395 from Bishop CA to Tioga Pass, the "back" entrance to Yosemite. Beautiful morning in Bishop - I could wake up to this view.

image

On the road out of Bishop

image

Approaching highway 120

image

The approach up to Tioga Pass, the actual entrance to the park.

image

image

There were tons of rock climbers out and about in Yosemite. Must have something to do with the abundance of rocks....

image

Going back to Cali

We had to revisit Nevada to pick up the Western Union money as it had to be picked up in the state it was sent to. So we waited around for an office to open (friendly local Rite Aid), got the cash, and rolled up the road to Reno.

image

We woke up in Eureka in the same fog we’d arrived in. Something about the cold air blowing in off the ocean, and the warm layer above, created a thick soup that we rode through on our way out of town.

First we stopped at the HD dealership and had Dad’s brakes looked at. They checked and tested them and fixed a minor oil leak in less than an hour from our arrival, at no charge. HD service comes through again. We added our locations to their US map of visitors and hit the road.

Slacking in Seattle

So, we cut across from the coast to Kelso, WA for the evening. In the morning we rode to and around Mt. Rainier, but I only got one pic due to not stopping and it being cold. In case you didn’t know, 90% of my pics are taken from the saddle while riding. If I stopped to take a pic every time I thought about it, I wouldn’t get any where.

image

We got to Dave and Jen’s place in Seattle. On Friday, they took us around town a bit. The neatest place was the Pike Place Market.

image

A crisp 40 degrees in Missoula, Montana this morning. Dad no longer makes fun of the fact that I have packed for all climates. He just borrows a flannel shirt. One time and one time only - I told you so.

We took off from Seattle early Saturday morning and crossed eastern WA and the little panhandle of Idaho. Couer d’Alene, Idaho was beautiful - deep blue lake surrounded by pine forested mountains. Sorry no pics as it was, again, cold! Made it to Missoula and packed it in for the evening.

I need a shirt, a sticker, a hat, SOMETHING, that says, “No, I didn’t go to Sturgis. No, I don’t care what the rest of the lemmings did. I’m too busy riding my bike to stand around and compare bolt on factory-authorized accessories with a bunch of people in brand new leathers.” Hmm, might be a little long for a sticker. Look, I appreciate the thought - it’s a conversation starter. People see a long-haired tattooed guy on a black HD out in the American west in August, he must be on the way to or from Sturgis. Well, I’m not. I don’t care.

Getting up in Steamboat Springs, we rode through the Routt National Forest on US 40 over Rabbit Ears Pass (9,426 ft). The road up to and down from the pass was gorgeous, alpine meadows, forested mountains, the whole Colorado kick.

Stopping for gas in Granby before heading up 34 into Rocky Mountain National Park, I found a nail in Dad's rear tire. I stopped him before he could pick it out! We needed it to keep the air in there over the mountain and into Loveland, the nearest dealer I knew of.

We got to Memphis in the early, very hot, afternoon. I'd heard that the Art of the Motorcycle exhibit was in town at a place called the Pyramid. When I asked where the Pyramid was, they just said, go downtown and you can't miss it.

Well, no kidding. As we were rolling across the bridge from Arkansas, a huge pyramidal structure came into view on the opposite bank. This, obviously, was the Pyramid.

Warning - strong patriotic content. May not be suitable for some audiences.

Remember this?

image

It stands for

image

which, if you recall, has a price.

Each one of these names

image

all along this wall

image

was a mother's baby, with hopes, dreams and possibilities, who paid the ultimate price for our country.

You may not agree with the man who lives here

image

26 days.

10,343 miles.

28 states and the District of Columbia.

2 tires and 2 oil changes.

Longest day - Little Falls, NY to Bowling Green, KY - 857 miles, 13 1/2 hours.
Shortest day - 2nd Day in Seattle, no miles. Only day off the bike in a month.

What did I learn?

That I have more questions than answers.

That I like mountains, water, trees, and motorcycles. Guess I actually knew that ahead of time but the trip sure confirmed it.