Feel like going for a motorcycle ride? How about the Southern California Motorcycle Club’s Three Flags Classic?
This is one of the best motorcycle runs in the world, spanning (as the name implies) three countries: Mexico, Canada, and the United States. My friend Marty and I, along with 457 other motorcyclists, rode the Three Flags in 2005. It was the 30th Anniversary of this grand event, and it was a hoot.
The Route
What a run this was! We rode our motorcycles from our homes to Tijuana (Mexico), Gallup (New Mexico), Grand Junction (Colorado), Driggs (Idaho), Whitefish (Montana), Calgary (Canada), Penticton (Canada), Portland (Oregon), Roseburg (Oregon), Davis (California), and back home…a 12-day round-trip sprint spanning just under 5,000 miles.
It was a grand ride. Speeds ranged from slogs through traffic to a few times when we cruised at speeds north of 130 mph. Temperatures ranged from ungodly hot to subfreezing. We had sunny days and we had rain. It was grand. I’ll do my best to tell the story with pictures and words, and you’ll have to imagine the rest. Did I mention that it was a great ride?
The Bikes
Marty rode his K1200RS Beemer (with close to 100,000 miles on it when we left) and I rode my ’95 Triumph Daytona 1200 (the only Triumph motorcycle in the entire event). At the banquet in Calgary, Charlie Coyner (the event director) announced that there were 218 Hondas (most of these were Gold Wings), 90 Harleys, 90 BMWs, 34 Yamahas (mostly FJRs), about a dozen Suzukis (mostly DL1000s), about a dozen Kawasakis, and one Triumph.
Yep, one Triumph, and that was me!
The Equipment
I used my Nikon N70 film camera with just two lenses (the 24-120 Nikon, and the 17-35 Sigma). Yep, in 2005 I was still shooting film. The photos were okay…not as good as I would be able to do in later years with my Nikon digital cameras, but not terrible, either. Hey, you go to war with the Army you have, and in 2005, that was my trusty old N70.
Other gear included included Joe Rocket pants, jacket, and gloves, a Firstgear rain jacket, a Gerbing electric jacket (it was worth its weight in gold as we continued north), an HJC helmet, Haix boots (from Australia; they are wonderful!), a Nelson Rigg tank bag, and Oxford saddlebags.
The Guys
That would be Marty and me, and four other guys we rode with who were part of the Brown BMW First Church of Bob. Everybody but me was on a Beemer.
Did I mention I was the only guy in the entire Three Flags Rally on a Triumph?
Most of the time it was just Marty and me. The other three guys were off riding their separate ways, but Marty and I rode together for the entire trip. Marty is a retired Superior Court judge. At the time, I was heading up Layne-Christensen’s western US water treatment business sector. Marty told me about the event and I wanted to go. You had to pay for tickets and hope your name was drawn, and ours were not. I thought that would end it, but nope, Marty told me that happens. You just wait and some of the guys who had been drawn would be selling their tickets, that’s what occurred, and Marty and scooped up a couple. Then I had to ask my boss at Layne for two weeks off, and I thought that would kill it. But nope, he was a good guy, too, and he told me I should go for it. (A side note: Layne was in the drilling business, too, and when those Chilean miners were trapped underground a couple of years later, this same guy ran the drilling project that reached and retrieved the miners…how’s that for “genuine good guy” credibility?)
So, we were off. But I don’t want to force feed you through a fire hose and try to cram the entire 5,000-mile Three Flags Rally into a single blog. We’ll present this story in six or seven separate blogs. This is just the first one…the introduction…something to whet your appetite, as they say.
Stay tuned!