Yep, we’ve added a few new header images at the top of our blog again. Every once in a while we like to add a few more, and on occasion we’ll blog about what they are. Every time you visit the blog, one of a dozen or so images randomly pops up at the top of our blog. If you’ve wondered what they are, today is the day your ship comes in! Here’s a brief explanation of each…
This is the original ExNotes blog header image, which will still pop up from time to time. I love this photo. I took it on the ride through Colombia in Mompox, a mystical town tucked away in a magic land. I’d like to invite you to read the blog I wrote on Mompox a few months ago. If you look real close, you’ll see my good buddy Juan, who I rode with in Colombia and on the CSC Western American Adventure Ride.Ah, the whales Scammon’s Lagoon, Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur. Gresh and I are going to ride there in March. It’s one of life’s real treats. We’ll be blogging the entire trip, and we’ll be insured with BajaBound Insurance (the best there is).Wow, another Guerrero Negro photo, this time after the bikes had been put away for the evening at the Don Gus Hotel. I love the hotel and the restaurant (and the bar, too!) at the Don Gus Hotel. This was on one of the CSC Motorcycles Baja adventure rides.One of the best parts of any Baja adventure ride is the cuisine. These are tacos we enjoyed on the recent ride with Janus Motorcycles. The food down there is fantastic!Janus Motorcycles parked along the Malecon in San Felipe. This was a great Baja ride, and the Janus machines performed perfectly. It was a grand adventure. Hell, they all are!A photo of Jordan Swartzendruber (on the left, hugging the center line) and Devin Biek (on the right), both on Janus Motorcycles. We did about a thousand miles in 4 days on these 250cc motorcycles. It was one of the coldest rides I’ve ever done, but we had a grand time!Ah, my old Daytona 1200 on the road near Shiprock, New Mexico. I grabbed this photo during the 2005 Three Flags Classic Rally, in which good buddy Marty and I rode 5,000 miles from Mexico through the US and on into Canada. It was a grand adventure!This is another photo from the 2005 Three Flags Classic, somewhere on the road in Arizona. There were over 400 motorcycles in the ’05 TFC; I rode the only Triumph in that event!A lot of folks get their shorts in a knot when they see this photo. It’s Elmer, my good buddy and mature Mexican rattlesnake catching some rays and staying warm. We were on the road to see the Sierra San Francisco cave paintings in Baja. Elmer was very cooperative that morning, and I got some fantastic photos of him.Good buddy Mike Huber shot this photo of his campsite and he graciously allowed us to use it on the ExNotes blog. Mike wrote a guest blog for us on using hammocks. Mike lives on his motorcycle, camping wherever he finds a good spot. What a life!At Zongshen plant in Chongqing, China. We were moments away from starting our motorcycle ride across China, and the Zongers had a departure ceremony for us. That was one of the greatest rides I’ve ever been on, and you can read all about it Riding China. Gresh rode that one, too, and you can read his story about the trip here!The lighthouse in Baja’s Guerrero Negro. It’s where we go to see the whales. This is an interesting photo…it’s a composite stitched together from six photos shot from left to right. I had a polarizer on the camera, which explains why the sky is darker in some portions of this composite.
Good times, to be sure. We’ll be adding more photos in the future, so stay tuned. Keep coming back to the ExNotes blog and you’ll see a different header time each time you visit!
Native American cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park.
The latest Motorcycle Classics has a cool article on Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Sue and I were there last year and it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area. Nah, let me change that last sentence: Mesa Verde National Park is worth a visit all by itself, wherever you are. It’s only an 11-hour ride from Los Angeles on the freeways, although if I were going there again it wouldn’t be a freeway ride. There are just too many interesting things to see on the our secondary roads. I’ve been writing for Motorcycle Classics for about a decade now, and you can see more of the MC articles here.
Day 5 would have us crossing another international border (this time in Canada, the third country of our 2005 Three Flags Classic rally), and it would be yet another grand day. If you haven’t read the first four days, you might want to catch up by reading our prior blog posts here:
Day 5 would take us all the way in to Calgary, Canada!
We loaded up early again the next morning and headed north from Whitefish, Montana. Wow, was it ever cold! It was 34 degrees when we rode across the border into Canada, and even though the sun climbed higher into the sky on that fine bright day, it grew even colder as we continued north. I had my electric vest cranked all the way up and I was still freezing.
We stopped for breakfast in Fernie after we crossed the border to warm up a bit. Our route took us through a brief bit of British Columbia, and then we entered Alberta. The route took us into the Kananaskis National Park in Canada on our way to Calgary, our destination that day.
The Canadian Rockies in Kananaskis National Park, on our way to Calgary. That’s my Triumph Daytona 1200 in front, and Marty’s BMW K1200RS behind it. Wowee, it was cold that morning!Another photograph with the Rocky Mountains in the background. This was in Canada’s Kananaskis National Park, and that’s me next to my Triumph.A comparable photo of Marty at the same spot with his Beemer.
We saw signs warning of mountain sheep crossing the road. I thought it would be great to see one, but I didn’t expect that I would. Then we started spotting the things all over.
Look closely. Way up the road. Just past the sign on the right. Do you see the mountain sheep standing there?
The first one was that lone sheep you see in the photo above. We stopped to grab a photo, but I realized I had my Sigma 17-35 wide angle on the camera. I grabbed a quick shot from the motorcycle, but I knew the distance and the wide angle lens would make the animal just a tiny bit in the photo. I didn’t want to get off the bike because I thought I might scare it away. I fumbled to get my longer range 24-120 zoom lens on the camera (it was in my tank bag). The entire time I thought the goat would run away before I could get the lens on my Nikon N70.
Then the sheep looked directly at me and starting slowly walking in my direction.
“Uh oh,” I thought.
I didn’t know if mountain sheep bite or if they are aggressive. Maybe it would come over and try to butt me. I could see, even at a distance, that the thing had horns. I had visions of it knocking me and the Triumph over. My Triumph had never been on its side. The scratches on that beautiful Daytona fairing would be tough to explain. I remember wondering if I would be able to keep the bike upright if the thing butted me.
Little did I know….
Marty’s photo of my close encounter.
The sheep literally walked right up to me. I took this shot while sitting on my Triumph, at a distance of maybe 4 or 5 feet.
My new best friend. We were both feeling kind of sheepish. I guess it was as curious as I was.
I shot up a whole roll of film and the thing was still hanging around. I noticed that as it advanced, it would stop every few feet and lick the road. I’m guessing that it was enjoying the remnants of the road salt the Canadians put down when it snows and the roads ice over. Someone later said they are probably used to being fed. I prefer to think it just wanted a better look at the Daytona. After all, it was the only Triumph in the 2005 Three Flags Classic.
It warmed up after that and it was a glorious day. Our next to last checkpoint was in the Kananaskis National Park at a place called Fortress Junction. Marty and I chatted with the other riders and then we rode the final leg of the Rally into Calgary.
A guy named Dave and his friend at the final checkpoint in Fortress Junction, Canada. It was a glorious day.
Later that day, we rode along a highway and then into Calgary, the endpoint for the 2005 Three Flags Classic. I would be the turnaround point for Marty and me. We still had a lot of fun in front of us…a couple of days in Calgary, and then the grand ride home. On the ride home, we were on our own (it was not part of the Three Flags Classic, which ended in Calgary. That portion of our ride is coming up in future blogs, so stay tuned!
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I received an interesting email from my good buddy Rob a couple of nights ago. Rob is an interesting guy…I rode with him on the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride described in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM, and then again on one of the Baja trips.
Good buddy Rob in Oregon.Rob’s mascot on a bike he calls “Donkey Hoty.”
Here’s Rob’s note to me, along with some very interesting photos…
Hi Joe,
Hope your living life to the fullest. I really enjoy you and Gresh’s ExhaustNotes and keeping up with you.
Anyways its very cold up here and to kill time I’ve been looking at Ball and Cap pistols and wondered if you had any experience shooting, loading, etc. with them? Any further plans on an east coast RX3 trip or Alaska?
If your ever up here in the Pacific Northwest area , give me a shout. Maybe I can meet up with you somewhere.
Not sure this year where all my bikes will take me. My favorite rally in Hells Canyon is done and over with and she’s looking for another venue place to host it. I may try and get to the beater bike rally in Hood River. I’m working on a Kawasaki KZ440 that I took the motor out of and put in a Harbor Freight 212cc lawn mower motor in it with a cheap torque converter so its an centrifugal clutch auto like a big mini bike. If I can get it to go fast enough (45-55mph) I may try and ride down to rally from Walla Walla.
Hope all is well with you and yours Joe.
Take care,
Rob
Rob calls his new bike Einstein, and like Donkey Hoty, he has a hood ornament to match.Rob’s unintentional self-portrait.
Rob, your project bike is fascinating. Please keep us posted on how it progresses. The centrifugal clutch concept on a full-figured motorcycle is interesting. Mustang (i.e., the original California-manufactured Mustang of the 1950s) offered a centrifugal clutch bike in the 1950s they named after their original offering (the Colt), and the one I saw owned by Al Simmons and later Steve Seidner was a real beauty.
A ’56 Mustang Colt. It had a centrifugal clutch. The Mustang Motor Products Corporation positioned this bike as a lower-priced Mustang, but it was a commercial flop.
Mustang’s intent was not to offer a bike with an “automatic” transmission; what they were really after was a value-engineered version of the Mustang. It had the standard Mustang 322cc flathead engine, but a centrifugal clutch replaced the Berman transmission and the bike had Earles-type forks instead of the Mustang’s telescopic forks. The factory workers didn’t like it and there was some talk of efforts to sabotage the ones leaving the plant. The one I saw was beautiful. It flopped in the market, which was unfortunate. When I worked at CSC, we’d routinely get calls from folks asking if we had any bikes that had an automatic transmission. The answer, of course, was no. But I think this sort of thing could work on a small displacement bike for folks who don’t know how to (or don’t want to) shift. I know you do and I know you are doing this just to have fun. But I think you are on to something here.
To answer your other questions….I have zero experience with black powder guns, other than to watch my good buddy Paul build custom black powder rifles and play with them. I once bought a Uberti .44 Model 1858 sixgun and it looked to be very well built, but a friend of mine wanted one and I sold it to him without ever having fired it.
I don’t have any east coast RX3 or other plans at this time. I’m too busy planning for the next Baja trip, I guess.
The beater rally you mention sounds pretty cool, and I love the Hood River area of the Columbia River Gorge. That sounds like it might be fun!
Day 4 was a grand day on our 2005 Three Flags Classic adventure! Before you get into it, and if you haven’t read the first three days, you might want to catch up by reading our prior blog posts here:
Day 4 of the 2005 Three Flags Classic. We started in Driggs, Idaho, and we stopped to spend that night in Whitefish, Montana.
I did a dumb thing on the 2005 Three Flags Classic. Well, actually, I did it about a week before. In those days, I was using my Triumph Daytona as a daily commuter, and on the way into work one day, I had picked up a nail in my rear tire. The tire didn’t go flat right away. Nope, we had to make a trip to China Lake later that morning, I rode my Daytona there from the San Bernardino area, and the tire decided to go flat in China Lake. It was a lucky break for me. There’s a lot of nothing on Highway 395 in the Mojave Desert, and the Daytona had the good manners to go flat once we were in town.
Fortunately, there was an independent motorcycle repair shop in China Lake, and he plugged the tire for me. The Daytona ran tubeless tires, and pulling the nail and plugging the tire was no big deal. That’s where I screwed up. I should have replaced the tire, but I didn’t, and it was just one week later that we were off on the Three Flags Classic.
Well, that morning in Driggs, Idaho when I mounted the Triumph and pushed it back, it wouldn’t budge. That’s when the coffee kicked in and I realized the bike wasn’t leaning as much as it should on the sidestand. Uh oh, I thought. I got off the bike, and sure enough, the rear tire was flatter than day-old beer. It was cold that morning, and I was looking forward to getting on the road and feeling the glow from my Gerbing electric vest. What was I thinking, I thought. It was at that moment that I realized that leaving home with a plugged tire had been a dumb move.
Marty had one of those little electrical compressors you attach to your motorcycle battery, so we hooked everything up. Damn, those things take a long time. I’ll bet we sat there for a good 20 minutes, before the sun came up, with Marty’s BMW idling and that very noisy little electric pump banging away. It took that long to get the tire inflated, and I pumped it up to 45 psi reckoning that I would need to either find a new tire or pump it up again most rickety scosh.
I guess I had done okay (or rather, the Triumph’s rear tire had) until I started taking some of the sweepers at high speed the day before in Idaho. A couple of Three Flags riders on FJRs passed me, and we played cat and mouse with those guys for a while. We took the turns at high speed, which probably flexed the tires more than the usual amount, and that most likely loosened the plug that had been installed in China Lake.
We were on our way after pumping up my flat in Driggs, and when we stopped at a gas station somewhere later that morning I found that the pressure had dropped to about 20 psi. So, I plugged the thing again. The new plug would hold all the way to Calgary, and that was a good thing, because I didn’t see another motorcycle shop until we reached that destination. I wised up and bought a new tire in Calgary, but that’s a story for the next blog in this series.
This is the gas station in Idaho where I re-plugged my rear tire. And it worked. While we were there, a kid pulled up in a yellow dune buggy. We had an interesting conversation and then we were back on the road.Breakfast in Ennis.
The next day took us into Wyoming. Wyoming had magnificent scenery. We stopped at a bunch of great locations to take it all in. The best parts, for me, were the riding, the photography, and the interesting folks we met along the way who were also riding the 2005 Three Flags Classic. The oldest rider in this event was 89 years old. He received a standing ovation at the banquet a couple of nights later in Calgary. The youngest was 17 years old.
I took this picture somewhere in Wyoming. This is John and Joyce, married 45 years. They rode in from Virginia to participate, each on their own motorcycle. They won the award for the longest distance traveled to participate in the Three Flags Classic.
We stopped for lunch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It was touristy as hell. It had some great photo ops, but the prices were crazy and the traffic matched the prices. I’d never been there before, so I was glad to make the stop for bragging rights. But (trust me on this) Jackson Hole is not the real Wyoming.
This is Jackson Hole, a tourist town, but with good eats. We had a great Mexican dinner there. The arch is made out of real antlers, and there are four arches like this at the corners of the town square.A door handle on one of the many art galleries in Jackson Hole.
Later that day and we rode into Montana. Montana is another beautiful state. In fact, the scenery on the entire trip was unbelievable. We also saw a lot of game. I saw an entire herd of deer in Montana.
It was getting very cold. I was glad I was riding the Triumph, and I was glad I had that Gerbing electric vest. The Triumph threw off a lot of engine heat, which is not a good thing in the summertime, but it was wonderful in the cold weather. And, that electric vest was heavenly.
Later that day, we hit the checkpoint in Missoula, Montana. It was good to stop for a while and chat with the other riders. Here are several photos from that checkpoint…
Good buddy Bob’s RT-P BMW at the checkpoint in Missoula, Montana. These are amazing machines. Bob can ride any motorcycle he chooses (he owns a BMW dealership, Brown BMW in Pomona, California), and this is his weapon of choice.Bob’s route card. When I wrote The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles a few years ago, I learned a lot about these police Beemers. They are impressive machines. Two batteries, a stronger alternator, an oil cooler, and ABS braking. Plus the normal BMW niceties, like heated handgrips.This Gold Wing is actually one of the oldest bikes in the event. We spoke with the rider for a bit, and he told us that this bike is on its fourth engine.Check out the mileage on this Canadian Gold Wing! 900,000 kilometers! That’s well over a half million miles!Carl and his beautiful K1200LT BMW at the checkpoint in Missoula.This rider and his wife flew in from the Netherlands to participate in the Three Flags Classic. He had never been to Mexico, Canada, or the United States. A friend let him borrow this yellow DL1000 Suzuki. Like all of us, he and his wife were having a grand time.An older airhead BMW boxer twin.One of the FJR riders. The FJR is a very impressive machine.
That night, we stayed in Whitefish, Montana, just south of the Canadian border. We walked into town from our hotel and found a microbrewery, and we had a fabulous dinner. Whitefish is a cool town. We walked around a bit and then called it night. The next morning we would ride in Canada on Day 5 of the 2005 Three Flags Classic!
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Sue placing a pebble at Trahlyta’s Grave, north of Dahlonega, Georgia.
A few years back Sue and I were on a road trip through the southeastern US, visiting spots and grabbing photos for Motorcycle Classics magazine’s Destinations page. That was a grand adventure and we saw a lot of cool places (Memphis, Dahlonega, the Emerald Coast, the US Army Infantry Museum, New Orleans, and more), but the one that stands out in my mind is Trahlyta’s Grave.
We were wrapping up a visit to Dahlonega’s museum (prior to my visit, I did not know that Dahlonega was where the first US gold rush occurred) and on our way out when I asked one of the museum’s docents where the good motorcycle roads were. My perception initially was that the guy wasn’t too interested in helping us, but first impressions are frequently wrong and that one sure was. We didn’t get any good info while we were still in the museum, but he followed us out and gave two small polished stones to me. I wasn’t too sure what was happening. Then he proceeded to tell us the Tale of Trahlyta.
Trahlyta, you see, was a Cherokee princess with the key to eternal youth. She was abducted by another Cherokee with whom she desired no romantic involvement and she subsequently died, but not before asking to be buried near her home at a point where three trails came together. Legend has it that anyone who places a stone at her grave will be rewarded with eternal youth. Hmmm. The docent told us to watch for the pile of rocks. Can’t miss it, he said. You’ll see the marker.
So Sue and I headed north out of Dahlonega, eyes peeled for a rockpile. We saw several small piles perhaps a few inches high over the next few miles, each time thinking we had found Trahlyta’s grave, but none of these had a marker of any kind. Suddenly, we came to the junction of three roads, and when we saw what was there we had a good laugh. The docent was right, we couldn’t have missed it. This pile of rocks was a good 6 feet tall, and it had the historic marker he had mentioned.
The docent had explained to us that several years ago the Georgia transportation folks wanted to move the rockpile, but a member of the road crew attempting to do so was struck by a car and died. A few years after that, the high rollers in the Georgia Department of Transportation decided the earlier road crew fatality was coincidental and they sent another crew. Son of a gun, the same thing happened again! Not wanting to deplete the dues-paying membership, cooler government minds prevailed and the weenies left Trahlyta’s grave as is, where it still exists to this day.
Sue placed both small stones the docent gave to us on the pile, and I’m here to report that they seem to be working. She looks as good today as she did nearly 40 years ago when we first met. Me? I missed an opportunity. I let Sue deposit both of those stones while I was busy taking photos. And yeah, while she stays the same, in the mirror every morning when I shave I see a guy growing steadily older. I should have asked that guy in Dahlonega for more stones.
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A question I sometimes hear about traveling in Baja is: What about gasoline?
Getting fuel in Mexico is pretty much about the same as getting fuel in the US. There are a few things you should know, but concerns about fuel shouldn’t hinder your plans to ride south of the border. Let’s take a look at what folks planning a Baja expedition might worry about.
Availability
Baja has gas stations distributed about like we do here in the US. There are lots of them in and around the cities, one or two in each of the smaller towns, and they are farther apart in the deserts (all similar to the situation here in America).
A typical Pemex in Baja.
The only stretch where it can be concern is the long stretch through the Valle de Los Cirios between El Rosario and Guerrero Negro, where it’s a cool 200 miles (that’s miles, not kilometers) between Pemex stations. That’s beyond the range of many motorcycles’ fuel tanks, but don’t worry about it. In Catavina, which is very roughly at the midway point between these two spots, you’ll a bunch of enterprising Mexicans selling fuel in plastic jugs or pumping it out of a 55-gallon drum. Capitalism rules, folks!
Refueling in Catavina. It’s all part of the adventure!
There’s another plus to stopping for fuel in Catavina and buying gasolina from the guys selling it out of bottles: It makes for a great photograph!
Price
I live in California, the land of exorbitant taxation and left-wing loonies run amuck. What that means is that our gasoline prices are usually about 50% higher than what people in the more-sensibly-governed parts of the US pay. The advantage here, for me, is that the fuel prices in Baja are about the same as what I pay for gas in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia. As of this writing, we pay somewhere around $3.25/gallon for regular, and something closer to $4.00/gallon for high test. Another thing to consider here is that you don’t buy fuel by the gallon in Baja; you buy it in liters. And the price is not in dollars; it’s in pesos. Today, it’s about 17 pesos per liter, which is about $3.39 (US) per gallon. See what I mean? The prices are roughly equivalent to California.
One more minor point: Mexico uses the dollar sign for pesos, so when you see a fuel price of, say, $17.85, that’s 17.85 pesos per liter. Use of the dollar sign for pesos is a little unnerving at first, but you’ll soon get used to it.
Paying for Fuel
Most places in the US require that you pump your own gas, and most of us pay with credit cards at the pump. You can forget about that in Baja. The way it works in Mexico is that every gas station has attendants, and they’ll do the pumping for you. They all seem to know that you’ll want to handle the nozzle when you’re on a motorcycle, but they’ll take the nozzle out of the pump, hand it to you, and then you can do the pumping.
You pay the attendants directly, too, so then the question becomes: Do you pay in dollars or pesos? I always have enough pesos that I pay directly in their currency. I’d go nuts trying to the convert the pesos to dollars in my head, and I don’t like to try screwing around with a calculator when I’m filling up, so I just pay directly in pesos. The attendants will take the cash from you and run up to the cashier if you have change coming; you don’t pay the cashiers directly.
Roselda, the prettiest pump attendant in Baja!
I’ve never used a credit card at a Baja gas station. Some of them may take credit cards, but I don’t like the idea of giving my credit to somebody who’s going to run into an office to use it. I always pay in cash.
One more thing: Tipping is a good idea. Yeah, you’ll probably never see the attendant again, but it’s peanuts to us and a livelihood to them. Do the right thing, and give a few extra pesos to the person who helped you.
Fuel Brands
Until relatively recently, the government-run Pemex brand was the only fuel station in Mexico (other than the guys selling it out of bottles in places like Catavina). The story was that the government subsidized the price of fuel but did no exploration, so ultimately their fields played out. That’s when the Mexican government realized that Margaret Thatcher was right: Socialism works until you run out of other people’s money. Within the last year, Mexico started allowing Arco, Mobil, British Petroleum, and others to sell gas in Mexico, with the understanding that they had access to larger reserves and these companies would pour a portion of the profits back into exploration.
Regular or Premium?
Some stations will offer both regular and premium fuel; in the more remote parts of Baja it’s regular fuel only. I always run regular, and I’ve done so even on bikes that required premium. I’ve never had a problem doing this.
Fuel Quality
We’ve all heard the stories about bad gas in Baja. Folks, it’s all Internet rubbish. I’ve never had a problem with fuel quality in Mexico, even when buying it from the guys selling out of bottles. That said, I do sometimes carry a small container of Sea Foam just in case I get fuel with water in it, but it’s never happened. I think the last time I used the Sea Foam was when I rode my Triumph Tiger in Baja. It started running a little rough somewhere north of Santa Rosalia, so I put a little Sea Foam in the fuel tank and maybe the roughness went away. Or maybe I imagined it. The bottom line here is you can forget about fuel quality issues in Baja. It just doesn’t happen.
Restroom Availability and Cleanliness
We often stop at gas stations to use the restrooms. You might have visions of filthy, disease-laden banos, but that’s another thing that just isn’t true. Most bathrooms in Baja fuel stops are relatively clean, about the equivalent of what you might see at any gas station in the US. What is different, though, is toilet paper. There’s usually none in a Mexican gas station rest room, so it’s a good idea to bring toilet paper with you. You may or may not see a sign asking that you not flush toilet paper, but to instead deposit it in a waste basket in the stall. I guess the deal is that the sewage systems are not set up to process toilet paper. It’s counter to our custom, but it’s what they do.
So there you have it. Fuel is not an issue in Baja, and it’s certainly not a reason for being apprehensive about an adventure ride in an area that arguably offers the best riding on the planet. The cost is reasonable, it’s available about like it is in the US, the quality is good, and the photo ops are awesome.
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The third day of the 2005 Three Flags Classic motorcycle rally would take us from Grand Junction, Colorado (where we stayed the second night of the tour) to Driggs, Idaho. Wowee, we were covering some miles! You can catch up on the ride by reading our prior blog posts here:
Day 3 of the 2005 Three Flags Rally. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho…it was magnificent.
As you’ll recall, it had rained big time during parts of Day 2, and it had continued to rain that evening. The next morning, though, was a bright, crisp, Colorado day, and after a great breakfast, we pointed the bikes north and crossed over into Utah.
The Gold Wing (shown here in Utah) was the most popular bike on this trip. They sure looked comfortable compared to my Daytona!
Utah was amazing. I continue to believe it is the most scenic of our 50 states. Although I had been to Zion and Bryce on previous trips, the Three Flags Classic was taking us to places I had never seen. We had a checkpoint in Vernal, a most interesting place in the heart of Utah’s dinosaur country.
Check out the way this guy has his Harley packed at the Vernal checkpoint. Think he might be dragging a bit in the corners? Harleys and Gold Wings were the most popular bikes in the 2005 Three Flags Classic.
We rode north, up to and around Flaming Gorge Reservoir. These were all magnificent destinations. The folks who planned the tour route did an amazing job.
Looking down into Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah. The colors, the brightness, it was all amazing. All of these photos were on film, captured with a Nikon N70 camera.Marty and his Beemer, with Utah as a backdrop. Marty is the guy who invited me on this ride. He’s another serious long-distance rider, having put nearly 100,000 miles on this BMW. The machine looks as if it is brand new. Today in 2019, it’s still parked in his garage.With Marty near Flaming Gorge.Marty and the motorcycles, with Flaming Gorge Reservoir in the background. The photo ops on this ride were amazing.
After leaving Utah, we entered Wyoming for a brief period, and then we were into Idaho. Idaho is a beautiful state. We saw quite a few dead animals on the road, and in particular, a lot of dead skunks. We also saw a few larger roadkill carcasses that I didn’t immediately recognize. I later learned they were wolves!
My friend Dave on his BMW in Driggs. This is a beautiful R1150GS. Check out the custom lighting (just below the turn signals) and the custom wheels. Dave’s bike was always spotless. He cleaned it every night.
We would our night in Driggs, Idaho, at the end of Day 3. It was an interesting night, with forest fires raging around us. We had a great dinner, more great conversation, and I was getting to know the guys better. Marty, as always, was an easy guy to travel with. I got to know good buddy Dave, shown in the above photo, a lot better on this trip, too. Dave was an absolute fanatic about keeping his bike clean, which was a hell of a challenge considering all of the rain we had ridden through the prior day. We had a bit of rain that night after dinner, too, and I remember talking to Dave as he was wiping down his GS, in the rain, cleaning it as the rain fell on the bike. I told him he was going to have a hard time, washing a bike in the rain, and we had a good laugh about that.
Looking due west after dinner in Driggs, Idaho. Smoke filled the skies from fires raging all around us.
And that, my friends, wraps up Day 3 of the 2005 Three Flags Classic. The following day would take us way up north to Whitefish, Montana, just south of the Canadian border. It had been an amazing three days so far, and we still had a long way to go. But that’s coming in future blogs.
The China tour story I wrote took a long, winding road to publication. I like to pre-sell any feature-ish story and since we had recently done another big CSC story at That Other Magazine I pitched the China ride to Editor in Chief, Marc Cook. He liked the idea and suggested making the story less about the CSC motorcycle and more about the ride.
All went swimmingly on the tour but while I was in China That Other Magazine was going through upheaval on every level. I returned to a smoking, charred magazine landscape of fewer, thinner issues and a frequently changing vision for That Other Magazine. I ran the China story past each new editor (in quick succession) they all liked it but the reformatted book had many must-print stories and little space for a long feature on China.
That Other Magazine went through another major restyle opting for a spare, photo-heavy layout, a cut back to 6 issues a year and hired a platoon of fresh, new writers. I re-re-re-pitched the thing, refusing to believe it was over but like any failed love affair the day came when I realized my blue passion for That Other Magazine had faded to grey.
Whenever I do a free-riding junket for a motorcycle manufacturer there are no preconditions. I may love or hate their motorcycle but I will write honestly about it. The only thing I can offer in return for their hard-earned money is publicity. My job was to write a story and get it published: I had failed myself, CSC, Joe Berk, my fellow China Riders and Zongshen.
At this point I pretty much gave up on the China tour and shoved the thing into a dark, dusty corner of my hard drive. I couldn’t stand looking at the story, so much effort that came to naught. Newer challenges awaited writing and I wasn’t going to let the China story drag me down. I moved on.
Enter this blog and its demanding publishing schedule. While I’m no fountain of content I’ve never written as many words a month as I have since we started ExhaustNotes. The hectic pace and all-consuming need for content has changed my opinion of writing from an art form into a trade. I make stories like I pour concrete. Instead of a failure, the China tour became just another slab. I pitched the thing to Motorcycle.com and thankfully they bit. I rewrote the story to reflect the new realities regarding That Other Magazine and the result can be found here: Kung Fu Riding. Sorry it took so long.
So I guess Charley and Ewan are planning another ride. I suppose that’s a good thing, even though I thought the first ones were kind of contrived. I mean, really, you have two rich kids riding around the world on their own with corporate sponsorship, followed by a caravan of chase vehicles, spare parts, tool chests, mechanics, and camera crews. Two dilettantes confusing their income with their abilities, making a movie, complete with photos like the one above vaguely suggesting a combat mission somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. Give me a break. Maybe I’m being hypocritical; after all, I sort of did the same thing on the Western America Adventure Tour and the China ride. We even had a chase vehicle on both of those rides, too, although I managed to convince myself that chase vehicles are a net negative and I never used them again.
You want to read a real adventure story? Turn to my all-time favorite…the story of Dave Barr’s solo ride around the world.
Dave Barr in the hills above Lake Isabella, photographed by yours truly.
Dave Barr is a guy who lost both legs to a landmine while fighting in Africa. Undeterred and unbroken, after a lengthy recovery he finished out his enlistment, came home, put an electric starter on his beat up old ’72 Harley (which already had a hundred thousand miles on the clock), and with no sponsorship, no chase vehicle, no film crew, and nothing other than a strong will, Barr spent the next four years riding around the world. He’d ride a bit, run out of money, find a job wherever he was, work a bit more, and get back on the bike. That, my friends, is a real adventure, and you can read about it in Riding the Edge. Trust me on this: Riding the Edge is infinitely better than the long way whatever.
The China tour story I wrote took a long, winding road to publication. I like to pre-sell any feature-ish story and since we had recently done another big CSC story at That Other Magazine I pitched the China ride to Editor in Chief, Marc Cook. He liked the idea and suggested making the story less about the CSC motorcycle and more about the ride.
