Motorcycle Adventure Ride – Page 41

The Three Flags Classic: The Run Home

So there we were in Calgary. Wow. And we’d ridden there on our motorcycles through all three countries (Mexico, the United States, and Canada). It had been a grand ride, but it was only half the trip. Now, it was time after a fun two days in Calgary for the ride home.

Before diving into our ride home, though, you might want to catch up on the ride to Calgary. Here are the first seven installments of our story on the 2005 Three Flags Classic…

The 2005 Three Flags Classic Rally: the Intro!
The Three Flags Classic: Day 1
The Three Flags Classic: Day 2
The Three Flags Classic: Day 3
The Three Flags Classic: Day 4
The Three Flags Classic: Day 5
The Three Flags Classic: Calgary

And now, on to the run home!

The plan after the events in Calgary was to select our own route home and ride it at our own pace. The official portion of the 2005 Three Flags Classic was over. It had been a blast. On the run home we would decide where to go, how to get there, and how long to take doing it. Our plan was to head west across Canada from Calgary toward British Columbia, turn left somewhere above Washington, meander over to the coast somewhere after Portland, and follow the Pacific coast home. It was to be another grand adventure, and wow, we were having fun!

On the first morning out of Calgary, we stopped in Banff and had a great breakfast. Smoked salmon and eggs, as I recall. It was delicious.

The road through Banff. It was a crisp morning and the riding was great.

We walked around in Banff a bit after breakfast. This bear skull was for sale in a store window.

Good buddy Marty posing with the 1200 Daytona in Banff.

The ride that morning was beyond glorious. Crisp, clean air, cool temperatures, and all was well with the world. The big 1200 Daytona was running superbly well and the scenery was magnificent. Every scene was a picture postcard, and I caught a lot of them. Incidentally, all of the photos you see in this story were shot with film. I had my Nikon N70 with me and just two lenses (the 24-120 Nikon, and a 17-35 Sigma). Great scenery, great photo gear, a great motorcycle, and great photo ops. Life was good. It still is.

After that great breakfast in Banff and a bit of walking around, were back on the road headed west across Canada. Our next stop was Lake Louise.

The Lake Louise Hotel lobby, courtesy of the 17-35 Sigma lens. This place looked very expensive. In our dead-bug-encrusted road gear, we looked out of place.

A statue near Lake Louise, erected by the Canadian Pacific Railway, honoring the Swiss Mountain guides. When building the railroad through the Rockies, the Canadian Pacific Railroad needed guys who knew how to find their way around in this kind of terrain. They bought mountain guides in from Switzerland.

Lake Louise. It gets its greenish hue from glacial silt.

There were signs around Lake Louise advising us to be on the lookout for grizzlies. Wow!

We continued heading west and then south through Canada, and we spent the night in Penticton, about an hour north of the border. Penticton is an interesting resort town, complete with a large lake and a casino. I had a smoked salmon pizza for dinner. Love that smoked salmon.

We crossed the border early and re-entered the U.S. into Washington. We were honking along pretty good, not 30 minutes into the U.S., when a Washington State Patrol officer pulled us over for speeding. It was early, maybe 6:30 in the morning, and the officer was heading north when we were heading south. He lit us up as he passed by, I saw him do a “Smokey and the Bandit” u turn in my rear view mirror, and we pulled over immediately. The officer pulled up behind us. When we took our helmets off, he looked at us and said, “Ah, old guys,” while shaking his head. He told us to slow down. The trooper was an old guy, too. I think he felt a connection. No citation. We chatted a bit. We were lucky. Yeah, I’m an old guy, but riding that Triumph always made me feel like I was 18 years old. “I don’t know why you boys aren’t getting tickets today,” the trooper said and then he told us to ride safely. His strategy worked. We rode across Washington at a sedate 60 mph for the rest of the day. It took forever.

We stopped in Goldendale, Washington, for a cup of coffee in a local bar, chatted with the locals for a while, and then we had one of the most scenic rides I’ve ever taken. It was to be one of the best parts of the ride, and it was through the Columbia River Gorge. The roads and the scenery were incredible. It was the first time I’d ever seen it, and I’ve been back there several times since. It was an area I knew I had to include when we hosted the Chinese for the ride through the American West, and I wrote a piece about the region for Motorcycle Classics magazine. The Colombia River Gorge is one of my favorite places in the world.

Marty, headed into the Columbia River Gorge.

We rode along the north side of the Columbia River for about half the length of Washington, and then we crossed into Oregon on the Bridge of the Gods. It was probably 300 feet above the river, and it was one of those iron mesh bridges that you can look down and see all the way to the river. It looked and felt like I was flying, and it was unnerving. I looked down once and that was enough for me. We then found our way into Portland, and checked into a hotel I knew from a previous business trip.

Portland, looking out over the Willamette River.

Portland is a very cool town. Marty and I had fun exploring it, and in particular, stopping for lunch at the Olympian. I later did a story on the Olympian, too, for Motorcycle Classics. The Olympian has a fantastic vintage motorcycle collection.

Kelly’s Olympian Bar. This is a cool place to have a drink.

Inside the Olympian. It’s a “must see” spot on any ride through Portland.

We left Portland before sunrise early the next morning and headed southeast toward the coast. Oregon is a wet state. We had a lot of mist in the morning riding through the rain forest, and it was eerie. I half expected to see Sasquatch jump out and grab me every time I wiped my face shield. Then, we arrived at the Oregon Coast Highway, and yep, that ultimately became a story gracing the pages of Motorcycle Classics, too.

Hippy Bob, who we met on Oregon’s Pacific Coast Highway.

The people you meet are the best part of any motorcycle ride, and on the Oregon Coast Highway, we met a guy who introduced himself as Hippy Bob. Hippy Bob had hit the Oregon lottery for $5,000 and he immediately bought a Harley basket case for $4,500. Bob was taking his time working his way down the coast from Portland on that motorcycle (Bob had been on the road for two days when we met him, and he had only traveled about 200 miles south of Portland in that time). I was really interested in Hippy Bob’s motorcycle, as I hadn’t seen a Shovelhead Harley on the road in years. His was a 1981 model. I used to own a 1979 Electra-Glide (with the Shovelhead motor), and I called it an optical illusion because it only looked like a motorcycle. Things were constantly breaking on my Harley. I asked Bob if he had any problems with his Shovelhead, and that opened the floodgates. Bob just went on and on about the nonstop challenges he had faced keeping his Harley running. He was still talking about it when we left.

We rode the Coast Highway all the way south to Highway 138, and someone told us to watch for the elk further east. We did, and wow, were we ever impressed.

We spent the next night in Roseburg. The hotel was literally next door to the Roseburg Harley-Davidson dealer. We looked at the new 2006 Harleys (it was the first time I had seen them, and they looked good). I bought a Roseburg Harley T-shirt. There’s that old joke…you know, for a T-shirt company, they make a pretty good motorcycle…

Our destination the next morning was Crater Lake. Was it ever cold that morning! We rode through more beautiful scenery, but the temperatures were damn near debilitating. I need to tell you that we had been seeing signs warning of elk crossings for much of our time through Washington in Oregon, but the only elk was had seen so far were the ones off Highway 138. I had mentally dismissed the elk warning signs until what happened that morning. We saw another elk warning sign, I was trying to stay warm with my electric vest cranked up all the way, and then all of a sudden about 300 yards further up the road, the largest elk I ever saw stepped in front of us. I stopped, Marty stopped, and the elk stood broadside, just staring at us. He was daring us to proceed. That bull owned the road. He knew it, and he wanted to make sure we knew it, too.

Now, you have to picture this scene. We were the only ones out there, having a staring contest with this elk that was the size of a house, on a bright sunny freezing morning. Steam was coming out of the elk’s nostrils, and mine, too. I flipped my visor up because it was fogging over. The elk stared at me. I stared at it, wondering if I could get the bike turned around if the elk charged. I could see the headlines: Motorcyclist Gored to Death By Enraged Elk.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the elk looked away from us, crossed the highway, and disappeared into the forest on the other side. I started to let my clutch out, and then a female bounded out of the forest on the right and followed the bull into the forest on the left. I stopped and waited a second, and then started to roll forward. Then another female elk appeared. We stopped again. They just kept coming. Big ones, little ones, more big ones, more little ones, and well, you get the idea. I realized: Those elk crossing signs are for real.

Then it was on up to Crater Lake. It was beautiful, and it would become yet another Motorcycle Classics article.

My Daytona parked along the road circling Crater Lake.

The area around Crater Lake was downright scary. There are steep drops on the side of the road, no shoulder to speak of, and no guard rails. There are lots of signs warning that you could get seriously hurt or killed up here. On the way down, we encountered ice on the road. I love riding; I hate riding on ice. I was concentrating intensely when out of the corner of my eye I saw a yellow motorcycle closing in on my right rear and I remember wondering who else would be nutty enough to be up here riding on the ice, and who in the world would try passing under these conditions? Then I realized: It wasn’t another motorcycle. It was my motorcycle, and the ass end was sliding around. The back end of my Triumph wasn’t going in the same direction as the front end. That was a close one.

After Crater Lake, we buzzed down to the California border, almost got stopped for speeding again (the CHP cruiser going the other way hit us with the lights but didn’t come after us), and we made it to Davis, California. We had dinner with Marty’s son, and then headed home the next day.

A trip like this is one of life’s grand events. It’s hard to say what part of it I liked best: The camaraderie, the people we met along the way, the scenery, the riding, the wildlife, the memories, the photo opportunities, the sense of adventure, or just the sheer pleasure of being alive and out in the world.

Here’s a summary of the miles that Marty assembled:

• 9/1/05 Upland, CA to Tijuana, BC: 139
• 9/2/05 Tijuana, BC to Gallup, NM: 657
• 9/3/05 Gallup, NM to Grand Junction, CO: 419
• 9/4/05 Grand Junction, CO to Driggs, ID: 569
• 9/5/05 Driggs, ID to Whitefish, MT: 526
• 9/6/05 Whitefish, MT to Calgary, AB: 366
• Total for Three Flags: 2,676
• Miles ridden within Calgary, AB: 6
• 9/8/05 Calgary, AB to Penticton, BC: 430
• 9/9/05 Penticton, BC to Portland, OR: 468
• 9/10/05 Portland, OR to Roseburg, OR: 288
• 9/11/05 Roseburg, OR to Davis, CA: 469
• 9/12/05 Davis, CA to Upland, CA: 427
• Total for return trip: 2,082
• Total for round trip: 4,764

The Three Flags Classic Rally is one of the world’s great motorcycle rides, and if you’ve never experienced it, you might consider signing up for one of these rides. You can get more information on the Three Flags Classic on the Southern California Motorcycle Association website. I’ve done some great rides in my life; the Three Flags Classic was one of the best.

Baja Riding Gear

The right bike and the right clothes make for good traveling, and this is especially important when you’re riding Baja. Travel light and travel right is the way to go. What you don’t want to do is travel like I did on my first Baja trip. On that one, my Harley looked like that opening scene in The Beverly Hillbillies (you know, the one with everything strapped to Jed Clampett’s old pickup, including Granny in a rocking chair on top).

How not to do it. My old Harley was way overloaded on this early Baja trip.

I guess it all starts with the right bike, and for all of us, that’s the bike we have. I’ve ridden Baja on many different motorcycles, and they all worked for me. My preferred bike for Baja riding, though, is my CSC RX3, which I think is perfect (especially with its standard luggage). I’ve settled on a 250 as the perfect size for real adventure travel (your choice may be different, I’m not trying to pick a fight, and if my choice upsets you, hey, you’re young…you’ll get over it).

My RX3 early in its life. I can pack everything I bring with me on a Baja ride in its luggage. My bike also has a sheepskin seat cover, which makes for a more comfortable ride.

When I’m on the RX3, I can carry everything I need in its two panniers and the top case, with nothing strapped onto the bike with bungee cords. I don’t like to carry stuff outside the luggage, because everything is locked and I can leave the bike when we stop to eat or take pictures without worrying about anyone stealing anything. I’m usually carrying more than most of the folks I ride with, too, because I’ve got my Nikon DSLR, a laptop computer, the power supply and cord for the laptop, the recharger for the camera battery, an extra camera battery, and a laptop mouse. I need to keep the beast fed (i.e., this blog), and I blog daily from the road. The top case is devoted to the computer and the camera gear. I keep tools, spare parts (you can read about recommended Baja spares here), and chain lube in the right pannier, and clothes in the left pannier. Remember what I said above…travel light and travel right.

If I’m on a bike that doesn’t have luggage, my preferred approach includes an older Nelson Rigg tailpack and a set of Wolfman soft pannier bags. That’s all I need. These two items go on and off the bike easily and they are high quality items. I bought the Nelson-Rigg tailpack 20 years ago when I rode Baja on my TL1000S, and I bought the Wolfman bags from CSC when I rode Baja with my TT250. I’ve been impressed with both the Wolfman and Nelson-Rigg brands. Wolfman, especially…it’s good gear.

My old TL1000S (the first year for that bike…it was a ’97) and the Nelson-Rigg tailpack. The TL is long gone; the tailpack is still covering miles with me.

My TT250 with my Joe Rocket gloves, HJC helmet, Wolfman soft luggage, and Nelson-Rigg Tailpack (the same one you see on the TL1000S above, but 20 years later in this photo). All good gear.

My helmet is another item I bought from CSC. It’s an HJC and I like it. It’s not heavy (which makes a huge difference when you’re covering hundreds of miles day after day) and it’s comfortable. I’ve tried others, but I keep coming back to the HJC line. I have a Scorpion, but it doesn’t have a visor position that allows opening the visor slightly for air flow. Others don’t form a good seal between the visor and the helmet, so when it rains the visor gets wet on both the inside and the outside. Nope, for me that HJC works.

The HJC helmet I currently use. It’s comfortable and it’s not heavy.

My jacket is made by Olympia. I like it because of the color (fluorescent yellow), and the fact that it is all one color. Most (maybe all) of the other fluorescent yellow jackets available today have black panels along with the fluorescent yellow and I don’t care for that approach. My jacket has a removable liner and it keeps me warm, and at night if it’s cool and I’m off the bike, I can wear just the liner as a light jacket.

A selfie showing my Joe Rocket gloves and my Olympia riding jacket. I didn’t realize it when I bought it, but keeping that Oly jacket on the road required more maintenance than the motorcycles.

I should mention that I hated the Olympia jacket the first two years I owned it. Olympia used cheap stitching when they had these made, and most of it came undone. Every time I washed that jacket, more stitching came apart. Oly wouldn’t make good on it (they were quick to point out that the jacket had a 1-year warranty). I paid a tailor to resew all the seams, though, and after that, it stayed together (even after repeated washings). It’s the jacket I wear most often now.

I always bring along my R Heroes 505 workshirt, an ultra-high quality sweatshirt I wrote about in an ExNotes blog a few months ago. I own two of these shirts (one of which has held up for 10 years now). It’s warm and it’s extremely comfortable. It’s also loose enough that if you’re carrying a concealed sidearm, it provides good coverage (don’t do that in Baja, though). I love my R Heroes shirts.

I wear Walmart jeans (I’m not into fancy jeans and I think anybody that pays big bucks for blue jeans is bonkers) and an old set of motorcycle pants. On warmer days, the motorcycle pants go into one of my bags and it’s just the jeans. On cooler days or if it’s raining, I wear both. My motorcycle pants are water resistant but not waterproof (if the rain lasts long enough, they’ll soak through). Every year or so, I’ll spray the paints with Kiwi water repellant to refresh the Scotchguard. I’m kind of embarrassed that I don’t know who made the motorcycle pants. I’ve had them for more than 20 years and the labels are long gone.

My gloves are Joe Rocket. Joe Rocket gear is reasonably priced and the quality is there. I have two pair. I cut off the right index finger tip off on one so I can work my iPhone when I’m using it as a nav system. I also have an older set of BMW cold weather riding gloves, and they work gangbusters. I think I paid a hundred bucks for the BMW gloves (everything that says BMW is big bucks), but on supercold mornings, I’m constantly reminded that was money well spent.

The last item I’ll mention are my boots. I’m not a big fan of any of the motorcycle-specific boots because they are too big, too heavy, and too uncomfortable when you get off the bike. I like military or police style boots, and my preferred brand is from an outfit called HAIX. They’re Austrian (the boots are actually manufactured in Croatia). They’re expensive (about $200), but they are worth it. The first pair I bought lasted 10 years. I bought a new pair a year or two ago, and I’ll get 10 years with them, too.

Get Out: Kilbourne Crater

If you roll along dusty, unpaved county road A011 through the desert shrubbery of New Mexico’s south-central region, and you roll with purpose, you will fetch up on the shores of Kilbourne Crater. Kilbourne was formed by a maars-type volcanic eruption. In a maars eruption a crater is created by hot magma coming into contact with the water table. When the two meet, the rapidly heated water turns to steam, expands and blows huge chunks of ground skyward. By huge I mean 2.5 kilometers across 1.8 kilometers wide and 125 meters deep. It’s a big hole and it must have made quite a racket when it blew its stack 20,000 to 80,000 years ago.

Maars volcanic eruptions don’t form the classic Hanna-Barbera, cinder cone shape or leave behind crowd-pleasing lava flows. At first I thought a meteor caused the crater but the crew at Southwest Expeditions had several guest speakers situated under a billowing tent to set me straight. They also had a van if you didn’t want to burn your own fuel to get to the crater. I saved $2.57. In addition to downloading a heck of a lot of information about volcanism into the assembled masses they served us a fine chicken-taco lunch.

Lunch was fabulous except for one thing. That thing being a giant jar of sliced jalapenos. No one was eating them because the lid was too tight. I gave it a good twist but the lid would not budge. I’m not the strongest guy in the world but I can open a damn jalapeno jar, you know? I finally gave up and handed it to this big guy that looked like Chief from the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I swear, he took the lid in his fingertips and the lid spun off easy as pie.

It put a damper on my lunch I tell you. I ate moody qua-moody. Am I getting old? Will I need a Clap-On soon? Life Alert? After the jar debacle it was probably best that Southwest Expeditions canceled our hike down into the crater. The temperature was 92 degrees and the wind was howling. No sense crushing anyone else’s sense of self-worth.

After lunch we assembled to participate in an art project with Tim Fitzpatrick and Jeff Erwin. Fitzpatrick had a long swatch of bright red cloth that he wanted to juxtaposition against Kilbourne’s vast, earth-colored sweep. It was something to do with the wavelength of light and spectra. I’m not sure because Fitzpatrick lost me after he said, “Hold this red cloth.” While we marched around Erwin flew a drone to capture footage of the cloth snaking across the rim of the crater.

After piercing Kilbourne’s visual solitude with our happy, marching red-band the artists had each of us recite one line of John F. Kennedy’s, “We choose to go to the Moon” speech and took headshots of the readers. I’ll let you know when the thing pops up on you tube.

Surrounding Kilbourne are ash dunes and surprisingly little lava. What lava pieces you do find at the site are more block-shaped and are pieces the explosion ejected from an older layer of lava that had covered the area long before Kilbourne was born from pressurized steam. There’s also a lot of ammunition shell casing scattered around. I imagine the lead-to-lava ratio will approach 50:50 by the year 2234.

The reason for all of this activity in the middle of nowhere was the 50th anniversary of astronauts Conrad, Bean, Gibson, Carr, Irwin and Schmitt training in Kilbourne Crater for their upcoming Apollo 12 Moon mission. That would be the second Moon landing. Kilbourne was chosen for its dust, the rough terrain and the multitude of geologic examples found at the site.

Other Apollo missions trained at Kilbourne: Apollo 13, 14, 15 (canceled), 16 (renamed 15) and 17 crews all did their time in the hole. NASA’s budget and our will to explore the Moon waned and the Apollo missions kind of ran out of steam. Which, in a suitable ending is what created their moon-mission training ground those many years ago. Maybe one day NASA will return to Kilbourne and use its dusty, rocky landscape to train another generation of astronauts. I hope to see America once again become a space-faring nation and that those astronauts will be heading to Mars.

A new RoadRUNNER video…

This popped up in my Facebook feed this morning. It’s a RoadRUNNER magazine video on a recent Suzuki V-Strom and Wee-Strom trip through Tennessee. You’ll enjoy it; I sure did!

Dream Bike: 1978 Triumph Bonneville

This is a blog I did for CSC a year or so ago, and it’s one I thought I would run again here. We haven’t done a Dream Bikes blog in a while, and it’s time.

It’s raining, it’s cold here in southern California, and those two conditions are enough to keep me indoors today. I’ve been straightening things up here in the home office, and I came across a Triumph brochure from 1978. I bought a new Bonneville that year and as I type this, I realize that was a cool 40 years ago. Wowee. Surprisingly, the brochure scanned well, so much so that even the fine print is still readable…

Triumph had two 750 twins back then. One was the twin-carb Bonneville, and the other was the single-carb model (I think they called it the Tiger). The Bonneville came in brown or black and the Tiger came in blue or red (you can see the color palette in the third photo above). I liked the red and my dealer (in Fort Worth) swapped the tank from a Tiger onto my Bonneville. I loved that bike, and I covered a lot of miles in Texas on it. I used to ride with a friend and fellow engineer at General Dynamics named Sam back in the F-16 days (he had a Yamaha 500cc TT model, which was another outstanding bike back in the day). I wish I still had that Bonneville.

After I sold the Bonneville, I turned right around and bought a ’79 Electra-Glide Classic. There’s a brochure buried around here somewhere on that one, and if I come across it I’ll see how it scans. The Harley had a lot of issues, but it’s another one I enjoyed owning and riding, and it’s another I wish I still owned.

So there you have it. That ’78 Bonneville is a bike I still have dreams about, and they were made all the more poignant by the Royal Enfield Interceptor I rode in Baja last month. You can read about the Enfield Interceptor and our Baja adventures here.

Want to read more pieces like this? Check out our other Dream Bikes here!

Riding India on an Enfield

I came across my new good buddy Chris Alves’ photo essay about a ride across India on a Royal Enfield a day or two ago and I was impressed. Imagine that…a 3,000-mile ride across India on a Royal Enfield. That’s a bucket list ride for me. You can get to Chris’ photo essay by clicking here. Folks, this one is worth your time.

Genuine’s G400c and more…

I was up in San Francisco a week or so ago and I stopped by good buddy Barry’s San Francisco Scooter Centre for two reasons: To say hello to Barry, and to check out the new Genuine G400c motorcycle. It’s the bike manufactured by Shineray (in Chongqing, China), and I had seen two versions of it when I rode across China on an RX3 nearly three years go.

Brand new Genuine G400c motorcycles in good buddy Barry’s San Francisco Scooter Centre.

The new Genuine’s pricing in the San Francisco Scooter Centre. Like other Asian and Indian bikes from Royal Enfield, CSC, and BMW, the price is seriously lower than others on the market from the Big 4 and Europe. Unlike many other dealers, the San Francisco Scooter Centre’s setup, documentation, and freight charges are honest and reasonable.

I didn’t have the time or the gear to ride the Genuine G400c last week, but Barry said he wants me to try the new machine and he offered a ride. I’m going to do that later this month, and I’ll tell you more about the bike when I do.

The products available to us as motorcyclists sure are changing, and there’s no doubt the imports from China and India are rocking our world. Gresh and I have a bit of experience on Zongshen’s RX3, RX4, and TT250 (made in China and imported by CSC). I’ve had some seat time on the new BMW 310 made in India. Joe and I recently completed a week-long adventure in Baja riding the Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet and their new 650cc Interceptor (both made in India). I don’t have any time yet on Harley’s 500cc and 750cc v-twin cruisers (also made in India), but I’m working on correcting that character flaw. There’s an old proverb that says “may you live in interesting times.” We certainly are.

Hey, more good news: I finally received my printed copies of Destinations, and my story on Kitt Peak National Observatory is in the next issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine. You can see all of the Destinations pieces (and get your very own copy) right here. Good buddy Mike did. Mike and I graduated junior high school and high school together back in the day (as in 50 years ago), and we still talk to each other a couple of times each month. Good friends and good times!

Good buddy Mike, who knows a good thing when he sees it!

1Q19 Moto Book Winner!

Good buddy Bob, our most recent adventure moto book contest winner!

It’s that time again, and our first quarter 2019 adventure motorcycle book contest winner is good buddy Bob. Bob became eligible when he signed up for our automatic email blog updates, and you can, too! We’re giving away another book at the end of this quarter, and all you have to do is sign up for our automatic email updates.

When we notified Bob of his win, he wrote to us…

I like your approach with the Zongshens…1200cc is not required for touring. My touring machine is shown in the photo: A 2002 Honda Silverwing scooter. I sold it with 35K showing on the odometer and later bought another.

Bob, your copy of Destinations, our latest moto adventure book, will be going out to you in the next few days. Congratulations to you and thanks for being an ExhaustNotes reader!

Destinations!

Our latest book, Destinations, went live on Saturday and it’s now available in a color print version ($29.95), a black and white print version ($12.95), and a Kindle version ($4.95).

Destinations is a collection of motorcycle rides and destinations culled from the pages of Motorcycle Classics magazine. I’m a regular contributor to Motorcycle Classics, and this book encompasses travel stories going back as far as 2006. My good buddy and editor Landon Hall (who found a few Rock Store photos I put on the Internet in 2005) is the guy who first got me started in the travel writing business, and he wrote the foreword to this book for me.

Destinations has 56 chapters and 150 photographs (many of which have never before been published). Great motorcycle hangouts, mountain roads, national parks, motorcycle museums, best kept secrets, how to get there, things to avoid, the best restaurants, and more for great rides both in the United States and Baja…it’s all here, inviting you to ride the best roads and the most exciting destinations in North America!

Riding to Colombia’s Volcan Nevado del Ruiz: Part II

Here’s Part II of our grand ride to the top of Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. Colombia was an awesome adventure, and my good buddies Juan and Carlos were great traveling companions. Here you go, folks….

As I mentioned earlier, our riding positions were Juan, me, and Carlos. Juan was just amazing. I was keeping up, but I was working hard to do it. And I knew Juan and Carlos had dialed it back for me.

Juan made it look so easy. He would sometimes ride through the curves standing on the pegs, almost as if he needed to give himself more of a challenge. At one point, we were taking a set of curves at speeds way above those at which I would normally ride, with the bikes leaned over at an unimaginable angle, when I looked ahead at Juan. He was standing on the pegs again, with his motorcycle leaned way over in a sweeping curve, and he was reaching back to check the latch on one of his panniers. He was doing this as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Both he and Carlos are incredible riders.

Colombian chicken-strip-reducing twisties on our climb to the top.

Juan knew another photo spot, and we stopped. He and Carlos took positions on the side of the road to take photos, but I zeroed in on my front tire. I wanted to check out my chicken strips.

Chicken strips are the edges of the tire tread that haven’t contacted the road surface. The harder you corner on a motorcycle, the more you lean the bike over, and the narrower your chicken strips become. Our ride during the last 30 miles or so had been aggressive, and my chicken strips showed it. They were about as narrow as any I have ever created on a motorcycle.

Juan and Carlos came over. They thought I had a problem with the motorcycle’s front tire until they saw me photographing it. Both guys laughed. They knew immediately what I was doing.

“I was watching you in the mirrors,” Juan said, “and you are riding more strongly. We will make you an honorary Colombian motorcyclist!”

The spot Juan had selected to stop was indeed a good one. The Nikon 18-55mm lens came off the camera I replaced it with the Tokina 12-24mm. I grabbed a shot that became one of my favorites (it’s the one you see above).

Chicken strips (the narrow unused tread area at the tire’s edge).

The climb continued, we turned left at an intersection, and then we made a right turn onto a dirt road. We were in the fog, but the fog had not descended to reach us. We had climbed into the clouds to reach it.

It was cold. I could barely see Juan through the fog and I thought it was because my visor had clouded over. I lifted the visor and I realized that it was indeed fogged over, but the visibility wasn’t any better with it up. We were in the soup, and it was thick.

I hit the toggle switch on the left handlebar to activate the RX3’s emergency flashers. I saw Carlos follow my example in my rear view mirrors, and then Juan did so, too. I fixated on Juan’s taillight and his flashers; it was really all I could see in that thick soup. I was glad I was wearing my contact lenses instead of glasses; I would not have been able to see anything if I had worn my glasses.

I could barely see the dirt road beneath my wheels (the fog was that thick). The road had not turned to mud (and for that I was grateful). I felt the moisture hitting my face. It was cold.

That dirt road and the fog we were riding through went on and on and on. I saw a sign that said we were at 3400 meters. Wow, I thought after doing a quick mental calculation. That’s over 11,000 feet! It was about as high as I’ve ever been on a motorcycle, but it was a record that would be broken just a few more miles up the road.

As we continued, the moisture continued to smack my face, but it was stinging more. I thought maybe it was freezing rain. It seemed to bother my eyes quite a bit more, too. I put my visor down and it fogged over immediately. I put it back up just as quickly as I had put it down. This was extreme riding.

Juan stopped at another sign. We were now at 3,950 meters! That’s 13,000 feet. I was cold, but I knew I had to get the camera out for a photo of the bikes next to this sign. I told Juan the elevation was amazing, and he told me we would be climbing even higher.

Then Juan noticed something on my jacket. He looked at my bike and he became very excited. My jacket and the bikes had little specks of dust on them. Those little specks were what I had felt hitting me in the face. They hadn’t been freezing rain droplets. They were volcanic dust! The volcano we were riding up to was belching its innards all over us!

Juan was excited. “I’ve been up here maybe 10 times,” he said, and I’ve never seen this. The volcano knows we are here, Joe, and it is talking to us.”

We rode another couple of miles and we arrived at the Colombian National Park headquarters for the volcano. The bikes were covered with volcanic dust. Our helmets were muddy because of it. My eyes itched, but I didn’t dare rub them. I now knew my eyes were irritated because they had cinders in them, and rubbing them would grind that dust into my eyeballs. Nope, it would be best to let the tears that were streaming down my face do what they were designed to do and wash this stuff out naturally.

The people manning the Colombian National Park told us they were sending people away, back down from the volcano because it was active. Imagine that!

A volcano!

And it was active!

Wowee!

The sign at the top told us we were at 4,138 meters. That’s 13,562 feet, folks. And we rode up here on our 250cc motorcycles!

That’s 13,562 feet above sea level, just below the rim of an active volcano!

Juan told us there was a trail that went all the way up to the volcano’s rim, and that was above 15,000 feet. The Colombian government no longer allowed any kind of motorized traffic on that trail, so we couldn’t take the motorcycles. Juan told me he had done that ride while it was still legal to do so, and he had done it on a 100cc two-stroke Yamaha while riding two up! This guy is one hardcore biker, I thought.

We stayed for a bit, we had a cup of tea, we took a few photos, and we left. That would be one more checkmark on my bucket list. I didn’t even know riding up to an active volcano had been one of the things I wanted to do in my life. Having now done it, though, I can tell you what we accomplished that day deserved a spot on the list. It felt good knowing I could say I had done it.

We rode another 10 miles or so on dirt roads, downhill all the way, to a hotel that was about as far off the beaten path as I have ever been.
It was still bitter cold as we rode down the side of the volcano, but I was feeling good. I’ve said it in every chapter, and I’ll say it again: Juan was showing me one hell of a good time. This Colombian adventure tour was the most exciting motorcycle ride of my life.

Our destination that evening was the Hotel Termales, and it was at the end of a long dirt road. The Hotel Termales was interesting. As we rode in, there were springs emerging along the side of the road. The springs were small, but they gave off a lot of steam in the cold air. I could smell the sulfur. It was obvious we were in a very geologically active region.

The dirt road leading from Volcan Nevado del Ruiz to the Hotel Termales.

As we were unloading the bikes I realized just how cold it was. The sulfur smell was heavy, but it wasn’t too objectionable. The aroma reminded me of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming or that stretch in Baja between Mexicali and San Felipe (two other geologically active regions I had ridden through on previous motorcycle adventures).

We checked in and a young guy carried my bags up to my room. It was a great room at the far end of the hotel. I had a huge window just above the bed with a commanding view of Manizales, the nearest town nestled in a valley perhaps 30 miles away. The lights of Manizales sparkled in the evening air. It would have made a good photograph, but truth be told, I was about photographed out that night. The ride up to the volcano had been demanding and I wanted to get in that hot pool.

The bellboy explained how to work the heater. To my surprise, it was an electrical heater that blew air through an electrically-heated grid. It was noisy and I thought it might keep me up, but I enjoyed the heat it threw as soon as the guy turned it on. I thought it was odd that with all the hot water coming out of the ground the hotel opted for electrical heating. That’s what happens when you’re an engineer, I guess. You look at things and wonder why.

I met Juan and Carlos in the lobby and we went outdoors to the hot springs pool. We were in our swimsuits and, wow, it was cold out there! Juan had warned us that he pool water was scalding hot and it was best to ease into it gradually, but it was so cold out there I wanted to get submerged as quickly as I could. It was a real shock going from the frigid air into that super-hot water, but I acclimated to it quickly. It was wonderful soaking up all that heat. I had been chilled to the bone, and now I was being boiled. The water had a strong sulfur odor, but I didn’t mind that at all. I was enjoying the heat.

I found that the water temperature, while hot throughout the pool, was much hotter where the water fed into the pool. I stayed close to the water inlets as very hot water cascaded over my shoulders and neck. These areas bothered me every night, no doubt due to the muscle tension associated with riding the Colombian twisties. Those hot springs helped enormously. It was better than being in a Jacuzzi.

That night we ate in the Hotel Termales restaurant. I strayed from my usual evening meal (nearly always chicken) and I tried the truche (that’s Spanish for trout). It was exquisite. Trout in the US is always a dicey proposition. Usually there’s only a small amount of meat on the fish (US trout all belong to Weight Watchers, I suppose). That was not the case here. Even though the truche was about the same length as a US trout, it easily had twice the meat on the bone. It was succulent, it had a pink hue to it, and it almost tasted like salmon. It so intrigued me that I looked up truche up on the Internet, and I learned that trout is actually in the salmon family. In Colombia, I guess the trout family relationship is much stronger than it is in the US.

I slept like a baby that night. The hot air heater didn’t keep me up at all. It was very cold outside, but my room was toasty.

So, back to what I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter…as I fell asleep that night, I thought about everything we did that day. Day 7, just like Days 1 through 6, had been a full day. Breakfast in Honda, exploring the town and the very first bridge to cross the Magdalena River, the river museum, Fresno, hard core cornering as we climbed into the clouds, bitter cold, fog more obscure than the US tax code, dirt roads, riding higher than I had ever ridden before (above 13,562 feet!), volcanic dust from a volcano that could have used some Pepto Bismol, a hot springs bath, and a delicious trout dinner. It had been another day in Paradise. I was loving it.

I thought about everything we had done during the day, and then I realized tomorrow was Day 8. I felt a strong twinge of regret when I realized it would be our last day on the road in Colombia.

And there you have it! If you want to read the entire story, get yourself a copy of Moto Colombia!