{"id":4227,"date":"2019-05-12T08:30:20","date_gmt":"2019-05-12T15:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=4227"},"modified":"2021-01-15T09:29:12","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T17:29:12","slug":"the-three-flags-classic-the-run-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/05\/12\/the-three-flags-classic-the-run-home\/","title":{"rendered":"The Three Flags Classic: The Run Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

So there we were in Calgary.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 And we’d ridden there on our motorcycles through all three countries (Mexico, the United States, and Canada).\u00a0 It had been a grand ride, but it was only half the trip. \u00a0 Now, it was time after a fun two days in Calgary for the ride home.<\/p>\n

Before diving into our ride home, though, you might want to catch up on the ride to Calgary. \u00a0 Here are the first seven installments of our story on the 2005 Three Flags Classic\u2026<\/p>\n

The 2005 Three Flags Classic Rally:\u00a0 the Intro!<\/a>
\nThe Three Flags Classic:\u00a0 Day 1<\/a>
\nThe Three Flags Classic:\u00a0 Day 2<\/a>
\nThe Three Flags Classic:\u00a0 Day 3<\/a>
\nThe Three Flags Classic:\u00a0 Day 4<\/a>
\nThe Three Flags Classic:\u00a0 Day 5<\/a>
\nThe Three Flags Classic:\u00a0 Calgary<\/a><\/p>\n

And now, on to the run home!<\/p>\n

\n

The plan after the events in Calgary was to select our own route home and ride it at our own pace.\u00a0 The official portion of the 2005 Three Flags Classic was over.\u00a0 It had been a blast.\u00a0 On the run home we would decide where to go, how to get there, and how long to take doing it. \u00a0 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. \u00a0 It was to be another grand adventure, and wow, we were having fun!<\/p>\n

On the first morning out of Calgary, we stopped in Banff and had a great breakfast. Smoked salmon and eggs, as I recall.\u00a0 It was delicious.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The road through Banff. It was a crisp morning and the riding was great.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
We walked around in Banff a bit after breakfast. This bear skull was for sale in a store window.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Good buddy Marty posing with the 1200 Daytona in Banff.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The ride that morning was beyond glorious.\u00a0 Crisp, clean air, cool temperatures, and all was well with the world. \u00a0 The big 1200 Daytona was running superbly well and the scenery was magnificent.\u00a0 Every scene was a picture postcard, and I caught a lot of them.\u00a0 Incidentally, all of the photos you see in this story were shot with film.\u00a0 I had my Nikon N70 with me and just two lenses (the 24-120 Nikon, and a 17-35 Sigma).\u00a0 Great scenery, great photo gear, a great motorcycle, and great photo ops.\u00a0 Life was good.\u00a0 It still is.<\/p>\n

After that great breakfast in Banff and a bit of walking around, were back on the road headed west across Canada.\u00a0 Our next stop was Lake Louise.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Lake Louise Hotel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
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.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
A statue near Lake Louise, erected by the Canadian Pacific Railway, honoring the Swiss Mountain guides.\u00a0 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.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Lake Louise. It gets its greenish hue from glacial silt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The road crew in front of Lake Louise.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
There were signs around Lake Louise advising us to be on the lookout for grizzlies. Wow!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 It was early, maybe 6:30 in the morning, and the officer was heading north when we were heading south.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The officer pulled up behind us.\u00a0 When we took our helmets off, he looked at us and said, “Ah, old guys,” while shaking his head.\u00a0 He told us to slow down.\u00a0 The trooper was an old guy, too.\u00a0 I think he felt a connection.\u00a0 No citation.\u00a0 We chatted a bit.\u00a0 We were lucky.\u00a0 Yeah, I’m an old guy, but riding that Triumph always made me feel like I was 18 years old.\u00a0 “I don’t know why you boys aren’t getting tickets today,” the trooper said and then he told us to ride safely.\u00a0 His strategy worked. We rode across Washington at a sedate 60 mph for the rest of the day. It took forever.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Somewhere north of Yakima, Washington.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 It was to be one of the best parts of the ride, and it was through the Columbia River Gorge.\u00a0 The roads and the scenery were incredible.\u00a0 It was the first time I’d ever seen it, and I’ve been back there several times since.\u00a0 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<\/em> magazine.\u00a0 The Colombia River Gorge is one of my favorite places in the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Marty, headed into the Columbia River Gorge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 It looked and felt like I was flying, and it was unnerving.\u00a0 I looked down once and that was enough for me.\u00a0 We then found our way into Portland, and checked into a hotel I knew from a previous business trip.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Portland, looking out over the Willamette River.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Portland is a very cool town.\u00a0 Marty and I had fun exploring it, and in particular, stopping for lunch at the Olympian.\u00a0 I later did a story on the Olympian, too, for Motorcycle Classics<\/em>.\u00a0 The Olympian has a fantastic vintage motorcycle collection.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Kelly’s Olympian Bar. This is a cool place to have a drink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Inside the Olympian. It’s a “must see” spot on any ride through Portland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We left Portland before sunrise early the next morning and headed southeast toward the coast.\u00a0 Oregon is a wet state. We had a lot of mist in the morning riding through the rain forest, and it was eerie.\u00a0 I half expected to see Sasquatch jump out and grab me every time I wiped my face shield.\u00a0 Then, we arrived at the Oregon Coast Highway, and yep, that ultimately became a story gracing the pages of Motorcycle Classics<\/em>, too.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sasquatch is down there somewhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Hippy Bob, who we met on Oregon’s Pacific Coast Highway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 Hippy Bob had hit the Oregon lottery for $5,000 and he immediately bought a Harley basket case for $4,500.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 I was really interested in Hippy Bob’s motorcycle, as I hadn’t seen a Shovelhead Harley on the road in years.\u00a0 His was a 1981 model. I used to own a 1979 Electra-Glide<\/a> (with the Shovelhead motor), and I called it an optical illusion because it only looked like a motorcycle.\u00a0 Things were constantly breaking on my Harley.\u00a0 I asked Bob if he had any problems with his Shovelhead, and that opened the floodgates.\u00a0 Bob just went on and on about the nonstop challenges he had faced keeping his Harley running.\u00a0 He was still talking about it when we left.<\/p>\n

We rode the Coast Highway all the way south to Highway 138, and someone told us to watch for the elk further east.\u00a0 We did, and wow, were we ever impressed.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Wow.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Wow again!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
A bambino.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 There’s that old joke…you know, for a T-shirt company, they make a pretty good motorcycle…<\/p>\n

Our destination the next morning was Crater Lake. Was it ever cold that morning!\u00a0 We rode through more beautiful scenery, but the temperatures were damn near debilitating.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I had mentally dismissed the elk warning signs until what happened that morning.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I stopped, Marty stopped, and the elk stood broadside, just staring at us.\u00a0 He was daring us to proceed.\u00a0 That bull owned the road.\u00a0 He knew it, and he wanted to make sure we knew it, too.<\/p>\n

Now, you have to picture this scene.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Steam was coming out of the elk’s nostrils, and mine, too. \u00a0 I flipped my visor up because it was fogging over.\u00a0 The elk stared at me.\u00a0 I stared at it, wondering if I could get the bike turned around if the elk charged.\u00a0 I could see the headlines:\u00a0 Motorcyclist Gored to Death By Enraged Elk.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0 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.\u00a0 I stopped and waited a second, and then started to roll forward.\u00a0 Then another female elk appeared.\u00a0 We stopped again. \u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Then it was on up to Crater Lake.\u00a0 It was beautiful, and it would become yet another Motorcycle Classics<\/em> article.<\/p>\n

\"\"
My Daytona parked along the road circling Crater Lake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Yep, that’s snow.\u00a0 It was cold up there!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 On the way down, we encountered ice on the road.\u00a0 I love riding; I hate riding on ice.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 Then I realized: It wasn’t another motorcycle.\u00a0 It was my motorcycle, and the ass end was sliding around. \u00a0 The back end of my Triumph wasn’t going in the same direction as the front end.\u00a0 That was a close one.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Here’s a summary of the miles that Marty assembled:<\/p>\n

\u2022 9\/1\/05 Upland, CA to Tijuana, BC: 139
\n\u2022 9\/2\/05 Tijuana, BC to Gallup, NM: 657
\n\u2022 9\/3\/05 Gallup, NM to Grand Junction, CO: 419
\n\u2022 9\/4\/05 Grand Junction, CO to Driggs, ID: 569
\n\u2022 9\/5\/05 Driggs, ID to Whitefish, MT: 526
\n\u2022 9\/6\/05 Whitefish, MT to Calgary, AB: 366
\n\u2022 Total for Three Flags: 2,676
\n\u2022 Miles ridden within Calgary, AB: 6
\n\u2022 9\/8\/05 Calgary, AB to Penticton, BC: 430
\n\u2022 9\/9\/05 Penticton, BC to Portland, OR: 468
\n\u2022 9\/10\/05 Portland, OR to Roseburg, OR: 288
\n\u2022 9\/11\/05 Roseburg, OR to Davis, CA: 469
\n\u2022 9\/12\/05 Davis, CA to Upland, CA: 427
\n\u2022 Total for return trip: 2,082
\n\u2022 Total for round trip: 4,764<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 You can get more information on the Three Flags Classic on the Southern California Motorcycle Association<\/a> website. \u00a0 I’ve done some great rides in my life; the Three Flags Classic was one of the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So there we were in Calgary.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 And we’d ridden there on our motorcycles through all three countries (Mexico, the United States, and Canada).\u00a0 It had been a grand ride, but it was only half the trip. \u00a0 Now, it was time after a fun two days in Calgary for the ride home. Before diving … Continue reading “The Three Flags Classic: The Run Home”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[654,136,89],"tags":[466],"class_list":["post-4227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure-motorcycle-books","category-canada","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-three-flags-classic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/06340020-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4227"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4268,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions\/4268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}