Even more adventures!  This time was a 3 day weekend down to Montrose, CO for the annual North American V-Strom Gathering thingy.  I rode down with a couple of somewhat local friends, Paul and Jeff.

We started out on Thursday afternoon.  Jeff left out around 2pm and headed south, Paul headed out of Ogden around 6.  It took him nearly 2 hours to make Salt Lake, which including getting a front row seat to seeing a car in front of him go totally sideways.  It took us a further 2 hours to get to Spanish Fork… gah!

We arrived in Green River, and headed west on I-70.  About 15 miles down the road, there is a turn off just off the shoulder of the interstate.  Through a gate and into BLM land, there is a camp ground a few miles down a dirt road.  It was a really spectacular place to camp.  Truly out in the middle of no where, with no one around for miles and miles.  Too bad we had a full moon, the stars would have been amazing.

Friday morning we went just a little further down the road to Black Dragon Canyon:

(click on any image for the full size version)

We stopped part way up the canyon and hiked around a bit.

We came in from the left, the road continues to the right and eventually goes up on top of the rocks.

Petroglyphs are all over this canyon.  I found this neat mural under and overhang.

Here’s the black dragon, faded to red:

I kinda liked this guy, which was just to the left of the Black Dragon.

From here, we stopped for breakfast in Green River, and headed south towards Moab.  We took a turn off north of Moab down about a 10 mile dirt road that took us across Courthouse Wash and into Arches National Park.  This road was spectacular.  I was nervous going in, but found myself sad it was over by the end.  Really, the vstrom, aired down a bit, has no trouble with a road like this even loaded with gear.  At one point, all 3 of us turned off the main road and were riding around the slick rock, what fun!  I banged my engine guard a few times on rocks, was glad it was there.

Jeff making a short decent:

A stop at an area that showed off some dinosaur tracks embedded in the rock:

Paul shot down this road, so I had to get Jeff to ‘poise’ for me down this beautiful bit of road:

From here, we went into Moab and had some lunch, and then south to the La Sal cut off, over to Naturita, and on to Ridgway and Montrose.

Dropping out of the mountains and into Paradox Valley, between La Sal and Ridgway:

We arrived at 7:25 to the dinner and found the food was pretty much gone.  Hurray!  $25 a head for a plate full of dinner rolls.  Camped, and then arrived at a game plan for the Saturday ride.  I was rather disappointed that they did not offer any maps in our packets nor did they have any huge maps to point out possible routes on.  Luckily, I knew the area and was able to lead the trip.

We headed south to Ouray, stopping in Ridgway to see the rafters get underway for the Whitewater Rodeo:

Just out of Ouray, I took the guys up towards Yankee Boy Basin.  I’d been up here a few times via Jeep, and I was both really excited to try it on the bike and also a tad bit scared since I knew the road

We didn’t go up all the way, as we had a big loop to go on and we certainly did not want to be late to our $25 dinner.

At one point, the road is carved into the side of the cliff.

Here’s a panoramic shot that should help to establish the scale here.  Look for Paul coming down the road, Jeff taking photos on the side, and, for bonus points, the Subaru up the road that managed to lose a tire off the edge and was stuck:

Of course it was raining on us.  It has rained on me every time I have been up this road, so…

We stopped at the Ouray overlook and took a few shots:

We stopped in Silverton and had a brew and a burger.  Found this Snowmobile on the way out, looks like it probably still even runs!

We stopped up on top of Molas Pass and took a few shots:

360 degree panoramic from the top of the pass, it’s a big one:

We went towards Durango, but… we’d spent too much time playing in the dirt to do the whole Teluride loop, so we turned around and headed north.  Unfortunately, it was a tad too wet on the 10mph curves just outside of Ouray to really get into the hard, but still a great ride, despite Jeff getting stuck behind slow cars and us losing him

This is where my photos end, although I think I have a few on my little camera I have not downloaded yet.

Another night of camping with a guy named Mike from California, who I think we managed to not scar too bad with our campground antics, on Saturday night.

Sunday, the initial plan was to ride up Black Canyon on the way out, but… we ended up deciding to not spent the $11 or whatever to go see it and just bombed on down the road to home.  I don’t know what it was about today, but it was a hot, long ride.  I was happy to be home.

55,000 miles on the bike now.  Paul wants to spend 2-3 weeks next summer and ride Alaska, and I find myself getting excited about the idea.  Stay tuned for more adventures.

Here’s a link to the whole gallery for these and additional photos

After months of planning, and despite last minute drama, I managed to break away for a week and enjoy Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons for a week with some college friends.  It would doubly nice as it turned out to be far cheaper than I had planned on.  Go case of ramen and tent camping!

The temperatures were just right, and I think we managed to get in just before the big summer rush.  Nevertheless, there were a number of people there.

I think we managed to see almost every animal the park hosts, from midnight wolves crossing the road, to elk, deer, moose, bison, and black and grizzly bears.  I managed to get a few photos of critters, but I think this one is my favorite:

It’s good to be back home, but I wouldn’t mind just going back to Wyoming for a few more weeks!

You can find more pictures, both from my camera and my friend’s cameras (as they upload them), here.

Forward: It has come to my attention that it might be felt that because I force comments to be made on my site instead of on livejournal that I am somehow trying to force you to visit my site. I assure you, this is not the case. I prefer to host my blog on my own terms, and I only cross-post it on livejournal because Danny whined and whined about having to visit some other site to get updates. Thus, I am trying to limit the avenues of different discussion on each missive issued to one site. Sorry for the convenience of being able to read all comments in one place I’ll quit using the ‘more’ link so you don’t have to pop over to my site to read the entire story.

Now on to the content…

My poor pickup. It has been through a lot lately. I’ve strived to keep it looking and running great, and so far it has worked out for me. I only use full synthetic oil, and I stay on top of service. 85,000 miles later it runs like it did when it was new.

However, in the last few months, it has had a hard life. Amanda was driving it as her daily vehicle for a while, until we found a Subaru for her, and she managed to tag a pole with the front bumper and smear paint on it. I think that will buff out if I work on it. Then, she decided to be ‘clever’ like me and back it into the space every night, but got nervous one night because of traffic and managed to back into the same pole and put a good dent into the back bumper that will not buff out. She’s probably going to have a cow that I am posting all this, haha. The radio has a motorized front face that pops open when you put in a CD or when you turn off the truck (so you can remove it for theft deterrent). That has started to not work properly for the last month or so. At least everything else is ok, or so I thought…

Friday I went out to the truck around 11pm with Amanda to go over to Wendy’s for a late night meal. Walking up to the truck, I found a mostly empty Natural Ice beer can laying on the ground next to the drivers door, and it appeared to have exploded. My door was covered in a film of presumably dry beer, but nothing seemed amiss. I sat down in the truck and shut the door and found the problem. My mirror was busted. It would seem someone threw a full beer at my mirror while driving past and shattered it. The dried beer on my door contains bits of glittery glass. Mind you, the truck had been parked on the street with about 15-20 other vehicles near my apartment, so I had not thought much of leaving it there (in fact, I figured I could keep a better eye on it…). I took a picture the next day after a motorcycle ride:

I moved the pickup to the parking area behind the apartment, next to where I park the bike. These are unassigned, covered parking spaces. There are many spaces open in the covered area, and many more in the uncovered area. I have been keeping a close eye on the truck every day since when I leave and come home from work (on the bike). After having been parked there for going on 4 full days, I discovered this taped to the drivers window of my truck last night:

I… I am at a loss here. What does it even mean? It looked like there was two different strokes on the H looking character, so I can only assume that the word written is, ‘troke’. I assume they feel this is their parking space? But it is unassigned parking and there is literally 10 open spaces 4 spaces down.

I removed the sign and threw it on the ground nearby. I figure it will at least be plausible that it fell off, so as to give this genius pause before escalating. I look forward to what might appear tonight.

In a related note, I bought a car alarm off eBay last night. One of the kind that has a ‘pager’ key fob that alerts you if the alarm went off, so at least I will get notification. We’ll see what happens. But, seriously, poor truck. Everyone is picking on it, it seems.

So, recently, we bought Amanda a used ’92 Subaru Legacy 4 door sedan. 146,000 miles, ran good, but the clutch was shot, $700. Bought it, drove it to the shop. I spent a couple of days putting in a new clutch, which wasn’t nearly as hard as some of the ones I have put in in the past. I cleaned it up, fixed a door lock, bought trim pieces from the junkyard to get everything little thing inside looking good. It passed the emissions test no problem, and was running good.

However, the windshield had a crack. Saturday I took it in to get it replaced, and get the safety check. The safety guy was not there so I couldn’t register it. Whups. Monday I sent Amanda down to Salt Lake to have them do the check (for free, no less) so she could get tags for it. I had been at work for about 3 hours when the phone rang. It was Amanda, really broken up, and I couldn’t understand much of what she was saying, except she had been in an accident on I-15. I jumped in the truck and headed north.

Turns out that while attempting a lane change through a mound of slush to get clear of a disabled vehicle on the side of the road, she had lost control of the car and ended up hitting the disabled vehicle, an Isuzu Trooper, at about 50mph. The Trooper was mostly alright, but the Subie folded up, as you can see. More photos here. So, the $700 car is no more.

I’m debating taking the engine and tranny out and hanging onto them for a bit to make a few more bucks on it, but I haven’t decided yet. I gotta take it off to the junkyard Monday, though, so we’ll see.

Ah well, at least Amanda was not really hurt. She’s got bruises, but nothing broken.

So, anyway, watch out for slush this winter

Yeah, Brian talked me into it. He trailered his Mustang, and I rode my V-Strom the 140 miles from Salt Lake out to the ‘outlaw’ track at Wendover, which is right smack on the Nevada border. I say ‘outlaw’, because the rules are rather lax. The tech inspection is, ‘Do you have $10 and can you sign this liability release?’ The track itself is part of an old runway, and is a tad rough, but, it works well enough.

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