rose and i went on vacation in utah last month. i know, i'm a slacker about getting photos posted, but i've been running non-stop since july and this is the first hotel i've been in that had reliable internet. so i'm finally getting a "round tuit." the long version is
here, as usual, but if you just want the photos and the blurbs, those are below. i'll do photo posts here as i get more "round tuits" but i will warn you: this week, i'm working in new orleans. the eating, drinking, and being silly are likely to be in much larger supply than the late nights pecking away at my keyboard.
We met up with three friends... two from Bakersfield, CA and one from Phoenix, AZ. as fate would have it, that meant we had five hondas and one yamaha. left to right: Hondas Goldwing, Valkyrie, Spirit 1100, Yamaha Royal Star, and Honda VTX 1100.
it seems like we barely scratched the surface at Mesa Verde national park, famous for its very well-preserved cliff dwellings built by the native americans ca. 1200 AD
we just passed by and took photos at The Four Corners... this is the only place in the US where four state boundaries meet at a single point. so here we are, standing in utah, new mexico, colorado, and arizona all at one time.
the scenery along the road was awesome. this is mexican hat... so named because it looks like a man sitting on the plains wearing a serape and sombrero.
these are our bakersfield honda riders at goosenecks state park. this was a terrific piece of scenery and if we hadn't had these two leading us on this ride, we would never have found it. they did wonderful research and took us to all the pretty places.
this little snippet of road, highway 261, is probably the most challenging riding i've ever done, the dragon included, if that gives you a frame of reference. it was all gravel, except the actual u's in the switchbacks which were mostly paved, but peppered with gravel dragged in by traffic. we were essentially scaling the face of the mesa, and from the bottom you can't even tell that the road is there...it literally blends into the rock. on approach, you think you're about to ride into a tunnel because there is no sign of a road ahead, and then suddenly you're twisting your way up the cliff.
if you click
here and look at the terrain, that's something like 1000' vertical rise in a 1000' span, but of course the switchbacks make for an easier climb. that is, until the VTX overheated.
turned out her bike's circuitboard "brain" was dead and backordered. until she overheated on this climb, nobody even knew the fan circuit was affected.
we waited about an hour in the highest switchback turn on that route for the bike to cool off. once it did, we were able to start motoring toward Hanksville, but that meant we had more road ahead of us than daylight. included in the VTX's braindead circuitry board were the connections that make the headlight work. so i rode lead because i have the best night vision/headlight combination. the VTX went behind me in close formation so she could use my beam. the goldwing, spirit, and yamaha were strung out behind us at various distances depending on the riders' fluctuating need to take pictures, gawk, and twist the throttle. this was all good until my headlight fell upon a coyote standing in my path of travel. he never moved, as far as i could tell, but i left a good strip of rubber on the road, and a fair cloud of smoke and cinders behind me in my attempt to avoid HIM. as luck would have it, we stumbled across a dead coyote in the desert the next day, so here i present you the probable results of my first motorcycle/wildlife encounter.
the good news is, none of the people were hurt and we all rode on to our campsite that night with a slightly greater appreciation for the fact that we were all alive and nobody had rubber or gravel in their teeth. it transformed the acts of setting up the camp in the dark and eating chef-boy-ardee cooked over a camp stove from sucktastic to fantastic. cuz, hey, it could have been MUCH, MUCH, MUCH worse.
so i leave you, as i almost always strive to do, with a smile.
