It's All About the Bike

Climbing Mt. KLRimanjaro

dfields — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:21:09 +0000

Editor’s Note: I am grateful to Dave Fields for sharing the words and pictures from this epic adventure, and let me just say how glad I was to not have been part of it.

With my wife and kids in Michigan, I had a free Sunday and wanted to try Darth Nater’s Hanna, Utah ride. Our group of five became two by the time we left Center Street in Heber, on Sunday, August 1, at 3:15 PM. Rich Morehouse aboard his 2005 KLR that had been in storage for four years, and me riding a 2006 KLR.

Armed with scribbled directions that Darth gave me over the phone, we were ready.

Scribbled directions from Darth. Now was that a left at the big fallen tree, or a right?

The ride east out of Heber was beautiful and we soon reached an overlook that was a good place to take a rest. We could see Currant Creek Reservoir to our southeast.

Things are looking good so far. Are those clouds moving this way, or are we going that way?

And dark clouds to the northeast.

The clouds are getting darker.

Despite our detailed directions, we took a wrong turn and encountered a mud hole and several creek crossings. But nothing was going to stop us from experiencing the Hanna ride.

As Darth says, always bring a saw, for trees and the impromptu amputation.

Once we found the right road down to Hanna, things were going well. We saw all the landmarks Darth mentioned – ranch, deep river crossing, small bridge. Then we encountered rain-soaked mud. Also known as greasy clay.

This is what happens when you ride through clay.

I tried to stop for a pick-up and horse trailer that slid off the road and it was like riding on ice. After five minutes of trying to get my kickstand to hold my bike I started hiking back to see what had happened to Rich. What I found was not good. Rich went down on the greasy mud and snapped the rear brake lever off his KLR.

The rear brake lever on a KLR doesn't do much when it is in your hand.

As the rain and lightning started in earnest, we began a two-hour slog over about a mile. The clay was so thick and sticky the bikes’ back wheels would clog and the bike would stall. We stopped and cleaned them out only to have them clog again 100 feet later. Even when the bikes would run it was so slippery you had to effectively walk down the road.

I sent this image to Moto with a simple question: this is bad, right?

Covered in mud and soaked from the rain, we headed for Heber. The sunset on Wolf Creek Pass was beautiful but cold and the deer and elk were out in force. We reached Heber around 10 p.m., had dinner, took the bikes to the carwash and then rode over Guardsman Pass, getting home around 11:30 or 12. Rich rode the entire way with his front brake.

We missed the return on dirt, so I’ll be going back, but it will be dry.

Indeed, it was a Double Rainbow All The Way.

New Triumph Adventures Will Use Triples

moto — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:10:30 +0000

As a follow up to yesterday’s post, today was to be the day that Triumph would release details about the engine in their soon-to-be released new Adventure bikes. I signed up for their email newsletter, and sure enough, today I received an email with vague details about their plans to use triples. My buddy Jake will be stoked on that!

Right on time, Triumph announces engine details for Adventure bikes.

Triumph Dualsport Motorcycles Coming This Year

moto — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:27:43 +0000

Ok, I’m all for a “coming soon” teaser microsite, but this is some straight up bullshit right here. Does anyone out there have any info about new Triumph Adventure bikes that are supposedly in development? Hopefully they won’t just be Tigers with TKC 80s on them. In the meantime, check this out:

http://www.triumphadventure.com/

Hayes M1030 via Bike EXIF

moto — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:03:39 +0000

First of all, any post from the Bike EXIF folks usually grabs my attention. My little daily reward for keeping my head down at the workplace is to read the daily pick. Extra points for me if the featured bike is adorned with knobbies. But the cerebral blokes blew me away when they opened this post with a quote from Cormac McCarthy’s novel (and film) The Road. I recently saw the film which featured Viggo Mortensen as the main character. Bone chilling and depressing. I’m not ready to dig a fallout shelter and stock it with Spam and peanut butter just quite yet, but I would have to agree, if the shit hits the fan, this is the bike you want. The questions is this: at $18,500 plus tax and shipping, you could probably buy 5 Kawasaki KLRs. Still, I am searching for more information about what it takes to get your name on the waiting list. This thing is badass. Check out the full post on Bike EXIF.

Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.—Cormac McCarthy, The Road.

via bikeexif.com

Utah Desert to Idaho Mountains Dualsport Video

moto — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:42:41 +0000

The dilemma after getting back from a long motorcycle trip is whether or not to shake the dust out of all my gear first, clean up the bike first, or wrangle the multimedia into some sort of narrative to share on the blog before the trip fades into a distant memory. In this case, I also had to deal with taking care of myself after an injury, which further complicated the decision making process. Here is a short video with some clips taken from the Utah to Sun Valley Rally. It’s a rough cut, but you get the idea.

How My Mind Works Sometimes

moto — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:17:31 +0000

I realize this post will likely create a lot of questions about what happened. I’m not a linear kind of guy when telling the story of a five-day dualsport motorcycle trip. I don’t keep a journal when I am out on the road. When you are riding in a large group (7 on this last trip), you go with the flow. I use my iPhone camera to snap some images that will help me remember the moments out on the road, and the places we have been. Then I piece the story back together in chunks that sometimes all fit together, never neatly. This post is about the Touratech Zega-Pro anodized black cases that I installed on the bike a few months ago. This was the first trip where I had them loaded to the gills. As you can see from the photos below, they got a little banged up on this trip. I learned an important lesson. Some would say a rookie mistake. When your bike is loaded up with 75 to 100 pounds of gear, the suspension handles quite differently when you are in rough terrain. That’s all I’ll say about the cause part of the cause-and-effect. This post is about the effect. The right side took quite a bashing. The pannier rack deformed enough that the box was pinching against my gas tank, but the box didn’t come off. The box itself was dented in the rear and the side, but later that night in the City of Rocks campground, my mates helped me bang it out with a two-by-four. We also took the rack off and did some blacksmithing to bend it back to the point were it wasn’t hitting my gas tank. Unfortunately there were a few cracks in the welds, so at least the right side rack will need to be replaced. The whole assembly did a lot to prevent my bike from serious damage. Check it out:

Direct side view of the right side box, post incident.

View of the box from the back. Ouch.

Walking it off after eating it in the ditch.

Roadside Attraction: BMW R100 GS

moto — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:04:13 +0000

This past weekend, I had embarked on a rather long solo road bike ride, to try to shake the cobwebs out of my legs, and the bad attitude that was left over from the thorough ass-whooping I endured the day before in the Big Cottonwood Canyon Hillclimb. I rode from Park City, down Brown’s Canyon, through Oakley, then out Smith-Moorehouse way, up the Weber Canyon road. I didn’t notice it before the turnaround, but after I made my U-turn at the end and started heading back down the canyon, I saw this beauty parked in the gravel, near the gate to one of the cabin communities up there. I don’t know if $5,000 is too much to ask for a bike like this, but it kind of reminded me of the first GS I ever ever saw. This one is a 1992.

1992 BMW R100 GS for sale in Utah.

The Jake Rack: Take Your Bike On Your Bike

moto — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:10:55 +0000

Check out this prototype bike rack for a motorcycle, fashioned to Jake’s new KTM 990 Adventure. There have been many times I wanted to load up my moto with my mountain or road bike and head out of town. It’s always been an either/or proposition in the past. Jake is going to prototype one of these for my BMW F800 GS. All connections are said to have quick release pins, so the hardware can be removed easily. Stay tuned for detailed photos and a test drive once we get a prototype on the BMW.

Bicycle rack for a KTM 990 Adventure

Side view of Jake's Bicycle rack mounted on a KTM 990 Adventure

Now if we could just get Jake to put some dirt tires on that KTM…

Slideshow from Lakeside Daytrip

moto — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:53:41 +0000

Below is a link to recent daytrip around part of the Great Salt Lake. The IAATB crew consisted of Moto, Darth, Bartman, Han Solo, and @ScottSLC. We need to think of a good road name for Scott.

Here’s the link, if the embedded slideshow doesn’t work properly, as in, if you can’t view Flash.

Wordpress for iPad

moto — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:52:37 +0000

This is my first time taking a crack at posting to IAATB via iPad. The new Wordpress app for iPad plus a brand new camera connector kit will make this here iPad thingie a blogging machine. Funny, because all the haters say you can’t create content. There. I just did.