It's All About the Bike » adventure motorcycles

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.

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.

Winter Weather Still Has Its Grip On Utah

moto — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:15:10 +0000

Not much to report here, other than ski season is still hanging around. The BMW F800 GS is still covered up, hooked up to the battery tender, dying to get out on the road. I dug this photo up from an early spring moto trip a few years back, dated by the bikes: my KTM 640 Adventure which is now in the capable hands of North American 10k Biathlon Champion Casey Simons, and the Blue Angel which is now in Scott Beck’s garage. Never fear boys. Rip up the powder while we have it, it won’t last long. And soon the dirt roads will unfold ahead of us as we chase the setting sun.

Spring Dualsport Moto Trip circa 2008

How To Convince Your Wife To Let You Get A Motorcycle

moto — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:39:18 +0000

This only works for adventure motorcycles, definitely not Harleys, sport bikes, or motocross bikes. But if you really want to get into adventure riding and you don’t quite know how to open the dialogue with your wife, do this. Borrow or buy a copy of Long Way Round, a documentary about traveling the world on BMW motorcycles starring Ewan McGregor and his buddy Charley Boorman. Your wife will want to watch it because it stars Ewan McGregor. That’s the Trojan Horse. That’s what you use to wheel the conversation about getting a motorcycle within the gates of “categorical NO.” As you watch episode after episode, you will imagine yourself being the crafty Odysseus, on a seemingly never ending journey home. Home is when your wife gets to the end of the DVDs, and says, “that looks pretty cool, I bet you’d really enjoy that, honey.” Not exactly a “yes,” but sort of an implied OK. Home is that spot in your garage that you start clearing, long before you have made your purchase, where you will eventually wheel in your new ride. It also can work when you have already had the conversation without a definitive green light, and you are in a sense taking your own “Long Way Round” to seeking your wife’s approval. You waive the element of surprise, because if you bust out LWR at the very end, she will know what you are up to and be suspicious. But it stars Ewan McGregor, you keep telling her. At this point, you might as well be throwing a hail mary pass into the endzone, in which case, this is the only play you’ve got left. So what do you have to lose?

Last Day of May Mudfest

moto — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:59:41 +0000

A small posse made up of myself, Nato and Ben attempted to loop from Heber, Utah, up into the Uinta mountains. We motored up Center Street towards the dirt, and saw two big moose crossing the street right by the LDS church. Cars were off to the side of the road, people taking pictures, moose taking their sweet time. Not sure what I would have done if they came in our direction, we were only about 20 feet back. I think I would have layed the bike down in the road and jumped in the creek. Ever see two moose jump over a fence? Breathtaking. We didn’t get very far up the canyon before we encountered some snow patches. The first few were no problem, as some trucks loaded with ATVs had cut some nice deep tire ruts. Just get your wheels in the tracks and juice it. Eventually, we hit a nasty section where the snow was deep and as far as the eye could see, and it was pretty muddy too. The little KTM I was riding squirted through the mud just fine, but the BMW and the KLR looked like they were trying to burrow into the mud with even the slightest amount of throttle. It will be a few weeks of warm weather before we’ll be getting into the mountains thataway.

Obi Ben Recons Guardsman Pass

moto — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:07:15 +0000

The last day of May 2009 is here, and it will still be awhile before the IAATB crew will be riding our favorite rides in the Wasatch Mountains. Obi Ben rode to the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon to see if it’s possible to connect to Park City via Guardsman Pass, and the photo below tells the tale. It will take a few weeks of summer weather before we are riding any of the high mountains.

Obi Ben gave it a college try, but there is still a lot of snow above 9000 feet.

Utah West Desert Moto Trip

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:05:08 +0000

Hard to believe last Thursday I was standing at the top of Alta, ready to plunge down a High Boy run in waist deep powder, then just 2 days later, I was packing up the KTM for a moto ride into the Utah west desert for an overnight camp-out. Darth and I rolled out of Park City late morning on Saturday, April 18, 2009, the first real trip of the spring. We rode highway through Salt Lake City, then west to Tooele. They say it’s only 30 miles from SLC, but it seems like a whole different world out there. After a windy mountain pass and some good dirt road cruising, we ended up at Simpson Springs, an original Pony Express stop with a replica carriage house and some BLM campsites. We have been through Simpson Springs on many dualsport rides, including the Trans-America Trail ride last spring, and Loop The Lake in the fall. This time, we had the whole place to ourselves, except for Darth’s parents and son who drove out to join us in their sweet camper van. With the van stocked up with food, drink, firewood, and frisbees for frisbee golf, we weren’t exactly roughing it. We set up camp in the afternoon, did some kite flying, exploring, cooking over a charcoal fire, and kicked back and watched the sun go down over the basin.

View of our campsite at Simpson Springs

View of the Simpson Springs Pony Express route, carriage house in the distance.

Flying Darth Nater’s kite in the campsite.

Campfire and Sunset.

Spring Is Coming

moto — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 07:01:28 +0000

It’s mid February, and it seems like a long haul between cold winter and warm spring in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. The KTM is up on the centerstand, hooked up to the battery tender, draped with a dust cover. Occasionally, some skis are left leaning against it. Can’t wait to get it out, crank it up and run some fuel through the carb. A crash on the mountain bike last fall resulted in a shattered clavicle and brought my moto season to a premature end. After just watching the sixth and final episode of Long Way Down, I’m getting the bug to get out on the bike. There will be plenty of powder days yet this winter and a few more sledneck excursions with Nato into the Uintas, but I am looking for at least one warm sunny weekend in March to get the bike rolling.