This weekend in Park City, Utah was a pretty typical March weekend, where one has a hard time deciding whether to do something for fun on two wheels or two heels. On Saturday, I was hankering for a bike ride, so I pumped up my tires hard and took my 29er single speed out for a pavement ride, the first bicycle ride of 2009. While riding past the White Barn, the nordic tracks looked delightful, and I was left thinking I made the wrong choice, but it was a fleeting feeling, and once I turned right on Old Ranch Road, it passed. Sunday was a different story. After a morning session of skiing at Bambi Basin with my wife and daughter, I spent the afternoon getting the KTM fired up and ready for spring riding. Unhooked the battery tender, stripped a bolt putting my fuse box back together, replaced the bolt, put the seat on, rolled the bike out of the garage, eased the choke lever back slightly, turned the key, pressed the starter, started right up on the first try. Hmmmm. Me like that sound. I let the bike warm up, then took it for a little 20 mile spin up to the Jordanelle reservoir scenic overlook and then back through town. Saw a few other motorbikes out there, including a spitting image of the original Blue Angel, Darth Nater’s BMW F650 GS Dakar. What this all means of course, is there is a big storm rolling in overnight, with predictions that we’ll get up to three feet of Utah’s GSOL (Greatest Snow On Earth®) over the course of the next few days. You can’t count on much these days, except for unsettled weather in the Wasatch Mountains. Be flexible in your recreational plans over the next few weeks, and you might just make it to April with your sanity intact.

So Darth drags his BMW F 800 GS off the battery tender and rides it to breakfast at The Goldener Hirsch, because it’s the middle of January, sunny, and he doesn’t feel like skiing, or because he just can’t wait until the thaw to get out and ride it. He tells me this story that as he is riding through town, he thinks a black limo might roll up to him at a stop light, and the window rolls down, and it’s Ewan McGregor, part-time movie star and full-time adventure moto rider, saying hello and checking out his bike. Good luck, I say. I don’t think Ewan does these hyped-up festival things, then sure enough, we get this photo from PCTV owner Stanton Jones, who meets Ewan at a screening. Stanton shows him a picture of his new BMW GS 1200 Adventure bike from our Loop the Lake ride, and concludes after talking to Ewan, that in fact, it is all about the bike after all.

  
Ewan in Park City, no doubt thinking about his motorbike.