Carr's Big Bike Blog

8,000

2008-06-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

Days like today are exactly why I ride a motorcycle. Woke up this morning and for the first time in weeks, no months, it was nice outside and I was pretty excited to go riding. Met up with Brad (on his white 848) and Dave (on his yellow 1098) in the morning and headed out to Port Angeles. It was a little chilly out, but otherwise uneventful. In PA we met up with our friend Pete on a Ninja and from there bombed out Hwy 112 twords the coast. Somewhere along the way we passed a small group of guys on sportbikes on the side of the road who apparently were some locals because they passed us with ease. Eventually we all stopped at the Hwy 112/113 intersection and they were in fact a group of local riders from Port Angeles. Very cool guys. Even though they know that road like the back of their hands Brand and I were able to hold our own and keep up with them for the most part.

They told us that it wasn't worth riding all the way out to Neah Bay because the road wasn't very good. I knew better, so the three of us took off that way anyway. Apparently all they do is ride 112 back and forth all day long. It's a great road and all, but eh, even that would get old after awhile. The last 20 miles out to Neah Bay are very technical and yes, some parts of the road weren't that great, but overall man, it was an amazing ride. We passed through Neah Bay and headed out all the way to Cape Flatery which is the NW most point of the continental US. The road from Neah Bay out to the Cape is only about 5 miles, but it was unquestionably the best section of road we hit all day. It was repaved recently so the road was absolutely perfect. It started out with a nice section of high speed corners and gradually tightened up with slower corners until we made it all the way out there.

Unfortunately the road ends rather abruptly in a parking lot surrounded by trees. It was nice and all, but we came all that way and we wanted to see the ocean damnit. So we set out down the hiking path with all the best intentions of seeing the damn ocean. It was pretty cool hiking through the woods on a nice trail with some really cool wooden bridges over some of the swampy portions. We made it all the way out there and got some really awesome pictures. We managed to hit it on one of the rare days when it was nice and sunny out rather than totally foggy and rainy. By the time we got back to the bikes we were all pretty tired. Motorcycle boots are great for riding, but lets just say they are less than ideal for hiking through the forest.

Did just under 300 miles for the day, and I even broke 8,000 total miles on the 848. Not too shabby for a bike I've only had for 5 months.

A few pics are below, the rest can be found here.

Meeting up with the locals from Port Angeles:

The three Ducatis:

Cape Flatery

Brad

Dave

Recap: Day Eight

2008-05-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

Day Eight Route - 318 miles - Pullman, WA to Silverdale, WA

I never thought when I left on this trip that I would come home to an empty house, but thats what happened. The ride home was uneventful as I made my way across almost the entire state of Washington.

It never really hit me about what happened with Kathie while I was gone, probably because it wasn't 100% real just yet. Now that I'm home and am sitting here alone it's starting to sink in a lot more.

I've posted a number of pictures of my trip here, but there are quite a few more. If you want to see them, check out my photobucket page.

Recap: Day Seven

2008-05-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

Day Seven Route - 602miles - Ogden, UT to Pullman, WA

Got up at the crack of dawn and headed out right away. I had called my friend Kevin who located a motorcycle shop for me in Twin Falls, ID where I could get a new front tire put on the bike. It was worn down to the point where all of the tread was gone and the front end was sliding all over the place on me as I rode. I stopped in at Action Cycle Sports in Twin Falls at 9am just as they were opening and they were able to get me right in and replace the tire in just over a half hour. They were fantastic and I can't say enough good things about them. The first half of the day was boring as shit as I covered 300 miles of freeway between Ogden and Boise.

I grabbed some lunch in Boise and headed out to find a gas station. Unfortunately I came up a block and a half short. The damn bike ran out of gas with a Chevron right down the road. I was forced to walk the bike down the street, across a cross walk and over a grass embankment to get gas for the damn thing. That musta been a crazy sight.

From there I headed North to try to get to Pullman where my friend Kevin lives so I could crash at his place for the night. Somewhere along the way I managed to pick up two more tickets. One for 95 in a 65 and another for 84 in a 65. Pretty fabulous end to a tiring day.

Recap: Day Six

2008-05-30T19:35:00.001-07:00

Day Six Route - 381 miles - Washington, UT to Ogden, UT

Today is when things got really fucked up. I had been instructed the night before that the rest of the crew would be coming up from Vegas in the morning and that I was to meet up with them at 11am at the main entrance to Zion National Park. Since I knew they would totally forget about the time change that meant they would be there at noon. This meant I had some time on my hands in the morning.

I jumped on my brother's computer and checked my email and found a message from Jessica, the daughter of my roommate Kathie. It turns out that Kathie passed away on Sunday and no one had been able to get ahold of me until then to tell me. Apparently she had been drinking Saturday evening and was sitting in the hot tub when she passed out and drown. She was found on Sunday evening when her friend came by the house to check on her after not hearing from her all day.

I freaked out and tried to call both her daughter and her son to find out what the hell had happened. Neither answered their phone, but that wasn't entirely surprising as it was only 7am. I called my friends Lenna and Gillian and they were able to swing by the house and make sure it was locked up and everything was ok. They found a card for the detective in charge of the investigation who I called and was given the details. She also suggested that we get a company out to clean up the hot tub as that was where she was found. I made the proper arrangements and it turned out that they had to completely dispose of the entire hot tub.

I didn't know Kathie for very long, but she turned out to be a very good friend and one of the very best roommates I've ever had. She even gave me a little St Christopher medallion to attach to my motorcycle key. Somehow it fell off, but was miraculously recovered by some stranger who found it in my driveway. I made sure to take it with me on my trip to keep me safe and as a little piece of her to keep with me. She and I made a great team and had become very good friends, and occasional lovers, over the few months we lived together. She loved hockey and allowed me the pleasure of taking her to her first hockey game ever. I know I can be kind of a cold hearted callous jerk sometimes (my friend Lenna chewed me out pretty good tonight about that, rightfully so), but I loved Kathie and I know I'll miss her.

So anyway, after meeting up with everyone else, I decided that it just wasn't right to continue on with the vacation so as everyone turned South to head to the Grand Canyon, I turned North and punched it up to Mach 2 as I crossed Utah, finally stopping in Ogden for the night.

Recap: Day Five

2008-05-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, a day off, how sweet it is. Got up Tuesday morning and exchanged text messages with JD and found out that the BMW dealer in Bakersfield did not have the necessary part to fix his bike, so they were renting a U-Haul and bringing the bike up to the dealer in Vegas who did in fact have the part. This basically meant that the whole day was going to be spent fixing bikes rather than riding, which was just fine by me, I needed a day off to rest and recoup. Turned out that one of the other BMW riders had his shift lever fall off somewhere and he needed to get that replaced as well. So the guys got those fixed and they also got new tires put on their bikes just to be safe.

Since my brother had the day off we were able to spend the day goofing off. We washed the bike up and my brother (the photographer) used a Super Clamp and mounted his Canon 5D along with a remote trigger to the frame of my bike. We headed off outside of town to a nice road and were able to get some really awesome pictures. Basically I would ride past Chris and he would use his camera to take some pictures causing both his camera and the one mounted to my bike to fire simultaneously. I was under strict orders not to take any left hand corners too hard seeing as how four thousand dollars worth of camera gear were hanging off the side of my bike! We did a few runs with the super clamp on the bike, but it was really getting in my way and making it difficult to change gears so we took it off and did several more passes without them.

Grilled up some steaks for dinner and topped it all off with a couple margaritas. Not a bad way to spend the day. It was great seeing my brother again. I've only got to spend a few days with him since he moved to Utah so we got in some good brotherly bonding time.

Recap: Day Four

2008-05-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

Day Four Route - 620 miles - Carson City, NV to Washington, UT

We blasted off and headed South along the Eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada mountain range for the first part of Day Four. We were going to take a detour up into the mountains to hit some good twisties, but as we sat on the side of the road we could actually see the road we wanted to take snake up the side of the mountain and it was just this little squiggly white line. We weren't about to willingly take our bikes up into the snow so that little detour was quickly shelved. We grabbed some breakfast and continued to head South until we ran into Hwy 120. Well, we ran PAST it due to some very poor signage, but we got turned around and made it down the right road. This turned out to be a very interesting road. We got some nice shots of the bikes in the snow (and I think Bong got one of JD peeing in the snow even) as we crossed over the summit of some random mountain. Once we headed down the back side we hit a long straight downhill stretch so Mark and I just gunned it. I got it up to 150 before backing off. After this the road turned into a crazy stretch of some wicked dips. I can't adequately describe this road, it was totally insane with dozens of incredibly sharp dips in the road followed immediately by a quick rise. It felt as though you could easily just launch off the top of one of the dips only to completely ram the bike into the following rise they were so close together. In fact, I about shit myself when I caught air at 120 coming off the top of one of the rises.

Eventually we made our way all the way South and gassed up just before hitting Death Valley. We were all geared up for cold weather as we had been riding in the mountains and so we all took turns in the men's room at the gas station in Lone Pine, CA changing out of our cold gear and into our warm weather gear in preparation for the heat we knew would be coming. Pretty entertaining to see a bunch of motorcycle guys all file in and out of the john all changing clothes.

Shortly after entering the park we all stopped along the side of the road and got some great pictures of the bikes at the top of a cliff overlooking the Northern part of Death Valley. After this, three of us (Marv, JD and myself) busted ass out of there and hit some gnarly twisties on our way into the heart of the valley. Death Valley has twisties (and good ones!), who knew?!?! I got a pic of my bike at the sea level elevation point and continued on till I hit the main museum at the bottom of the valley. Managed to meet a very sweet officer Jennifer who for some reason didn't like the fact that I was travelling at 93mph in a 60mph zone. Met up with JD and Marv at the museum and waited for the rest of the crew to show up.

And waited....

And waited...

After about 2 hours of waiting we were getting pretty concerned and figured something had to have gone wrong. Marv was able to get the Rangers at the museum to radio ahead and found out that Marks brand new '08 BMW was having an ignition problem. Basically his key has a little RFID chip and the sensor around the ignition wasn't picking it up so the bike wouldn't start at all. We waited around for a couple more hours hoping the guys would get it fixed and we'd be ok, but that never happened. The three of us decided to head back up to find the rest of the guys to get some more info, but shortly after leaving we ran into Steve who was on his way to get to us. It had been decided that the four of us would ride on to Vegas (our scheduled end point for the day) while the rest of the guys stayed behind waiting for a truck to show up and get the bike out of there. At this point I decided to just continue on to Utah and stay the night at my brother's house so I took off ahead of everyone else to try to make good time to get there. I went through Pahrump, NV and was hoping to get a picture of my bike in front of a brothel, but I wasn't able to locate a single one. Total bummer. Stopped off in Vegas for gas and to get a bite to eat at the Spearmint Rhino and eventually pried myself out of there and took off across the desert in the middle of the night for my brothers house. I made it there somewhere around 1:30am and promptly passed the fuck out.

Turns out that the guys in the desert had a pretty miserable time. They waited for who knows how fucking long before finally getting a truck out there in the dead of night to get the bike out of there. The only problem was they were headed the wrong way and went into California instead of Nevada! They spent the night somewhere near Bakersfield after they finally got the fuck out of there.

Recap: Day Three

2008-05-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Day Three - 409 miles - Redding, CA to Carson City, NV

Sunday was a mix of some of the absolute best riding of my life combined with some of the most miserable. We headed out in the morning from Redding anticipating to head up and over Lassen Volcanic National Park, however due to all of the rain (did I mention we were being rained on yet AGAIN?) it had been snowing for several days up on the mountain and the road was closed. this caused us to have to detour up and around. After that we jumped on Hwy 32 into Chico which once we got out of the rain turned into some of the best roads ever. Bong led the way and I was right behind him and we railed the corners through the forest, absolutely amazing stuff.

Once in Chico we busted out the GPS units and managed to locate a good set of twisty roads to get us East over the mountains. JD led the way and yet again we were able to slay the corners. The first half of this ride was great, but it quickly transitioned into, yep you guessed it, MORE FUCKING RAIN.

That's not even the best part. Once we got down to Truckee and were about to head up to Lake Tahoe before cutting over to Carson City the skies opened up and it started pouring rain. Not your typical West Coast rain that I'm used to, I'm talking a complete driving rainstorm. Fun stuff. We managed to talk to someone who had just come from Tahoe and told us that it was actively snowing up there so we detoured down the freeway to Reno and then South into Carson City. The ride from Truckee to Reno was a good half hour in the worst rainstorm I've ever been in. We were hauling ass down the freeway through curves in a pouring down rainstorm at a good 90mph, totally insane. Anyway, it dried out by the time we hit Reno, but all the rain was too much for my little GPS unit as it died a wet and dreary death on the road.

Helmet Hair FTW!

Motorcycle Ninja!

Recap: Day Two

2008-05-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

Day Two Route - 431 miles - Florence, OR to Redding, CA

We got up and headed out from Florence at 7am and went straight South on 101. It was early enough that there was almost no traffic so I was able to buzz past the other guys and set a pretty good pace up through some of the mountains until we stopped in Coos Bay for breakfast. After that we continued to make our way South until we hit Gold Beach and then turned East for Grants Pass. This was a pretty damn scary road, but at the same time quite entertaining and exciting. Hwy 23 leads up and over the coast range from Gold Beach to Grants Pass and is a 1.5 lane road with no lane markings of any kind so we had to be on our toes to watch for any oncoming traffic. The road was also a total mess with all kinds of dirt, pine needles and rocks all over the place so the pace was rather slow as we were all being very careful. All of us except Mark H on his Multistrada that is. His bike was basically made for roads exactly like that so he was able to haul ass and basically dirt bike it all the way up the mountain. Once we reached the top there were 6 foot walls of snow on both sides of the road so it was like riding down a tunnel of snow. I was able to stick my right foot out a few times and drag my toe along the snow banks they were so close. Probably not the brightest idea in the world. We found out later that road had just opened that very morning, so our timing was impeccable. Oh yeah, did I mention that we had been rained on AGAIN? This was starting to get old.

From Grants Pass we hit I-5 and headed South once again. Once we passed Ashland and started to make our way up and over the Siskyou mountains the weather finally cleared up so a couple of us led by Bong cranked it up a notch and proceeded to tear ass up and over the mountains for the first real nice high speed run of the trip.

Originally we had planned to continue South on I-5 to Redding where we had hotel reservations, but we were running a little early (quite a change of pace) so once we made it into California we turned off onto Hwy 3 for some more back road goodness. It started out great as we made our way up into the mountains, but yet again, as we headed out of the mountains it started raining on us. We did manage to get a little bit of luck when a CHP passed us going the other way as we weren't going nearly as fast as before due to the rain.

Finally we made our way into the hotel in Redding and were told by the lady running the place that there was a good Mexican food joint "about a half mile down the road" so we set out on foot to find the place in the dark only to find that it had closed only minutes earlier as it was 9:08PM. Heaven forbid a restaurant stay open past 9pm. Not only that, but we were walking for a long ass way and were sure that it was a hell of a lot farther than a half mile. After finding that it was closed we called in a pizza order and called it a night.

Recap: Day One

2008-05-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

Day One Route - 403 miles - Silverdale, WA to Florence, OR

Friday marked the beginning of our big adventure, and as is typical for Ducatisti we met up at a Starbucks to start our day. I headed out a little before 7am and met up with the guys at the Starbucks in Dupont, WA. I was actually able to spend the night in my own bed as we had decided the night before to head South into Oregon instead of East into Idaho due to some bad thunderstorms. Here is the list of miscreants who were on the journey:

Me - '08 Ducati 848
Mark H - Ducati Multistrada 1000 DS
Bong - '06 BMW K1200S
JD - '06 BMW K1200S
Mark C - '08 BMW K1200S (Brand new, he picked it up only 2 days prior)
Marv - Honda Blackbird
Steve - Honda (not sure of the exact model, but it was some sort of sport touring bike)
Kurt - Yamaha (again, not sure of the model, but it was a big cruiser)

I was moderately disappointed that only two Ducatis showed up, especially since this was a ride organized by members of a Ducati Owners Club! Oh well, I got big points for being the only one on a crotch rocket.

After leaving the Starbucks we headed directly out to the coast and down into Astoria at which point we headed inland to hit some really nice twisties only to have it start raining on us which meant we weren't able to go nearly as fast as we would have liked, but it was still very nice to be out and running. It was a nice road through the forest and you could easily tell that this was lumberjack territory. After that we made our way down to Hwy 26 and had lunch out at Camp 18 which was a big hit with the guys. We sat inside and watched it rain on our bikes, but it started to clear up just as we were finishing and headed back out once again.

From there we found some really nice roads that led us into Tillamook. Would have been cool to stop in at the cheese factory, but we were running a little late already so we just kept on running. After that it was down to Newport (again, missing the Rogue brewery, total bummer) and we just continued on down 101 all the way to Florence.

All in all a fairly uneventful day other than the rain. My bike was completely filthy by the end of the day due to all of the rain and crap. The last 2 hours or so on 101 were pretty boring due to lots of traffic and people driving along 5-10mph below the damn speed limit. Very frustrating.

We stayed at the Three Rivers Casino in Florence and had a rather exciting evening. After dinner, Mark C wanted me to teach him how to play Craps so several of us headed over and shortly after we got there I started rolling and went on one hell of a hot streak. I must have been rolling for 20 minutes straight. I walked up with $50 and walked away after more than tripling my money at $160!

SPOT

2008-05-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

One of the guys on our big trip (Mark) will be carrying a SPOT Tracker GPS device that tracks his progress and plots it via Google Maps. It's some pretty cool stuff, the only downside is that it only has the last 24hrs of data available. So if you want to keep tabs on me and my compatriots you'll just have to keep checking it.

Here is the link to the appropriate page. Mark lives in Port Angeles and has already left for the evening and is heading into Seattle so you can get a decent idea of what he's been up to. Check it every day or so and you'll see what we've been up to.

Day 0: SNAFU

2008-05-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

"Gimmie a SitRep soldier!"
"Situation Normal sir, all fucked up!"

So the original plan was for me to be heading over to the Seattle area right now to crash at my friends place and then meet up with everyone out in North Bend, WA before heading out on our big adventure tomorrow. Well, someone got wise and decided to check the weather and it turns out we were about to ride right into a big ass storm through Idaho and Northern Utah. So we made a last minute executive decision. Rather than heading East through Eastern Washington and into Idaho, we are instead turning South and are going to ride down the coast and wind up in Florence, OR for our first evening. This basically is going to completely demolish all of our pre-ride route planning and leave everything completely up in the air. Oh well, it wouldn't be an adventure otherwise now would it!

So now instead of meeting everyone at 8am tomorrow at a McDonalds in North Bend, we'll be meeting up at a Starbucks near Olympia at 8am. This is actually good news as it allows me to spend the night in my own bed. I'll just get up early, grab a bite to eat, put on all my damn gear and roll out.

Final Countdown

2008-05-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

God damn, hard to believe I'm leaving in just two days. Thursday evening I'm heading over to Seattle to spend the night, then Friday morning we all meet up in North Bend and haul ass outta there. Unfortunately the main road through Hells Canyon in Oregon is still snowed in so we won't be going that way and instead have to detour around it. We've got a pretty good route planned out (which has changed yet again from my previous listing) and we'll be in Washington, UT to see my brother on Monday afternoon. We're only doing about 300 miles that day so we should show up early enough for him to cook us up a nice BBQ.

I have no idea what my internet connectivity will be like out on the road, but I know it will be limited at best. If I can get a chance to jump online and post up a blog and/or some pictures I will do so, but who knows if I'll actually be able to. I'll definitely post up a full report with a bajillion pictures when I'm home.

Got a new set of PIAA headlamps installed last night which are about twice as bright as the old ones. Hopefully we won't be doing much riding in the dark, but they should help out if we do. Especially since my visor is tinted. Try driving at night with your sunglasses on and you'll know what I mean. I'm still expecting to get a new pair of gloves either today or tomorrow.

My original integrated tail light (a one piece unit that displays the running/brake lights as well as both turn signals) had the left turn signal crap out on me so I sent it back to the company that manufactured it (Clear Alternatives) last week. I got a voice mail on my phone when I got home yesterday afternoon letting me know that the color I wanted (smoke) was currently out of stock, but that they did have red and yellow tint lenses available. Unfortunately it was 4:03pm and they had JUST closed for the day at 4, so I had to call them up this morning and let them know to ship me out a red one ASAP. I even ponied up a few bucks to have them ship it overnight so I'll have it on Wednesday with time enough to get it installed before I leave. Nothing quite like cutting it down to the wire for some last minute excitement.

Over the weekend I set aside all of the various tools, clothes and miscellany that I'll be bringing along with me on the trip and to my surprise it all fit in the tail bag with room to spare. This was actually very good news and allowed me to remove the saddlebags because those would just add too much weight and influence the handling of the bike more than I would like. So those came off and everything went into the tail bag and it's all ready to go. I'm sure I'll end up having to unpack some of the tools to get the damn new tail light installed, but that's fine.

Oh yeah, I also picked up some foil backed tape used for heating duct vents and lined the bottom of my seat pan with the stuff. It's pretty reflective and is supposed to be able to withstand some pretty high temperatures. I've been getting a LOT of heat coming up through the seat and making my butt quite uncomfortable, hopefully this will help at least somewhat.

I also spent some time wiring in the power cord for my GPS unit which also provides real time traffic updates which will be handy out in the middle of fucking nowhere Utah. I installed my heated grips finally as well, but I doubt I'll actually be using them. I still remember last year when I left Bend, Oregon at 6am and my hands were so cold I could barely operate my brake/clutch levers properly. I had to pull over and warm them up on the engine just to be safe. After that I vowed never to have something like that happen again, so I got the heated grips.

New Tank Bag

2008-05-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

About a week ago my new SW-MOTECH tank bag showed up and I am very pleased with the result. It uses a special locking ring that mounts to the outer ring of the gas cap. It came with some new screws for the gas cap and I mounted that up easy enough. The bag then has a big plastic ring that attaches to the metal ring mounted to the gas cap. This assures a nice firm mount that allows for easy removal. The best part is that the whole thing sits up just slightly off the gas tank so there is nothing to scratch up my paint. The bag initially comes with the mounting ring unattached so it allowed me to position the bag exactly where I wanted it, then drill the holes and mount it up myself so it fits my bike perfectly. Everything was going smoothly until I noticed that two of the supplied bolts for mounting the ring to the bag were shorter than the other two and it was enough of a difference to make them unusable as I could not get the locking nuts to thread on as there just wasn't enough room. Fortunately Home Depot had exactly what I needed and I was able to get it taken care of easy enough. So now my tank bag is all mounted up and ready to go for my big trip. It's not very big, but that's fine, it really only needs to store some small stuff like my camera and my cell phone. I've got the huge tail bag and saddlebags for the big stuff.

The bike is in the shop right now getting the new pipes installed, but it'll be done tomorrow so expect some more pics of the bitchin new Termis in the next day or two!

Here are some pics of the new tank bag:

Packing List

2008-05-13T08:03:00.001-07:00

So as the big trip approaches I've been starting to get a list in my head of all the shit I need to take with me. I figure I need to start writing this shit down because I will start forgetting stuff. So yeah, here is my list of stuff to bring that I've come up with so far:

Riding Gear:

Arai Profile Sinister Grey Helmet
Alpinestars TZ-1 Jacket
Alpinestars Leather Track Pants (w/o the knee pucks)
Alpinestars SPS Riding Gloves
Alpinestars SuperTech Boots
Orange ICON reflective vest
Small backpack with water bladder

Tools:

Allen Wrenches (2.5mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm)
Small Mexican Speed Wrench (aka Crescent Wrench)
Gerber Multi-Tool
Phillips and Flat head screwdrivers
Spare Fuses
Wire Cutter/Crimpers and spare connectors
Tire Pressure Gauge
Chain Lube
Oil/Lube rags

Clothes:

Spare gloves
Ninja Head Scarf (aka baclava)
Street Shoes
Lots of socks
Clean underwear (in case I get hit by a truck)
Under Armor Cold Gear long sleeve compression shirt
Under Armor Warm Gear long sleeve compression shirt
As many Ducati t-shirts as I can find
Thermal bottoms
Tall wool riding socks
Board shorts (for sittin in the hot tub at night)
General Purpose Shorts

Misc:

Eye Drops
Toothbrush
Small spray bottle with face shield cleaner
Microfiber towel
Maps of Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado
Beef Jerky!
Cell Phone & charger
Camera & charger
iPod & charger
Garmin Nuvi 660 GPS
Escort Passport 9500i Radar Detector

New Routes

2008-05-13T07:54:00.000-07:00

After talking to some of my riding companions the last riding schedule was a bit, shall we say, ambitious. Numerous back to back 500 mile days can get very tiring very quickly, so I came up with a new set of routes stopping at my brothers place in Utah on the fourth night. I doubt this will end up being our actual route. All the guys I'm riding with are a little older than me and may not be up for the long distance back to back days and want to wing it a bit more each day. I swear I must be part Russian because I can't take a dump without a plan.

Day One: 508 miles - Seattle WA to Baker City, OR

Day Two: 447 miles - Baker City, OR to Pocatello, ID

Day Three: 440 miles - Pocatello, ID to Price, UT

Day Four: 406 miles - Price, UT to Washington, UT (my brother lives in Washington)

Day Five: 497 miles - Washington, UT to Cortez, CO

Day Six: 450 miles - Cortez, CO to Rock Springs, WY

Day Seven: 393 miles - Rock Springs, WY to Bozeman, MT

Day Eight: 420 miles - Bozeman, MT to Lewiston, ID

Day Nine: 373 miles - Lewiston, ID to Seattle, WA

Preparations

2008-05-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile, and there is a lot to cover so lets get right to it: I'm riding to the Grand Canyon at the end of May! I'll be travelling with six other guys, all Desmo Northwest members, the Seattle area Ducati Owners Club (or as my mother calls them, my motorcycle gang). We will be departing on Friday May 23rd and spending the next 8 or 9 days out on the road riding through Utah to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, then heading back up via Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho. It'll be a pretty intense journey covering roughly 4,000 miles. We'll be staying in little motels along the route, which will be a little spendy, but it shouldn't be too bad as I'll actually have guys to split the cost of the room with this time instead of flying solo.

I played with Google Maps for awhile and came up with a tenative route plan. I would imagine that some of this will change, but you can get the basic idea of where we're going:

Day One - 520 miles - Seattle, WA to Weiser, ID via Hells Canyon

Day Two - 557 miles - Weiser, ID to Logan, UT

Day Three - 504 miles - Logan, UT to Cedar City, UT via Bryce Canyon

Day Four - 587 miles - Cedar City, UT to Cortez, CO via Zion and Grand Canyon North Rim

Day Five - 427 miles - Cortez, CO to Vernal, UT

Day Six - 471 miles - Vernal, UT to Idaho Falls, ID via Grand Teton

Day Seven - 562 miles - Idaho Falls, ID to Lewiston, ID via Lolo Pass

Day Eight - 469 miles - Lewiston, ID to Seattle, WA via North Cascades

A large multi-day trip like this requires me to bring along a no so trivial amount of extra "stuff" ranging from clean underwear to charging devices for all my various gadgets and gizmos. How the hell do you carry all the stuff needed for an adventure like this on a freakin Ducati 848 that is meant to ride around on a track stripped down not loaded up with tons of extra stuff? Well, if yer an engineer, you figure something out! Fortunately I was able to get some inspiration from a fellow rider with a bike just like mine (his is red, so mine is faster). He took a cutting board from Target and strapped that to the rear seat of his bike, then strapped a nice large tail bag to the cutting board, and viola, instant touring bike!

I took his idea one step furthor and added vertical sections hanging down to support saddlebags. I bought two dark plastic cutting boards from Target, and using my friends tablesaw cut one down to 10" x 17" and the other into two 10" x 8.5" sections. I then sanded down all the rough edges and using some L brackets and bolts from Home Depot I was able to bolt the side panels to the main section. I actually had to redo the left side because my original bolt placing was too far forward and caused one of the bolts to come very close to scraping up my fairing. I moved it back about an inch and a half and it's well out of the way now. Once that was completed I was able to use my dremel tool to cut out some slots in the board for the nylon straps that would be used to secure the rear seat. Once the boards were secured to the rear seat and placed on the bike I was able to attach the saddlebags and rear tail bag. It actually went together very smoothly. The tail bag has built in bungie cords that wrap around and secure nicely. It also has clips that clip right into the saddlebags so they stay firmly attached. The saddlebags also attach to each other in the rear and then to each of the passenger footpegs keeping them from moving around. And the best part is that the whole damn thing comes off in about 5 seconds. I only have to unclip the saddlebags from the rear pegs and then unlock the rear seat and it all comes off in one big piece. This will make it real easy for me to bring everything inside each night so I don't have to worry about someone coming by and taking all my stuff while it's sitting on the bike overnight.

I took a bunch of pictures during the process, here is a slideshow:

I also ordered a brand new tank bag that should be arriving via UPS today. I'll get that mounted up in the next day or two and put up some more pics of how that goes. It mounts directly to the gas cap so it should be very secure.

A keen eye would have noticed that the first picture in that slideshow was of a big red box marked "Ducati Performance Exhaust by Termignoni". That's right, I got Termi's! I actually tried to install them myself on Friday, but it was a procedure that was more complex than what I was comfortable with attempting. The kit includes a new Air Filter and ECU and part of the procedure is to remove the Lambda probe and resetting the computer. This would require some tools and know-how that I just don't have. I'm taking the bike in on Thursday for a complete service and check-up, as well as to have a new rear tire put on so I figure I'll just have them install the exhaust system at the same time and get it all done at once. This will also allow for Mike Velasco (the chief motorcycle tech) to fine tune the bike on the Dyno at the shop so hopefully it'll be running better than ever.

Anyway, as things heat up over the next couple weeks, expect to see a few more posts from me detailing all the preparations for the bike, what I'll be taking with me etc.

What A Wonderful Day!

2008-04-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

Today started out pretty damn fantastic and it only got better as the day went on. I met up with fourlocal friends around 10am and we headed out with the goal of riding all the way out to Neah Bay and back. The sun was out and it was nice and warm and for once in a very long time, I wasn't cold at all while riding.

We cruised out and over the Hood Canal Bridge only to find ourselves trapped behind a group of at least 12 Harleys going 50mph in a damn 60 zone! The most ironic part was seeing one of the guys with a T-Shirt that said "Rebel Till I Die!". Way to be a rebel dude, go 10mph UNDER the god damn speed limit! Eventually we had some passing room and we blew right past em. Other than that the trip to Port Angeles was pretty uneventful. We eventually met up with a sixth rider in PA and continued West. After an hour and a half of boring highway riding, we finally found ourselves in the midst of some fantastic sweepers and twisties.

We made it to Neah Bay and pulled over for a short rest when a local drove past and informed us that they had recently paved the road that went all the way out to the Cape which is where the Northwestern most point of the Continental US is located. With the news that it was no longer a dirt road we hauled ass out of there to check it out and found some of the most beautiful pristine pavement I've seen in a very long time. All brand new, clean and dry. It was only about 8 miles, but it was pretty awesome. We made it out to the cape and found another good sized group of riders already out there, and after another short break headed back into town.

The ride back was even better than the ride out as the sun warmed us up even more and we were all more comfortable riding just a little faster. We were ripping and railing through quite a few corners. I got down low enough into one that I scraped my left boot. That always gives ya a bit of a startle. By the time we hit PA again on the way back we were all pretty well beat up and tired so we stopped for lunch at a Taco Time. We were expecting a nice quiet boring ride down Hwy 101 on the way home, but boy were we wrong. We were making our way through traffic and eventually came up behind another group of guys on sportbikes (including one who was 2up) and well, that pretty much started it. Imagine driving down the hwy in your car just cruising along enjoying the day only to have 10 sportbikes come ripping past you at 100+mph. Yeah, that was us.

All in all, it was fantastic. This was the first real good hard run on my new bike and I couldn't be happier. I'm still trying to get the feel for the lower speed corners, but my confidence increased steadily as the day progressed. The bike has been washed, and I now plan to kick back with some beers and just watch some tv.

Oh yes, of course I took pics!

In Port Angeles:

In Neah Bay:

Somewhere along the side of the road:

New Bike!

2008-02-09T15:53:00.000-08:00

So after a week of waiting I picked up my shiny new pearl white Ducati 848! I've only put about 35 miles on it so far today, but due to all the dirt and gravel and water on the roads it's already totally filthy. Oh well, I'll just wash it tomorrow.

So far it's such a different bike from my old one. It's so much more nimble and more powerful than my old 620. I've been takin it real easy so far just trying to get used to everything.

Anyway, enough talkin, here are the pics:

My first crash!

2008-01-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

They say there are two types of riders, those who have gone down and those who are yet to go down. I am now officially a member of the first group. The weather was gorgeous today so I decided to head out and get in some riding and check out some of the usual roads out twords Dewatto and Tahuya. I was on my way home taking the back roads out of Gorst up to Bremerton when it happened. There was a lot of dirt/gravel still on the road from all of the ice we've had lately so I was taking it easy, only going about 25mph going through a slight right hand bend, even thinking to myself "Ok, I'm gonna take it nice and easy cause of all the gravel" when my rear tire slid out from under me and I low-sided. I didn't slide very far and was able to get right back up and shake it off. Fortunately there was a guy who saw what happened and came over to help me pick up my bike and make sure I was ok. I was wearing full gear and it really saved my ass.

The bike was ridable so I rode home, but by then my right hand was really starting to hurt. I changed my clothes and called my friend Kevin and he gave me a ride down to the hospital cause there was no way I would be able to shift to drive properly. They checked me out and thankfully nothing was broken. My right hand is banged up pretty good and I'll prolly have some gnarly bruises tomorrow, but I'll be ok. They gave me some pain killers and sent me on my way.

After all that I was able to inspect the damage to the bike. Fortunately there is nothing that absolutely has to be replaced immediately. The frame sliders did their job and took the brunt of the damage. The bad news is that the rear brake lever for my bitchin CycleCat rearsets is bent, it's usable, but I'll probably want to get a new one. I'll need to replace the right side frame slider as well. The tank has a small scratch in it as does the front faring. I guess there goes the resale value. The front brake lever is scraped up at the end, but isn't bent and is still usable. Same goes with the right side mirror. The back of the mirror is scratched up pretty nicely, but it's usable. Most of my gear survived with only minor scuffs. The gloves, pants and jacket don't have any major damage at all. My helmet however has some nice scratches in it. I've heard that helmets are only good for one impact, so I may have to replace it. Buying a new $600 helmet is not something I'm looking forward to.

All in all I have to say I was god damn lucky. My only physical damage is relatively minor as is the damage to my bike. Full gear saved my ass.

Here are some pics:

Old Man Winter and Plans for 2008

2008-01-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

Geez, it's been five-ever since I've updated my blog. Why is that? Well cause it's fucking cold and rainy out thats why! I don't exactly get a chance to ride much this time of year. My bike has been lonely sitting in the garage for the past few months. I try to get out and tool around town a little bit when the weather clears up a bit. I don't really get to ride except to the store or the bar or some place close. Anything more than 10-15 minutes and I'm freezing ass cold. Although it is VERY nice to be able to come home and jump into the hot tub right after riding and my body is still very cold.

I have however installed some new heated grips on my bike, and boy are they awesome. They make a huge difference this time of year. I can always put on an extra layer (or two) when I go out for a ride, but the one problem I've always had was with my hands. The new heated grips should help that.

It's a new year, and that means a whole new set of goals for the bike:
- Get a god damn radar detector. I accumulated something like 8 tickets (seriously) during 2007 so my goal is to reduce that drastically this year. I'm trying to decide between the Valentine One and the new Escort Passport 9500. Both are in the $400 range and are both considered the top of the line. I should be able to hook it up so I can move it between my car and the motorcycle, which is my ultimate plan. I know that the radar detector isn't a 100% guarantee that I won't get any tickets (especially with the way I ride/drive), but I know for sure it would have helped me in the past, so it can only help in the future.
- Get a new Alpinestars jacket that will zip to my leather pants. I have some really nice leather Alpinestars leather track pants, but I need a jacket that will properly zip to it if I am going to do any track days this year...
- Take my bike out to the track! I've been riding for a year and a half now and have logged damn near 19,000 miles and damnit, I'm good enough to go out on the track. I want to sign up for a beginner track school where I can get some good instruction and learn more about riding. I've heard that just one of these days at a track school will increase my riding ability drastically.
- Fabricate some form of passenger footpegs. Ok, this is mostly a vanity thing. Ever since I put on the new CycleCat rearsets I haven't had any passenger footpegs, and I've had a few girls ask me for rides when I simply can't. Girls like my motorcycle, and I like girls, so yeah. I'm a sucker.
- Plan a big ride for this spring/summer. I did a fantastic ride down to California last year, and I want to do something similar (but not quite as long) this year. There are some good rides out around the Washington/Oregon/Idaho/Montana border mountains so I'm thinking that if I can stay at my friends place in Pullman, Washington that would be a good base of operations to head out on a couple nice day rides.

Argh

2007-08-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

Well, good news and bad news. The good news is that my bike will finally be ridable again this afternoon after being out of commission for THREE weeks. The bad news is that the local motorcycle shop only ordered one set of brake pads for a bike that has two front rotors (meaning it needs two sets). So now they have to order another set of pads and I have to take my bike in yet again once they show up. Fortunately it shouldn't take too long for the pads to show up and my bike is rideable until then.

The only reason my bike is even ready today is because I spent Tuesday afternoon busting my ass to get my hands on a rear sprocket from Ducati Seattle. I called my local guys Tuesday afternoon and the rear sprocket they were waiting on from Italy still had not shown up after damn near three weeks. So I called up DucSea and they had one in stock, but it was too late in the day for me to get over there to pick it up. Fortunately my friend Greg from desmonorthwest.com (great group of guys) was nice enough to swing by and pick it up for me and meet me at the ferry terminal. He drove up right out front, handed it to me all in time for me to haul ass and turn around and get right back on the same ferry. Saved me a good hour of fucking around.

New Rearsets

2007-07-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago I bought a new pair of black CycleCat Rearsets (foot controls for the lingo impared) from another Ducati owner in California. They didn't fit his bike so I got them for almost $200 cheaper than MSRP. Well they finally showed up last week and I installed them on Thursday all by myself. I was pretty happy with myself for doing all the work on my own without even needing the instructions. Part of the installation involved relocating the rear brake master cylinder which caused a lot of air to get into the brake lines. The one thing I couldn't do on my own was bleed the brakes as I had never done it before and wanted to make sure I was doing it right. Well last night my good friend Erick came over and showed me exactly how to do it. So now I can actually ride my bike again as the rear brakes finally work. The rearsets have about a million different adjustements that can be made to them so I have to spend some time tweaking everything to get the feel just right. The first time I took it out the shift lever was so high I couldn't even get it into second gear.

So after all that I took my bike into the shop this morning for some scheduled maintenance. The last time it was in was before I left for California over 4,000 miles ago. I had to order a new chain and both new sprockets because mine were just beat to shit. And of course even though they were ordered two weeks ago they still had not shown up yet to the shop. Gotta love getting parts from Italy! As I was riding to the shop this morning I couldn't feel my rear brake lever, so I looked down and it was just hanging there. I stopped and it turns out that the brake linkage had come loose so I had lost my connection to the brakes. Fun. So now that it has finally stopped raining and the sun has come out and I could actually ride again for the first time in a week, my bike is in the shop. Bummer.

Anyway, here are the pics of my new rearsets:

New Rearsets on my table:
Old Setup:
Right Side Installed
Left Side Installed
New Setup

Day Seven - Tuesday June 26

2007-07-21T20:03:00.001-07:00

At long last my journey would be coming to an end. I woke up early and was determined to make it home by the end of the day. Riding out of Bend at 6am was by far the coldest I had been on the entire trip. It got so bad at one point that I was forced to pull over and warm my hands up on my exhaust a couple times. Eventually the sun came out and I was able to continue feeling somewhat warmer. I made my way up twords Mount Hood through the forest up there. I wound up on a paved logging road that was only ONE lane! The forest was thick and the road was barely wide enough for even a single car. If a car, or a fucking logging truck, were to be coming in the other direction neither of us would have much reaction time to get out of the way. Because of this I slowed down and was pretty cautious. It was a nervous hour or so, but I made it out the other side without seeing a single car the entire time. I just kept heading North and eventually made it to Hood River, Oregon for an early lunch.

From there I crossed the Columbia River into Washington and worked my way up to Mount Saint Helens. I could have just gone the easy route and hit I-5 to get home but that would have been boring as shit and I still had plenty of time. As I made my way closer to Mount Saint Helens I noticed that they had just opened the road up to Windy Ridge which goes up the East side of the Mountain. This was a VERY cool road as I rode right through areas that were still devastated by the explosion twenty years ago. All the trees were completely barren and grey and on their side, very erie. Once up closer to the mountain I saw Spirit Lake which had a large amount of trees floating in it still. I got some pictures and headed back. They call it Windy Ridge for a very good reason. It was so windy up there I was afraid my bike would actually fall over while I was walking around.

From there I made my final trek back home. As I was getting close to Tacoma I came upon two guys riding two-up on a little Buell. The two of us played follow the leader for a little bit passing cars and hauling ass around corners as much as possible. It was a lot of fun as I hadn't ridden with anyone else my entire journey. Finally, I made it home all in one piece after almost 3,000 total miles ridden. The bike was a complete mess and was covered in bug guts. I even pulled a full size dragonfly out of the hinge of my front brake lever. Considering everything it was a fantastic success as me and my bike were in one piece and I got in a fantastic amount of riding experience in just a week.

Day Seven Route

Pictures

Day Six - Monday June 25

2007-07-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

At this point in my journey my main goal was just to get home. My goal for the day was to get to Klamath Falls, Oregon, but I was pretty sure that I would be able to get past that. So again I set out at the crack of dawn to get ahead of the traffic. I made my way up through the mountains and the forests to Lassen Volcanic National Park. Apparently Lassen Mountain is a dormant volcano that erupted not so long ago (in geologic terms at least.) The biggest thing I noticed about this park was the extreme elevation. I had been up and over numerous mountains and passes, but this was much higher than I had been previously on my trip. When I entered the park I was at 3,000 feet elevation, but at it's highest point I was all the way up at 10,000 feet! And yes, there is snow on the ground in June at that elevation. There was even a small mountain lake that was still partially frozen. The best part of all this was I had neglected to monitor my fuel and my fuel light came on while I was still climbing the mountain. I did my best to conserve gas and came down the back side of the mountain with the clutch in as much as possible. Lucky for me they had a gas station and market on the far side of the mountain so I was able to refuel on gasoline, snickers and beef jerky.

At this point I was pretty much out of the California mountains so I headed up to Klamath Falls at full throttle. All this speeding was bound to catch up to me, and it did. When I was only about 5 miles from the Oregon border I got tagged by CHP for going 80 in a 60 zone. I tried to talk him into letting me go because I was almost out of his jurisdiction, but he didn't care. Oh well, just the cost of doing business I suppose. It was still early afternoon by the time I got to Klamath Falls so I just got lunch and headed out to Crater Lake.

I had been to Crater Lake once when I was a kid, but I didn't really remember it so it was nice to go back and check it out. The lake is just an amazing color of blue. The only source of water for the lake is rain and the melting snow of the mountains that ring the lake so it is extremely pure. They don't allow anyone or any boats in the lake so that keeps it extremely clean and even from the ridge you can see way down into the water. I got some great pictures then headed off to Bend for the night. It took about two hours to get to Bend from the lake, and it was some of the most boring riding of the entire trip. Long flat straight roads with just enough traffic to make going very fast impossible. I got a room in Bend and headed to the local McMenamins for some dinner, ready to head home the next day.

Day Six Route

Pictures

Day Five - Sunday June 24

2007-07-21T19:28:00.001-07:00

The first half of Sunday was spent at the lake packing up all our camping gear and just getting ready to head home. I got back to the cabin (where I had stored my bike and all my gear) around noon so I grabbed some lunch before heading out for the day. My goal for the day was Tahoe City along the North shore of Lake Tahoe. I left Groveland and made my way North to Jackson before turning East to head up Highway 88 to get to Lake Tahoe. This was another great road that wound up through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. At one point along the road I could see what looked like a large forest fire way off in the distance. I couldn't actually see the fire at this point, but I could see the massive cloud of smoke being generated. As I continued along the highway I could see the cloud of smoke getting bigger and bigger as I got closer. Eventually I realized that I was heading directly at it.

Once I got close to Lake Tahoe I merged with another highway and at that point everything changed. The highway I had been on had very light traffic with only a few cars, but now it was total gridlock. At this point the fire was just over the hill, very close to the road and it was obvious that there were some significant evacuations underway. Fire Trucks as well as Police cars were constantly moving through traffic to get to the fire. Because traffic had slowed to a crawl in both directions I just took off down the road along the shoulder. At one point I actually went right through the smoke from the fire and the entire sky was orange from the reflection of the fire off the smoke, it was very cool. I do regret not getting a picture of this.

Once I got through the fire the traffic lightened up considerably as I wound my way North along the edge of the lake. I did stop to get some good pictures of the cloud of smoke working its way over the lake. Once I got to Tahoe City I found a motel and got some dinner. After looking at a map I realized I was only about a half hour from Carson City, Nevada. It was still pretty early so I headed out over to Nevada and made a visit to the Sagebrush Ranch. I hung out in the bar and watched some of the local talent entertain me. I didn't partake in the full meal deal, but it was still a very unique experience.

Day Five Route

Pictures

The Cabin
The Fire
The Ranch

The Pedro

2007-07-21T19:20:00.000-07:00

Every year for the past four years I have headed down to California to go camping out at Lake Don Pedro with some of my very good friends who live in California. In previous years I had always flown, but as you are well aware, I rode my bike down this year. This year my friend Chris had a big surprise for everyone when he showed up with a brand new seriously bitchin boat! We spent the next several days just playing on the boat and a pair of jetskis and getting shit hammered drunk at night. In years past we've never come close to running out of beer, but we were in serious jeopardy of running out this year. On Saturday night it was so bad that we were down to drinking Tecate beer. We were scavenging through all the coolers desperately searching for something else to drink, but we were unsuccessful and were forced to continue our drinking games with Tecate. It's all about the sacrifices.

Day Four - Wednesday June 20

2007-07-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

Today was my big day to ride through Yosemite National Park. I got up bright and early (as always) and headed out to the park entrance. Fortunately my friends parents have a yearly pass to the park so I was able to use that to get in without paying. That's always a nice bonus. I started out heading East through the park across Tioga Pass Road. This road is closed during the Winter due to it's high elevation, but it's open during the summer. This was a great ride because there was very little traffic so early on the road so I was able to really haul ass. Once I got over the mountains it opened up into a vast meadow on the East edge of the park. There was a small market here so I stopped off and grabbed some breakfast before heading West back the way I came. This section had a great high elevation lake and I got some excellent pictures.

After heading back near the park entrance I went down into the main Yosemite Valley. This is where all of the famous landmarks of Yosemite National Park are located (El Capitan, Yosemite Falls and Half Dome). There was a lot of traffic now, but that didn't matter because it was nice to just roll along at 20mph and stare up at all the fantastic scenery. I got a couple great shots of my bike in front of Yosemite Falls here.

After venturing through the valley I went up Granite Point Road which wound its way up the mountains along the South side of the Yosemite Valley. This was a much nicer road as far as riding conditions went because the corners were perfect, there wasn't much traffic and the views were fantastic. Once I got to the end of the road there were several lookouts where you could get the best views of Half Dome. I got in some rest and some great pictures then headed back. This is another road that is closed during the Winter so there was a large elevation change across the 20 miles or so. Just as I was coming near the end of the road I passed a Jeep with a couple girls in it. I tried to get them to follow me, but they just couldn't keep up.

I spent the next couple hours winding my way down and around the various canyons and valleys to get back to the cabin. I swear ever time I thought I was getting close there was yet another hill for me to get over. I made it back to the cabin sometime in the mid afternoon after doing a little over 300 miles for the day. A few hours later all my friends started showing up for our camping trip. We stayed up late talking and drinking copious amounts of beer.

Day Four Route

Pictures

Day Three - Tuesday June 19

2007-07-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

Today would be a much shorter day than the previous two as I only needed to make it about 250 miles to Groveland where the parents of my friend Chris have a cabin up in the mountains. I headed out in the morning through the wine vineyards of Napa Valley. Its always so nice to ride in the mornings when there is no traffic and you can just cruise along with little hassle. Eventually I left the wine country for the open flat central California valley. I had such a wicked crosswind that I actually had to lean the bike a good 5-10 degrees to the side just to stay in a straight line. A few strong gusts of wind almost blew me into oncoming traffic, not cool. Now I know why they have so many of those windmill electric farms out there.

The winds died down as I made it into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was really surprising just how heavy the traffic was even out in the middle of nowhere. I was able to maintain a reasonable pace, but with so many cars traveling in both directions it made it difficult to make any real good time. There are too many damn people in California. Finally I made my way into Groveland and up to my friends cabin. Hard to call it a cabin really, that place is nicer than my house. Anyway, after three days of riding I was ready to crash on the couch and just do some nothing for an afternoon.

After a nap and some lunch I jumped back on the bike and rode the 30 miles up to the entrance to Yosemite. This was easily the best riding of the day as there was very little traffic and it was all high speed sweeping turns through the mountains. At one point I was haulin ass through a right hand corner when a CHP came along the road going the other direction. Fortunately for me he didn't turn around and I was able to keep on going. I made it up to the entrance, took a couple pictures and headed back for the night.

Day Three Route

Pictures

Day Two - Monday June 18

2007-07-21T16:17:00.001-07:00

Again my journey began at the crack of dawn. I was up and on the road by 6am. Let me tell you, it's COLD at 6am along the coast, even in June. Again I was very glad to have that extra layer of clothing to keep me warm. The scenery on Monday was by far the best of the entire trip. The ride down Highway 101 is as beautiful as any I've ever witnessed. Once I made it into California I was soon traveling through the Redwood forests. The sheer size of these trees is amazing, that and the forest was very dense with so many of these ancient trees was incredible. It was mid morning with the sun shining as I was riding along yet it was almost dark due to the density of the forest. Hwy 101 actually turns into a four lane freeway through one of the forests, but fortunately there was a side road, The Avenue Of The Giants, that went along parallel to the highway through all the trees. This was one of the best stretches of forest road I've ever been through. At the South end they even had a tree that you could drive through. The insides of the tree had burned out long ago so it was actually hollow, but yet the tree was still alive.

Highway 101 turns inland away from the coast so I needed to get on Highway 1 that stayed along the water. I stopped at a little town called Leggett where the two highways came together for a short break. Hard to call it a town really, it only had three buildings: a post office, a gas station, and a small market. The market had a couple tables out front so I grabbed some lunch and sat down to eat. A few minutes later a local hottie sat down at the other table with a snack. I tried chattin her up, but she clearly didn't give a shit. Crash and Burn once more.

The first stretch of Highway 1 to get back to the coast went up and over some hills. This was some of the most technical and challenging road I've ever ridden. Lots of very tight slow speed turns up and down hills through the forest. Very cool stuff. Once I got to the coast I proceeded South yet again. The road was still very windy and only 2 lanes, but there wasn't much traffic so I was able to make some decent time. I was planning on spending the night in one of the small towns along the coast, but there was really nowhere to stay so I was forced to turn East and head into Cloverdale for the night. It was a 60 mile stretch of road that took me almost 2 hours to travel due to the incredibly narrow and windy road. This was without question an amazing ride and was only tainted by the fact that it was so late in the day I was already very tired and wasn't able to rail the corners as hard as I would have liked. Again, very challenging and technical, but well worth it.

Day Two Route

Pictures

The Oregon Coast
California!
One of the drive through trees
The redwood forest
Wine Country

Day One - Sunday June 17

2007-07-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

The start of my big journey began in some rather cold nasty weather. I'm very glad that I wore my thermal leggings and black turtleneck to keep me warm because it started raining about a half hour into my trip. I took off first thing in the morning around 7am and headed out to the coast through Shelton. Once I made it to 101 I just started heading South into Oregon. I stopped off at Cannon Beach for a few pictures then continued on to the Tillamook cheese factory where I stopped for lunch. Being Sunday they weren't actively making any cheese, but all the machinery was still running. It was a little odd seeing everything running with no people and no cheese moving around. Got some of their fantastic blackberry ice cream and headed out once again.

This stretch of 101 was probably the worst of the day. Being that it was a Sunday, and Father's Day even, there was a ton of traffic so I wasn't able to go very fast or pass hardly anyone. Even if I did pass a car or two there was another line of traffic just ahead. I stopped again in Newport at the Rogue brewery for a bit of a break. Got in some rest and a pint of beer. From there I just made my way to Coos Bay and then took a few back roads out to Coquille and then back down to Bandon where I found a little motel to spend the night. It was a pretty long day, rode about 440 miles, but the scenery along the coast was fantastic even if I was trapped in traffic all day.

Day One Route

Pictures

Cannon Beach
Haystack Rock
Cheese!
Beer!

Final Route and Pics

2007-07-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've deleted the previous two posts (that were over a month old) that recapped Days 1 and 2 of my big trip because I wrote them when I was a little drunk. So I'm going to take some time today to write up everything and post my actual route from each day as well as the pics from each day.

Day One - Sunday June 17
Day Two - Monday June 18
Day Three - Tuesday June 19
Day Four - Wednesday June 20
Day Five - Sunday June 24
Day Six - Monday June 25
Day Seven - Tuesday June 26

Pictures!

Final preparations

2007-06-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

Tonight I packed up all of my gear and mounted the various bags onto my bike. While I was doing so I wrote down all of the various items I will be taking with me. Here is a big list of all my gear. Lets see how much of it actually survives the entire trip:

Black Canvas Shorts
4 white undershirts
2 Diego T's
Stonecutter T-Shirt
4 Pairs of socks
4 Pairs of underwear
Black nylon shorts
Board Shorts
Floppy Hat
Adidas pants
Sandals
Book: It's not News, It's Fark
Ducati Monster owners manual
Pad of paper and a pen
iPod and charger
cell phone, charger and link cable
Laminated maps of Washington, Oregon and Northern California
Various printed maps from Google Maps
Insurance Paperwork
Motorcycle Registration Paperwork
Mag-Lite
Wire Cutters/Strippers
Pliers
Philips Head screwdriver
Standard Head screwdriver
Folding set of metric Allen wrenches
Fixed set of metric Allen wrenches
Zip Ties
Spare wire connectors
Spare fuses
Can of Chain Wax
Extra quart of 20-50 oil
Small spray bottle of 409 (for cleaning my face shield)
Small towel
2 shop rags
Bottle of Aloe Vera
Bottle of Sunscreen
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Tire Pressure Gauge
Bottle of Ibuprofen
Lighter
Chap Stick
Toenail Clippers
Gerber Multi-Tool
2 Pairs of Gloves
Helmet
Sunglasses
Riding Jacket
Reflective Orange Vest
Riding Pants
Riding Boots
Ducati T-Shirt
Backpack with water pouch
Sleeping Bag
Spare headphones
Pocket Knife
$200 cash

Packing

2007-06-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I got out all of the stuff I want to take on my trip. I spread it out and took a picture, just for shits. Anyway, I've got maps, tools, clothes and all kinds of stuff. In the picture you can see the two bags I've got on the left. The larger one is a tail bag that sits on the passenger seat on my bike. I can strap my sleeping bag right to the top which is very handy. The other smaller bag in front is my tank bag that straps to my gas tank. It's got a large clear plastic pouch on top so I can place maps in there and be able to look at them while I'm riding. Packed it all up and everything fit with room to spare! I was able to bring a couple extra clothes and even some more tools. I'm going to put up a final list of gear sometime today or tomorrow. We'll see how much of it comes back with me.

Stupid Fuse!

2007-06-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

So I picked my bike up from the shop the other day for it's 12k mile service. When I got it back the service techs told me that the horn and my brake light weren't working. Not only that but my tires were getting down and should probably be replaced soon. I went home and started poking around with my Volt-Ohm meter to try and isolate the problem with the light and the horn. I didn't think it could be a fuse because the rest of the tail lights worked just fine. But after checking the fuse box I noticed that the same fuse controlled both the brake light and horn! Popped in a new 25 cent fuse and everything worked again. Now, I take full responsibility for my own idiocy, but don't you think that a trained tech should be bright enough to recognize this? Wouldn't he already know that a fuse controls those two things and if they both go out take the 30 seconds to look? It was already in for a major service! This shit really pisses me off. And why did they tell me about the tires as I was picking it up? Why the hell didn't they call me that first day they looked at it and told me about that so they could order up some new ones and get it taken care of? They would make some money, and I would get the new tires I need. Morons. So today I called over to the other bike shop in town where my friend Erick works and they have the tires that fit my bike. So he's going to do me a huge favor and get them installed for me today so I can have a fresh set of tires before I head down to California on Sunday. Thanks man.

Route Home From California

2007-06-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

Day Four Route
Day Five Route
Day Six Route

Day Seven Route

Route to California

2007-06-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

Overall Route Down Day One Route
Day Two Route
Day Three Route
Route Through Yosemite

New Road

2007-06-01T20:06:00.001-07:00

Today I went out for an afternoon ride around Kitsap and I found a new road that has become one of my very favorites! I was cruisin down one of my regular back roads when I passed a road I had gone past many times when I decided to just hang a left and see where it led me. Turns out Ettendahl Pass Road is fantastic. Nice country road in the woods where I could keep my speed through most of the turns. The best part is that it's actually through woods instead of through clearcut areas like most of the roads I know. Anyway, here are a couple pics I took this afternoon.

Lists...

2007-06-01T11:25:00.001-07:00

So I've kept a few lists of all the shit that I'm going to be taking with me on my big trip and I decided to share. I'm notorious for forgetting shit if I don't write it down, so this is my official list of crap. I'm sure I'll have to adjust it over time.

Tools, Gear, etc

Metric Allen Wrench Set
Phillips Screw Driver
Flat Head Screw Driver
Pliers
Wire cutters/strippers with extra connectors
Multi-tool
2 Shop Rags
Chain Lube
Extra Oil
iPod with charger
Cell Phone with charger and link cable
Advil
Tooth Brush & Tooth Paste
Maps of Washington, Oregon and California
Printout of route as planned on Google Maps

Camping Gear

Board Shorts
2 Deigo Tees
Sandals
Sweatpants
Floppy Hat
Cheap Sunglasses
Sunscreen
Chap Stick
Sleeping Bag

Travel Clothes

4 pairs of socks
4 pairs of underwear
4 white undershirts
4 random T-Shirts
Riding Pants
Boots
Riding Jacket
2 Pairs of Gloves
Helmet

Gear

2007-06-01T11:13:00.001-07:00

So my brother was questioning how the hell I'm going to transport all my shit with me when I head down to California in a couple weeks. And ya know what, that's a good question. I've spent a fair amount of time getting everything organized, but I haven't really put up any information about it. So, now you get to read about all the crap I'm taking.

First up we have a pic of the entire bike. You can see the tail bag on the back with my sleeping bag on top. I can attach it with some bungie cords, but they just aren't shown here in the picture. Up front we have the tank bag (sitting on the gas tank of all places) with my helmet on top of it, and then my backpack draped across the seat. The backpack is pretty small so hopefully it doesn't hurt my shoulders too much. It's also got a water bladder in it and a small hose so I can drink water on the go. That'll come in handy when I'm going across the fucking middle of nowhere.

Here is a close up shot of the rear tail bag with the sleeping bag bungied to the top.
And a closeup of the tank bag. It's got a nice large clear pouch on top where I can place maps so I know where the hell I'm going.
The backpack
My helmet and two pairs of gloves. These are the two pairs that I'll most likely be taking with me. I have like 5 pairs total.
And lastly my jacket. It's nice heavy leather with extra armor padding in the shoulders, back, and elbows.
I've got a pair of new riding jeans on order which should show up in the next day or two, so I'll put up some pics of those when they show up. I'll probably also get some new boots.

Planning...

2007-05-31T15:12:00.000-07:00

So now that my trip to Mexico is over I can focus on planning my trip down to California which is coming up in just about 2 weeks. I've ordered a new pair of riding pants that I plan on wearing, as well as a replacement for my left mirror. About 2 months ago I smacked my left mirror pulling my bike out of the garage and it broke the lens, but the metal housing was still intact. I took it down to a local glass company and they put in a replacement mirror for me for only $5, but it was totally the wrong kind of glass. It actually magnified what I was looking at, instead of the reverse like rear view mirrors are supposed to be. This made it fucking impossible to mount properly so I could get a good view of what was behind me. In addition to that, whatever he used to affix the mirror to the housing wasn't very good as the mirror itself vibrated quite a bit. So I just said fuck it and bought a whole new mirror assembly for $40.

I also had to order a new set of shield housings for my helmet! On Tuesday as I was coming into work I lifted up my visor so the guard could see me and the tabs holding the shield covers on both sides of my helmet popped at the same time! Basically there are two plastic panels, on on each side, that cover up the mechanics where the face shield attaches to the helmet. Those are held in place by two plastic tabs, one on top and one on bottom. Well, the top ones both broke on me so I had to order a new set which should be covered under the warranty, I'll find out in a day or two when they come in. I ordered a second set just so I have a backup. I really don't want to have this happen when I'm riding down to California.

The weather has been absolutely PERFECT all week, and it looks to stay that way all weekend. Bright and sunny with temps in the mid-low 70s, perfect riding weather. I haven't had a chance to get out and ride much this week, but I have a three day weekend to catch up. I also scheduled a service visit down at the motorcycle shop for next week so they can give my bike a good check before I take it out to put a couple thousand miles on it. I should spend some time finalizing my route this weekend and print out some of the maps. Buying a couple traditional paper maps would be a good idea as well.

Mexico!

2007-05-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

I got back from Cozumel Mexico a few days ago, and so I figured I should probably post up a recap of everything that happened. I went down with my new friend Shena who was somehow able to get a plane ticket with only about a weeks notice. All in all it was a fantastic trip and we had a ton of fun. I took a bunch of pictures with my camera phone and posted them up to photobucket, you can check em out here.

Our flight left Seattle Friday evening at 10:30pm and went to Atlanta where we had to sit through a six hour layover before jumping on a small plane for another 3hr flight to Cozumel. The flight to Atlanta actually wasn't that bad because it was so late I slept through most of it. The coolest part was being able to watch the sunrise coming up over a perfectly flat horizon from so high up. Don't get to see that around here.

So we showed up at the hotel Saturday afternoon after something like 18 hours of traveling. We stayed at the Occidental Grand Cozumel all-inclusive resort on the South end of the island, and I have to say that the hotel was top notch. Better than most hotels in America, let alone Mexico. The rooms were large and very nice. The grounds were meticulously maintained and the staff was very friendly and helpful. Being all-inclusive all of the booze and food were already taken care of so we never had to worry about paying for anything directly while at the hotel. This is absolutely the way to go and I highly recommend it, it just made the whole trip that much more relaxing and stress free. So after showing up on Saturday we hit the beach to relax and started drinking mojitos. I had never had a freshly made mojito before, but they are fantastic. I think I put down about 5 or 6 drinks rather quickly and passed out quickly after dinner. After being totally exhausted from traveling so much, the mojitos quickly pushed me over the edge. Apparently Shena and I had some conversation that night that I have zero recollection of, and she won't tell me what we talked about, so I'm sure I said something typically stupid.

Sunday was basically our lazy day. We slept in and basically hung out on the beach and did as little as possible all day. I finished up Chuck Klosterman's third book, Killing Yourself to Live, and it was pretty good. I like his earlier books better though. I spent some time snorkeling in the ocean right off the beach and located a HUGE school of fish. I have no idea what kind of fish they were, but I came up on the edge of them and it was some kind of optical illusion, but there were so many the ocean floor was black and it looked like the ground dropped away into the deep ocean. Soon enough I was floating on the surface and they were in a large ring beneath me. As I swam back towards shore a fucking barracuda came out of nowhere and came right up to me, stared at me for a few seconds before swimming off to find lunch. I found out later that was Bob The Barracuda. He apparently likes to hang out there and people see him all the time. That's nice and all, but fuck, it sure did startle me.

That night we went down to Senior Frog's in downtown Cozumel (our hotel was a good 15 minute cab ride South of town) which is the big nightclub party joint in town. We had a pretty damn good time, but the drinks sure were spendy. $15 bucks a pop for some frozen yard daiquiri's and $4 for a bottle of Dos Equis! Made me appreciate the free booze back at the hotel. At one point the MC got up on stage and started asking for 4 guys to come up who can drink beer. I noticed they had four bottles of beer up on stage so I figured it was some kind of chugging contest. Being a large fan of beer (especially free beer, even if it is Mexican beer) I headed up on stage. Now, I have NEVER lost a beer chugging contest, and I wasn't about to let a couple collar-up preppy douchebags break my streak. So I showed them how we drink beer up here in the Pacific Northwest and soundly thumped em. What did I get as a prize? Why more free Mexican beer of course! God I hate Mexican beer.

My main purpose for going to Cozumel in the first place was to do some scuba diving, so Monday I convinced Shena to go diving with me. Because I didn't have my certification card, and she had never been diving before we had to pay the extra instruction fee to have an instructor go through all the equipment, hand signals etc with us. The boat picked us up from the pier right off from the hotel and it was just the two of us, plus one other guy and the instructor. Me and the other guy had both been diving before so we were familiar with everything so Shena basically had the instructor all to herself which helped tremendously as she had a distinct fear of putting her face underwater ever since almost drowning as a small child. She was a real trooper and pulled through without any problems. It was a pretty good dive, I was actually surprised that we went 80 feet deep with someone so new. He took us through all kinds of large coral reefs and we went through a couple tunnels through the coral, including one that was pretty damn tight. We did the two dives then they dropped us off back at the hotel, all in all it only took about 3 hours, which is crazy fast for two dives. Normally it's an all day ordeal.

When they dropped us off back at the hotel I gave our dive master/instructor a $40 tip for being so helpful, and he gave me a dirty look like it wasn't enough! It cost us about $200 to do the dives, so I gave the guy a 20% tip. Since when is 20% a lousy tip? I'm a notoriously cheap tipper and have only recently become amenable to tipping my barber which apparently is common practice these days. This probably is because my haircut actually takes longer than 5 minutes now, and I actually am friends with Trish who cuts my hair. I guess I'm OK with people I don't know thinking I'm a cheapskate, so long as people I do know don't think I'm a cheapskate. Anyway, what ever happened to just doing your fucking job? Why is it everywhere I go these days people expect me to tip them?

So I spent two other days diving while Shena relaxed on the beach or cruised around taking pictures of the island. Both days I got in two dives with several other experience divers so we were able to go a little deeper and stay down a little longer as we were more experienced with conserving our air. We did a great wall dive right on the coastal shelf where I could look down and watch the coral disappear into dark blue nothingness, then look to the left and see nothing but open ocean. It was a weird sense and trigged some minor agoraphobia (fear of open spaces.) We saw a big fucking nurse shark (much bigger than I thought it would be) as well as multiple sting rays (yeah, the same thing that killed the croc hunter guy) and sea turtles. I even had a huge groper fish come right up and stare at me for a good 30 seconds before swimming off. Unfortunately I don't have an underwater camera so I wasn't able to get any cool pictures. They have some silly disposable underwater cameras that you can get, but they aren't good deeper than 30 feet. Oh yeah, I actually got to see a Cozumel Toad Fish which is native only to the reefs around Cozumel island. He was a little guy, only about 4 inches long with some yellow fins.

While we were staying at the hotel there were just over 40 high school kids from Baton Rouge, Louisiana for their high school senior trip. This was a pretty high end hotel, so of course it was all the preppy rich kids from that school. They were funny sometimes, but mostly they were annoying as shit. Being 18yrs old they were just happy to be somewhere where they could drink, so of course there was a group of them who were totally shithammered the entire time. I guess I'm officially an old fucker now that I'm bitching about kids. Hell, while in line waiting for some mojitos one of them actually called me Sir. One night we were at the nightclub at the hotel hanging out with some other Americans we had met when one of the high school guys approached us and offered to let one of us fuck three of his girl friends if we could hook him up with one "older" girl. We told him that we didn't exactly need his help to pick up on drunk 18 year old girls doing shots of tequila.

On Wednesday we got up at the crack of dawn (literally) and ventured over to Chitzen Itza, the big ass Mayan ruins on the mainland. We had to get up early to catch a ferry over to the mainland, then take a fucking three hour bus ride through the damn jungle. First we stopped at a Yucatan freshwater sinkhole where you can swim. We didn't swim, but it looked like fun and I took a shitload of pictures (too many probably.) Apparently because the Yucatan Peninsula is made entirely of limestone there are no freshwater rivers above ground. The only source of fresh water are the sinkholes and underground rivers that criss cross the peninsula. So I got my learn on even while in Mexico. After that we grabbed some quick lunch where I was able to imbibe something extremely rare, Squirt soda pop in a glass bottle! This was definitely the highlight of the day so far. After lunch we finally made our way to the major ruins where our tourguide showed us around to all the major sights. The main pyramid was fucking huge, but they wouldn't let us climb it. Several people had died recently falling down so they closed it off. The main ball court where the Mayans played a game I can't remember the name of was very impressive. Each team was made up of seven players with the objective to get a large rubber ball up through a hoop on either side of the court. One single point was all it took to win (it looked crazy impossible to do even that) and the captain of the winning team was rewarded with the ceremonious removal of his head! We spent some more time exploring the ruins and Shena got a few pictures of me climbing up to a couple places I probably wasn't supposed to be. All in good fun. In all it was a LONG fucking day, we didn't get back to the hotel until about 9pm, but it was totally worth it.

For our last day, Friday, we rented a Jeep and spent the day exploring the island. Well, it's not a very big island, so there wasn't much to explore. There is really only one road that loops around the island, so we basically followed that the whole way. There is a small lighthouse at the southern tip of the island that we saw, and we had lunch at a small beach side joint on the Eastern coast. The West coast of the island (where all the hotels and main city are) faces the mainland and so the water is very calm with no waves and barely even any appreciable tide. The East coast on the other hand faces out to the Atlantic Ocean so it had some pretty decent waves and a much rougher rockier coastline. It's a pretty interesting difference. After lunch we found the local island Mayan ruins and spent some time hiking around there. I have to say that after being to Chitzen Itza this was pretty lame in comparison. These were much more run down and were little more than piles of rocks. Oh yeah, and I got to pay $2 for a fucking can of Sprite! So yeah, I wasn't too impressed.

So the trip was fantastic and we managed to make it home alive and in one piece. The island of Cozumel was TOTALLY different from what I remembered when we went there 14 years ago. Back then there were only 3 or 4 hotels and they were all North of town and none were all that big. Now there are numerous large hotels all along the West coast and the downtown area was all built up and FAR more touristy than it ever was. Which I guess all that was to be expected.

Hopefully I'll have some more pictures to post up once Shena gets around to developing her film.

Cozumel!

2007-05-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow night I'm taking off to spend a week in Cozumel Mexico. A whole week of margaritas and senioritas! I plan on renting a dirt bike and spending at least one afternoon exploring the island. I'll post up some pics of the adventure when I return.

Ride in Seattle

2007-05-17T17:31:00.000-07:00

So last Saturday (May 12) I got up at the crack of dawn to get on the 7am Bainbridge ferry over to Seattle. Cruised up to Ducati Seattle and met up with at least 20 other Ducati guys for a ride. It was a pretty awesome sight, there were over 20 bikes there, all Ducatis. Everything from a couple low end Monsters (like mine) all the way up to a brand new 1098S and a 999R, not to mention multiple seriously tricked out monsters.

Unfortunately I don't really know the Seattle area all that well so I don't know where we went. I know we started off heading down the 520 freeway heading East. We were haulin ass when the guys up front spotted a white Crown Vic sitting along the shoulder and we all had to slam on our brakes. He was still sitting in his car pointing his radar down the road when I passed him, and no one got pulled over, so it was pretty lucky. We stopped at a Starbucks somewhere along the way and picked up a few more riders and headed East out of town.

We had a huge line of Duc's all following this one green SUV along some farm road. When he slowed down to turn off a few guys moved out to go around him, but some crazy woman pushed a fucking wheelbarrow out into the road RIGHT in the way of everyone. She looked right at us and pointed it down the road at everyone and just started walking down the middle of the road right at us. We all had to split around her just to keep going. Totally insane.

From there we made our way into Monroe, but seven of us got separated from the main group. It was me and 6 other very high end bikes. We cruised down some back roads to Granite Falls and I was able to keep up the whole way. Made me feel good that me and my bike could keep up with the big boys, even if they were holding back. Once we made it to Granite Falls we regrouped with everyone and had lunch at a little mexican joint in town. We managed to get all our bikes parked in a line outside, it was a pretty cool sight. They weren't expecting 25 hungry guys to show up for lunch, so it took damn near 2 hours to get through lunch. By that time it was starting to get late and a few guys had to get back. So we took a shortcut back to Everett and hit I-5 South to get back to town. Hopped on the Edmonds ferry over to Kingston and was back home by 5 that afternoon.

To be perfectly honest, the riding wasn't all that great. Only got in about 150 miles and there was so much damn traffic that we spent most of the time trying to get around people. Having 25 riders also made it a bit of a pain to keep everyone together. But all that really doesn't matter because I was able to meet a lot of new people and spend a lot of time getting to know some of the other local Ducati guys.

So anyway, here are the pics:

On the ferry ride over in the morning. My bike is in the foreground:

Rock's 1098S, that bike gives me fuckin wood every time I see it:
Getting everyone all gassed up:
All lined up along the side of the road. My bike is in there somewhere.
Lined up outside the mexican joint in Granite Falls for lunch. The red bike in front is a 999R, a seriously tricked out $30k race bike:

Do not fuck with a man's motorcycle!

2007-04-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

Ride to The Coast

2007-04-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

So this morning I met up with my friend Michael (aka router.exe) in Port Orchard and we spent the day bombing out to the coast and back. Poor fucker missed his ferry so we had to push things back about an hour. Not a big deal though. You can see an approximate route map here.

First we headed out to Belfair to top off the fuel tanks and make a quick pit stop at the local Starbucks. From there we headed out along the water through Union and down to US 101 and veered off on hwy 102. Little did we know that there is a Washington State Patrol Academy AND a jail out on hwy 102. We figured it would be a bad idea to blast past the jail at 80mph so we took it a little easy. I think I missed a turn and went straight at one point when I should have turned left, but it all worked out and we made it to Aberdeen soon enough. We stopped at a gas station to fill up and talked to some local stoner who gave us directions to a place called The Lighthouse that was supposed to have real good burgers. Unfortunately Captain Douchebag gives crappy directions, so we ended up eating at a local Dairy Queen. I actually like DQ, so it was cool with me. The local high school girl working there tried flirting with me to get me to give her a ride on my bike. Maybe in a few years and a few less cheeseburgers sweetheart.

From there we had one of our best runs out Hwy 105 to the coastline and then South to Raymond. We stopped to take a few pics by the water and a few actually turned out rather nicely. From Raymond we headed East down Hwy 6 into Chehalis. This was a real nice run as it was wide open and we were able to really open it up at a few places. Straighter than either of us would have preferred, but it was empty, so it's ok. It was empty enough that I was able to spot a white car off in the distance. Is that a...... yep, thats a cop. Good thing I spotted it or we would have run up on him faster than he would have liked I'm sure. Made it to Chehalis without incident and stopped for gas again.

We took out the map and decided on taking Hwy 507 to Tacoma rather than I-5. As a note to anyone who reads this: Hwy 507 is NOT a shortcut from Chehalis to Tacoma. That was the longest 40 miles I've done in a long time. 40 miles of douchebags driving 10mph UNDER the speed limit, and too much traffic to really pass. I do have to admit, we were able to make 3 Harley riders eat some pasta dust, so that was quite satisfying. Once we hit Tacoma traffic got real bad, so I bailed and jumped on the freeway home.

All in all a real good ride, I think I did about 300 miles total today. Came home and rested in the hot tub for a bit then took a nap.

Oh yeah, what you've all been waiting for, THE PICS!

In Port Orchard:
The obligitory shot outside Starbucks.
At the DQ. Thats the drive through lane behind my bike.

My bike at the coast:Mike's bike:
620 on the left, 695 on the right:
Both bikes:
BUG GUTS! This is nothing compared to what it looked like when we stopped in Chehalis.

Route Planning

2007-04-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

I spent some time today going over a possible route for my trip down to California. You can check it out on Google Maps. It's about 1,050 miles which works out to roughly 350 miles per day, definitely doable. Probably stop in Coos Bay, OR on the first day then cruise down the California coast and into the Redwoods for day 2, then cut across the state and up to Don Pedro for day 3. That would put me at my destination a full day ahead of schedule which would allow me a whole day to cruise through Yosemite National Park on this route. Thats another 280 miles, not a bad day. Now I just need to figure out how the hell I'm going to get home.

More pics from the St Helens Ride

2007-03-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

Outside the Krispy Kreme in Tacoma:Lined up for lunch in Toledo:
At the mountain:

Another shot up on the mountain:

All lined up:

Ride to Mount St. Helens

2007-03-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

So I dragged my ass out of bed at 6:15 this morning and cruised down to the Krispy Kreme in Tacoma to meet up with a bunch of other Ducati riders. After fueling up on coffee and donuts we headed out to the mountain. I had never been up to Mt. St. Helens (well maybe once when I was a little kid, but I don't remember it) so this was a pretty exciting opportunity for me. We cruised down some smaller back highways and ate lunch in Toledo before heading up the mountain. The 45 mile ride from Toledo to the observation point was the single best ride I've ever been on, it was the most fun I've had that didn't involve naked bodies. Me and two other guys took off at the head of the pack and just roared up the mountain, bombing through corners at 80-90 mph and pushing 100+ in the straights.

Here are all the bikes lined up at the observation point:

And my monster on the left next to another black 695:

And me with my shit eatin grin next to my bike:

What was that? Did you say something?

2007-03-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

Cause I can't hear it because my new pipes are SO FUCKING LOUD! I just got back from my first ride after installing my new pipes. I've screwed up my ears enough playing the drums, this is really going to make me deaf in no time. I'm going to have to start wearing ear plugs. I do however have one hell of a shit eating grin right now :)

Oh yeah, turns out that what I thought was the fuel filter is just the emissions canister, so it's not nearly as important as I had previously thought. Gonna just get rid of it.

Problems...

2007-03-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

Well, after spending the afternoon installing my new exhaust pipes (which are fucking awesome by the way) I've run into a couple problems:
- The new pipes are RIGHT in front of the seat release. Should be interesting to figure out how I'm gonna get my key in there to get the seat off.
- The bigger problem is that the right side pipe goes right through where the fuel filter is originally located. I had to remove the bracket that holds it in place and move it behind the pipe. However, it's not secured as of yet, gonna have to figure something out.

Finally, New Exhaust Pipes!

2007-03-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

Today I finally got my hands on the new Fresco Ti Conic High exhaust pipes that I've been waiting for all week. I had to drive all the way down to Tacoma to pick em up from FedEx, but I got em none the less. I took a number of pictures during the process:

Side shot of the bike before doing anything:
And the corresponding shot of the rear before any mods:
Side shot after removal of the old pipes:
The new pipes unpacked:
The old pipes on the ground after removal:
Side shot of the new pipes installed:

And a rear shot of the new pipes:

Front Turn Signals

2007-03-15T14:18:00.001-07:00

Turns out it was a whole lot easier to install my new front turn signals than I had originally thought. I went out last night and just undid the two screws that hold in the headlight and popped it out. Doing that opened up the entire front end and gave me very good access to everything I needed. Unplugged and unscrewed the old ones, then drilled some new holes and popped in the new ones. Only took about an hour or so. Here are the pics:

Before:
After:

Tail Lights

2007-03-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

The new exhaust didn't make it today, but I did get my hands on my new tail light kit and front turn signals. The tail light kit is pretty cool, it's an LED circuit board that has the turn signals built into it. This allows me to remove the external turn signal lights. I was completely amazed at how well it cleaned up the look of the rear end.

Here is a pic of the rear end before:

And now after:

Now all I have to do is figure out how the hell to get the front cowl off the bike so I can replace the front turn signals. That should be fun.

Exhaust Pipes

2007-03-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

Fucking FedEx! They tried to deliver my exhaust pipes yesterday, but I wasn't home (duh, I'm at work all day) so they left the note on my door. I signed it and left it for him for today, but yet again, they didn't deliver it! Apparantly they require an actual signature in person. I called em up and they are going to try to deliver it tomorrow afternoon when I might actually be home. If I have to drive all the way to Tacoma tomorrow to pick em up I'm gonna be pissed.

My bike is actually done though, so I'll be picking it up after work this afternoon. At least I'll get to bomb around and install my spiffy new lights tonight.

Three Weeks!

2007-03-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

So I took my bike into the shop damn near three weeks ago now. All they had to do was order in a tire, a chain and a new rear sprocket. The tire and chain showed up awhile back, but apparantly the fucking sprocket fell off the back of a truck somewhere between here and Italy. I called up Ducati Seattle today and guess what, they had one in stock. So I bailed out of work and spent the afternoon fetching the sprocket. Dropped it off at the shop this afternoon and the guys said they would do it first thing in the morning. If all goes well, it'll be ready tomorrow afternoon and I'll be able to pick it up.

Some good news though, my new exhaust pipes and tail light kit should be here tomorrow! Once I get those installed I'm going to have my photographer friend take some nice pics of it. It's gonna be awesome, I can't wait.

Parts...

2007-02-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

Well turns out it hasn't rained all week so I was able to go for a short ride after work on Tuesday. Then yesterday I dropped my bike off at the shop for a new tire, rear sprocket and chain. I swear they are a bunch of retarded monkeys over there. Took the guy at least a half hour to look up three damn part numbers. The tire should come in quickly, but of course the sprocket and chain have to come from Italy, so who knows how long that shit will take. Time to get my hands on some chain wax so I can start cleaning my chain regularly to keep everything from wearing out.

Rain...

2007-02-20T11:26:00.000-08:00

Well, after a beautiful weekend it looks like we go back to normal with a healthy dose of rain. I almost rode my bike into work this morning because the sky was sunny and blue, but there were some wicked rain clouds coming over the mountains so I decided against it. I'm guessing it'll start up around lunchtime.

I still need to figure out how to mount my tail and tank bags, maybe I'll do that tonight.

Pictures from yesterday's ride

2007-02-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

Here are all the bikes lined up outside where we ate breakfast. Mine is the black one on the far right.Stopping at Neah Bay for a short break.

Some of the other bikes. The 1098S is the red one on the left.

So dirty

More dirt

Nice and clean after I washed it this morning.

Saturday's Ride

2007-02-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

Got home from the ride out to Neah Bay this afternoon, what a hell of a day. Got up at 7am, showered, ate and was out the door by 7:45. Cruised up to Kingston to meet the group as they came off the ferry. Only they were a little early and I was just finishing gassing up my bike as I heard the whole pack roar by. Busted out of there and caught up with em in no time though. It was my first time riding with a big group and it was a lot of fun. There were 17 bikes, one even had a passenger.

From Kingston we bombed out hwy 101 to Port Angeles and stopped at some fancy breakfast joint for some food. A few guys had to turn back, but we had 12 bikes go on to Neah Bay. We headed West out of Port Angeles down hwy 112 along the coast. The sky actually opened up and it was a very very nice day. The road however, was not nice. It was still wet and very dirty which made navigating some of the turns very tricky. At one point I came up over a rise into a blind left turn and ended up going off into the dirt for a bit because I didn't see the turn coming. A little scary but I was able to pull it off.

After a brief pitstop in Clallam Bay the real fun began. That far out there was hardly any traffic and the roads were much better. We started ripping down the coastline, and some of the guys up front fucking took off. I went around a couple corners and they were fucking GONE. I was bombing along at a good 90mph and they still completely dusted me and another guy on a 998.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I got to ride with a brand new 1098S? The most beautiful and awe inspiring bike I've ever seen in person. That thing gives me major wood.

So after a good 20 miles of high speed twisties, we made it to Neah Bay and stopped for a few pictures. I of course did not bring my camera, because it sucks donkey balls. A bunch of other guys did though, so I'll post up some pics when I can get em. We didn't stop for very long though because the weather was shit and was starting to rain. We took it a little easier heading back, but not much easier, I still couldn't keep up. I ended up going wide through a few turns and had to pull back because they it was just too fast for me. I caught back up to them when we came to an open flat section and I took it up to about 110. We took a different route back and ended up hitting hwy 101 again on the far side of Crescent Lake. That was a very cool stretch of road, the highway ran right along the waters edge, it was only like a foot off the road. Nice twisty roads with a great view of the lake and mountains. Lots of traffic though, so we didn't get to open up the throttle much through there.

Coming back from Port Angeles was pretty mundane. Lots of traffic so we didn't get to open it up much through there either. But man, when an opening presented itself (like with a passing lane) those guys were quick on the throttle and tore ass down the road. I've always been considered a total lunatic maniac driver/rider, but these guys were another notch or two above me. It was actually pretty humbling riding with a lot of guys who are far more skilled than I am.

Broke off from the main pack after we crossed the Hood Canal Bridge. They went left to get back to Kingston, and I went right to head home. Came home, stripped off all my gear and passed out on the couch for a couple hours.

Tomorrows Goals:
- Clean the bike
- Take pictures
- Go grocery shopping

Ride to Neah Bay on Saturday

2007-02-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow morning I'm meeting up with a bunch of other Ducati guys at 8:30AM in Kingston and we're going to bomb out to Neah Bay. Here is a link to the route. This is my first ride with a large group, or with anyone else for that matter so it should be interesting. But fuck man, I gotta be in Kinsgton at 8:30AM on a fucking Saturday. The sacrifices we make.

I should have some pics of my bike and the other guys who went on the ride posted soon.

First Post!

2007-02-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

Well I've begun planning a big motorcycle trip for this Summer and so I figured I should start up a blog to document my planning and adventures. I'm taking the last two weeks of June, and the first week of July off work so that gives me three full weeks to tear ass around and explore the west coast.

Right now my plan is as follows:
- Leave my house Sunday June 17 and spend three days riding down the Washington, Oregon and California coasts stopping along at the redwood forest and any other cool places.
- Ride up to Lake Don Pedro on Wednesday and meet up with some friends of mine and go camping until Sunday.
- Spend the next several days riding back home up through the Cascade mountains, stopping by Crater Lake and Mnt St Helens on the way.

I have a lot to do before I leave. I need to learn how to change the oil in my bike and lube up the chain. Both should be pretty easy, I just need to get down and do it. I also need to buy a new rear tire and rear sprocket and maybe even a new chain. I plan on taking care of those sometime in March.

I have a lot of other crap to buy. I just got my hands on a new tank bag and tail bag so thats taken care of. I just need to figure out how to mount them and get used to riding with the extra weight. I'm also going to need to get a new camera, the one I have just won't cut it. It's several years old and chews through batteries like crazy.