Recap: Day Three

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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.