Archive for July, 2009

July 12th 2009

Moto-Camping Day 5 (late post)

Moto-Camping Day 5 (late post)

Posting this on day 6:

So I made Moab, made the hostel, didn’t care for either, although I met nice people there.  Moab struck me as incredibly touristy–and pricey.  The hostel was neither of those.  I stayed at the Lazy Lizard hostel, which was cheap at $9/night for a dorm bed and I did laundry and shaved.  But I wouldn’t call it “the best” (as they claim) anywhere.

I met Sara(h?) from Syracuse, New York, who had called her husband in tears to come get her when she got to the hostel (he didn’t come, but was worried).  She stuck it out; once you get past the looks of the place, the people were quite nice and interesting.  I met Charley, who was saving money for a six-month trip to Europe, but who loved the desert around Moab and had lived at the hostel for about a year (working there) to be in the area cheap.  I met a tour guide who’d done Europe, Mexico, and was now doing the desert (as a guide).

I treated myself to a real dinner and two oatmeal stouts at a local microbrewery (which somehow gets around the 3.2 beer situation that the rest of Utah can’t avoid).

But I made the decision to leave as soon as I could.  At 5:30 local time (4:30 in CA), I had the bike loaded while everyone else slept and I took off.  It was 75 degrees then and I went straight to the Arches National Park where an hour later it was already 85 degrees and climbing fast.  The sunrise was beautiful on the red sandstone, though, and I took some pics, walked a bit (sorry Jane, not the ones you suggested), then high-tailed it (well, I did stop for breakfast in Moab).  No more 110+ heat!

Heading south out of Moab, I caught Highway 46 east into Colorado–a nondescript (but nice) highway until it dropped into the Paradox Valley (I didn’t ask anyone what conundrum begat the name) and the San Miguel River basin.  There it became positively beautiful–and a fabulous motorcycle road winding through a shallow canyon.  Eventually I made it to Montrose, CO, and then headed east to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park–I was hoping there’d be a campsite on a Saturday afternoon…

And there was and it is gorgeous!  I’m staying three nights, it is so nice.  Continued…

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July 10th 2009

Moto-Camping Day 3 to 4

Moto-Camping Day 3 to 4

Written the night of the 9th:

Somehow, in packing up all my stuff from the Starbucks in Cedar city, I left my power cords for most everything behind.  Damn it.  It means I’ll have to back-track and hope they still have it.  Fuck.  So much for making good time tomorrow.

I’m headed for Moab, but nothing is straight across in the backroads of Utah, so I’m winding Highway 14 over to Highway 89, then North to Highway 12, across Bryce Canyon and through Escalante.  This is the proverbial “scenic route” and until tonight the main question was whether to take a southern route past Glen Canyon and then up Highway 191 into Moab, or just to jump up Highway 24 to I-70 and skip above Canyonlands before heading South into Moab.  But now, for time’s sake, I think it is the northern route.

Well, hell. That’s what I get for dragging all this electronics with me.  Or for being absent-minded.  Whatever.

Late night-11:30 local time (10:30 back in CA).  The campsite next door shows no sign of sleeping soon, so I’m just going to hop in the sack and see what happens.  F**k, f**k, f**k.

Sigh. It would be so nice not to be human.  Maybe not.  But still.

Update:

I couldn’t sleep the whole night. Somehow, about 4:30 or so I knocked out, but I was up before 7, packed and on the road back to Cedar City.  No stuff.

So, I was in a funk all day.  Today’s drive had the most gorgeous scenery–I took pics when I could, but I some of the best stuff I didn’t get.  If you do one road in your lifetime, Highway 12 through Utah should be the one!

Anyway, all I could think of was what a loser I can be–all those negatives, over and over in my head.  It is terrible to be alone and have nothing good to say to yourself.

Then, about 15 miles out of Torrey, Utah on the way to Hanksville there was a woman by the side of the road with a motocross helmet and jacket trying to flag people down.  No one stopped, so I turned around when I could and went back.  I asked if everything was okay and she said no, she’d dropped her multi-sport bike in sand in wash about a mile off the road and couldn’t lift the bike herself.  Her name was Susie and she was from Tennessee, about my age, and had a knee replacement last year and didn’t trust the weight on it.  I didn’t ask why she was doing something so dangerous alone and with no phone–what the hell am I doing after all?  I followed her in, helped her lift the bike, which kicked over and seemed none the worse for wear and I refused the $20 she wanted to give me for helping.  After I was sure she was fine, I rode off.  Maybe there’s still some good in me.

So now I’m in Moab, which is too depressing.  It’s gone tourist from when Ed Abbey wrote and I think I’ll leave as soon as I can tomorrow.  I caught a cheap $9 room at the local hostel and I’ve showered, shaved and done my laundry.  I’m almost presentable.  Almost–I still have a cloud over me and I can’t hardly stand the people I’m around, but it’s me, not them who’s out of it.

I’ll visit Arches, tomorrow, then I don’t know.

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July 9th 2009

Moto-Camping — Day 3

Moto-Camping -- Day 3

Day 3 began early again–but at least I slept through the night!  The sky was getting light at 5:45, so I swung out of the hammock and got going.  It was actually chilly, which was nice.

I was packed and out by 7am again.  They apparently don’t believe in garbage cans at the campground, nor at the nearby picnic site, so I just left a neat pile next to the restrooms.  I had no room for any dross today.  I hope they understand.

The rest of Westgard Pass (Highway 168) was uneventful, largely due to the road construction that had fresh gravel all over the place.  No fast twisties (at least there).

I had been listening to my favorite instrumental guitar music as I rode the last couple of days and more frequently than you might expect, there have been interesting sychronicity.  Today, for example, after a gorgeous little black-rock canyon (Mollie Gibson Canyon) I burst out over Deep Springs Valley–the road a luminous undulation across a dun plain.  Just then, Phil Manzanera’s guitar let loose (in “Trot” from the Quiet Sun album Mainstream) a sustained fuzz-wail that perfectly complemented the grandeur ahead.  I zipped past the only other vehicle (a VW van) and shot across the valley to his accompaniment.

The next little mountain pass was Gilbert Pass, near aptly named Chocolate Mountain (the rocks are all dark chocolate here) then I connected to Highway 266 and headed toward the junction with 95 to take me into Las Vegas.  On 266, exactly 1 car passed me in the other direction and I began to get nervous looking at my gas gauge and thinking how lonely and hot it would be to break down out there.  I passed a 3-point buck deer by the road, but no other critters were visible, four-hoofed or otherwise.

I made Beatty, NV, eventually with enough gas apparently.  Then on into Las Vegas.  Vegas was awful, though. Hot.  115 degrees according to the bike.  I stopped at a Starbucks long enough to post the Day 2 blog,  then skirted Las Vegas proper on Highway 215 to get to I-15.  North into (first) Arizona, then Utah, I-15 is about as ugly as a road can get in Clark County (Las Vegas), but when you reach the Virgin River Gorge, it transforms.  Utah is cooler and I hightailed it for Cedar City (with an appropriate Sondra salute to St. George as I passed).

So I made my camp for the night, in a nice, but too-close-to-civilization campground up Cedar Creek Canyon from Cedar City.  The canyon is an amazing gorge itself and here, on a nice wide paved road, I could finally open the throttle a bit.  I washed my hair (!) for the first time in three days and had a leisurely dinner of backpacker “Phad Thai.”  I came back to Cedar City to post this and get a few supplies.  415.6 miles today.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Moab. I made reservations at a hostel there so I can get a shower and feel human a bit.  I’ll explore Arches from there rather that camp.  And it’s actually cheaper to stay at the hostel, though god knows what it’ll be like.  Report tomorrow (if there’s internet)!

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July 9th 2009

MotoCamping — Day 2, Bristlecone Pines

MotoCamping -- Day 2, Bristlecone Pines

Note:  although this is posted on Thursday, the post is for Wednesday–had to find an internet spot!

Hardly went anywhere today, at least as the odometer reads.  Just 187 (.0) miles today, but it was a good day–I haven’t wanted to just put on miles on this trip, I wanted to see things.

I didn’t get to sleep Tuesday until midnight, but I was up before six today anyway.  The moon was full or nearly so and it kept me awake with its light.  It was warm, too, last night.  I started to sleep under the stars, but it was so bright and I felt so small, I retreated to the tent.  I got up as the sky was getting bright and tried to photograph the sun just as it cleared the El Paso Mountains.  Well, it’s an okay photo, but I’m not the camera person I’d like to think I am.

I had the camp packed by 7am and it was already warm (78 degrees) as I set out.  I had a plan to run up Nine Mile Canyon to test using a camcorder to record going through twisty passes and such.  I had hoped the canyon would be a spectacular ride, but it was only okay.  I’d like to try crossing the Sierras on that road (the only other crossing north of Walker Pass until Tioga Pass in Yosemite), but that will be for another time–and possibly another bike.  In any case, the camcorder performed okay, but the strap that held it to my leg didn’t feel secure enough, so I’ll probably have to figure something else out.  That’s okay, it was a test.

After that, I headed for the Manzanar War Relocation memorial site. I spent about an hour there–cried so hard during the movie of the history of the place I had to go to the bathroom to dry off.  Had that happen once before at the Big Hole National Battlefield in Montana (site of the Sand Creek massacre of the Nez Perce–a moment of infamy amid a rich history of such occurances) and again at a small touring version of the Holocaust Museum.  We have such a capacity for evil, and for rationalization.  I rode around the site (it’s huge), but nothing struck me so much as the faces and voices of the people in the film.

After that, I stopped in Independence to grab a sandwich lunch and mail some postcards to the kids.  The Subway was crowded as hell with highway workers (there’s construction every 20 miles or so and all down the main stretch of Independence), some of whom were pretty obnoxious.  They ran out of receipt paper and the lady was both stupid and rude.  I just ate outside and wrote the postcards.  I had envisioned a long narrative about Manzanar, spread over the three cards, but I just didn’t have it in me.  I just wrote some crap because I miss them and needed to connect.  Talked to Lorraine on the phone and it was so nice to hear her voice.  We just talked about mundane things and that felt good to me.

Made the Bristlecone Pine campground by 1:00 and rode up to the Visitor Center in time to catch a Nature Talk, which was nice.  I bought water and some souvenirs.  Then I walked the 4-mile Methuselah Grove trail, which convinced me (if I had not already known) that I’m seriously out of shape.  It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other at the end.  I was so exhausted, I had a hard time steering the bike back to the campsite.  I boiled some water for freeze-dried “Katmandu Curry,” strung my hammock (yay, no tent!), and rested a little bit.  After dinner, I felt better, but it was to be an early night [and I slept through].

It’s cool here–the sun is almost down (at 8:43) and the breezes are chilling.  Soon, it will be time for the sleeping bag and I’ll read until I sleep.  I’m halfway through Ghost Rider and it is kind to cool to run across some similarities between his journeys and mine.  I just read how he found this great motorcycle road through Westgard Pass-which I’ll go through tomorrow morning on my list of must-do roads for this trip.  Too bad he didn’t hike the Bristlecone Forest (although he’s obviously in better shape than I).

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July 7th 2009

Moto-Camping 2009 — Day 1

Moto-Camping 2009 -- Day 1

Made Red Rock Canyon State Park by about 12:30 (left the house at about 8, but didn’t get on the road til 8:20).  Shot down 99 to Delano, then took the Garces Highway (155) east to Lake Isabella.  The 178 from there over Walker Pass.

The riding was hard to get used to, at first.  I felt off on the curves, so I was slower than usual up and over Greenhorn Summit.  But no cars in front or behind the whole way, so!  Gorgeous ride!

Red Rock is hot.  Expected that.  Didn’t expect gusting winds all afternoon.  I couldn’t do much exploring (did some).  Finally crawled up a gully behind my camp and slept an hour before dinner.  Did dinner down in a little wash to be able to light the stove.  Dinner was a piece of BBQ chicken left over from last night, freeze-dried “Louisiana Red Beans and Rice,” a couple cups of cheap wine and all the sand that could blow into things.

Road into Ridgecrest to check in with the fam and post this.  Posts will be erratic.  None tomorrow, but next day perhaps.  Bristlecone Pine Forest eventually tomorrow, but several side trips as I go…

Lovin’ it!

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July 6th 2009

Moto-Camping 2009 — final preparations

Moto-Camping 2009 -- final preparations

Compared to last year, I’m either taking less or packing better.  Hopefully the latter.  I made some slight modifications to the bike that seem to make sense for my needs.  I lowered the licence plate, wired in some led lights for night driving, and I now have a spot for my light, but oversized sleeping mat, orange ground cover/tarp and tent poles.

On the seat behind me, my sleeping bag ( a new, smaller one), a picnic mat and my computer. Everything else is in a saddlebag or the trunk.

I have maps, a GPS, fuel, stove, food, clothes for three complete changes.  The bike was fully serviced less than a thousand miles ago, has relatively new tires and I’m giving the battery one last trickle charge tonight.

I have been reading Ghost Rider by Neil Peart, the Rush drummer, which chronicles his BMW motorcycle odyssey of healing after the deaths of this daughter and wife within 10 months of each other in 1997.  He’s quite a good writer, after all.  My travel pales in comparison (he was riding up to a 1000 miles a day–I’ll do considerably less, even on a long day).  Still, it is nice to feel an affinity of sorts.

Looking forward to an early start.

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