Truck'n The Good Roads

I have seen such beautiful sights on the roads I've been riding on my KLX, that I had to take Carolyn to see some of them.  Yesterday was her birthday, so we spent the day together driving the back roads over towards Carson.  The following pics were taken within 30 miles of our house.

This is our 1987 Toyota pickup with 175,000 miles.  I bought it used in 1988 with money I got from a motorcycle accident settlement.  That's Mt Hood in Oregon in the background.

Driving the roads I have been riding on the KLX sure made me appreciate the motorcycle.  At any level spot in the roads there are potholes, some of them very big and deep.  On the bike, I could either avoid them because of my narrow single track, or if I couldn't avoid, I could sort of float over them by standing on the pegs and gassing it.  In the truck it was crash, bang and 10 miles per hour.

This picture is looking north and you can see all of the major mountains in Southern and Central Washington.  Mt St. Helens is on the left with its missing top, Mt. Ranier is in the center and is probably 100 miles away, and Mt. Adams is on the right.  If you click on these pictures it enlarges them.

Some of the wildflowers and Mt. St. Helens.

Another view of Mt. Hood.  There are forest roads all over this area.

Carolyn among the wildflowers.

This is an interesting plant.  Its called Bear Grass, and this is the flower of it.  The grassy part is often harvested by people who get permits to do so from the Forest Service or the state Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR).  When I used to ride my dirt bike or work on the local trails, we would sometimes come on these people out in the middle of nowhere gathering this grass in large bundles.  I believe they sell it to be made into hats, mats, and baskets in Southeast Asia, and also perhaps as ornamental touches in floral arrangements.  It only grows at a relatively high altitude.  Carolyn has tried transplanting it to her garden, but it didn't survive.

This is the same snowbank that we barely got our motorcycles around in the previous post.  In only three days it melted enough to get the truck by.

Little bunny in the road

The Carson Loop

We live on the edge of two public forests......the Gifford Pinchot national forest and the Yacolt Burn state forest. Both of these forests have many miles of unpaved roads for the purposes of logging and fire suppression and they are legal for licensed vehicles.  I bought my dual sport bike so I could explore these roads, get an easier experience of off road riding, and see some new territory.  Carolyn and I have been on some of them in our 1987 Toyota four-wheel -drive pickup, and it's fun having her along, but it's a slow way to go.  One of the routes I have been trying to ride for the last two months is a loop over to the town of Carson in the Columbia River Gorge, and then back to an area east of us called Chelatchie Prairie.  (Prairie is what the early settlers called a clearing in the forest).  The loop is a little over 100 miles starting and ending at my house.  I have been trying without much success to ride this loop because snow has blocked the roads at several points.  Today, though, I finally made it.  A friend who has a big BMW adventure bike joined me and we did the loop between 9 am and 1:30 pm including a stop in Carson for gas and pie and coffee.  The pic below shows the final narrow track through the snow that we had to negotiate:

This is pretty amazing to have snow at this elevation (around 4,000 ft) on July 26.  I have several other routes I want to try that are even higher, so it may be mid August before I can do some of them.

This is Joe:

And this is me:

Dual Sport Ride

Saturday, July 23, I rode a dual sport ride organized by Northwest Adventure Riders and sponsored by the Portland KTM dealer:  http://mysite.ncnetwork.net/nwadvriders/default.html.  I trucked my dual sport bike over to a friends house and then we loaded his bike and went to the start of the ride at the KTM dealer.  Here is a picture of my Kawasaki KLX 250s:

After a free hot breakfast, we got started about 0830 and headed towards Mt Hood national forest.  Of the 15 bikes on the ride, mine had the smallest engine by almost half.  There was one 450 cc KTM, and the rest were mostly "adventure" bikes.  These are large displacement bikes designed to travel anywhere in the world over any kind of road, paved or not.  They often have around 100 horsepower and can make great time on paved roads.  However, off road they are tall and heavy and not very agile.  So, in the first part of the ride heading towards the forest on paved roads I had to wring the neck of my little KLX to keep up with the big guys, especially since they were far exceeding the speed limits.  Once we got to the off road sections my bike and my many years of dirt riding experience made me feel right at home.  Here is a picture at one of the lakes we went by.  The bike in the foreground is one of those adventure bikes......a KTM 990.  Mt Hood is in the background.  There is still plenty of snow up in the high country and, in fact, our route had to be modified at one point because the road was still buried under snow.

A large part of the off road section was the historic Barlow Road.  This is the original part of the Oregon Trail that got the immigrants around the falls that were keeping them from floating all the way down the Columbia River to the Willamette Valley.  In fact, we came upon a group reenacting the Mormon Handcart expedition.  This was a group of Mormons who, in the 1800's tried to push and pull handcarts across the prairies to the promised land, which I think was in Utah, not Oregon.  Anyway, these modern "pioneers" were probably Mormons also, who were doing their part to keep their traditions alive.  The original handcart party had a terrible time of it and got stuck over the winter and almost starved to death.  Maybe some did.  Even the modern reenactors didn't look like they were having much fun.  They were hauling handcarts over what was a barely passable jeep road.  But it was a great road for us off-road motorcyclists.

I ended up getting back to the KTM dealership around 5:30 after a total of 238 miles.  This was what dual sport riding is all about and I had a great ride.  I should be able to post more pictures as the NW adventure riders website gets them up.

Here's one of me:

The Mormons

Unfortunately, no handcarts in this picture.



The snow blocking our route



Physical Fitness

For many years, I've been concerned (some might say overly concerned........maybe even anal) about staying fit.  The picture of me at the end of my first enduro reminds me of how it all started.  I had not been doing anything about fitness before then, but during that race I was so excited, but at times so exhausted, that I vowed to do something about it.  The reason why my pant legs were wet in that picture was because the course ran up Piru creek in the Los Podres National Forest.  At times we had to climb up the bank out of the creek for a ways and the creek bank was deep sand.  With the power of that little 125 in those days, that meant getting off and pushing the bike uphill in the sand.  It didn't take much of that before I was wasted.

So, I started a fitness program.  Since being able to push a bike uphill seemed to be the basic requirement, my first attempts at a program consisted of pushing my Triumph up the driveway at my house and then jumping on and coasting back down to do it again.  I would do this over and over until I had had what I felt was a good workout.  I can just imagine what the neighbors thought about the nutcase they had living in the neighborhood.

Shortly after that, though, I read Dr. Kenneth Cooper's book, which I think was simply titled Aerobics.  He was the guy who started the whole aerobics and running revolution.  His major contribution was that he came up with a way to measure fitness and ways to obtain it and keep it.  Running was the easiest way to get fit according to his measurements, and so I started running.  As most runners and fitness buffs know, it gets addictive.  I began running during lunchtime at work, and kept at it for years until my knees started to give out.  Then I switched to bicycling, and started commuting on a bike.  Even now, after being retired for 16 years, I still ride my bike year around, which means having good rain gear where I live.  I swear, if a guy could invent a pill that gave you all the benefits of exercise, he would make Bill Gates look like middle class.  Exercise helps you control weight, makes the cardio vascular system work better and stay healthy,  tones muscles, and even helps psychological well being.  And its free.....all it takes is time, discipline, and effort.....things in short supply with modern Americans.  But enough of this slacking off at the keyboard;  I've got to go for a ride.

More old pics

I've dug up a few more old pictures from my early days of riding.  This one is me on my 1967 Triumph T100C.  I bought this bike new after I graduated and moved to Southern California to start my new job.  Between the Harley and this bike, I owned another Triumph and a BSA for a short while, but this bike I bought new after my daughter Karen was born and I saw that she had all her fingers and toes and I could spare a few bucks for a bike.

Note the lack of a front fender.  I thought I was being cool 'cause all the flat track guys in the magazines didn't have a front fender.  Now all the young guys remove the rear fenders to look more like road racers.

After I had the Triumph for awhile I got interested in riding off road.  In those days, with that kind of bike, that  meant mostly riding fire roads in the local Santa Anna mountains near my home in Corona.  Things changed in 1970 when I bought a Yamaha DT 125 for my wife to ride.  I found that bike to be so much fun to ride off road, and so indestructible, that I sort of took it over.  I began making modifications to make it more dirt-worthy, and eventually my friend Jim Ingersoll and I decided to enter a local enduro.  This picture was taken at the end of the race:

Boy, does that outfit look goofy now!  Note the work boots with the pants legs taped.  But I was hooked on off road competition and began riding AMA district 37 enduros.  This next photo was taken during an enduro and I was riding a 1976 Yamaha TT 500.

 I had sold the Triumph and did not own a street legal motorcycle until 1978 when a gas shortage convinced me to buy a road bike for the better gas mileage and ability to get to the front of lines at gas pumps.  It's been a long run of off road trail riding with a lot of great memories and good friends.  Selling my dirt bike last year was a pretty significant event, but age and modern times made it inevitable.  By age, I  mean the fact that I have turned 70, with a hip and a knee replacement (and the other hip and knee not that great either),  and a general lack of courage to hang it out and not worry about crashes.  By modern times I mean the current atmosphere of prejudice against off road vehicles that has caused the closing of so many riding areas.

What's it all about

The saying goes that the road is paved with good intentions.  But the Good Roads are paved.........or not.  And my intentions are to find the good roads and ride either my Kawasaki Ninja 650R road bike, or my Kawasaki KLX 250s dual-sport bike wherever they lead.  Until recently I was pretty well restricted to paved roads because I had a road bike and an off-road, unlicensed dirt bike.  Last year I sold the dirt bike and bought the KLX, which is street legal and allows me to ride unpaved forest roads, or to ride on paved roads to get to places to ride.

I've been riding for a long time.  I bought my first motorcycle in 1962 when I was in graduate school at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO, and here we are:

That was a 1952 Harley Davidson K model; Harley's answer to the British bikes that were getting popular at that time.  It was small for a Harley (750cc) and had a foot shift and hand clutch......very advanced.  By the way, I wasn't just posing on the bike.  That was my riding gear!

Compare that with a recent pic............all armored up!