Passed Out In CO & Washed Up In UT!!! Big Bikes Conquer The Elements Of The West!!!

Hello Everyone! And Welcome to our Ride Report!
This report covers the journey of 3 men , their bikes :dllama, I mean and 1 tiny dancer as they ride through the back roads of Colorado and Utah hoping and praying for fair weather and fair conditions.
Me, personally, I just wanted to stay on the bike and survive! More on that to come.


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THE ROUTE
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Ride Trails included:
COBDR
UTBDR
With a stop in between at the KTM Rallly in Steamboat Springs, CO

*Thank you Backcountry Discovery Routes for your awesome services!
*Thank you Butler Maps for your awesome maps!

Total Ride Miles = approx. 2,000 +/-
Total Ride Days = 2 weeks
Lots of planning was done beforehand by and with Mike Z piecing it all together fitting in the stop at Steamboat.
We trailered the bikes on a marathon drive (16 hours between the 3 of us) from Santa Clara, CA to Cortez, CO.
We would later repeat the marathon drive on the way home.




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THE CAST & CREW
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This is our Captain, Mike Z on his KTM 950. He put together all the routes incorporating feedback from everyone and made sure we stayed on the right routes.
*Jeremy's GPS was wacky and Russ had none.
*Also, many thanks to Mike for letting me use his pics and vids as content for our RR!



This is Russ, Mike Z's cousin from Edmonton, Canada on his KTM 990 Dakar. He trailered his bike to Steamboat Springs, leaving his truck there for the Rally.
Then rode his bike to Telluride and joined up with us on our route.



This is Jeremy on his KTM 990R. He actually left his laptop behind this time around! :eek1 Well, actually, he brought it but then decided to leave it in Mike's trailer, in Cortez.



This is me, Prev! And I am a Pillion on Jeremy's bike. This is my/our first ever long range adventure ride, 2 up!
We had done a prep ride the weekend before this journey, but we were still learning along this ride and boy, did we learn FAST!
Oh yeah, it gets "interesting" along the way.



GROUP PIC!



As this wall art piece says in the Branding Iron Restaurant in Buena Vista, CO...



I hope you enjoy our Ride Report!

Great Start!!
I'm IN!!!
Scott

Bring it on!

this is going to be great.
I'm loving it already.

I just checked my GPS odometer which was reset when we left and it shows we rode 1937 miles total. I'm already itching for another ride. Death Valley on the 530 sounds like just the ticket I need to get wrenching and finish her up!

been waiting for this!

brung it....

tuffy, jeremy and mike....nice meeting you at the rally. lots of fun. we all had a great time.

Hey Mike
Nice meeting you and your moto bros in SB. Looking fwd to your RR.
Stay in touch and lets put a ride together sometime.
Steve

Hiya DingWeed, MotoBoss & ClearwaterBMW!
Thanks for tuning in and I will do my best to provide regular feeds.


Hi StevefrmGV,
Mike will be chiming in here as well so will let him and the others respond to direct posts. Thanks for checking out our RR. I will try not to disappoint.

It was nice meeting you, too, Joel! I've never been to a rally before so that was a first for me. Super fun! And imagine my surprise being recognized! You caught me off guard initially, I was like :huh... LOL! Congrats on your "win" at the rally! When I get to the rally days on this post, I'd love to see a few snaps you took! See you on the trails! You may see Jeremy in DV, he's thinking about it.

In!

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DAY 1 & 2: Getting to the "starting gates"
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9/6/13 & 9/7/13
From Santa Clara to Cortez. 1,030 miles in 16 hours

*I promise to keep this one short & sweet



Note for Ladybug0048. What I did on this trip is I utilized more ziploc bags to organized my "pantry", "kitchen", "bathroom", "bedroom" and "closet" supplies.
I also rolled up every single possible clothing I could and used a hair tie to hold them. This made my clothes packing more compact & I had extra hair ties!
I was able to pack my closet in one sack, and likewise for the other categories. I'll go into more detail in my blog soon on this and other topics.
I'll also be looking into the vacuum bag idea from jdrocks with re: to food items to bring along for camping.



We stuffed up our sacks the nights before and packed everything up onto the bike the morning of. Mike came to pick us up with his SUV and trailer and we were off! (9/6 @ 1pm)

Poor car, it was completely full, especially with the addition of me. The guys were used to being just the two of them. Fortunately, I'm tiny, so I didn't need that much room.



Note for Rainprincess. Thank you for the wrapter idea! Even though I braided my hair, I still used it. The combo of which kept my hair totally tangle free and smooth as satin.

Since we would be driving and driving and driving for a looooooong time... I decided we needed a treat. We stopped at the Petro Stopping Station in Los Banos, CA.
I don't make it to truckstops often - but man, this place was nice! Theater, gym, restaurant... swanky!
I treated the guys to a milkshake, which was a great idea at the time with it being nearly 100 degrees!
But, oh boy, Mike and I felt the milk"shake" the rest of the trip. Be forewarned, it was very yummy but very thick!


Along our route, we passed through Vegas.
Jeremy really wanted to drive through the strip, so we let him! Told him to take the wheel too!
He was always saying how he wanted to come back here someday since the last time he was here was over a decade ago and lots had changed.
Little did he know, I had already booked a weekend trip when we got back for his birthday to Vegas.


We didn't really stop to eat properly along the way as we were still full from the milkshake and I brought plenty of snacks for the road trip there and back.

When we started seeing this type of scenery, we knew we were almost there!


I brought a diary with me to keep track of as many details as possible, useful or not.
As we neared our destination, I had no idea we'd be going in and out of different states, often! I started keeping track at first, then it just got too ridiculous!
And throw in the time zone flip-flops! Duuuuuuuude , what was I thinking?!




WE HAVE ARRIVED!
Finally, we reached our destination! We checked out Four Corners Monument and got to stretch our tired bodies.




We ran into these group of nice Harley riders who shipped their bikes from New Zealand and were into 2 moths of a 3 months US tour. Nice meeting y'all and hope you made it through the rest of your trip safely!



We finally got to eat properly! So hungry! :dg:dg:dg:dg:dg
Fiesta Mexicana was uber-delicious! And Bonus, it was right next to the Days Inn where we crashed...



It was 9/7, 4pm and the guys decided to go to bed. I caught up on my diary and hit the sack at 7pm. We all needed solid sleep and be well rested for the first day of our ride!

It's a good thing these bikes couldn't drive themselves away if they knew what was about to come!



Hang in there and be patient with me everyone! I'm off to dinner then I'll be back to post, post, post! Cheers!

Thanks for tuning in TouringDave! I'll be back shortly. I promise, it'll be worth the wait!

This looks like fun!!

Glad you finally got started.

Hi DaFoole! Thanks for joining us! The ride trip was beyond fun and can't wait to go on another one!

Hi Bob! Good timing, ride is about to begin! This RR authoring is fun but timely. I am happy to do it though.

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DAY 3: Cortez to Telluride (COBDR)
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9/8/13
Thank you Backcountry Discovery Routes for your awesome services!
Thank you Butler Maps for your awesome maps!



We woke up at 5:30am.
Well, well, well, the sun was actually out and somewhat shining. A bit overcast but otherwise, today we were going to start off with good weather!



I admit, I've never stayed at a Days Inn before and their breakfast was pretty good!
Actually, this whole trip was going to be a whole new experience for me and I couldn't wait!



After a hearty meal @ 6:30am, we were excited and eager to get started!
*Russ is not yet with us. He will join us once we get into Telluride.





So far, so good! We were riding along and finding our groove.
-Mike was checking out his GPS/routes and bike movement given the high elevation (I will let him chime in here for his take on his bike's performance)...
-Jeremy was feeling out the weight/balance of his bike now that he was riding 2up with extra 90 lbs of me and luggage, and checking our Sena headsets...
-I was practicing enjoying the scenery (so pretty & green!) and taking pics while assessing the comfort level of my Airhawk and various gripping/hold on tight options...
*Jeremy and I had done a prep ride the weekend before this trip and so we were just fine tuning and balancing our riding cadence.



And we're finally on the good stuff!





We're riding along and we encounter our first gate! So off the bike I go to tend to the gate!
I'm not really sure why I was excited about this - my first gate duty, I just was...
Thanks, Mike for helping me out on a couple of the gates along the way where the tension was too strong for me to work with solo.



Back to riding!



So... remember the gate? Well, turns out, 10 minutes up the road was the exit gate!
Yeah, so no wonder there were riding tracks on the other side of the gate - more direct and bypass the gates. Oh well, it was good practice.















So we're riding along and following Mike...



Next thing you know we...



What happened?
So... Mike got all swirly right about where he's standing & pointing in the below pic. He slid left right in front of us and we were about to make a perpendicular connection and run over him and his bike...
But... Mike managed to stay upright...
And... Jeremy was somehow able to slide away, avoid the disaster, come to a stop... which is when he, still getting used to the 2up thing, lost his balance and we... had our first tip over!
I don't know why I was excited about that either... I just was...


Takeaway: Don't follow Mike, or anyone else, too closely, Jeremy!


Phew! Now that we got through that mini-ordeal... back to riding!





Telluride!
Bonus! We made good time and it was only 12:30pm! So there was plenty of riding time left!
The ride conditions thus far have been relatively pleasant with light sprinkles here and there. But overall, we were weather-lucky today.



I snapped this pic of a quirky Statue of Liberty art sculpture on someone's lawn along the rode near the Welcome sign...



While the guys determined the afternoon's plan of attack.



Umm, see the really tall mountain up ahead? That is Black Bear Pass.

Both guys pointed it out to me and Jeremy stated, "Yeah, we won't be going up that. Too dangerous." rolleyes <-- You'll soon understand this...

Until then... I need to

Tuned in; looks like you're going to have fun
Jim

I see some potential humor hinted at in the next few days of this RR. I can't wait. I had some fun on some of these same roads a couple of months ago.


I think the gates were installed just to slow us down.





Hmmnnn . . . where am I? I guess I'd better just follow the CBCDR track.





Can't wait for the next installment. Thanks for writing!

Aw, at least you got it over with!



You sure got a nice close up of the statue of liberty!







Did you see this girl with the crazy hat?





Too bad you guys didn't get to do Black Bear.
It's beautiful!

Put it on your list for the future.
Some day!



Hi MikeZ!

Wow, nice effort!

Thanks for sharing...

Thanks for tuning in, on2wheels52! Everyday provided a lot of firsts for me and I had a blast on every turn!

Hi Jonathan! Ah ha -that makes sense about the gate. Colorado is awesome!
The potential is exponential!

Thanks, D.T.! Glad you're enjoying the RR so far.