Grand Canyon Loop: Ulterior Motives

I'm not making silt angles, I was just tired of waiting for everybody and decided to take a nap until kevin could catch up. It was a soft bed but getting into it felt like what i imagine the space shuttle goes through when it reenters the atmosphere at mach 26. And as for the other crash I have no excuse I was trying to dismount the bike like a seasoned gymnast but F ed it up, thank god for Kevin's helmit cam...... Don't you ever turn that thing off!! And thanks GED for keeping the Canadian kitties dry and for starting this thread its awesome, it must be tough having to travel south to the U.S. to get electricity for your computer.

I'm finally here. My wife thinks I'm nuts because I have been sitting here cracking up out loud at all of the brilliant writings from crusty, articulate, desert riding fools. Too bad I'm not at least one of those.

I know I'm a little late but I must go back to the arrival at the motel in Mesquite. Or should I say the drive to Mesquite we, 5 of us, were trying to figure out how to say Ged. Some thought it was the "J" sound for JED and others the "G" sound for GED, like get. So it was decided to screw with the foreigner. Of course this fell to the subtle smart ass teqniques that have been honed on Bobzilla for years, Dave let the Canadian have it. The look on Ged's face was priceless as Dave kept screwing his name up JED, yea right Jed, that's what I said Jed. This quickly turned into an awkward but funny first impression, as we knew the Canadian was a good guy, and about 30 minutes later was a good joke at dinner.

So I find it funny Ged that you thought my chain lasted the entire way without adjustment. So yes after the false start, my bike tip over in the parking lot, due to kickstand failure. About five miles from the motel, my gas line came loose from the rigt side of the Exxon Valdez tank. I had to stop, along with Bob and WWTD. We fixed the hose clamp and adjusted the chain. I should have known the rest of the day would be shit after these things that happened all in the first five miles.

I will have to say that I did add stuff to my 525 exc. I added a Scotts, new Motoz front tire (crap), and an Acerbis 6.6 tank. Now I'm not that fastest guy around but can hold my own. But I must say that this bike kicked my ass all day, trying to figure out all the new crap. Ged's description of my crash was quite nice and easy, but I can tell you I still have pain today from that crash. That was the first of many that day. By the time we got to the Bar 10 I was wooped and ready to go home. But with good friends and a Canadian and another 1200 miles, I just had to suck it up and see what the rest of the trip would bring.

DAY TWO:

We woke up in the red dirt "Just like Sedona", the cowboy had said after dinner when we asked for a good camp site closer than Toroweap.

Our first camp was a success as we had a fire, some jokes, an introduction to just how important
"The Chair Issue" was, and a chance to hear guys fart and snore as they settled into their tents. A bonding experience, one might say.



We packed up and headed north towards Utah. Breakfast was coffee and Power Bars and slurps from the CamelBack.

We were ready to get on with it and wound along the usual variety of gravel roads up through juniper and pine forests, switchback corners, high-speed stretches, and dust.






The morning was warm, the air fresh, and the rolling countryside approached the flatlands again...



We kept out of each others dust fairly well and riders tended to follow the trail rule of waiting at questionable corners until the approaching rider waved their recognition, allowing the lead guy to proceed while the approaching guy took his turn for the next guy.

Approaching the Utah border, we were on roller coaster gravel roads bordered by coniferous forest. I was about the second last guy from the end on one section and saw several riders pulled to the side of the road ahead of me. My first thought was that someone had crashed as I thought I saw someone lying down. As I got closer, the riders were a bit separate from a half dozen younger folks (late teens -early 20's).

It became more evident as I approached that the young folks were camping and hiking in the area....they looked hot, tired, and thirsty and looked like they were having a rest... I made a mental note to appreciate the luxury of a motorcycle at such a time.

I slowed a bit, waved, and wicked it up. After an hour or so, we stopped at a canyon that wasn't very wide but was sure deep. I stayed in the shade and had a smoke while everyone else clambered around the lip of the canyon warning each other to not fall. Bob mentioned that the road crossed this chasm by virtue of the original bridge being a wrecked vehicle jammed in the big crack in the earth....and subsequent layers of boulders, rocks , and gravel developing the bridge...










Bobby and Travis One "on the edge"...










Cool geology....





After the canyon stop (or was it before????), we came across a few more clusters of thrashed hiker-campers along the road,,,and noticed a few vans that looked like they were support vehicles for this cluster of what was deemed to be Scouts, wilderness Outdoor Bound type folks, or one of those bootcamp deals where uninvolved parents send their teens to have someone in their 20's trying to whip them into behavioural compliance...

We came out of the hill country once again on to pavement and flatland....heading toward Zion....





More on that later....DAy Two was about a third of the way into itself at this point in time. Time for a power bar and some water.....

Dan,
I knew that the first corner crash was no small deal....you were going at a good pace when you ran out of road and went down on your elbow on those rocks. And it was that first day you got a sunburned wrist....:eek1 :huh



It's nice to have you and Dave join the story...

Subscribed!!

Travis One,
We should explain the kitty thing for all the FF's out there who aren't sure about the reference....:huh:huh

Here is my version: the first evening around the campfire, somebody was talking about dairy farming.....even suggesting that dairy cows drink 250 gallons of water a day to produce daily amounts of milk. That, to me, sounded like an impossibility...my attention to their conversation was minimal at that moment as I was probably in deep thought about "Geez, I shoulda brought a chair....".

But, sometimes I am a bit hard of hearing and I joined the conversation by saying "What's that?", as my attempt to catch up with the conversation.

Well, that was all it took for these guys with razor-sharp wits to find an opening to continue their merciless testing of my character, patience, sense of humour, and lag time between a wise-crack and my right hook .

"Milk !!!", someone piped up. "Don't you have cows in Canada? What do you do for milk? Oh, you guys milk cats up there, huh?" The rest of the group, not to be outdone by another, piled on the jokes and before a dozen efforts to ramp up their pleasure of just how fukkin clever each one of them was, they ended up deciding that I was a kitty-milker (sometimes blended with me being a cougar-milker (double-entendres appearing to be part of their verbal arsenal )...

Not only that, they piled onto the falsehood that I had an accent different from theirs....(their only sense of Canada seemed to be Bob and Doug McKenzie, references to 24's (of beer), and pretending to pronounce words like "about" as "aboot"....which is likely only true of east coast Canucks...

I think the kitty milker thing was their reference to movie The Fokkers, but I only figured that out when when I got back home to the frozen north and cranked up the hand-generator to power up Google to research this query....

Yep, they put the boots to me....but in my style of gracious calm and understanding of the human condition (i.e If you look at the bell curve of the population's IQ's, it becomes apparent that at least 35% of the population is chronically stupid at any one point in time... .... so I just looked around this group of 7 other guys and figured at least 2 of them were likely on the left-hand side of that bell curve....). I didn't react with much more than an agreeable smile ....didn't want to alienate myself with a bunch of foreigners on their home turf with one of my usual acerbic witticisms...they could let the chupacabras kill me when sleeping, only to leave my corpse in the desert for the coyotes and vultures...

Yes, Canada has cows for milk, we DO have electricity (which we export to the States for big $$$$), and telephone systems will start to be installed in three years from now in some provinces...most Canadians have moved out of their igloos for the comfort of wall tents, and some creative folks have started to build houses out of logs.

And about the Canadian idiosyncrasy of sometimes saying "eh!" at the end of a sentence.....yeah, we do that.

BUT, what's with the American tendency to respond to a "Thank You" with "Uh Huh" instead of "You're welcome" ?

I suppose it's because they are not used to someone saying "Thank You"....and offer a gutteral grunt as their best response... .

Just to clear up any confusion...

I think they were all waiting for Kevin's diagnosis of me....he was the Trail Boss and they wouldn't dare mess with him....I was disposable.....

You a fine travel companion Ged ( its Jed, thats what i said Ged, no its Jed, right Ged)
I think I missed the whole Milking cats thing as I too was a bit zoned out at that point and thinking "wow that fire is really cool and i'm not falling out of my chair".

as i said before the riding is a big part but i think equally the compainons are important. being able to take it and give it back are key to blending with this group.


where did we spend the second night? were there bike problems already? its all a blur to me

Bob,

Bob,
You are correct about the Ged/Jed thing....at least they didn't use the Jed Clampett reference and it was a study on the grammar lesson of "E after C or a G makes those consonants 'soft'.....". And you hang with a cool group of guys. I certainly felt part of the group and appreciated their ribbing me....but I have to make note of it here to add colour.....

Stay tuned...we will tell you where you slept, if you had a good time, and how many different bike tear-downs you performed. :eek1

That is pretty much how it went Ged, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm on the left or right side of the bell curv and wondering if a bell has the same shape in Canada as it does in America but seriously we couldn't have picked a better foreigner to share this adventure with, you are a solid dude.
I also have to mention something about the pic of myself and Bobby on the ledge, I realized my father Bobzilla does care about me because you should have heard his voice telling me to get away from that ledge, it was sheer panic and pure love, well that's what I'm telling myself, it was probably more like shit... If he falls off that ledge I'm going to have to tow this bike all the way back home.

That was Crosby Canyon you drove down to get to Warm Creek Bay. I fixed lots of houseboats in that bay. It totally confused me to see that picture when you were talking about somewhere hours away. Hopefully you went up and looked off of Alstrom Point at Padre Bay and Navajo Mountain while you were in the area.

Great report so far!

You guys must have really wound around out there to see that truck in the canyon turned bridge, then hit Zion, then Lake Powell. That is the first time I have seen that truck on ADV. I can't remember the name of the canyon. Is it Johnson Canyon? I will have to look when I get home.

Travis,
If you aren't sure which side of the curve you are on, that might tell you something !

I think you are right about BobZ....he loves you, despite you stealing his baby from his careful watch.....

You know better than I do that BobZ's heart is bigger than the Grand Canyon....you better watch out, because his heart is opening up even more these days.....despite his occasional gruff denials of that.

No Travis if you had fallen off the cliff Bob would have asked you if we put you on the bike do you think you can ride it out? Having been a victim of a pretty good crash I know first hand that despite Bobs love for you he's not going to call care flight if you can still stand(or crawl) and are somewhat coherent. Man I'm not gonna miss the next ride and yes I'm in for june.

MM,
Thanks for that info.....a few pics of what you call Crosby Canyon are coming up....we approached this place from the north of Big Water via BobZ's favourite wash.... Wahweap wash:




And Crosby Canyon on the way out....




As for the other places you mentioned.....nope....not on the GPS track

And if they were, I was too busy fighting deep soft sand double track between Wahweap and the beach we ended up at ....more on that soon....

DAY TWO....cont'd:

So, after passing the weary hikers and managing to not lose anyone to the jaws of the micro-canyon, we rode north at warp speeds on a wide dusty road up to... (I think)....Fredonia and then west to Colorado City, Arizona. I think we got gas in Fredonia and had a good lunch at some cowboy-named restaurant....the burgers were good and the waitress informed us, when asked what there was to do there, "Drink beer..." . We mostly thought that would be one of the things we would invite her to do.

Bob pointed out a restaurant that advertised its "Ho Made Pies" :



...but the road beckoned us.....







It was another hot day...and the road west looked a bit like this....



Kevin mentioned "pink sand dunes" a few times, but didn't seem to think I was correct in suggesting that the area he was referring to was Coral Pink Sands State Park.... http://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/coral-pink....

I was convinced I was right when we passed Cane Beds Road on the way to Colorado City. I had been past that park on a previous trip to Baja and also wanted to check it out. My exhaustive pre-ride research had made it clear that the route through Coral Pink Sands Park was what turned into Cane Beds Rd at the parks southern end. I mentioned this to BobZ later and he confirmed my suspicions...

But we were motoring....



Bobby offers a salute:



Somewhere around Colorado City we found a sand road headed north and it wound through hills and curves on sand/dirt/gravel up to the southern entrance to Zion Park. The nose of civilization stuck itself into our ride and we had to deal with a rural/suburban paved stretch up to the park gates. We stayed on the side of the road at th ranger entrance booth ....and Kevin was told...."No park entrance fees this week"....











... and just as we were revelling in the warmth of that news, Travis Two noticed his 950 was losing fuel....he realized his recently filled tanks were enjoying their overflow function and he assured us that once we got moving, the problem would be over.

So there we were at the south entrance to Zion (one of Utah's best parks re: scenery, in my opinion) with nothing better to do than be in awe of the spectacular scenery.

The following pics are barely representative of that beauty....but it's our story and we are sticking to it...

























































The need for a brief stop was in the shade ...















We continued eastward to the tunnel (which has a few windows carved out of the rock...lower left in pic):







The line-up for one-way through the tunnel was a short wait:





On the east side of the tunnel, it wasn't long before we were out of the real majestic stuff. I was concerned about my gas so we stopped at a tourist trap shop. It took the clerk about 15 minutes on the phone with the boss to figure out how to sell me some gas....I was a bit impatient with her but managed to sort it all out...

This stop offered a solution to a few problems: We weren't sure where we would camp that day and across the road seemed to be a campsite....Kevin and a few others rode over to check it out and came up with several options, each getting progressively better than the one before. BobZ had apparently been having some 690 problems and wanted a place with shade to work on his bike....

We ended up with a primo location.....



A workshop :



Mechanical guidance...





The plot only thickens at this point....more on that soon...

nice to see more good stuff....

thanks ged and crew.

Did you guys sample the "Ho made pies"?

Great write up!

Did someone say free drinks at the International Hotel??!!!

Great writeup! Quite a bag of misfits I see. Perfect!!!

Travis (2), I heard you found a new way to add water to your oiling system? I guess since he's not on the internet much he cannot defend himself.

Great pix and story. We're departing for those parts Friday morning for 6 days...can't wait!

There is no right or wrong way to do the Grand Canyon area....a gazillion routes that you can pick and choose from.....

ged , nice report!! but i do miss YOUR pictures! carry on, as you still have a few day's left to divulge to us. thks cactusreid, another proud canadian!!