High_Sides Trips and Pics

[High_Side]

In 2005 my buddy Cal and I went down to Laguna for the first North American G.P. in 11 years! The California weather and G.P. show did not disappoint:
View from our perch on the hill


Shinyas 2004 ride:

Nicky on the move through the corkscrew

Capirex on the way up the hill

Outside the house of Miggy:

[High_Side]

2007!

It's been a long time since I've had anything new so here's a couple of pics of the ebay special I picked up last summer. There was a whole lot of scratches involved, a broken fairing, a hazy windshield, misc rusty bits and I had a hell of a time getting it to run (In the end I needed help to get it running) . Now with a few $ and some great scratch remover I think it looks great and it runs great as well.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Silver Scud.....

It really is a great bike. I've ridden with the newer V-Tec VFRs and this bike doesn't seem to be lacking anything.

All of these pictures were taken this afternoon when I had less than 2 hours to get out for a ride. The quality sucks a bit as most were just jumping off of the bike and doing the point and shoot...

Buying the VFR was actually about 12 years overdue. I thought they were nice for an "old guy" bike at the time but was always looking for something more fun (fast ). Now that the wrists say that I need a better sport touring bike, the viffer came along at the right time. I'll be off to Oregon on it in about 3 weeks. Pics to follow....

High_Side

[High_Side]

It's been 3 years since Cal and I could get our schedules aligned for another trip. This year we booked a week at the end of June to make it happen. Unfortunately we had our weeks crossed up and if it wasn't for our wives talking Cal would have shown up at my door a week before I was ready to go

As it turns out we had much better weather on the week that I had planned for. I looked and felt like rain the morning that we met up. Cal had ridden through a shower to get to our meeting spot and both of us ended up wearing our heated vests (man we are getting soft in our old age.....it's the end of June ferchristsakes). The plan for today is to take an easy day and get to Sandpoint Idaho. There is a lot of straight road between Calgary and Sandpoint and I took the opportunity to ride with an MP3 player for the first time (something I swore I would never do). So now I've got the full geezer checklist complete 1.) Music on board - check. 2.) Heated vest - check. 3.) Geezer sportbike (ebay Silver Scud VFR) - check. Hey at this rate I will have a Gold Wing in no time.....scary The one thing I do leave at home is my camera and I damned near turn back for it. Luckily Cal has brought his and is nice enough to lend it to me.
As we arrive in Sandpoint that night we are still wearing the heated vests. I love this lake town and we spend the evening hitting a few pubs after a very cold swim in the lake out back of our hotel. The next morning we stop to grab a few pics outside a funky little bike shop that I have never caught open any time I pass through (arriving late and leaving early have their downfalls). We stop to grab a quick pic....

[High_Side]

After the early start we head off south through Coeur D'Alene and move in to the rolling farmland around Moscow. This road used to be more fun but they have put a lot of work in to it in the name of progress (straightening and widening). There are some fun backroads in this area but have places to get to so we move on. After about an hour we find ourselves looking over a bluff at the city of Lewiston which looks to lie about 1000' below in the valley. As we stop to take a picture we notice new pavement snaking a back way down in to town (on historic hwy #95). It was likely far too long ago but the engineer who created this MUST of had a hotwheels track as a kid! We take a couple of pics form above before heading off to play.
The brand spankin' new pavement of Lewistons Hotwheels track!



And then we played - Cal on a well-ridden SV:

I almost feel bad for posting the pictures above as this road will be a magnet for sportsriders which will eventually screw it up......but it was fun while it lasted....

[BusaEater]

Nice pictures!

[High_Side]

From Lewiston we head south towards Enterprise Oregon for the first of what is billed as "Washingtons Top Five Roads" in Rider magazine (June 2007). I had planned on using this article as a guide to make sure I don't miss any of the good roads this time instead of doing my usual "find them by getting lost" method. The pictures looked impressive so off we went. We were then quite shocked after we caught a stretch of the good stuff coming out of town to find out this road turns in to flat azz prarie. I stopped to look at the map at one point figuring we were on the wrong road, but we were on the correct road to Enterprise Oregon. Shortly before the Oregon Border it did turn out much better as we rolled in to the canyon. From there to Enterprise was great fun, but I can't help but think that the author of the Rider article ran out of good ideas in Washington and really just wanted to send you to Oregon....
Finally, things are looking up:

Stopping for lunch in Enterprise we were shocked to find nearly every restaurant closed. The one pub that was open turned out to be a family ran place with a motorcycle theme. Once they saw tha twe were on bikes they enthusiastically filled us in on the good roads. This lucky catch would lead to some of the best bike roads that we have ever been on. Our new friends recommended taking the road to Joseph, through Hells Canyon Recreational area, on to Halfway and then Bakers City. Once we got past Joseph we found out what they really meant by good roads!

A funny thing happened once we were past Joseph: The road was so good and intoxicating we didn't even think to stop to take pictures. We came across two cars the entire time that we were riding this stretch and the adrenaline from the up-and-downtwisty ribbon over new asphault lost us in the ride. It was beautiful, but you will just have to believe me because I possess no photographic evidence to back up this claim....
We finally took a pause to decide if we should take a short detour up to the Hells Canyon look-out point and were laughing out loud at how amazing this day had been going. It only got better on the next stretch however as we detoured to the look-out over yet another stretch of even more amazing pavement than we had just passed over. Unbelieveable.
Finally the camera comes out at the look-out point, but this picture does not begin to do it justice:

[BusaEater]

Professional photographer?

[High_Side]

Up until now this had been the first day and a half of touring that I had ever done on the sportbike-for-geezers VFR that I picked up on ebay last year. I've been addicted to twins, specifically my VTR1000 Honda, and then Jens Ducati for many years and the 750 cc of V-four furry hadn't been lighting my pants on fire. The bike is super-comfortable, the degree of which I hadn't really understood until a couple of big days in the saddle. On these roads however, my VTR would have been effortlessly faster and light years more fun. I have been hopelessly familiarized with the old twin after so many years and miles together and feel perfectly comfortable riding it to the limit. The VFR up to this point had not been so willing. After the stop at Hells Canyon I took the lead and started off at a comfortable pace, trying to find the sweet spot where this bike likes to operate and adjust my body position to make the transitions more stable. The road itself was near perfect for the VFR and soon fun was happening. Keeping it singing around 8000rpm and being ultra smooth on throttle transitions seems to be the key. This stretch of road was an absolute blast and once again it was too good to stop for photographic evidence. Finally I was starting to get on with this old beast. As the road opened up past Halfway, near Richland we stopped to grab a pic. Conveniently, the police picked this moment to pass us going the other way up the road, probably responding to a call of motorcycling hooligans travelling at stupid speeds.....

From here on we head out to Baker City were we check in to a motel near the highway. The landscape is flatenning out and we fear that we are in for a great road dry-spell as we plan to cross Oregon to head for the coast the next day. These fears are compounded as one of the several Gold-Wing riders also checked in was gushing about the great twisties that he had found on Interstate #82. We thought buddy, you REALLY don't know what you are missing. There are no twisties on the Interstate......So close to motorcycling nirvana and painfully unaware. We started to tell him about Hells Canyon and he appeared disinterested. This slow detour would likely cut in to the seriously big miles he hoped to accomplish the next day.

[High_Side]

Professional photographer?

Nope. Just another nerd with a digital, but thanks!

[High_Side]

That evening there wasn't much happening in Baker City and it felt much more like a ghost town than the former boom town that it once was long ago. This was actually a nice change of pace for us coming from a boomtown and we were one of 10 people at the movie theater in town that night. You seriously have to wonder though about the future of a place with so little going on. The place is full of cool buildings though so the next morning I was up a little early and tried to get a few pics. The sun wasn't cooperating however and all I could score was a couple of the Viffer in interesting places....


The night before we had checked with some of the locals as to the most interesting way to cut across the state to get to Crater Lake. They suggested taking highway #7 to Bend and then heading south down to the park. Just after leaving Baker City on highway #7 though we came to a stop at a construction site. As we quickly checked my map on my tank-bag we realized that the intersection that we were stopped at led to a slightly different way to get to Bend. Later on that day I would check the internet to find out out that this stroke of luck led us to the Dooley Mountain Highway. What a piece of pavement this thing was. Thank you to the people of Oregon for creating and maintaining some of the best motorcycle roads I have ever had the pleasure to ride. Once again the VFR fell in to it's sweet spot and we had a blast.

As the road opened up it felt vaguely familiar like I had seen it before.....
Wylie Coyote set this trap earlier in the day....

Bend has to be the most ironically named city in the state (if anyone keeps track of that sort of thing....). As Bend neared the curves disappeared and the straight line drone that we had tried to avoid materialized until we reached Crater Lake.

To be continued....

High_Side