Yesterday afternoon we had a real frog-strangler rain, just in time to thoroughly mess up the rush hour. Luckily, the rush hour is no longer my problem, except as it messes up Ray's commute.
Last Tuesday the high temperature was 87 and it was totally sunny and glorious.
Yesterday the high temperature was 57 and it was mostly not sunny and miserable.
It looks like The Big Wet is getting itself wound up and ready to unleash itself on a dry Northwest. As much as I wilt in 87 degrees, I will kinda miss the warmth and the sunshine. We've not turned on the heat yet so it was 56 degrees in our dining/living room this morning when I got up. Probably colder when Ray got up.
But as miserable and wintry as yesterday was, we don't have to suffer the consequences of earthquake and tsunami, as do Indonesia, Samoa and Tonga, or typhoon as does the Philippines. We know people who have family and other loved ones in those places. We worry with them, praying their loved ones are going to be ok, and knowing that many, many thousands are way more miserable than a few wet people in Greater Pugetopolis, and knowing that our distant brothers and sisters have lost way more than some time in a rush hour backup.
If you can, please donate to a reliable relief organization, one that will truly see that the aid reaches the people it needs to reach.
And be glad it's only rain.
Susan
copyright 2009, all rights reserved
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Day Four-Blown Home
The word for this day was =WINDY=. We have never ridden in such wind.
Breakfast was the usual hotel breakfast, but it sufficed. Norman was eager to get going once again. He knew what was coming when we packed bags and Ray started hauling them out. Let's go! Let's go! We agreed, being tired and ready for our own bed and some home cooked food. We thought we'd be home by 3:30 or so. HA! The day had other things in store for us.
We had terrible, horrible, awful gusty cross-winds all the way from Spokane to Cle Elum. At first, the winds were out of the southwest, but we passed under a narrow cloud bank and then the winds came out of the northwest. It was very hard to hold the bikes in the lane they belonged in because of wind power. The way those winds blew, I think we could have powered the entire state from wind turbines that day and had some power left over to sell to California.
It was wierd going down the highway behind Ray and his Guzzi, leaned over into the wind just so they didn't get blown over. I didn't have that problem having 3 wheels on the ground and plenty of ballast but I surely did get shoved around plenty. At one point Ray had to lean hard right in order to turn left and complete the turn in a fairly upright position.
While we stopped often, at every rest area I 90 had to offer, we only took pictures at one place. That was the Wild Horse Monument and Columbia River Overlook. It was hot in this place and there was no wind. I think all the wind was busy rushing down the river. Norman jumped up on the low wall, so he could get a good look. It was the first time he was interested in scenery. I think it was the cool breeze coming up the canyon walls and the smell of all that cool water.
Here's the bridge we will shortly be riding over. Can you see the effects of the wind on the water?
See the white caps on the Columbia?
Aliens have landed!
When we got down to the bridge from this high but windless place, we saw the windsock was sticking straight out, not a wrinkle or sag in it and we said oh-oh. And we were right. That was one difficult bridge to get across. I was grateful there was not any other traffic on the bridge to get bashed into by the wind.
We kept going in spite, stopped someplace to pick up lunch to go and ate at the next rest area we came to. Coming into Ellensburg, there's a flat place with large agricultural fields abuting the highway. The wind there had renewed purpose and set about attempting to pull my helmet off my head. At one point, I could feel the wind blowing over all my head and the helmet was raised up and twisting to the left in the wind. We came to an overpass and in the sudden quiet and wind relief, I heard a shhhhhluuup! noise and that helmet slammed down on my head like a giant had pushed it down. Helmet was still skewed to the left and not too comfy, but we had to stop for gas, so I could fix it. I surely learned what those helmet chin straps are for. Mine was cinched on good and tight but the wind got to it anyway.
In Ellensburg we saw another sidecarist at the next gas station, so we went over there to say hello. It turned out to be an elderly couple with a California sidecar on an aged Gold Wing. He said in 24,000 miles, he'd never seen another sidecarist and so we were both pleased by the meeting.
Just outside of Cle Elum, the Powers That Be decided to use some stimulus money to mess up the traffic. One lane on each side of I 90 was closed for replacement of concrete. While this is an exceedingly grand idea, that road surface being firmly in the ouch, this road sucks camp, I wish they had not been busy that particular day. We were in the back-up for an hour. For a scooter rider with a sidecar, no big deal. I just trundled along at 2-5 mph no problem. But for a motorcycle rider, the clutch hand gets a huge work out. Ray finally pulled to the side of the road and let several cars by and then he'd drive up the shoulder to where I was putting along and wait again. It was easier on his clutch hand than trying to stay in the lane.
When the traffic finally had two lanes again, we entered the cover of a large cloud bank and the temperature dropped. We stopped to put on our Frogg Togg rain gear, which is nice and warm when worn over jackets and clothes. The temp dropped to 61 and with the wind it felt like it could snow. At North Bend, the sun came out again, it warmed up and we decided to gas up, take off the extra clothes and have some supper at a McDonald's with a really nice outside dining area, complete with fountain and pond. Norman wanted to drink the pond, even tho he had nice tap water.
The rest of the way home was fairly uneventful, the traffic wasn't even too bad thru the city. We got home about 6:30, talked to a neighbor with a new Harley for about 10 minutes and carried luggages in the house at 6:40.
While it was a much longer day than we'd ever suspected it would be, we learned more lessons which will stand us in good stead in the future. We can ride in fierce cross winds!
As you can see from the pics, the weather was clear most of the time. It was nasty, cold and dark and rainy on Saturday, but Sunday and today are beautiful and the rest of the week is forcast to be more so. It doesn't really rain all the time. In the summer. I can't believe how fast the summer has gone and how quickly true autum is coming on, turning leaves, early darkness and all. It will soon be time to park bikes for the winter and plan rides for next year.
Those sweepers down the mountain were every bit as much fun this time, maybe more so with a more powerful bike. Mr. Burgman never failed to give me power when I asked for it. However, Mr. Burgman does have a hefty appetite at 70-75 mph. I discovered he'll do 80+ fully loaded but then I decided that 80+ was liable to attract the attention of any wandering LEOs and so I do not know if he'll still do 105.
So we're home. I've seen the doc and the pain and numbness in my hand is carpal tunnel injuries, for sure in my wrists and possibly in shoulder and neck. Treatment is underway and it's getting better. I'm limited to typing in 20 minute chunks. Then I have to get up and do something else for a while to rest my hands and arms. That's another kind of pain for a keyboard junkie like me. In another 2 weeks I can try riding the bike for 1/2 hour a day. If it still hurts, I'm grounded again. Good thing it's going to be Big Wet season and not summer.
Words by Susan, Pictures by Ray, copyright 2009, all rights reserved
Breakfast was the usual hotel breakfast, but it sufficed. Norman was eager to get going once again. He knew what was coming when we packed bags and Ray started hauling them out. Let's go! Let's go! We agreed, being tired and ready for our own bed and some home cooked food. We thought we'd be home by 3:30 or so. HA! The day had other things in store for us.
We had terrible, horrible, awful gusty cross-winds all the way from Spokane to Cle Elum. At first, the winds were out of the southwest, but we passed under a narrow cloud bank and then the winds came out of the northwest. It was very hard to hold the bikes in the lane they belonged in because of wind power. The way those winds blew, I think we could have powered the entire state from wind turbines that day and had some power left over to sell to California.
It was wierd going down the highway behind Ray and his Guzzi, leaned over into the wind just so they didn't get blown over. I didn't have that problem having 3 wheels on the ground and plenty of ballast but I surely did get shoved around plenty. At one point Ray had to lean hard right in order to turn left and complete the turn in a fairly upright position.
While we stopped often, at every rest area I 90 had to offer, we only took pictures at one place. That was the Wild Horse Monument and Columbia River Overlook. It was hot in this place and there was no wind. I think all the wind was busy rushing down the river. Norman jumped up on the low wall, so he could get a good look. It was the first time he was interested in scenery. I think it was the cool breeze coming up the canyon walls and the smell of all that cool water.
Here's the bridge we will shortly be riding over. Can you see the effects of the wind on the water?
See the white caps on the Columbia?
Aliens have landed!
When we got down to the bridge from this high but windless place, we saw the windsock was sticking straight out, not a wrinkle or sag in it and we said oh-oh. And we were right. That was one difficult bridge to get across. I was grateful there was not any other traffic on the bridge to get bashed into by the wind.
We kept going in spite, stopped someplace to pick up lunch to go and ate at the next rest area we came to. Coming into Ellensburg, there's a flat place with large agricultural fields abuting the highway. The wind there had renewed purpose and set about attempting to pull my helmet off my head. At one point, I could feel the wind blowing over all my head and the helmet was raised up and twisting to the left in the wind. We came to an overpass and in the sudden quiet and wind relief, I heard a shhhhhluuup! noise and that helmet slammed down on my head like a giant had pushed it down. Helmet was still skewed to the left and not too comfy, but we had to stop for gas, so I could fix it. I surely learned what those helmet chin straps are for. Mine was cinched on good and tight but the wind got to it anyway.
In Ellensburg we saw another sidecarist at the next gas station, so we went over there to say hello. It turned out to be an elderly couple with a California sidecar on an aged Gold Wing. He said in 24,000 miles, he'd never seen another sidecarist and so we were both pleased by the meeting.
Just outside of Cle Elum, the Powers That Be decided to use some stimulus money to mess up the traffic. One lane on each side of I 90 was closed for replacement of concrete. While this is an exceedingly grand idea, that road surface being firmly in the ouch, this road sucks camp, I wish they had not been busy that particular day. We were in the back-up for an hour. For a scooter rider with a sidecar, no big deal. I just trundled along at 2-5 mph no problem. But for a motorcycle rider, the clutch hand gets a huge work out. Ray finally pulled to the side of the road and let several cars by and then he'd drive up the shoulder to where I was putting along and wait again. It was easier on his clutch hand than trying to stay in the lane.
When the traffic finally had two lanes again, we entered the cover of a large cloud bank and the temperature dropped. We stopped to put on our Frogg Togg rain gear, which is nice and warm when worn over jackets and clothes. The temp dropped to 61 and with the wind it felt like it could snow. At North Bend, the sun came out again, it warmed up and we decided to gas up, take off the extra clothes and have some supper at a McDonald's with a really nice outside dining area, complete with fountain and pond. Norman wanted to drink the pond, even tho he had nice tap water.
The rest of the way home was fairly uneventful, the traffic wasn't even too bad thru the city. We got home about 6:30, talked to a neighbor with a new Harley for about 10 minutes and carried luggages in the house at 6:40.
While it was a much longer day than we'd ever suspected it would be, we learned more lessons which will stand us in good stead in the future. We can ride in fierce cross winds!
As you can see from the pics, the weather was clear most of the time. It was nasty, cold and dark and rainy on Saturday, but Sunday and today are beautiful and the rest of the week is forcast to be more so. It doesn't really rain all the time. In the summer. I can't believe how fast the summer has gone and how quickly true autum is coming on, turning leaves, early darkness and all. It will soon be time to park bikes for the winter and plan rides for next year.
Those sweepers down the mountain were every bit as much fun this time, maybe more so with a more powerful bike. Mr. Burgman never failed to give me power when I asked for it. However, Mr. Burgman does have a hefty appetite at 70-75 mph. I discovered he'll do 80+ fully loaded but then I decided that 80+ was liable to attract the attention of any wandering LEOs and so I do not know if he'll still do 105.
So we're home. I've seen the doc and the pain and numbness in my hand is carpal tunnel injuries, for sure in my wrists and possibly in shoulder and neck. Treatment is underway and it's getting better. I'm limited to typing in 20 minute chunks. Then I have to get up and do something else for a while to rest my hands and arms. That's another kind of pain for a keyboard junkie like me. In another 2 weeks I can try riding the bike for 1/2 hour a day. If it still hurts, I'm grounded again. Good thing it's going to be Big Wet season and not summer.
Words by Susan, Pictures by Ray, copyright 2009, all rights reserved
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Day Three-Set the Dial to Broil
There wasn't much truly cool air to be found on Sunday morning, although it was pleasant enough when we got started. Once again Norman was eager to ride and thought we didn't progress from putting on motorcycle boots to leaving the parking lot fast enough. The boots are apparently his cue that a ride is in store. And don't touch his leash, or most especially, his sidecar harness until you want to use them. He doesn't understand the need to pack up stuff and load bikes. He just wants to ride.
What a beautiful road we found this morning! Curvy and hilly and scrumptious. We stopped at the overlook atop the mountain above Lewiston/Clarkston. This is another sequence we'd like to try to make into a panorama.
Take a look at that road and drool! You know you want to ride that road.
Now isn't that a lovely way to start a day?
We traveled on very nicely curved state highways to break time in a small town called Garfield. We found a small city park (flush toilets! a nice change from porta-potties and sorta-potties) and dismounted to stretch knees and rest the motorcycle seats, and drink some water. Twas getting warmer.
Norman was starting to feel the heat and enjoyed the cool concrete and irrigated (wet)green grass in the picnic shelter area.
It got hotter and hotter and hotter. And then it got hotter still. Norman's tongue hung out further and further. He's got even more black spots waaaay back there. As long as we travelled at highway speeds, we didn't feel the heat too much. But when we had to slow for a small town then we heated up pretty quickly. By the time the day was done, every piece of clothing I was wearing was stuck to me. Ick.
It must have been very miserable for Normie in his fur coat. Gas stops in the little towns (and one out in the country-nothing there but a farm road meeting the highway and a gas station/minimart--the minimart building looked like it had been there since the turn of the century) occasioned The Travelling Road Show. One time we had to stop at a shady place along the road to rest and have a drink because we could find no place else. It's really quiet out there and nobody wanted to ask The Questions. We stopped quite frequently, altho there are no pictures for the rest of the day. No spectacular scenery, but pretty farms and rolling hills alongside curvy roads took us to a junction with I-90 out of Spokane. One exit later and we were on Highway 2 and on the way to our hotel. This day was always planned to be our shortest day, and I'm glad it was because poor Norman was lying in his 'car panting like mad.
We couldn't find any place with shaded outdoor seating so we carried out from Subway. It's handy to have underseat storage at times like that. To the hotel, have lunch in our room, cool down, unload. We checked in at 2 pm, and were more than ready to retreat to the a/c and take a nap. Norman stretched out on the floor until he was cooled down and then curled up in his bed and didn't wake until pizza was delivered at 7-ish. Norman loves pizza bones (the crust edge) We didn't do much other than walk the dog the rest of the day. We needed a rest. Norman spent most of the time sleeping.
It seems to us we'll need to plan 3 days riding and a day off, 2 days riding and a day off, repeat as necessary, for our 2010 Grand Tour. We are also looking into cooling methods for the Normster. He can't perform for The Travelling Road Show if he's got heat exhaustion. Right now we're leaning toward the kind of vest the working dogs in Iraq wear, but we'll confer with the vet first.
I'm also having extreme trouble with my right arm/hand. It goes to sleep about 15 minutes into the ride. How it can be so numb and so painful at the same time, I do not understand. By this day of the trip I've tried different gloves, no gloves, different hand placement on the grip, wearing Therma Cares on my hands, everything I can think of. Sometimes I have trouble maintaining a speed because I can't tell if I've got a grip on the throttle or not. This night I woke up 3 times with the same thing going on. It has been waking me up early in the mornings ever since we got home and I even feel it during the day from time to time. A trip to the doctor is in store for me too, I can tell. It is extremely painful, all the way from my fingertips to above my elbow.
Lessons were learned the third day too. And we got to ride some truly fun roads!
Text by Susan, Photos by Ray, copyright 2009, all rights reserved
What a beautiful road we found this morning! Curvy and hilly and scrumptious. We stopped at the overlook atop the mountain above Lewiston/Clarkston. This is another sequence we'd like to try to make into a panorama.
Take a look at that road and drool! You know you want to ride that road.
Now isn't that a lovely way to start a day?
We traveled on very nicely curved state highways to break time in a small town called Garfield. We found a small city park (flush toilets! a nice change from porta-potties and sorta-potties) and dismounted to stretch knees and rest the motorcycle seats, and drink some water. Twas getting warmer.
Norman was starting to feel the heat and enjoyed the cool concrete and irrigated (wet)green grass in the picnic shelter area.
It got hotter and hotter and hotter. And then it got hotter still. Norman's tongue hung out further and further. He's got even more black spots waaaay back there. As long as we travelled at highway speeds, we didn't feel the heat too much. But when we had to slow for a small town then we heated up pretty quickly. By the time the day was done, every piece of clothing I was wearing was stuck to me. Ick.
It must have been very miserable for Normie in his fur coat. Gas stops in the little towns (and one out in the country-nothing there but a farm road meeting the highway and a gas station/minimart--the minimart building looked like it had been there since the turn of the century) occasioned The Travelling Road Show. One time we had to stop at a shady place along the road to rest and have a drink because we could find no place else. It's really quiet out there and nobody wanted to ask The Questions. We stopped quite frequently, altho there are no pictures for the rest of the day. No spectacular scenery, but pretty farms and rolling hills alongside curvy roads took us to a junction with I-90 out of Spokane. One exit later and we were on Highway 2 and on the way to our hotel. This day was always planned to be our shortest day, and I'm glad it was because poor Norman was lying in his 'car panting like mad.
We couldn't find any place with shaded outdoor seating so we carried out from Subway. It's handy to have underseat storage at times like that. To the hotel, have lunch in our room, cool down, unload. We checked in at 2 pm, and were more than ready to retreat to the a/c and take a nap. Norman stretched out on the floor until he was cooled down and then curled up in his bed and didn't wake until pizza was delivered at 7-ish. Norman loves pizza bones (the crust edge) We didn't do much other than walk the dog the rest of the day. We needed a rest. Norman spent most of the time sleeping.
It seems to us we'll need to plan 3 days riding and a day off, 2 days riding and a day off, repeat as necessary, for our 2010 Grand Tour. We are also looking into cooling methods for the Normster. He can't perform for The Travelling Road Show if he's got heat exhaustion. Right now we're leaning toward the kind of vest the working dogs in Iraq wear, but we'll confer with the vet first.
I'm also having extreme trouble with my right arm/hand. It goes to sleep about 15 minutes into the ride. How it can be so numb and so painful at the same time, I do not understand. By this day of the trip I've tried different gloves, no gloves, different hand placement on the grip, wearing Therma Cares on my hands, everything I can think of. Sometimes I have trouble maintaining a speed because I can't tell if I've got a grip on the throttle or not. This night I woke up 3 times with the same thing going on. It has been waking me up early in the mornings ever since we got home and I even feel it during the day from time to time. A trip to the doctor is in store for me too, I can tell. It is extremely painful, all the way from my fingertips to above my elbow.
Lessons were learned the third day too. And we got to ride some truly fun roads!
Text by Susan, Photos by Ray, copyright 2009, all rights reserved
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Day Two: Hell's Canyon-Good Name For It
Up early (ok, ok, it was only early to me) to eat the hotel's free breakfast, we hit the road in cool temps and clear skies. Norman was eager to ride and once again had a Traveling Road Show performance in the parking lot of the hotel. It was about 64, but the sun was so bright and hot that we were comfortable in our mesh jackets.
Today's ride was very demanding in many ways. The ride to the Canyon Recreation Area is a National Scenic Byway and quite beautiful. We stopped not too far out of Baker City to snap some pics and admire the scenery. It was sort of wide open spaces out here.
The landscape reminded us of old Western movies.
Here are Normie and I enjoying the view while Ray takes the pictures. See how the road disappears?
This was a lovely, curvy road, hilly and very little traffic. After about another hour we stopped at a rest area near a nice stream. All this day, with the exception of our lunch spot, we encountered those Sorta-Potties...permanent buildings, but no plumbing. The scenery more than made up for the facilities. We all had a nice break and the bikes rested in the only shade to be found for miles around.
If you click on the next picture you can probably read the sign that warns of 35 mph squiggles ahead. They were not kidding.
There were squiggles ahead and squiggles behind and many more to come.
We stopped at the Hole In The Wall Slide Overlook.
I enjoyed the views, Norman chased grasshoppers and Ray again took pictures.
Here you can see the shrunken river and the old road.
We passed thru the little town of Halfway. Halfway to what, I don't know, but possibly halfway to no place. The town had 2 restaurant/watering holes. At one, all the bikes out front were v-twin cruisers and at the other, right across the street, all the bikes were sport bikes. Apparently segregation is live and well in Halfway. There is no gasoline in Halfway, so perhaps it's halfway to fuel. Not the way we went though. Soon we arrived at the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area. Notice the scale of the sign and the amount of squiggles it shows.
Let me tell you, this sign vastly under represents the amount of curves and gives no idea at all of the elevation changes. The rest of the day's ride was brutal to not so bad. It was warming more every minute, eventually reaching 87, which may not sound so bad to the rest of you, but for Seattle people, 87 is HOT. The average in that location for the day is 76, so you can see it was indeed HOT.
This sign also does not tell you that for most of the ride through the rec area and beyond, the road surface is awful, with a capital A. This was way worse than last year's Road From Heck and its bad surface. This road is where extra potholes are stored and grown until needed in some city. I think the forest service (or whomever) followed an existing game trail and simply gathered up all the loose rocks they could find (and that would be a lot of rocks) and then poured hot tar over the rocks. That many bumps, dips and potholes. Dodging potholes and bumps is not such an easy thing in a sidecar, but I did get plenty of practice standing up and steering so my rear didn't get pummelled. That's easy on a scooter with those nice floorboards. It is not so easy in a hairpin curve. There was not much traffic on this road either. Some few cars/trucks and fewer motorcyclists. I have decided that's because they knew something we didn't know. This road is suitable for motocross.
This was by far the hardest, most "technical" road we've ever tried. The curves ranged from 15-35 mph and were never ending. The builders of the road were not concerned with things like camber, that's for sure. Nor did they worry about the tightness of curves or the way the curves join together, nor the width of the road. The maintainers are not much worried about actual maintenance. In some places there was not much road on the road.
But oh, my, was it ever beautiful. Although, we got mooned.
At last we made it to the canyon overlook. The Snake River is so far down in that canyon that you can't see it. The landscape was vast.
Here's the view at the overlook, which we are going to try to stitch into a panorama one day soon.
Here's Norman enjoying some shade with my scoot. Shortly after this a large group of riders came in and it was another installment of The Traveling Road Show before we got back on the road.
We hoped that the road on the other side of the overlook would show an improvement of the surface, but alas! Potholes and bumps continued. The road continued to be extremely curvy and narrow, probably a piece of cake for Kneedragger TJ and his ilk, but very hard for us. I wish we had pictures of the actual road, but between the trees, the narrowness of the road and the lack of turn outs, we have no pics of the curves. I don't know if Ray can post a track for you that will show the extent of the curviness. I hope so. We think that perhaps this road is harder to ride and curvier than Tail of the Dragon, with holes and bumps thrown in. Not to mention the cows. This is also range land and the cows to not respect the right of motorcycles to be on the road. If cows want to cross, they cross. If the cows want to hang out in the middle of the road in the middle of a blind curve, they do. And black cows can be hard to see in the heavy shade. I bet there aren't cows hanging out on the Tail. It was a very interesting and surprising ride.
Eventually we came out of the recreation area and thought the road would improve. Not much for several miles. We caught up with some state highway which gave us a bit of nice sweepers and easy curves. It was nearly 2 pm, our bikes were running on fumes and Lo! and Behold! A town! I can't remember the name of the place, but in additon to being hot and dry and sunny, it had a gas station (where the old guys at the station got a large charge out of Norman in the sidecar) and a restaurant with a shady dining porch where we could sit down and eat and Norman could cool off on the concrete. What a treat to sit on something other than a motorcycle seat. I can't tell you the name of the restaurant, but it served up what Ray said was the best chili dog he'd ever had in his life. Knowing it was 2 and that we'd probably want supper at some point, I ordered a single taco and a big soda. That "taco" filled an oval plate. It was huge, more like a cold, lettucey burrito than a taco. There were tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cheese and seasoned ground beef in a large flour tortilla. Very tasty. We saved the place in the Garmin for future reference.
Back on the road, it appeared that we'd have sweeping curves and small hills for the remainder of the day. Ha. Along the easier portion of the afternoon we stopped at another overlook for more pics. I think this is Idaho, but it might be Oregon. Maybe Ray knows. Ray says Idaho.
There were more nice curves for a bit longer.
And then we started to climb. The road surface changed to new asphalt. It was wider than the Hell's Canyon road, but not much and was packed with tight curves again. There were small to no shoulders. No place to take pictures, which is really too bad. You know what goes up must come down, and so did the road. Tighly unraveling, down we went into a valley and soon arrived, hot and sweaty and totally worn out, at the Best Western in Clarkston, Washington. We unpacked, this time in a first floor room, and Ray went across the street to bring home supper in a bag from the local fast food. It was food but not memorable.
Norman sacked out in his dog bed the minute it hit the floor and slept hard all night. He was one exhausted dog. I don't know why, I was doing all the work. Perhaps it was the heat that wore him out. It was awfully hot for us and for a dog with thick fur, it might have been even worse. He looked pretty hot most of the day and seemed to enjoy the a/c as much as we did.
Supper, a quick clean up and some tv finished us off for the day. We took breaks whenever we could find a suitable place, having learned our lesson about hydration last year. Our gas mileage today was better, Ray and I needing fuel at the same time, although my mileage was still worse than Ray's.
The Hell's Canyon road was hard for both of us. Ray said he thinks maybe once is enough for him and he didn't care if we never rode that road again. But I think if perhaps someone comes out to ride with us, he might be convinced. The going was way slower than we'd thought it would be, the road surface way crappier than it needed to be and the day was longer than we thought it would be. While we were coming out of the rec area, a small group of Wingers started up the road. I said to Ray, how can those guys on those big Wings, double up like that and several of them way rotund, manage that road? I guess they didn't, because while we were starting our lunch, that group came back past the restaurant and turned on down the highway. I admit that as hard as it was and as tired as I was, that I felt rather proud that we'd negotiated that road at respectable speeds and without mishap, despite hairpins, blind decreasing radius turns, cows, and potholes. But I gotta tell ya, my shoulders and hands hurt at the end of the day.
Norman was always the first one to want to get back on the road. If he thought we were taking too long at a stop, he'd fuss at us. On occasion, he didn't want to get out of the 'car. I think that although he missed his daily power naps, that he loves the sidecar. He surely loves stopping for lunch.
All words by Susan, all photos by Ray, copyright 2009, all rights reserved
Today's ride was very demanding in many ways. The ride to the Canyon Recreation Area is a National Scenic Byway and quite beautiful. We stopped not too far out of Baker City to snap some pics and admire the scenery. It was sort of wide open spaces out here.
The landscape reminded us of old Western movies.
Here are Normie and I enjoying the view while Ray takes the pictures. See how the road disappears?
This was a lovely, curvy road, hilly and very little traffic. After about another hour we stopped at a rest area near a nice stream. All this day, with the exception of our lunch spot, we encountered those Sorta-Potties...permanent buildings, but no plumbing. The scenery more than made up for the facilities. We all had a nice break and the bikes rested in the only shade to be found for miles around.
If you click on the next picture you can probably read the sign that warns of 35 mph squiggles ahead. They were not kidding.
There were squiggles ahead and squiggles behind and many more to come.
We stopped at the Hole In The Wall Slide Overlook.
I enjoyed the views, Norman chased grasshoppers and Ray again took pictures.
Here you can see the shrunken river and the old road.
We passed thru the little town of Halfway. Halfway to what, I don't know, but possibly halfway to no place. The town had 2 restaurant/watering holes. At one, all the bikes out front were v-twin cruisers and at the other, right across the street, all the bikes were sport bikes. Apparently segregation is live and well in Halfway. There is no gasoline in Halfway, so perhaps it's halfway to fuel. Not the way we went though. Soon we arrived at the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area. Notice the scale of the sign and the amount of squiggles it shows.
Let me tell you, this sign vastly under represents the amount of curves and gives no idea at all of the elevation changes. The rest of the day's ride was brutal to not so bad. It was warming more every minute, eventually reaching 87, which may not sound so bad to the rest of you, but for Seattle people, 87 is HOT. The average in that location for the day is 76, so you can see it was indeed HOT.
This sign also does not tell you that for most of the ride through the rec area and beyond, the road surface is awful, with a capital A. This was way worse than last year's Road From Heck and its bad surface. This road is where extra potholes are stored and grown until needed in some city. I think the forest service (or whomever) followed an existing game trail and simply gathered up all the loose rocks they could find (and that would be a lot of rocks) and then poured hot tar over the rocks. That many bumps, dips and potholes. Dodging potholes and bumps is not such an easy thing in a sidecar, but I did get plenty of practice standing up and steering so my rear didn't get pummelled. That's easy on a scooter with those nice floorboards. It is not so easy in a hairpin curve. There was not much traffic on this road either. Some few cars/trucks and fewer motorcyclists. I have decided that's because they knew something we didn't know. This road is suitable for motocross.
This was by far the hardest, most "technical" road we've ever tried. The curves ranged from 15-35 mph and were never ending. The builders of the road were not concerned with things like camber, that's for sure. Nor did they worry about the tightness of curves or the way the curves join together, nor the width of the road. The maintainers are not much worried about actual maintenance. In some places there was not much road on the road.
But oh, my, was it ever beautiful. Although, we got mooned.
At last we made it to the canyon overlook. The Snake River is so far down in that canyon that you can't see it. The landscape was vast.
Here's the view at the overlook, which we are going to try to stitch into a panorama one day soon.
Here's Norman enjoying some shade with my scoot. Shortly after this a large group of riders came in and it was another installment of The Traveling Road Show before we got back on the road.
We hoped that the road on the other side of the overlook would show an improvement of the surface, but alas! Potholes and bumps continued. The road continued to be extremely curvy and narrow, probably a piece of cake for Kneedragger TJ and his ilk, but very hard for us. I wish we had pictures of the actual road, but between the trees, the narrowness of the road and the lack of turn outs, we have no pics of the curves. I don't know if Ray can post a track for you that will show the extent of the curviness. I hope so. We think that perhaps this road is harder to ride and curvier than Tail of the Dragon, with holes and bumps thrown in. Not to mention the cows. This is also range land and the cows to not respect the right of motorcycles to be on the road. If cows want to cross, they cross. If the cows want to hang out in the middle of the road in the middle of a blind curve, they do. And black cows can be hard to see in the heavy shade. I bet there aren't cows hanging out on the Tail. It was a very interesting and surprising ride.
Eventually we came out of the recreation area and thought the road would improve. Not much for several miles. We caught up with some state highway which gave us a bit of nice sweepers and easy curves. It was nearly 2 pm, our bikes were running on fumes and Lo! and Behold! A town! I can't remember the name of the place, but in additon to being hot and dry and sunny, it had a gas station (where the old guys at the station got a large charge out of Norman in the sidecar) and a restaurant with a shady dining porch where we could sit down and eat and Norman could cool off on the concrete. What a treat to sit on something other than a motorcycle seat. I can't tell you the name of the restaurant, but it served up what Ray said was the best chili dog he'd ever had in his life. Knowing it was 2 and that we'd probably want supper at some point, I ordered a single taco and a big soda. That "taco" filled an oval plate. It was huge, more like a cold, lettucey burrito than a taco. There were tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cheese and seasoned ground beef in a large flour tortilla. Very tasty. We saved the place in the Garmin for future reference.
Back on the road, it appeared that we'd have sweeping curves and small hills for the remainder of the day. Ha. Along the easier portion of the afternoon we stopped at another overlook for more pics. I think this is Idaho, but it might be Oregon. Maybe Ray knows. Ray says Idaho.
There were more nice curves for a bit longer.
And then we started to climb. The road surface changed to new asphalt. It was wider than the Hell's Canyon road, but not much and was packed with tight curves again. There were small to no shoulders. No place to take pictures, which is really too bad. You know what goes up must come down, and so did the road. Tighly unraveling, down we went into a valley and soon arrived, hot and sweaty and totally worn out, at the Best Western in Clarkston, Washington. We unpacked, this time in a first floor room, and Ray went across the street to bring home supper in a bag from the local fast food. It was food but not memorable.
Norman sacked out in his dog bed the minute it hit the floor and slept hard all night. He was one exhausted dog. I don't know why, I was doing all the work. Perhaps it was the heat that wore him out. It was awfully hot for us and for a dog with thick fur, it might have been even worse. He looked pretty hot most of the day and seemed to enjoy the a/c as much as we did.
Supper, a quick clean up and some tv finished us off for the day. We took breaks whenever we could find a suitable place, having learned our lesson about hydration last year. Our gas mileage today was better, Ray and I needing fuel at the same time, although my mileage was still worse than Ray's.
The Hell's Canyon road was hard for both of us. Ray said he thinks maybe once is enough for him and he didn't care if we never rode that road again. But I think if perhaps someone comes out to ride with us, he might be convinced. The going was way slower than we'd thought it would be, the road surface way crappier than it needed to be and the day was longer than we thought it would be. While we were coming out of the rec area, a small group of Wingers started up the road. I said to Ray, how can those guys on those big Wings, double up like that and several of them way rotund, manage that road? I guess they didn't, because while we were starting our lunch, that group came back past the restaurant and turned on down the highway. I admit that as hard as it was and as tired as I was, that I felt rather proud that we'd negotiated that road at respectable speeds and without mishap, despite hairpins, blind decreasing radius turns, cows, and potholes. But I gotta tell ya, my shoulders and hands hurt at the end of the day.
Norman was always the first one to want to get back on the road. If he thought we were taking too long at a stop, he'd fuss at us. On occasion, he didn't want to get out of the 'car. I think that although he missed his daily power naps, that he loves the sidecar. He surely loves stopping for lunch.
All words by Susan, all photos by Ray, copyright 2009, all rights reserved
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Who Put Those Rocks In The Motorcycle Seats?
Somebody did. Ow.
We are nearly through with our latest adventure and it's been some thing. Some things good, some things not so good. Somethings were learned. But nothing was terrible and we were safe.
Here's a picture of The Norman Traveling Road Show and a couple of his admirers.
The first day we went nearly 400 miles but we got to Baker City, Oregon before dark! We went on the interstates all day and it made for a very long day indeed. We both decided that 350 miles on an interstate is more than sufficient unto a day. Didn't see much of Baker City because we stayed on the edge of town, along the road we were leaving on in the morning. Totally beat, we quickly decided to declare ourselves non-Iron Butt material and ordered a 'za from Pizza Hut. Came just when they said it would, and that happened to be concurrent with the finishing of the unloading and schlepping of multitudes of small, weighty motorcycle luggages up to the second floor.
I 90 over the Cascades is beautiful and fun and we both enjoyed that part. It was hot in Ellensburg where we stopped to have lunch and we were reminded of just why we want to live on the other side of the mountains from Ellensburg. We ended up at a Dairy Queen, hoping for some outside seating, but no such luck. Neither of us could remember any place in E-burg with outside seats. So we stood in the shade of some skinny leaved trees and ate our burgers standing up, while Norman ranged about our feet hoping for crumbs and/or onion rings to magically appear in his path. At least it rested our butts and it wasn't bad in the shade.
Leaving there we took I 84 (I think) all the way to Baker City. Parts of it were beautiful, parts of it were hilly and curvy and all of it was fast. 70+ mph doesn't feel real comfortable. One little mistake and you're toast. But everyone else wants to go that fast, so we did too. I think we arrived about 6:30. Maybe a bit earlier. All I know for sure was pizza came at 7 pm as promised.
My scoot gets horrible mileage at 70+ mph. Horrible, terrible, awful. I run out of gas before Ray does when we go that fast. We managed about 110 miles before needing to fill up so we bought many, many gallons of very expensive gasoline. We used it up like we own a Saudi oil field. Along the way we discovered just how far we can go once my gas alert starts flashing. All the way to the next gas station as it turned out. Lucky for us.
We did a fair amount of upping and downing and those lovely sweepers. Nice! Once we left I 90, there was not much traffic at all. Of course, there really is not much of anywhere to go TO out there. One thing we did notice was the difference between the entire I 5 corridor and the interstates we were traveling on this trip. Along the length of I 5, except for Shasta and some other small places in northern and central CA, there are 3 or 4 fast food places (or more) at every single interchange. You can hardly drive a half hour between our house and Los Angeles without encountering a McDonald's. On these roads less traveled, not only are the interchanges few and far between, national chain-type fast food is practically non-existent. It is good to know this, for planning The 2010 Grand Tour.
This day we also learned that shady outdoor tables have mostly gone the way of the dodo. Also good to know when traveling with a dog. We learned dogs in sidecars get as hot as the humans on the motorcycles do. Our particular dog will "sip" during the day's travel and then tank up like a camel when we are in the motel room. We learned to put his first drink down in the bathroom, where the floor can be easily dried off. We learned to park way at the end of any rest stop lots unless we want to talk to everybody and his brother, mother, sister, cousin and wife. Norman in a sidecar is worse than Morphous Wrex triked, when it comes to being an attractant.
We learned the standard Dog in a Sidecar Questions and the answers we'd like to give:
Does your dog ride in the sidecar? No, we make him run alongside.
Why has his tongue got spots? He wanted a tattoo.
Can I pet him? Sure. (followed closely by)
Will he bite me? Only if you touch him.
Does he try to jump out while you're going? Nope, he's smarter than he looks.
Is he tied in there? Nah, we just let him stand on the trunk and hang over the top of the windshield.
Does he like to ride in the sidecar? No, we force him in there.
Does he have goggles? Why, yes, there they are on his face!
Where's his helmet? O, gosh, he left it at the motel!
How does he hang on? We've got his thumbs on order.
What's his name? No-No Bad Dog.
What happened to his ears? We had them cut off so they wouldn't flap in the breeze.
What kind of a dog is that? A sidecar dog.
Where'd you get him? Junkyard.
What happens when you want to eat, like, lunch? We don't, we drink it as we go.
How long did it take you to teach him to ride in there? Where?
Where's his food? At McDonald's.
Oh, look! He drinks out of a cup! Don't you?
Can I introduce my dog? Nope. He likes people but not other dogs. (this is the actual truth)
We stayed at a Super 8 and it had a positively lovely good sleeping bed. Norman snuggled up in his sidecar dog bed after a sunset stroll around the edges of the parking lot. There were owls out hunting in the warm evening, hooting up a storm. Something was rattling in the brush and neither Norman nor I liked that sound, so we gave it a wide berth. Ray and I watched a bit of tv and went to sleep about 10. Thus ended the first day. Pictures to follow. Or be added.
We are nearly through with our latest adventure and it's been some thing. Some things good, some things not so good. Somethings were learned. But nothing was terrible and we were safe.
Here's a picture of The Norman Traveling Road Show and a couple of his admirers.
The first day we went nearly 400 miles but we got to Baker City, Oregon before dark! We went on the interstates all day and it made for a very long day indeed. We both decided that 350 miles on an interstate is more than sufficient unto a day. Didn't see much of Baker City because we stayed on the edge of town, along the road we were leaving on in the morning. Totally beat, we quickly decided to declare ourselves non-Iron Butt material and ordered a 'za from Pizza Hut. Came just when they said it would, and that happened to be concurrent with the finishing of the unloading and schlepping of multitudes of small, weighty motorcycle luggages up to the second floor.
I 90 over the Cascades is beautiful and fun and we both enjoyed that part. It was hot in Ellensburg where we stopped to have lunch and we were reminded of just why we want to live on the other side of the mountains from Ellensburg. We ended up at a Dairy Queen, hoping for some outside seating, but no such luck. Neither of us could remember any place in E-burg with outside seats. So we stood in the shade of some skinny leaved trees and ate our burgers standing up, while Norman ranged about our feet hoping for crumbs and/or onion rings to magically appear in his path. At least it rested our butts and it wasn't bad in the shade.
Leaving there we took I 84 (I think) all the way to Baker City. Parts of it were beautiful, parts of it were hilly and curvy and all of it was fast. 70+ mph doesn't feel real comfortable. One little mistake and you're toast. But everyone else wants to go that fast, so we did too. I think we arrived about 6:30. Maybe a bit earlier. All I know for sure was pizza came at 7 pm as promised.
My scoot gets horrible mileage at 70+ mph. Horrible, terrible, awful. I run out of gas before Ray does when we go that fast. We managed about 110 miles before needing to fill up so we bought many, many gallons of very expensive gasoline. We used it up like we own a Saudi oil field. Along the way we discovered just how far we can go once my gas alert starts flashing. All the way to the next gas station as it turned out. Lucky for us.
We did a fair amount of upping and downing and those lovely sweepers. Nice! Once we left I 90, there was not much traffic at all. Of course, there really is not much of anywhere to go TO out there. One thing we did notice was the difference between the entire I 5 corridor and the interstates we were traveling on this trip. Along the length of I 5, except for Shasta and some other small places in northern and central CA, there are 3 or 4 fast food places (or more) at every single interchange. You can hardly drive a half hour between our house and Los Angeles without encountering a McDonald's. On these roads less traveled, not only are the interchanges few and far between, national chain-type fast food is practically non-existent. It is good to know this, for planning The 2010 Grand Tour.
This day we also learned that shady outdoor tables have mostly gone the way of the dodo. Also good to know when traveling with a dog. We learned dogs in sidecars get as hot as the humans on the motorcycles do. Our particular dog will "sip" during the day's travel and then tank up like a camel when we are in the motel room. We learned to put his first drink down in the bathroom, where the floor can be easily dried off. We learned to park way at the end of any rest stop lots unless we want to talk to everybody and his brother, mother, sister, cousin and wife. Norman in a sidecar is worse than Morphous Wrex triked, when it comes to being an attractant.
We learned the standard Dog in a Sidecar Questions and the answers we'd like to give:
Does your dog ride in the sidecar? No, we make him run alongside.
Why has his tongue got spots? He wanted a tattoo.
Can I pet him? Sure. (followed closely by)
Will he bite me? Only if you touch him.
Does he try to jump out while you're going? Nope, he's smarter than he looks.
Is he tied in there? Nah, we just let him stand on the trunk and hang over the top of the windshield.
Does he like to ride in the sidecar? No, we force him in there.
Does he have goggles? Why, yes, there they are on his face!
Where's his helmet? O, gosh, he left it at the motel!
How does he hang on? We've got his thumbs on order.
What's his name? No-No Bad Dog.
What happened to his ears? We had them cut off so they wouldn't flap in the breeze.
What kind of a dog is that? A sidecar dog.
Where'd you get him? Junkyard.
What happens when you want to eat, like, lunch? We don't, we drink it as we go.
How long did it take you to teach him to ride in there? Where?
Where's his food? At McDonald's.
Oh, look! He drinks out of a cup! Don't you?
Can I introduce my dog? Nope. He likes people but not other dogs. (this is the actual truth)
We stayed at a Super 8 and it had a positively lovely good sleeping bed. Norman snuggled up in his sidecar dog bed after a sunset stroll around the edges of the parking lot. There were owls out hunting in the warm evening, hooting up a storm. Something was rattling in the brush and neither Norman nor I liked that sound, so we gave it a wide berth. Ray and I watched a bit of tv and went to sleep about 10. Thus ended the first day. Pictures to follow. Or be added.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Going To Hell, Hell's Canyon That Is
Friday morning we leave on a 4 day trip to the dry side of the state.
We're going to do at least one superslab day, partly to see how far we can get without being exhausted. It's research for our Grand Tour. We'll cross the mountains on I-90 and travel the interstates all day.
It's Norman's first 4-day trip and I hope he wants to get in the sidecar on the 3rd and 4th days. I'm a tad worried about the sun beating down on him all day. Can you put sunblock on dogs?
Hell's Canyon is a good motorcycle road, full of squiggles, but no rest areas and no gas stations. Planning will be required to negotiate the Canyon without mishap.
I may take the computer and make postings each evening, I haven't decided quite yet. If I don't take it, our next posting probably will be Tuesday.
It's gonna be warm over there, around 91, probably warmer in Hell's Canyon. After all, you can't expect it to be a cold day in any place named after Hell. We've been to Hell once before, on Grand Cayman Island. There's actually a place there named Hell. It has rough, rough ground with crusty black spires sticking up out of the ground in bunches and it's hot there too.
We're going to do at least one superslab day, partly to see how far we can get without being exhausted. It's research for our Grand Tour. We'll cross the mountains on I-90 and travel the interstates all day.
It's Norman's first 4-day trip and I hope he wants to get in the sidecar on the 3rd and 4th days. I'm a tad worried about the sun beating down on him all day. Can you put sunblock on dogs?
Hell's Canyon is a good motorcycle road, full of squiggles, but no rest areas and no gas stations. Planning will be required to negotiate the Canyon without mishap.
I may take the computer and make postings each evening, I haven't decided quite yet. If I don't take it, our next posting probably will be Tuesday.
It's gonna be warm over there, around 91, probably warmer in Hell's Canyon. After all, you can't expect it to be a cold day in any place named after Hell. We've been to Hell once before, on Grand Cayman Island. There's actually a place there named Hell. It has rough, rough ground with crusty black spires sticking up out of the ground in bunches and it's hot there too.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Details and Plans
Here are some interesting things from our trip last weekend. At least I think they are interesting. I've added an elevation profile from the GPS track of our Sunday trip. It starts on the coast. If you look close you will notice it starts at about 100 ft. Pacific Beach Resort is on a high bluff overlooking the ocean. We did a lot of hill climbing, we got to almost 1200 ft. Most of the rise didn't seem that noticeable. On Saturday's trip we didn't get as high as the route was closer to the coast. Here's the Google Map link if you want to look at the route we took on Sunday. You can zoom in and really see the twisties. We went 214 miles from PacBeach to the Kingston ferry landing then another 4 from the Edmonds ferry landing to home. But the last part hardly counts for anything. Saturday's trip was 248 miles.
As you read in Susan's entry it was a great time. We are planning a longer trip next weekend. I have some credit time I have to use before it expires and I lose it. So we though we would get a long ride in before the end of the good riding season here. It's already starting to rain some. It was coming down pretty hard this morning when I got up. We're glad we didn't plan anything for this weekend. We've got two possible routes depending on the weather, one down I5 and one out I90/I84 to eastern Oregon and Idaho. We are going to test our endurance on the super slab the first day. Then go through either Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area or Crater Lake. We plan to leave on Friday and return on Monday.
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