Ride With Tank

I had really high hopes for this ride and it turned out to be even better than I had imagined. We had ups and downs but it really was a great experience and one that we will never forget.

We broke the trip into threes: three days to get there, three days to see Colorado, and three days to get home.

The ride out was actually kind of fun. You know, one of the best parts of these trips is meeting people on the road. I don’t know if these people really are as nice as they seem – maybe it is only because our friendship only lasts 10 minutes and we don’t have enough time to piss each other off -, but I really do enjoy and have some great memories of some of the people we have met. Below you see BMW Al. He almost had me convinced to buy a BMW.

I noticed on the map that we would be going right past the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, so we decided to stop and see it. It really is a big place. Once again, the people we ran into were extremely helpful. There were two people working security at the entrance and they really helped make our visit great. She saw us taking a picture of the main building and came over to us and asked us if we wanted her to turn on the fountain! We said yes, and they turned it on! We were limited on time and had to choose between seeing the museum or taking a bus ride around the track. We decided we had been sitting plenty all day and it would be better to see the museum. It was a very reasonable $3 to see the museum. When I bought the ticket I told them I wanted to take a lap around the track expecting them to be really bored by the one millionth person to say that, but instead she said “That happens tomorrow”. Turns out there was a motorcycle rally of some sort across the street and on Sunday part of it was to take a lap around the track! You know it was a bummer to be there a day early and miss that opportunity but we had a great visit anyway.

We were pretty excited to see the St. Louis Arch. Illinois had a big, big speed trap going right at the Missouri border. Luckily I noticed the guy sitting on the middle of the overpass shooting radar. He was radioing to other cruisers on the freeway who to pull over. There must have been 8 people pulled over on the other side of that bridge. We were lucky that we had not been bitten by the speed bug yet and were only running about 75 – 80 MPH and I noticed him in plenty of time. If they had set one of these up in Kansas, Colorado, or Nebraska we would probably still be in jail.

Anyway, I don’t like St. Louis. They would not let us park in the parking lot to see the arch! The guy gave me some crap about the ground is too steep to park a bike on, but we would not have had a problem mostly because we are not total idiots. Since we only wanted a quick picture I did not want to park a couple of miles away so I decided to take the only option they left me with. I drove the bike up on the sidewalk, parked it, and took my picture. St. Louis sucks and the arch isn’t all that great anyway.

 

In Kansas we came across a ghost town. Thing is, this was not the type of ghost town we expected to see. I am telling you this entire town was abandoned. It was actually a little bit creepy. We found quite a bit of this sort of thing on the ride and I really don’t know why. I don’t know if maybe it is the Wal Mart / big giant truckstop thing putting these places out of business or what. Many of the places we stopped at were abandoned. The Wal Mart thing might be it because this trip really impressed upon me how big of a company Wal Mart has become. I honestly believe that over 3% of all trucks on the road are Wal Mart trucks. I mean, they were everywhere we went. Plus, we saw Wal Mart stores everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Maybe Wal Mart is the antichrist.

Kansas was a really big surprise to me. I really enjoyed Kansas. We did see the expected huge expanses of nothingness, but there is much more to Kansas than just nothingness. Some parts were absolutely breathtaking. One area of the state had these really unusual hills that were not all that tall, but the sides were very steep with flat tops. I know there must be some geological reason these hills formed this way and I intend to look that up. Unfortunately, we did not get any pictures of these areas because everywhere we stopped there was nothing to take a picture of. Kansas is where we were helped out by John and Elizabeth. These two were really nice and gave us a few pointers and maps. They tried to give us directions to a good steak place for dinner that night but we got all screwed up and could not find it. The next morning on our way out of town we saw it with not problem and I could not figure out how we had missed it.

Let me tell you about wind. I used to think I knew what wind was. I used to think I had ridden on windy days. Let me tell you, I know know what a windy day really is. The further west we got the windier it got. When we got off I70 in Colorado to start heading towards Pikes Peak we learned what it is really like to ride in wind. Off to our left there was a really ugly storm brewing. The wind was coming across the plains so hard it was genuinely difficult to keep the bike heading straight. I mean, I just cannot impress upon people how brutal this wind was. Lucky for us the storm missed us, but by the time we got to this little general store to get a bite to eat we were totally exhausted from battling this wind.

We were very surprised by our motel we stayed in at Pikes Peak. This is what they call a motel with “character”. You can get an idea by looking at the picture of the room below. The funny thing was that our room was built on a hill, and they did nothing to attempt to make the floor level! You can see the downhill slope in the picture – the floor inside has the exact same slope. We slept with our heads a foot lower than our feet! The toilet was set back inside a little cubby hole and the walls were about 20 inches apart. We all had serious doubts as to whether I could even fit inside this cubby hole. It turned out that not only could I fit, but I would squeeze in there quite often, but that part of the story comes later.

The night we arrived we took a short stroll over to the Garden of the Gods. This was a very impressive place. It was almost dark but it was unlike anything I had ever seen before in person.

The next day I just was dying to start the ride up Pikes Peak. I woke up super early so I went out and scouted out the way there before the other guys woke up. I arrived at the entrance before the mountain was open. Who knew a mountain could be closed? I headed back to the motel and waited for the other guys to wake up. We arrived back at the base after the mountain was open and each paid our $10 fee for entering. It turned out the ride was not nearly as scary as people had told us. There were parts in the dirt section that were wickedly bumpy, but all in all the road was extremely well maintained.

Halfway up I began to feel a little strange. To put it in a nice way lets just say my digestive tract was not working the way it is supposed to. This was where I made my first of many, many visits to the toilet over the next 24 hours. Still, I was not feeling that bad and was still enjoying the ride.

By the time we got to the top it was another story. I’m telling you, I was one messed up dude. I really don’t know exactly what caused this, but we suspect it was a combination of the Chinese food I had eaten the night before, the extreme sunburn on every exposed part of my body, lack of sleep, who knows, maybe even dehydration. All I know is I was dizzy, exhausted, short of breath, and could poop my pants at any minute. I was miserable. I went to the gift shop to suck on oxygen but that did me no good whatsoever. The sad thing is after all that anticipation all I really wanted to do was get off that mountain.

The ride back down was nothing but pure misery for me. It is a miracle I even made it back to the motel due to my disoriented state of mind. We got back to the motel at about 2 o’clock and I just went to bet. I slept pretty much all day and all night, with a trip to the tiny toilet about every hour. I felt bad that I was screwing up the trip for Jim and Mark, and I really did screw things up. Those guys are the best, they never even let me see their disappointment even though I know they must have been really bummed out. The guys even bought me some medicine to help revive me. I have said it before and I will say it again, those guys are the best riding buddies anybody could ever have.

The next day I woke up feeling much better.  I was not fully recovered, but I was well enough to travel and to enjoy it.  We headed north and stopped at the Florissant Fossil Beds park.  I was a little disappointed because I wanted to see dinosaurs but mostly all that was there was big tree stumps.  We left there on Rt. 24 headed west when we found the view pictured below.  This was one of those places where a picture really does not do it justice.  This might be the singe most scenic spot on the face of the earth.  The half hour our so we spent here made the whole three day ordeal to get to Colorado worth it.  Not far from there 24 starts heading north and into the city of Leadville, which is supposed to be the highest elevation city in North America.  It was a really nice little town and we stopped there for chili and ice cream.

From Leadville we took 91 north back to I70.  We thought we would save some time by taking 70 east to 119 which we would take to Estes Park.  We were wrong.  We got into some of the worst traffic jams you could ever imagine, and to make matters worse there did not even seem to be any reason for the traffic jams.  In fact, to make matters even worse I almost pooped my pants sitting in traffic.  That would have been bad.  Lucky for me I made it.

Just outside of Estes Park we saw some elk in the road and I thought it was really exciting.  We took 34 east into Loveland and I have to say that section of 34 between Estes Park and Loveland is an extremely excellent road.  Deals Gap is my favorite road and Rt. 250 in West Virginia has always been my second favorite road, but 34 west of Loveland might be better than 250.  If you are ever in the area, do not miss this road.

Rocky Mountain National Park was very excellent. Maybe I enjoyed this day the most because by now I had fully recovered from whatever disease was ravaging my intestinal tract. We were stopping about every 5 miles to take in the views. We ran into a little snow, hail, and rain when we got to the Alpine Visitor Center so we stayed there and visited. This is where Mark made his very noble climb to the top of the hill, which is well documented on the video. The weather cleared up and we rode the rest of the way across the park. Once we reached the other side it began to appear that the weather was changing for the worse again. Since we had taken so long to get through the park the only way we could arrive back at our motel in a reasonable time frame was to ride back across the park, so we geared up for the second crossing.

The second crossing was very much different from the first. We rode in the most terrible conditions I have ever been in. Last year when we came back from Deals Gap we got into that extremely thick fog, and until the second crossing that had been the worst conditions ever. It is hard to believe, but we had fog just as thick as that day, plus it was 38 degrees, plus it was snowing, plus we had hail, plus we had rain, and I still can’t believe it, but we had unbelievable wind. I honestly did not know it was even possible to have thick soupy fog and 70mph winds at the same time! There were periods where I really began to fear for our lives. We were all very relieved to return to more normal altitudes and more normal weather.

 

It was a bummer to have to leave Colorado after only three days, but we had to go.  We left Loveland north on I25 and could see the mountains off to the west the whole way north.  I really was genuinely sad to be leaving.  We went north so we could say we had been to Wyoming.  We were going to eat breakfast there so we stopped in a nice little town called Burns.  The local law enforcement there informed us that they had no place to eat in town, but Pine Bluff further down the road did.  She seemed a little nervous about getting her picture taken, but I promised I would not put it on a porn site and all was well.  Once again we fought the wind across Wyoming and Nebraska.  If I lived out there I would get pretty sick of the wind. 

The ride across Nebraska was pure misery.  It was around 100 degrees mostly the whole way across.  It was hard to believe we were risking being frozen alive only the day before.  Iowa was just like being back in Ohio.  At least the temperature the next day across Iowa and Illinois was a normal temperature.  We spent that night in Peru, IL, and it was an interesting town.  It seems like they had seen better days but we did get a very excellent prime rib dinner there. 

The next day was the last leg of the trip and I think everyone was ready to get home.  We really dragged our feet on this leg but we were all getting pretty run down by this point.  I think it took me about 3 days to get rested back up from the trip.  It really was a spectacular trip and one that I will remember all my life, but next time I think I will make it a two week trip instead of a one week.