This was to be my 4th Saddle Sore, and the plan was to make it my best time yet. Plans change.
Right after the pre-ride briefing on Thursday night, I copied the route map, then retired to my room & set about to plot the route in my ancient, but reasonably adequate Street Pilot III. This process was extremely time consuming; creating points along the route, and then adding them to the route in succession. No room for mistakes here, or else I’d have to start all over.
I finally got to bed around 10:30, and had a really hard time fading off to sleep. Next thing I know, it’s 2:50 am, & I gotta get up. My ass was draggin’! I was probably the last one to the start line at 3:45, whereupon I realized it might be a good idea to replace the dark helmet visor with the clear one. Dumbass, this should have been done last night! Better make one last visit to the little boy’s room, too. I’m back outside by 3:57, and start wiring myself up for GPS & RD audio. The whole pack takes off, and I’m left standing under the hotel canopy doing all sorts of last minute business.
I pulled out of the parking lot, and the GPS dings, “arriving at destination, on left.” WTF??? I toggle to the turn-by-turn screen and there’s nothing there, except for the other hotel driveway, a couple hundred feet away. You gotta be kidding me! All of the waypoints in my supposedly saved route were gone. I rode around the corner, out of sight of the well-wishers at the hotel entrance, dismounted, and dug out the map. I plotted a route to the first required photo stop, which ate up a good 10 minutes.
It was pretty slow going between Park City & Heber City, because there were deer and skunks all over the place. I topped off in Heber, & proceeded south to Provo. I got a little lost there, and wasted another half hour or so there, trying to figure out where the hell I was at, and telling the GPS where I wanted to go, instead of it taking me as far off course as it wanted me to.
I jumped onto US 6 where I came upon the first road construction of the day. The road was reduced to a single lane and they were piloting cars through, one direction at a time. I fell into place at the back of the line just in time, because the traffic in front of me was being led through. All of a sudden, the flagger’s sign turns from SLOW to STOP, just as I approached. WTF? The guy handed me a 2' wooden dowel with an orange flag wrapped around it. He pointed up the road and muttered something. We were right next to a loud light generator, & I told him I couldn’t hear him since I had earplugs in, and asked him to repeat. What’s he do?... turns to face up the road, points up there and mutters away again. “Dude, talk to ME (pointing at my own face), I can’t HEAR you!” This knucklehead wants me to carry this flag however far it was up the road to the flagger on the other end. I asked him, “where the f*** am I supposed to put it??!!” I laid it across the handlebars & did a quick lock to lock steering check. Good to go, but if I had to do it again, I’d have to told him to find someone else to do it. At least I was down the road then.
There were even more deer in the mountains on the way to the 1st photo stop, so the pace remained agonizingly slow. From there, I plotted the 2nd & 3rd photo stops and motored on, south toward Loa. Now, instead of deer, I faced multiple herds of cows & their calves on or near the highway. Great, let’s see if we can slow my progress down a little more, shall we?
Everything went fairly smoothly until about 30 miles north of Loa. I came out of a long, fast sweeper, and I don’t remember what I was gawking at, but I didn’t see the big, green, steamy-fresh cowpie until it was too late. The front wheel literally blasted through it, covering my right foot & ankle and showering most of the right side of my motorcycle as well as a good part of the left side. Even at speed, the smell was pretty intense. The gas station attendant in Loa was kind enough to let me use the hose to get the bulk of it off me & the bike. This was the first of several 7 minute gas stops that turned into a 30 minute adventure.
Off to Photo stop #3 at Cedar Breaks Nat’l Monument. I got to calculating fuel range between the last refill at Loa, and the next required photo stop in Escalante. That 230ish mile distance was my pushing my range limit, so I felt that another fuel stop in Panguitch might be in order. Okay, this time it will just be a quick stop... gas up, take some mileage notes, top off the water jug & get going. Riiiiiiiight. Everything went well until the ‘get going’ part. The GPS voice was only coming into one ear, and a sound check on the RD was even worse... the chirps were barely audible through static. A similar problem in Montana a couple weeks ago took a long time to diagnose but it was a fairly easy fix. Another effort was more or less fruitless, although I did manage to get sound out of both devices, but it was weak & only coming into one ear. Another 25 minutes to make up.
I finally made it to the entrance at Cedar Breaks. I unhooked, dismounted, dug out the Polaroid & rally towel, took the picture of the entrance sign, labeled it, put everything away, mounted up, hooked up, & went on down the road. I had to repeat the process a few moments later when it became apparent that I took a picture of the wrong goddam sign. Yyyyou dipshit. Adding to the misery was the unexpectedly high traffic volume traveling at or under the 45 mph limit, mile after mile of double yellow center line, and frequent K and Ka band hits from unseen sources. Traffic opened up a little bit outside of the park, and I made an attempt to make up some time. The attempt was negated a few miles later, when I absolutely had to stop & take a nature break. One step forward, 2 steps back.
I knew in advance that the gas stop in Escalante wasn’t going to be an in & out affair. The morning chill was long gone, and I had to make a wardrobe adjustment. I ate a candy bar while waiting for the restroom, and there was another fellow in line behind me. I offered him the opportunity to go before me since I was going to change clothes. I don’t know what the hell he did in there, but I’m sure he took longer than I did. Meanwhile, the clock kept ticking and my overall average speed was dipping well below 45 mph.
For the last couple hours, I’d been watching the clouds building storms all around. Between Escalante & Torrey, it became very apparent that I was fixing to become extremely wet. One of the most famed motorcycle roads in Utah, and I wasn’t really going to be able to enjoy it for what it was. Not all of it anyway. The scenery was spectacular and awe inspiring until the rain hit, and then it was just pure misery. As if torrential rain wasn’t bad enough, why don’t we throw in a little pea sized hail at high velocity? I crawled along as far as I could, until I just couldn’t see anymore. I pulled into a campground entrance and took shelter under a huge pine tree to throw on my rain gear. I didn’t want to take the time to do that, but the temperature was now down in the mid 60's, and I was drenched to the skin. After a brief, but intense lightning storm, the rain subsided a bit & I decided to get going again. I didn’t have to ride in the rain much longer (go figure), but I didn’t want to take the time to stop again and put away the rain gear. I kept it on until Torrey, and no sooner had I taken it off when I hit another little squall entering Capitol Reef Nat’l Park. Screw it, at least it’s warm out. Naturally, it was slow going through that short little stretch of the park, and I was 2nd in line behind a Ranger, who was pinging everything in sight. I was now halfway through my assigned mission and was on pace to take the full 24 hours to finish. Just shoot me.
After jumping onto UT95 at Hanksville, it looked like I would have an opportunity to make up some time. There was NO traffic, weather was clear & bright, no wind, and the temperature was up in the high 90's. Again, the scenery was amazing along this stretch, but there was no time to stop & memorialize it. Damn shame, guess I’ll have to come back someday. This little bit of forward progress was rather short lived, as I ran into another series of intense rain showers at the south end of the 95 loop. The cross wind was awful, too. Traction didn’t seem to be an issue, so I pressed on. The rain let up enough to allow for photo #5 at the entrance to Natural Bridges Nat’l Monument, but it was wet the rest of the way into Monticello.
The fill-up there at Monticello was quick & smooth, but an attempt to grab a quick bite was not. Of course! I was mighty foolish to believe that it would be. There was an on-location Taco Time, and it must have been break time right after I placed my order. I polished off a bottle of water and a RedBull while waiting for my chow, and just about asked for a refund when they called my number. Turns out I didn’t have much of an appetite after all. So then I wasted a few more minutes swapping out visors and rearranging the contents of my saddlebags. By now, everything was out of place & it took forever to find whatever I was looking for.
Wouldn’t you know it, the temperature started falling pretty quickly as I finally left Monticello, and the sun was sinking close to the horizon. Maybe I ought to layer up a little bit before I get too far. I stopped at the rest area not too far north of there and threw my jeans & long sleeve shirt back on. Of course, as soon as I pull into Moab around 9 PM, traffic is stop & go all the way through town, and it’s 91 fuggin degrees out! Give me a friggin break, PLEASE!
I was grateful for the extra layers a short time later, when I got into more rain & cold temps on the way to Cisco and the final photo stop. The wind was howling and it took several attempts to take the requisite picture of the rally towel and the target -- at night -- with a Polaroid -- and I can’t find one of the extra film packs since the camera was out of film. I finally got ‘er done, and then enjoyed some I-70 miles, even though there was a little more rain to deal with. If there was a bright spot to all of the rain I saw, at least it served to wash away a bit more of the cow crap, until I could give my FJR a thorough cleaning later on.
Believe it or not, I actually pulled off a successful gas stop at Green River. Last one of the day, in & out of there in less than 10 minutes. Next unplanned stop was up the road in Price. By now, the water in my jug had grown rather tepid, & I could really use some fresh, cool water about now. Not to mention the opportunity to unkink my legs a little bit.
What should have been the last hour or so between Price & Park City, was actually about 2 hours & change. Now it was almost 1:00 in the morning, and the deer were back out in full force. I didn’t have any near misses with any of them running out to attack me, but there was a close call with a fresh kill in my lane, with the victim vehicle parked a few hundred feet away with its flashers on and the left side all smashed up. The deer was still twitching, and I thought about turning around to take care of it, and check on the people. The folks were outside of the car, one was on the phone, and another was walking back toward the deer with a flashlight. Looked like they had it all under control so I kept going.
I made it back up to the same construction zone I hit almost 22 hours ago, but this time I had to wait quite a while before they let us west-bounders go. Plenty of time to jump off, walk around and stretch a bit. That’s when I discovered that I had forgot to put the drinking tube back into my jug back there at Price, and now the south end of my tube was thrashed. It had become wrapped up somewhere in or near the rear wheel, and it was unsalvageable. Fuggit, I was almost home. Any water I might need would come while off the motorcycle, and I’d be glad to have it drip down my front. It was a lot warmer here than it was at the start of the trip.
I finally rolled under the hotel canopy at 3:00 AM, right after two of the BBG riders finished their ride with more than an hour to spare. Lucky bastages! If I only I could experience such efficiency.
In the end, it really was a great ride. I never would have expected that Utah’s interior would be so beautiful. Sure, you can see a few interesting (if not spectacular) things along I-70 & I-80, even on a few stretches of the more heavily traveled secondary roads. But you haven’t seen diddly until you get off the beaten path and take in that much of what Utah has to offer. Thanks to all involved who put it together. I will be back!
Right after the pre-ride briefing on Thursday night, I copied the route map, then retired to my room & set about to plot the route in my ancient, but reasonably adequate Street Pilot III. This process was extremely time consuming; creating points along the route, and then adding them to the route in succession. No room for mistakes here, or else I’d have to start all over.
I finally got to bed around 10:30, and had a really hard time fading off to sleep. Next thing I know, it’s 2:50 am, & I gotta get up. My ass was draggin’! I was probably the last one to the start line at 3:45, whereupon I realized it might be a good idea to replace the dark helmet visor with the clear one. Dumbass, this should have been done last night! Better make one last visit to the little boy’s room, too. I’m back outside by 3:57, and start wiring myself up for GPS & RD audio. The whole pack takes off, and I’m left standing under the hotel canopy doing all sorts of last minute business.
I pulled out of the parking lot, and the GPS dings, “arriving at destination, on left.” WTF??? I toggle to the turn-by-turn screen and there’s nothing there, except for the other hotel driveway, a couple hundred feet away. You gotta be kidding me! All of the waypoints in my supposedly saved route were gone. I rode around the corner, out of sight of the well-wishers at the hotel entrance, dismounted, and dug out the map. I plotted a route to the first required photo stop, which ate up a good 10 minutes.
It was pretty slow going between Park City & Heber City, because there were deer and skunks all over the place. I topped off in Heber, & proceeded south to Provo. I got a little lost there, and wasted another half hour or so there, trying to figure out where the hell I was at, and telling the GPS where I wanted to go, instead of it taking me as far off course as it wanted me to.
I jumped onto US 6 where I came upon the first road construction of the day. The road was reduced to a single lane and they were piloting cars through, one direction at a time. I fell into place at the back of the line just in time, because the traffic in front of me was being led through. All of a sudden, the flagger’s sign turns from SLOW to STOP, just as I approached. WTF? The guy handed me a 2' wooden dowel with an orange flag wrapped around it. He pointed up the road and muttered something. We were right next to a loud light generator, & I told him I couldn’t hear him since I had earplugs in, and asked him to repeat. What’s he do?... turns to face up the road, points up there and mutters away again. “Dude, talk to ME (pointing at my own face), I can’t HEAR you!” This knucklehead wants me to carry this flag however far it was up the road to the flagger on the other end. I asked him, “where the f*** am I supposed to put it??!!” I laid it across the handlebars & did a quick lock to lock steering check. Good to go, but if I had to do it again, I’d have to told him to find someone else to do it. At least I was down the road then.
There were even more deer in the mountains on the way to the 1st photo stop, so the pace remained agonizingly slow. From there, I plotted the 2nd & 3rd photo stops and motored on, south toward Loa. Now, instead of deer, I faced multiple herds of cows & their calves on or near the highway. Great, let’s see if we can slow my progress down a little more, shall we?
Everything went fairly smoothly until about 30 miles north of Loa. I came out of a long, fast sweeper, and I don’t remember what I was gawking at, but I didn’t see the big, green, steamy-fresh cowpie until it was too late. The front wheel literally blasted through it, covering my right foot & ankle and showering most of the right side of my motorcycle as well as a good part of the left side. Even at speed, the smell was pretty intense. The gas station attendant in Loa was kind enough to let me use the hose to get the bulk of it off me & the bike. This was the first of several 7 minute gas stops that turned into a 30 minute adventure.
Off to Photo stop #3 at Cedar Breaks Nat’l Monument. I got to calculating fuel range between the last refill at Loa, and the next required photo stop in Escalante. That 230ish mile distance was my pushing my range limit, so I felt that another fuel stop in Panguitch might be in order. Okay, this time it will just be a quick stop... gas up, take some mileage notes, top off the water jug & get going. Riiiiiiiight. Everything went well until the ‘get going’ part. The GPS voice was only coming into one ear, and a sound check on the RD was even worse... the chirps were barely audible through static. A similar problem in Montana a couple weeks ago took a long time to diagnose but it was a fairly easy fix. Another effort was more or less fruitless, although I did manage to get sound out of both devices, but it was weak & only coming into one ear. Another 25 minutes to make up.
I finally made it to the entrance at Cedar Breaks. I unhooked, dismounted, dug out the Polaroid & rally towel, took the picture of the entrance sign, labeled it, put everything away, mounted up, hooked up, & went on down the road. I had to repeat the process a few moments later when it became apparent that I took a picture of the wrong goddam sign. Yyyyou dipshit. Adding to the misery was the unexpectedly high traffic volume traveling at or under the 45 mph limit, mile after mile of double yellow center line, and frequent K and Ka band hits from unseen sources. Traffic opened up a little bit outside of the park, and I made an attempt to make up some time. The attempt was negated a few miles later, when I absolutely had to stop & take a nature break. One step forward, 2 steps back.
I knew in advance that the gas stop in Escalante wasn’t going to be an in & out affair. The morning chill was long gone, and I had to make a wardrobe adjustment. I ate a candy bar while waiting for the restroom, and there was another fellow in line behind me. I offered him the opportunity to go before me since I was going to change clothes. I don’t know what the hell he did in there, but I’m sure he took longer than I did. Meanwhile, the clock kept ticking and my overall average speed was dipping well below 45 mph.
For the last couple hours, I’d been watching the clouds building storms all around. Between Escalante & Torrey, it became very apparent that I was fixing to become extremely wet. One of the most famed motorcycle roads in Utah, and I wasn’t really going to be able to enjoy it for what it was. Not all of it anyway. The scenery was spectacular and awe inspiring until the rain hit, and then it was just pure misery. As if torrential rain wasn’t bad enough, why don’t we throw in a little pea sized hail at high velocity? I crawled along as far as I could, until I just couldn’t see anymore. I pulled into a campground entrance and took shelter under a huge pine tree to throw on my rain gear. I didn’t want to take the time to do that, but the temperature was now down in the mid 60's, and I was drenched to the skin. After a brief, but intense lightning storm, the rain subsided a bit & I decided to get going again. I didn’t have to ride in the rain much longer (go figure), but I didn’t want to take the time to stop again and put away the rain gear. I kept it on until Torrey, and no sooner had I taken it off when I hit another little squall entering Capitol Reef Nat’l Park. Screw it, at least it’s warm out. Naturally, it was slow going through that short little stretch of the park, and I was 2nd in line behind a Ranger, who was pinging everything in sight. I was now halfway through my assigned mission and was on pace to take the full 24 hours to finish. Just shoot me.
After jumping onto UT95 at Hanksville, it looked like I would have an opportunity to make up some time. There was NO traffic, weather was clear & bright, no wind, and the temperature was up in the high 90's. Again, the scenery was amazing along this stretch, but there was no time to stop & memorialize it. Damn shame, guess I’ll have to come back someday. This little bit of forward progress was rather short lived, as I ran into another series of intense rain showers at the south end of the 95 loop. The cross wind was awful, too. Traction didn’t seem to be an issue, so I pressed on. The rain let up enough to allow for photo #5 at the entrance to Natural Bridges Nat’l Monument, but it was wet the rest of the way into Monticello.
The fill-up there at Monticello was quick & smooth, but an attempt to grab a quick bite was not. Of course! I was mighty foolish to believe that it would be. There was an on-location Taco Time, and it must have been break time right after I placed my order. I polished off a bottle of water and a RedBull while waiting for my chow, and just about asked for a refund when they called my number. Turns out I didn’t have much of an appetite after all. So then I wasted a few more minutes swapping out visors and rearranging the contents of my saddlebags. By now, everything was out of place & it took forever to find whatever I was looking for.
Wouldn’t you know it, the temperature started falling pretty quickly as I finally left Monticello, and the sun was sinking close to the horizon. Maybe I ought to layer up a little bit before I get too far. I stopped at the rest area not too far north of there and threw my jeans & long sleeve shirt back on. Of course, as soon as I pull into Moab around 9 PM, traffic is stop & go all the way through town, and it’s 91 fuggin degrees out! Give me a friggin break, PLEASE!
I was grateful for the extra layers a short time later, when I got into more rain & cold temps on the way to Cisco and the final photo stop. The wind was howling and it took several attempts to take the requisite picture of the rally towel and the target -- at night -- with a Polaroid -- and I can’t find one of the extra film packs since the camera was out of film. I finally got ‘er done, and then enjoyed some I-70 miles, even though there was a little more rain to deal with. If there was a bright spot to all of the rain I saw, at least it served to wash away a bit more of the cow crap, until I could give my FJR a thorough cleaning later on.
Believe it or not, I actually pulled off a successful gas stop at Green River. Last one of the day, in & out of there in less than 10 minutes. Next unplanned stop was up the road in Price. By now, the water in my jug had grown rather tepid, & I could really use some fresh, cool water about now. Not to mention the opportunity to unkink my legs a little bit.
What should have been the last hour or so between Price & Park City, was actually about 2 hours & change. Now it was almost 1:00 in the morning, and the deer were back out in full force. I didn’t have any near misses with any of them running out to attack me, but there was a close call with a fresh kill in my lane, with the victim vehicle parked a few hundred feet away with its flashers on and the left side all smashed up. The deer was still twitching, and I thought about turning around to take care of it, and check on the people. The folks were outside of the car, one was on the phone, and another was walking back toward the deer with a flashlight. Looked like they had it all under control so I kept going.
I made it back up to the same construction zone I hit almost 22 hours ago, but this time I had to wait quite a while before they let us west-bounders go. Plenty of time to jump off, walk around and stretch a bit. That’s when I discovered that I had forgot to put the drinking tube back into my jug back there at Price, and now the south end of my tube was thrashed. It had become wrapped up somewhere in or near the rear wheel, and it was unsalvageable. Fuggit, I was almost home. Any water I might need would come while off the motorcycle, and I’d be glad to have it drip down my front. It was a lot warmer here than it was at the start of the trip.
I finally rolled under the hotel canopy at 3:00 AM, right after two of the BBG riders finished their ride with more than an hour to spare. Lucky bastages! If I only I could experience such efficiency.
In the end, it really was a great ride. I never would have expected that Utah’s interior would be so beautiful. Sure, you can see a few interesting (if not spectacular) things along I-70 & I-80, even on a few stretches of the more heavily traveled secondary roads. But you haven’t seen diddly until you get off the beaten path and take in that much of what Utah has to offer. Thanks to all involved who put it together. I will be back!
Last edited by a moderator:
