" I haven't been everywhere....."Mount Rushmore

"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list"     Susan Sontag

We spent today droning across featureless prairie, but yesterday we crossed 4 places off our list.

Devil's Tower, featured in the movie "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind'

Sturgis South Dakota, site of the worlds largest annual motorcycle rally

Mount Rushmore ( The clouds were kinda low that day )

Crazy Horse Memorial - That's a 50 foot tall Excavator sitting up there on the flat part.

The Zombie Apocalypse Is Coming!!!!

If any of you have ever seen the tailgate of either one of my pickup trucks you couldn't help noticing the stickers - Skydive This! Jump That! Get Stuffed! - that completely covered them. When the stickers started to spread down the sides of the truck, I sold them. For the last year and a half during my travels I've been collecting stickers for the side cases on my bike. We were on our way out of a souvenir store in Cody when we walked past a display of knives unlike anything I've ever seen. It was huge! And scary! There were machetes and bayonets, tomahawks and spring loaded lock blades, stilettos and hunting knives almost as big as the machetes. On the top stood a sign " The Zombie Apocalypse Is Coming! Arm Yourselves Now!"

I was in there looking for a sticker, Ray was looking for jewelry. He's in trouble. It turns out that while he remembered to call his wife on their anniversary, he forgot to leave behind a card for her for the 10th anniversary of their first date. Really! I figure I'm doing well if I remember things like birthdays and Valentines day, but he 10th anniversary of a first date? Nonetheless Ray was clearly in the doghouse, so ever since he has been buying jewelry for his wife. The first thing he bought her was a pair of earrings from a gas station. Yes, it was a gas station/cafe/bar/grocery store on a mountain road in the middle of nowhere, yes they were hand made locally, but they were from a gas station!!!!

If I got a gift for my significant other at a gas station I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be anything significant going on for a long time after that. Then he picked up some necklaces for her in Yellowstone, and still he continues to search.

Me? Well, my girlfriend supports a homeless shelter, and so every time we check into a hotel I've been grabbing all the soap bars and shampoo bottles to give to her to give to the homeless.

Ray is stockpiling jewelry and I'm collecting soap, and he's the one in trouble?

When we got back to the bikes a local guy pulled up to ask me about my saddle bags, he has the same bike and hadn't been able to find anything he liked. He offered some great tips about our planned route, pointing out that the pass we had planned on taking through the Bighorn mountains was still closed and suggested an alternative. The alternative route went over a 9,046 ft. pass, in less than an hour we went from the heat of the high plain, climbed a canyon full of switchbacks, hit rain, then snow, sleet, more rain, coming out the other side to hot sunshine and an Espresso-Tapas bar in the town of Buffalo Wyoming.

Buffalo is the arch-rival of the next town over which was called Gillette, our destination for the night. According to our waitress, a sweet, young, corn fed, innocent, naive, blond haired blue-eyed bubble-head, if you're from Gillette you're only slightly above an amoeba in intelligence, and responsible for most of what is wrong with the world in general, and Wyoming in particular. She also recommended against our planned route, and instead tried to talk us into going in a completely different direction. I don't know if she's right about Gillette, but we should have taken her advice about roadways. Most of the road was great, a tour through the Badlands, long sweeping curves with easy elevation changes. Then we hit construction. Five or six miles being led by a pilot vehicle through the worst conditions I've ever taken a road bike. Every type of earth moving equipment moving earth everywhere, loose dirt heaped in random mounds, sometimes soaked by a water truck to keep the dust down but making the rutted and cratered surface greasy and even more treacherous for a two wheeled vehicle with high performance street tires.

Speaking only for ourselves and not for our waitress, we were awfully happy to see Gillette.

When I was in the lobby this morning getting coffee on my way back from unlocking my bike an oriental gentleman came up beside me, pointed at the lock and asked "Is that for a bicycle?"

"No, it's for my motorcycle."

"What kind of motorcycle?"

"A Yamaha FZ1."

"I always wanted a motorcycle," he said wistfully, "but my wife said if I ever got one she'd divorce me."

With a perfectly straight face I asked him "Do you miss her?"

He thought it was funny as hell, but his wife, who was standing behind me, thought otherwise. She stepped out from behind me, began smacking him about the head and shoulders, and started scolding him in rapid-fire Chinese. He just kept laughing. I hope he gets his motorcycle.

On our way through the park headed for the northeast entrance we passed black bears, brown bears, antelope, elk, deer, another one of those ostriches, and herds and herds of buffalo. There was even a valley that had so many it was called Buffalo Valley. There were plenty of signs warning people to watch out for animals on the roadway, but the real hazard was the reaction when people saw wildlife. They'd slam on their brakes without warning, or suddenly swerve across the road to the other shoulder and then hit the brakes, after which as often as not the doors would pop open and the vehicle would disgorge it's passengers and then they would start running back and forth across the road. The buffalo might be bigger, but people are definitely more dangerous.

Mostly. We came around one corner to find a mother and calf buffalo wandering around on a bridge. They seemed to want to cross, but were leery of going past the bikes even though we were sitting quietly with the engines stopped. Ray put his side stand down, and as the mother came closer he started to slowly slide off the bike away from her. But since Ray was closer to her than I was, I had a different plan, similar to the tried and true one for dealing with bears: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you!" I turned the ignition back on, put the bike into gear with the clutch pulled in, and had my thumb hovering over the start button. At the first sign of trouble I'd stab the starter, slip the clutch, and burn rubber to safety while mom was goring Ray and stomping him to death. I don't have to outrun the buffalo........

We were rounding a corner hemmed in with tall snowbanks on our way down from Beartooth Pass when Ray almost hit another one of those strange ostriches. Ray says it was just a huge, long-legged, butt ugly turkey, but I'm positive it was an ostrich. I've almost hit big turkeys before, I even clipped one once with my head (contrary to conventional wisdom, turkeys can fly), this thing didn't look like any of 'em. But I did get it on video, so as soon as I figure out how to post it on Youtube I'll let you be the judge.

We're in the western themed Big Bear Hotel in the western themed Wyoming town of Cody, named after Buffalo Bill Cody. There must be some kind of local ordinance about every building being as tacky as possible, and western museums and shops far outnumber regular stores. But despite the first impressions it's probably the newest hotel we've stayed in during the trip. It comes complete with a shower curtain printed with biblical verses. Built in reading material!

We've crossed one mountain range, one left to go, then a whole lot of prairie.

Moose Drool

The ride out of Boise was everything we'd hoped for and more, the road twisted back and forth as it climbed up and down several mountain ranges, and we had lunch at a restaurant with a patio overlooking a stream with salmon swimming in it and a muskrat bathing below us, while a pair of Ospreys circled overhead.

We're in West Yellowstone, just outside of Yellowstone Park. This is officially the Rocky Mountains. I've been here before, 43 years ago when my grandmother and uncle loaded my sister and my five cousins into 2 cars pulling trailers and headed for Disneyland from Calgary. We were gone for weeks with no real set itinerary, just a list of places we wanted to go, kind of like this trip. We went to Yellowstone, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Crater Lake, Good Grief Idaho ("Population 2 Dogs and an Old Grouch," I looked around for it on our way through this time but I guess the Grouch died), and we had the time of our young lives.

Yellowstone is pretty much as I remembered it, Geysers, Bison, Elk, Wolves, and a large bird I'm positive was an Ostrich but the guy on the front desk at the Days Inn isn't so sure. I don't remember there being roving packs of Japanese tourists though. They're everywhere! Bus loads of them! Taking pictures of everything! Including us! We were leaving one of the parking lots when I spotted a group of them tracking us with their still and video cameras. Haven't they ever seen two Michelin Men on motorcycles rolling past a snowbank before?

The multiple layers we're wearing to ward off the cold of the elevation we're at  (6,667 ft at the dry Adiabatic Lapse rate of 3 degrees centigrade per thousand feet of elevation makes this place 20 degrees colder than at sea level) presents some unique challenges. It can take as long as several minutes to go get geared back up when we stop, and when the reason for leaving is a Bison that's seems to be as curious about us as we are about him it can become a real problem. And imagine going to the bathroom while you're wearing more layers than an onion? By the time we get checked into our room I can't wait to shed it all for jeans and a T shirt. Tonight when we got to the room I couldn't choose between getting rid of my long underwear and ballistic pants with insulated liner, or having a beer. So I tried to do both. I pushed the pants down to my knees, opened my beer and inserted a slice of lime, started trying to extricate one leg from the pants, which is when I realized the beer (which had been rattling around on the back of my bike all day) had started to foam all over the dresser. I dove over to it, wrapped my lips around the top, and with beer foam shooting out from around my lips and out of my nose tried to hop to the bathroom sink as Ray shouted "Where's my camera?!" All I wanted to do was get rid of my pants, it shouldn't have been complicated.

Every night when we go for dinner we seem to wind up in a place that has a selection of locally made craft beers, and every night Ray goes through the list, interrogating the waitress in detail about the selection, and then he makes his choice. Tonight it was easy, the first one on the list was "Moose Drool". He couldn't pass up a name like that. He claimed to enjoy it. I went with Corona Light, not very adventurous but at least you don't have to ask for a fork with it.

The town is rather eclectic, there's a place a couple of doors away between 2 liquor stores and across the street from a third, called "Gun Fun". "Shoot a Machine Gun!" I'm thinking we'll get a couple more drinks in us before we go give it a shot. Give it a shot! Get it? While we were at dinner somebody at the next table stood and started singing songs from Les Miserables. Around the corner there's the "Ho-Hum Hotel". According to the sign out front they include TV, Air Conditioning, and Free Heat. And yet more Japanese tourists scurrying about taking pictures of it all.

I couldn't resist the temptation and bought a bottle of EVERCLEAR, 190 proof pure grain alcohol. Twenty  bucks.  I think it's illegal to posses in Canada, but that shouldn't be a problem, I'll get Ray to take it across the border for me. I'm sure it'll be a hit at the Drop Zone.

Tomorrow we head back through the park, departing out the northeast entrance towards Cody after making our side trip as far as we can up the Bear Tooth Pass. I'm sure it won't be as bad as the pics that Jan sent, but then again, judging by the size of the snowbanks at Old Faithful.....

"How far ya goin'?"

It seems that every time we stop somebody asks some variation on the question: "Where are you headed?", or "How far have you gone?". Young or old, biker or cager, the bikes draw attention everywhere we go. I'm surprised by how many people notice the licence plates, and pleasantly surprised by how many Americans know where Ontario is, the assumption is that they don't know about anything beyond the borders of their own state. In Alturas a kid from the next hotel over kept dragging his dad over to let him see the bikes, he quickly declared the blue one his favorite. The youngster obviously does not have very discerning tastes. Mine is much prettier.

Tornadoes are forecast all through the midwest for the next few days so we decided to continue with our original plan when the weather blew through and arc up through the bottom corner of Oregon, zig-zag through Idaho, cut the corner of Montana, into Wyoming and Yellowstone Park, then head for Sturgis South Dakota. Assuming the roads are open, some of the them were closed last night because of snow, including a short stretch of interstate we'll need after the Beartooth Highway.

As we were leaving the hotel Ray looked over at the mountain range we had to cross and said "I don't remember seeing snow on those when we left here yesterday." They were covered with a carpet of white, and we were headed straight through them. I thought about the tornadoes and decided I'd rather take my chances with cold. And it was cold. I felt like the Michelin man when I climbed on the bike. It was a struggle getting my leg up and over the seat. For my upper body alone I had no less than 5 layers on. A long sleeve insulated Under Armor base layer, a light sweater, an insulated windproof shell, then the jacket with it's insulated liner installed. My neck warmer was sealed into it all then wrapped over the lower half of my face and tucked up inside the helmet. I had heavy duty insulated gloves and my grip heaters on full, a quilted layer aver my long underwear inside the ballistic pants, merino wool socks, basically everything I could wear and still function.

And we needed it. It got colder and colder as the scenery got better and better, we climbed and descended a couple of mountain ranges, going from gas station to gas station through an almost deserted landscape. We stopped to take pictures on one arrow straight stretch of road in a desert valley that stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. No telephone poles, no hydro lines, no houses, no traffic. We took some pictures but there was just no way to capture the feeling of isolation. Strangely enough Ray discovered he had excellent cell reception. About the only living things were ground squirrels sunning themselves on the pavement that scattered as we approached, and free range cattle, like the squirrels they wandered wherever they chose. Dry lake beds, a red graveled valley covered with lush green vegetation with the road weaving downhill for 40 miles, it went on and on.

Ray keeps marveling at how much we've seen in a week, all the places we've gone, the diversity in just an hour between desert, forest, high plain, mountain pass, cultivated fields, orchards, and back to desert, over and over. And yet I wonder about all the roads we had highlighted during our planning but don't have time to ride. But we're doing our best to hit the points. I'm already trying to talk Ray into coming back next year.

Today we leave Boise Idaho headed to Idaho Falls where we've got the bikes scheduled for oil changes the first thing tomorrow. Here's a description of part of our route lifted from the Butler Motorcycle Map:
Highway 21 keeps things interesting with continuous G2 and G3 riding. On the approach to Lowman, the riding becomes more thrilling as the road tightens and bends it's way into town. At the Grand Bend turnoff ID-21 gets hemmed in by two of Idaho's most gorgeous wilderness areas as the road begins it's climb to Banner Summit, 7,056 ft. (Road may be closed periodically due to avalanches)

We've recovered from Highway 36, a couple hundred miles of continuous corners leaves you all twistied out, exhausted physically and mentally, but still smiling.

"Even The Goats Are Running Away!"

The plan was to leave Arturas California heading north to cut across the bottom corner of Oregon before turning east towards Boise Idaho, our destination for the night. After a week of getting further and further from home we were finally starting to work our way home. We went to a highly recommended greasy spoon for a big breakfast before we went, and while we were there an extremely cold looking guy rolled in on a BMW F800GS. He had just come down the highway from the north, and said it was snowing for a few hours while he was coming through Oregon. It was bad enough he'd had to pull over for a few hours. We were heading northeast so we figured we'd be able to stay ahead of it, and away we went.

We got 15 miles. As we got into the hills it looked like heavy rain ahead so we pulled over to put on our rainsuits. I had my head down as I dug around in my saddlebag when Ray said "Uh, Larry, that's not rain." When I looked up, I could barely see across the highway for the blowing snow. There was already a thin coating on the ground when Ray pointed and said "Look! Even the goats are running away!" There was a large herd of goats that had been grazing in the field next to us and they were all running for the cover of their barn. Deciding to be at least as smart as a goat we jumped on the bikes to beat a hasty retreat back to town, the sticky snow falling so fast it quickly coated our visors.

We didn't have a Plan B and as we were standing in a parking lot poring over the Nevada map to try and find a way straight east (there wasn't one) a passing lady told us there was hail falling to the south.

We didn't get our old room back at the Super 8, they were already busy making it up, but they had another one ready that was just as nice and we've spent the day watching various combinations of snow rain hail sleet and sun repeatedly cycle through. The guy on the BMW pulled into the lot a few hours later."I got to the campground where I was supposed to meet my buddy when the snow started. After it had started to accumulate in a drift around the bike I decided I'd had enough". The weather system should pass through tonight leaving sunny skies with temps in the low teens. And no snow. Boise can wait a day.

Shades of Alfred Hitchcock!

On Thursday as we we drove down US Highway 101, the Pacific Coast Highway, we passed underneath a changeable highway sign reading: "Drought Conditions. Save Water". Under other circumstances I wouldn't have taken any particular notice of it if it hadn't been for the fact that we'd been driving in the pouring rain for the last 6 hours. DROUGHT CONDITIONS!!! SERIOUSLY??
Give us a friggin' break!!!! You want some water?!?! I'll give you some water!!!!

We'd left the hotel that morning in a Scotch mist that kept getting thicker and heavier as we rode, and by the time we stopped for lunch it had become a steady rain. With the exception of Wednesday afternoon every time we get near the coast it starts to rain. On Wednesday we ran most of the Oregon Coast at 75-80 miles an hour, diving and swooping along as the road paralleled the beach then climbed into the hills before returning to the ocean again and again.

By the time we passed beneath that sign I couldn't wait to get away from the coast. We were covered head to toe in plastic, could taste the salt spray in the mist that was swirling inside our visors, the water had begun to worm it's way through any chink it could find in our rainsuits, I was already soaked with the moisture from my body that couldn't escape the plastic, and I was done. But doing a tour of the Pacific Northwest without rain would be like having Poutine without gravy or squeaky cheese. We drove part of the Redwoods Parkway, but it lost a lot of it's charm in the deluge.

So we called it an early day and found a nice dry Brewpub in Eureka California, a much more civilized way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Friday dawned warm and clear, so we rode The Avenue Of The Giants through the Redwood forest, past trees that were already old when the first white guy showed up here, many of them over 20 feet in diameter towering hundreds of feet into the sky.

We had a long haul planned for the day as we headed inland on highway 36, which my Butler Motorcycle Map had highlighted completely in red and orange, signifying it was twists and turns from one end to the other. The next 3 hours were an absolute blast but were exhausting. I have never seen so many hairpin turns in such a short space of time. We were sprinting from corner to corner, that is when we weren't going directly from one corner into the next. We climbed more passes than I could be bothered to count, our hands were sore from constantly grabbing brake and clutch levers, and for miles at a time we never got above 30 miles an hour. I loved it! But was relieved when the road finally opened up into some longer sweeping turns to give us a bit of a break. I fell in love with southern California roads last winter, now I see that the northern ones are just as good.

This afternoon after we'd had a late lunch at "Lois's International Cafe" in Ono California, an absolute dive of a roadside diner but with great food and stupid cheap pitchers of beer, Ray re-enacted a scene right out of The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock. He was leading us  down the twisting Highway 299 when he startled an enormous vulture having lunch at the side of the road. The damn thing must have decided to get even because when it took off it gained some height as it made a quick circle before diving straight at Ray! He was startled by the movement above him and I was treated to the sight of him ducking and weaving all over the road before he cracked the throttle wide open and out-ran it - one bird power is no match for 145 horsepower. The best part? When we left the cafe I had mounted my GoPro on top of my helmet, and caught the whole thing! If you don't have video it didn't really happen!

If you don't ask.....

If you never ask the question, you'll always wonder "What if....????"

Nobody had replied to to Ray's email asking if he could pose his Blackbird next to the museums Blackbird for a picture. It wasn't a big surprise, at the very best you'd have better odds of winning the lottery than of getting permission to wheel a motorcycle through the middle of a museum.

When the museum came into sight we were blown away. It was so big it had Two Boeing 747's outside! One of them had been converted into a water slide! And the Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' 8 engine monster flying boat was nowhere to be seen. That's because the buildings were so huge that it fit inside! While we were standing in line to buy our tickets we were standing underneath the wing and didn't even know it.

Ray and I got to chatting with one of the museum staff who looked like any of the other older guys wandering around with name tags pinned to their vests. I did notice his name, Larry Wood, and the Marine Corps crest sewn onto his vest along with several others. I had wandered off to take a look at the Goose when Ray came running up to me waving a business card with a look on his face like a kid on Christmas morning who just got a new bike, a train set, a computer, an iPhone, and a lifetime subscription to Playboy.

"I was telling that guy about my email, and that I didn't get a reply. He handed me his business card, told me to call him when we're done, and said he'd open the door for me so I could bring it in!" The card read:
Larry A Wood
Executive Director
Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

2 Hours later, as good as his word, he rolled up a door that covered one entire side of the building, and.........

Later that day as we ran down the winding highway 101 along the the Oregon coast, if Ray had run right off the side of that cliff to die in a flaming fireball, he would have gone grinning from ear to ear.

"If you don't ask the question............."

"Are you guys lost?"

Twice so far somebody has looked at our licence plates and asked the question:

"Are you guys lost?"

Too which I've replied: "Not yet, but we're still trying!"

Over the last 4 days we've ridden 2,200 km criss-crossing the Washington and Oregon deserts (yes, there are deserts in Washington and Oregon), going to and fro over the Columbia River no less than 9 times while studiously avoiding Interstates and major highways, using only maps and a compass, and we haven't been lost for a minute. We've taken some wrong turns, and have deliberately taken a road or two not knowing where it went, just because it looked interesting, but not for lack of trying we've not gotten lost. And we're only 4 hours from where we started. At this rate we'll be getting back to Ottawa in 3 months, not 3 weeks. Our biggest problem has been finding gas and coffee. The gas stations start closing at 5:30, and while roadside coffee stands abound along major highways, they are few and far between in our stomping grounds, and close as early as 2! That makes more sense when you consider the fact that there are more abandoned buildings than inhabited ones - not that there's many of either - and it's not unusual to go half an hour without seeing another soul. And Police? Non existent. On the roads that is, no matter where we're staying they seem to wind up in our hotel parking lot. While that has given us licence to go about causin' a ruckus and general mayhem, things such as fuel management have become key. After we passed a few "Last Gas For 84 Miles" type signs we learned to stop and fill anytime we get the opportunity. All the tourist traps we've visited have been deserted, parking lots empty, doing the Mount St. Helens loop we saw no more than a dozen vehicles in 60 miles.

But there is one huge bonus. No RV's. No 10 ton projectiles the size of a bus piloted by old folks whose senses are deteriorating, barreling along like swaying mobile roadblocks on twisting mountain roads, impossible to see around and extremely difficult to pass. Probably because they need to hit a gas station even more often than we do.

Despite our best efforts, the biggest crisis we've had to deal with was a beer bottle packed in Ray's saddlebag that gave way under excessive vibration forcing a laundry night earlier than anticipated. The bikes are performing flawlessly, all we've had to do is check tire pressures and oil the chains daily. When we left Vancouver both machines had brand new tires requiring them to be "scrubbed in", as new tires have an oily coating that could cause them to slide out while leaned over in a turn. We started off going easy in the rain, and as the tires wore in, the rain wore out, and our confidence increased, the speed increased, and there's no reason to slow down.

Wednesday morning we visit the Evergreen Aviation Museum, home of the Spruce Goose - built by Howard Hughes and for a long time the largest aircraft in the world, and one of the few places that has a Lockheed SR71 Blackbird, which still holds a number of world speed and altitude records going back as far as 30 years. Ray is really looking forward to that, his bike is a Honda CBR 1100XX - Blackbird. He emailed the museum a few weeks ago inquiring about getting a picture of the two of them, they didn't reply.

These pictures were all taken within 24 hours, I'm looking forward to the next 24.

"If you live in a car......"

"If you live in a car, you're homeless.
But if you live on a motorcycle, you're Free!"
From the column "How To Disappear Completely",
By Mark Hoyer, Editor-in-Chief, Cycle World Magazine

The shipper showed up a day late, just in time for the rain to start. Within an hour Ray and I had ourselves sorted out, wrapped ourselves in our rainsuits, and headed for the border. The rain continued off and on for the next 5 hours. It began in earnest about an hour before we finally had a chance to turn east to run through the Cascade Mountain Range to escape it. There was one problem with that plan however: before it could get any better, it had to get a hell of a lot worse. The higher and higher we went up the pass the harder and harder it rained. Then we started to see snow up on the mountains beside us, then on the shoulder of the road, and in just a few minutes we were riding past snow drifts 20 feet tall. I was wearing most of the warm clothing I had brought, my grip heaters were on full, my visor was almost completely fogged over and the temperature was still dropping. We got over the high point of the pass and I was just starting to think that we might survive this when we passed a bunch of guys at the side of the road unloading their snowmobiles. I couldn't decide if I should laugh or cry. But the weather gods must have decided to show us some mercy as a few minutes later through the rain I spied a thin wedge of blue sky far down the pass. Minutes later we were tearing along in bright sunlight next to the Columbia river, passing packs of kayakers braving the frigid melt-water and rapids.

All that rain did serve one purpose though, as soon as we'd started that morning it became clear that there was a problem with my front brakes. Over the winter I'd changed out the regular brake lines for braided stainless steel ones that should have given me much more solid braking. But despite the fact that the lever felt good and solid I had to squeeze the lever with almost all my strength to get the bike to slow down, the pads just weren't grabbing the rotors. I probably spilled some brake fluid onto the rotors or pads when I changed the lines. But all it took was a few hours of pouring rain and heavy braking going down a snow covered mountain pass and they were as good as new! However I wouldn't recommend that process to anyone looking to solve that problem in the future.

The cold must have caused hallucinations, as somewhere along there we both thought we'd passed through some bizarre satirical parody of a Bavarian Village. Imagine a Starbucks done up with gingerbread and cartoon people wearing lederhosen painted on it's windows. The McDonald's was beyond description and is probably going to give me nightmares for weeks.

We had dinner that night at a restaurant in Wenatchee that had the best steaks in town. We know it did because it said so in letters 4 feet tall across the side of the building, right underneath "Breakfast Served All Day" The only redeeming qualities the place had was that it was next door to our hotel, and had karaoke. If you've never been treated to atrociously bad red-neck karaoke in a dive bar in some backwater hell hole you've missed out on one of the most important lessons anybody can ever learn: Alcohol can lead otherwise reasonable people into thinking that everybody is laughing with them.

Day 2
The sun was shining, the temperature was above freezing, (barely), and by 8:20 we were belting along through another mountain pass at a dangerous and unsafe speed, heading for The Dalles in Oregon. We went from tree covered mountains to barren plains then rolling hills so many times I couldn't count. At any given time if somebody told me we were in either central Arizona, Montana, or southern California, I'd have believed it. We'd be weaving back and forth for mile after mile while climbing up out of a valley, make a short run across a plateau, then long sweepers as we carved our way down into another  valley. The plan was to cross the Columbia river and circle around to run a road one of our travel guides claimed was "The Best Motorcycle Road In the Pacific Northwest". The middle third was nice but nothing special, but the last third lived up to it's billing so well that we're going to go run it again tomorrow going the opposite direction. It was the perfect mix of tight twisties, long sweepers, straight-aways, elevation changes, spectacular vistas, and faultless pavement.

Late in the day as we finally began to close on the Columbia River Gorge we could see a series of showers threatening to cut us off and soak us before we could get to our hotel, and the race was on! We covered the last 60 miles at 75-85 miles an hour, angling along in front of the rain. Every time the road turned west we'd be in the leading edge, the rain slowly getting stronger, then the road would turn east and we'd come out of it only to have the highway turn back west and it would start again. it was a near thing, but in the end we won, and were only slightly damp when we rolled up to our hotel beneath a rainbow that stretched from one horizon to the other.

Again we had dinner at the place next to our hotel, but this time it was at a fantastic brew pub complete with great service and wonderful food. That is exactly the sort of place we both love to trip over when on a road trip.

It's only the second day, we've already covered 700 miles and hit a bunch of the points we wanted to pass through if we got the chance. We've thoroughly checked the weather and have come up with a plan: tomorrow we're doing a big loop back through that valley to visit The Painted Hills and re-do Hwy 197, (even faster this time!) before heading to Mount St. Helens and the Oregon coast on Tuesday.

This is exactly what we had in mind when we started planning this trip: lots of miles, fun roads, great scenery - We're Free!

The wheels fell off the wagon!

Things got off to a rocky start just getting through security at the Ottawa airport. First I forgot about my cellphone stuck in a cargo pocket, then the titanium in my neck set off the metal detector, then my shoes set off an alarm resulting in a full body pat down and scan. After it was determined that I was safe their attention shifted to my tank bag jammed with electronics - GPS, 2 cameras, US cellphone, chargers, adapters, etc. At one point the guy emptied the bag onto a table and was repeatedly passing the empty bag through the scanner. I leaned over so I could see the screen, and as they pointed at the screen while poking and prodding the bag I could see a bunch of odd flower shaped things scattered about in the middle of the bag that looked like they were glowing somehow. Just as they were trying to figure out how to disassemble the bag it hit me: "Magnets! They hold the bag onto my steel gas tank!" Ray mentioned that they probably don't see a lot of motorcycle luggage at an airport security checkpoint.

The flight went fine, my sister picked me up as promised, and since we had time to kill we set up on a patio in White Rock overlooking the ocean for beer and nachos. That proved to be an excellent choice, the temperature was 25C and bikini/halter top season had begun. All the scenery was just lovely!

That's when the wheels fell off the wagon. Ray called me that night from his buddies house to tell me the truck hauling our bikes had broken down in Canmore Alberta. The parts were ordered, and he expected to arrive on Friday night. Oh well. Could be a lot worse. Peggy and Dave gave me a vehicle (a turbo charged Subaru, neither of the Miata's has been plated yet for the summer) and since I couldn't play with my own bike I spent the day touring motorcycle shops in the lower mainland.

It was in the late afternoon after I returned to Peg and Dave's that I received an email from Ray telling me the shipper had now been delayed because the highway had been closed for avalanche control! The fact that the bikes were going to be held up until Saturday was only a small part of the problem, the bigger problem was the whole avalanche thing. We had planned on being able to run back and forth through the mountain ranges to escape bad weather on the coast when necessary, and while we realized some of the roads we wanted to use in Wyoming or Montana might still be snowed in we hadn't expected that to happen so early in the trip. Thankfully my sister and brother in law had prepared for just such an eventuality and laid in an extra stock of Vodka in case I wound up staying an extra few days.

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