Just FYI

I posted a couple posts to my other blog that were motorcycle related.
Steve, there's one more pic of my bike over there. Stay tuned for more
thoughts on the Boulevard. Hint: its all good. :)

Sent from my iPhone

Oh yeah, almost forgot...

I guess I may have to change the rideblog name to something else. At least if I'm going to post any ride logs with my new Suzuki Boulevard C50 that is! Behold the majesty:

Waiting for roll-out at dealer.

First Day at Home

I suppose you could say that I'm a little excited. To answer the big question most people have had, no, I did not get rid of the DR650. The Boulevard is merely an addition to my stable. And I have to say it's quite an addition. Specifically, it's a 2007 Suzuki Boulevard C50C. I believe the extra 'C' at the end stands for Custom. It's got some extras that the base model doesn't have. Namely, studded seats, a custom paint job with tribal graphics, and mag wheels. I didn't intend to get the Custom model, but the dealer mis-quoted the price based on the base model, and it was too good to pass up. MSRP is $7100. I got it out the door for $7122. Before taxes and all that rhubarb, it was $6299. Not too freaking shabby.

I got it on... Wednesday, I think. (?) Got about 350 miles on it so far. She rides real smooth. Plenty of low/mid torque, and does ok at about 80mph on the freeway. I've wanted a cruiser since about 2001, when I bought my Bandit. The bandit edged out a couple cruiser models I was looking at as I wanted to do more distance riding, and it seemed more suited to that. But, buzzy handlebars made anything over about 90 miles... numbing.

This past little while I've been thinking about a bike to get in the spring that is good for road work. Considered a lot of options, from SV605s, BMW F650s, Bandit 1200s, etc. The Bandit might have been best suited for highway work, but the price tag on it was just too high for me. With taxes I probably would have spent close to $10k, IIRC. So, I settled on the idea of finally getting a cruiser, and among all the ones I looked at, the Boulevard C50s jumped out at me. (Now 3 Suzuki's in my "garage" and I always thought I was a Honda guy. Huh.)

Apparently, since Suzuki only sells motorcycle, (unlike most other companies who also have their hands in ATVs and snowmobiles) they drop their prices in the winter to keep revenue coming in. It could be all dealer BS, but it did result in a pretty substantial savings for me.

So, now that I'm halfway through the break-in interval, what do I think? I'm totally satisfied. Need to get some bags on it so I don't have to carry a backpack, and I want to get a windshield at some point to help with highway fatigue, but other than that, the bike is spectacular. My butt still gets a bit sore after less than 60 miles, but nothing like the DR650. After 3+ hours of riding today, I don't feel at all saddle sore, and that's something I can't say about the DR. Still, they're both great bikes for their own purposes.

I recorded my route today with the GPS. But, it's nothing too fancy. I basically went to Daniel's Summit for lunch, then turned around, went through Heber, and up through Park City to SLC, then back down to the Provo/Orem area. Since the route is pretty well marked (and I didn't take any pictures as the landscape is pretty barren this time of year) I'm not going to bother with processing and uploading the GPS files.

Great day for a ride, though. Probably one of the last best ones before winter hits in earnest. Can't wait for Spring...

Hoo doggy!

Today just begged for a ride. When I left Orem it was in the mid 70s, and there was absolutely zero wind. At first I couldn't decide where I wanted to go, but I was hungry, and the cafe at Daniel's Summit was sounding awfully good. I perused Google Urf and my Garmin topo maps for a bit and decided that I would ride there, then head south on some trails with the intent of coming out in the Diamond Fork area. It was a nice plan, even if it didn't happen.

Provo Canyon
Like I said, heading out was just gorgeous. Couldn't ask for a better day for riding. I did bring what cold weather gear I had, just in case. In this case, it's a Lands End jacket and my waterproof / cold weather gloves by Shift. Didn't end up needing the gloves, but I was glad to have the jacket.

I thought about heading up the canyon out of Wallsburg to get to Daniel's Summit, but decided that I was hungry enough I'd just take the pavement through Heber City. A hearty lunch in Daniel's Summit, and I was off.

Sheepz!
Yes indeedy. First thing on the trail from Daniel's Summit, and a couple cowboys and their vast herd of sheep were covering much of (and around) the road. Ha. From this picture, it's hard to make them out, but they're there in the trees, mocking you. There were just tons of these little guys. Fortunately the cowboys had the help of a few very competent dogs to keep the herd doing what it was supposed to.

Corral
Headed south toward Buck Springs instead of west towards Big Glade. Was nice to be on a new road. Up until this point, it was awesome hard-packed dirt. Few rocks. Just perfect for opening her up and just romping all over the place. Good stuff.

I spy snow.
Aye, that be what that white stuff is. Wasn't concerned at this point. It was off the road, so I wasn't interested. I had forgotten, though, that we got TONS of rain down in the valley over the weekend. This equated to snow in the mountains, and lots of runoff. Mud, slush, ice. You name it.

Yeap. Ice.
This is the point I started to reconsider my choice of trails. Fortunately, it was just warm enough to keep the top layer mushy in spots, which is the only thing that allowed me to get any type of traction. Unfortunately, many ATVs and 4x4 trucks out here carrying hunters had really packed down the main tracks. I took it very slow and was able to cross this and other icy areas without incident. How slow is very slow? Feathering first gear just enough to keep the back tire moving. My feet were used as "training wheels" the duration, also. It was like wearing skis. This would be the first (and last) icy spot. Some were worse. Others were much worse.

Ahh, better.
Fortunately once off the nice smoth, hardpack, there wasn't really many places for the snow to gather on the road. At this point I'm back on the nasty, rocky stuff, but happily there was no snow to be found. There was a good bit of mud, though.

Strawberry Res.
This pic reminds me of one I took on a previous ride, from one of the other hilltops.

Coasting along the rim.
At the top-ish of the hills, it was like this in many spots. Nice, grabby dirt - would be a heyday for a good set of knobbies. Even my DS tires got a kick out of it. I should note, though, that I had to come through some ugly slushy, icy, muddy stuff to get to this point. Including one small hill climb that I really shouldn't have attempted with as much ice/water/mud/crap as was on it.

Road Closed!
You'll notice on the GPS track I marked a couple road closures. These roads were where I planned to get back down off the hilltops. They were also the only way (that I knew of) to continue on my desired route. I was bummed to see the last road I know of closed off by the Forest Service. Oh well. I ended up turning around at this point as the sun was getting low enough that I knew it'd be getting colder, and I didn't want the roads to freeze up any more than they already were.

Interesting note. On the GPS tracks, you'll notice that I discovered (after the fact) using Google Earth that there ARE in fact ways down that seem to be well traveled. Unfortunately, Garmin Topo doesn't show them. And, as I said, I wasn't up to exploring that late in the day. Ironically, I was only .3 miles from one of the main junctions that would have taken me down closer to my planned route.

More rough road.

The H.O.D. (Hill of Destiny)
Not really. It's hard to see just how steep this was, though. Getting up it was a feat in... something. Balance? Luck? Traction? I grunted up the whole way in first gear. The rear tire kept trying to decide if it was going to slip on ice, mud, or slick rocks. Fortunately, it chose none of the above. There were a couple times, though...

H.O.D. Looking Down

More Muck
I sure didn't miss this junk once I got out of it. Fortunately, a lot of these snow fields had nice little streams running down the middle of them where the snow was melting and flowing. The "streams" were much easier to get traction in than the actual snow pack. I'll take water + rocks over ice any day. *As long as they aren't moss covered rocks.

Wallsburg Fort
I ended up coming back via Big Glade and down into Wallsburg. I had wanted to stop and see this marker, anyway. Turns out there used to be a fort here.

Next to the Marker
Almost swampy looking. I didn't get a good enough pic, but on the other side of the road, there's a house. In the house's yard there were about 5 deer. They didn't seem to mind the people on the road. A nice little area, though.

I did learn a few things, though. Things like Fox Tracker boots aren't waterproof... at all. They don't claim to be, but oh well. They did keep my feet warm enough, though, even when they were wet. I'll be interested to see how they perform as it gets colder.

GPS files follow:
GPX File
Google Earth

WTF.

Remind me again why I haven't moved off Blogspot. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this message when trying to add pictures:

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Eureka!

Well, wanderlust struck early today. Around 11:30 am, to be precise. I decided to just go for it. Had it in my mind for a while now to head back out to the Eureka, UT area, and decided that today's temps were far too perfect for me to not go. (Especially since the weekend weather will be adequately crummy yet again.)

Took surface streets and a bit of interstate until I was near West Mountain. At that point, I noticed some ATV trails heading up into the foothills, and decided to see if I could cross to the other side on dirt instead of by road. I did. It was a little bit hairy in a couple spots, though.

Top o' the Hill
This was the top of the first fun stuff. A lot steeper than it looks, but certainly doable. I was a bit nervous, though, riding on the stock Trailwings. I just got it well into first gear, then grunted my way to the top. Once I got there, I stopped long enough to take this pic and calm my pulse.

Going Doooown
After farting around on a few hilltops, I finally spied this route down the other side. It didn't look that bad from above, it looked pretty much like a road. The "road" quickly shrunk to ATV size, and almost a bit smaller in places. I wouldn't want to do it on an ATV for fear of wedging myself in there somewheres. (On the GPS files, this is marked as "Eeep.") What's the antenna on my bike, you ask? It's a 2m ham radio antenna, that's currently not attached to anything. I need to get a SMA-BNC connector so I can use it with a hand-held. Either that or I'll wire up a waterproof mobile radio to it.

Still going down.
My motorcycle is actually parked in the same place as the last pic. I walked a bit down the trail to make sure it wasn't going to do anything fancy like dead-end for me. Would not have liked to try to turn that thing around in those cramped quarters. A note: at the bottom of this goat trail, you'll come out at a canal. I rode up and down the canal, and there was only one easy exit, marked as "Cross Here" on the GPS file. From there you just follow south-east until you hit pavement.

No idea.
I really hate Blogspot's WYSIWYG editor, FYI. Anyway, I've seen this many times on different rides/drives out to Eureka. Not sure what it is. The only road that it looks like might head out there is marked as No Trespassing. Shame, it looks very interesting. Someone has obviously been out there as there is graffiti on the buildings.

Fire House
Next to the Fire House in Eureka is this old rail car. There's another car used to maintain the railway sitting near here. Dunno why I didn't get a pic of that. *bonk* Eureka has a lot of little things like this, tributes to a more active time.

"City Hall"
I don't think it still is. I'm pretty sure it isn't. There's a mannequin in the top right window, keeping an eye on the town. The large bay to the left of the door is a fire truck bay. That's probably not in use any more, either.

Back of City Hall

Jailhouse Rock
This is attached to the back of City Hall, as you can see in the previous photo. The door was ajar, but I didn't really look in. The wind was so bad that I was more interested in getting back to my bike before the wind knocked it over.

Silver City Cemetery
This cemetery is the biggest tribute left to the mining downs that ran dry, dried up, and blew away. Going between the headstones, it was pretty easy to see a pattern of the lives claimed in the area. The vast majority of them were children.

Twins
These twins died only about a month after being born.

Four of them.
This was the saddest thing. There were 4 of these slabs, side by side. They said the following: "Baby Girl Steele 1916", "Baby Girl Steele 1917", "Lily Steele June 8 - June 16, 1919", "Albert Steele Feb. 28 - Mar. 14, 1920". I have a friend that lost a baby. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose 4 over the course of 4-5 years.

Silver Pass Road - Behind
This is a great dirt road running form the Silver City area, back to the highway east of Eureka. There a a LOT of little mines dotted all over the landscape, trailings litter much of the hillsides. I'd imagine most of them were just test mines to see what was there.

Silver Pass Road - Ahead

Mine Elevator
This one was pretty close to the road, but there are "NO TRESPASSING" signs everywhere. So, I didn't ever get off the road to get a closer look. No sense chancing it. I like that this one had the cage intact that the miners would have used to travel up and down the mine shaft. You've gotta have nerves of steel to hop in that thing and descend into the cold & dark.

West of Utah Lake
After running around the Eureka area, I decided to head back in. The wind was just too strong for me to want to stay out much more. There seem to be some reasonable riding places on the west side of the lake, but there have been so many shooters there the past couple times I've been, that I don't really feel up to riding around in the hills and hearing guns booming off in every direction.

That about wraps that up. Today was a fun ride. Would have ventured around a lot more if the wind weren't howling so much. There are so many dirt roads in the Eureka area that I constantly want to go back and see what I've missed. If you go, pay attention to your maps. Garmin Topo shows just tons of mines in the area. Make sure to watch out for No Trespassing signs, too. Curiosity isn't worth getting fined or arrested for. If you're into it, there are a lot of geocaches in the area of Silver City and Eureka. I only went to one, but there's plenty to look around at, if you're so inclined. GPS files, as usual, follow:

GPX File
Google Earth File

Easy Rider

I wanted to do a full sized ride today, but just couldn't bring myself to do it for whatever reason. Instead just ended up petering around on familiar terrain. Namely, Squaw Peak trail up to what I call "The Hump." Basically, this is where it crosses over from the Provo Canyon area to the Hobble Creek Canyon area.

This area is my fall back area more often than not. I usually take it all the way down into Hobble Creek Canyon, but when I hit the hump today, I was greeted with a massive wall of (very chilly) wind. I didn't really dress warm, and ended up turning back at this point and just enjoying a slow ride back to Provo Canyon.

I did fart around in a couple places, one being (what I thought was) a trail, but turned out to be a dead end. (It's marked as such on the GPX file.) At least I think it's a dead end. Perhaps you can continue farther on foot, but it seems you'd have to bushwhack a little bit.

Saw some deer in one of the popular places for campfires. There were about 6 of them, all drinking from some pooled water. All but two scattered. One young buck, and an equally young doe. I killed my engine and watched them for a bit. The buck never quite got the nerve to go back to drinking, but the fawn did. Eventually a truck coming up the main road scared them and they scampered off. Shame, too, because I was about 10 seconds out from having my camera ready to take a picture. Oh well.

Speaking of terrain. Due to the recent rain and the abundance of vehicular travel on the road, the roads were very nicely packed and 50mph straightaways were easily done. A nice change from the powder that was up there last time I was there that nearly had me turf in a corner.

Anyway, back to the canyon and I decided to head towards South Fork Canyon. I was just out for the leisurely drive at this point, anyway. Stopped at the park towards the end of the pavement and just sat and enjoyed the evening for a bit.

The temps were nice in most of the areas. As I mentioned, it did get chilly up higher where the wind started whipping around. If I'd had remembered to bring my heavier jacket I would have just kept riding and probably dropped down into Hobble Creek again.

On this ride I was also testing out my new Shift Assault pants that I recently picked up on eBay shipped for about $50. They are nice. Comfortable, a bit lighter weight than I would have thought. They keep your knees warm, though, heh. I think with some thermals underneath, they'd probably be good to about 40 degrees or so. Further testing will decide that.

I still need to pick up some waterproof gear. Hopefully my most excellent cold weather coat will be back from Arizona in a couple weeks. It's totally waterproof, and I've worn it when the temps were as low as the teens. Can't recall the brand, as it's been holed up for the past 4 years or so.

Today's ride made me realize that I do need to really branch out more. It's kind of pathetic that I have hardly gotten out of Utah valley. I need to finish getting my trailer ready so I can drag the bike in the cage, then ride it elsewhere. Moreover, I just need to plan on some 2 day trips and find some good backwoods riding to get me from point A to point B. In time.

Oh yeah, I also forgot my camera on today's ride. I got some pics with my Sprint Mogul, but the camera in this thing is just so freaking crappy that I'm not going to even bother uploading them. I need to get a decent, small camera that I can just leave in my rack bag so it's always there when I go riding. Oh well. Track logs to follow:

GPX File
Google Earth File

Skid Plate & Tool Kit

Ahh, I do enjoy having the job done. Turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. The new Utah Sportcycle skid plate is a beauty. Went on pretty easily. Getting one of the clamps to meet up with the bolt was kind of a pain, but that's just due to how the bike is designed. The screws were just long enough to accommodate the piece of angled steel that I used to attach the tool kit. I may replace them with some a mil or two longer. Just don't want things falling off the bike while I'm bumping down the road. Here's the pics.

The Install

Closeup

New Tool Kit

If you can't GO riding, you might as well do something to look forward to riding again. This weekend was just positively crummy. It actually snowed a bit yesterday, in addition to all the raining it did. Total crap before October, if you ask me.

So, I opted instead to get some upgrades ready for the bike. One of them being this nifty PVC toolkit that I'll store on my skid plate. (Once I get my skid plate.) I got the idea from a riding forum somewhere, I can't recall where. The concept is pretty simple, though. I did go a bit different route, though. Most I've seen just use normal end caps, or a screw-type end cap. I found (at Lowe's) these temporary caps. I'm not sure what they're actually called, but they're really great. I used a 3 inch PVC tube. Including caps, the thing is about 10 3/4 inches wide. (~273mm.) The tube is about 1/4 inch think (6mm). I don't really worry about breaking it.

The Tool Kit

Nifty End Cap
I really love this thing. They basically just squeeze the seal between two pieces of plastic to push it out to press against the pipe. They work beautifully. My only concern is getting the wingnut busted off in a crash, but I could always add a normal nut at that point.

In Place
This is another shot of the cap in place on the tube. Like I said, I'm not sure how crashable they are, but they seem extremely sturdy and I'm not really worried. They seem as water tight and secure as a normal cap, plus (I think) they are easier to get off the tube. Did I mention they were actually CHEAPER than a normal threaded cap & adapter? Go figure... Oh, and yes that wingnut is freaking huge. 2.46" (62.8mm) from tip to tip. You won't have any trouble torquing this down with your fingers.

Well it's official...

Blogspot simply does not like to have multiple images in one post. You can only upload five at a time, and it always inserts them above the ones you've previously uploaded. So, getting a layout that follows a timeline is a giant pain in the butt. For example, today's ride is ALLLLL marfed up on the blog, but looks fine in the preview window when I created it. I don't know. I'm going to have to look into getting a different place to put my ride blog. Either that or I'm going to have to figure out a different way of handling pictures. I'll keep you posted.

High Uintas

GPX File
Google Earth

Blogspot apparently, doesn't like my actual content, so you'll have to scroll down to see it. Stupid WYSIWYG editors. It even PREVIEWS right!! Oh well...

This is the same clearing, from a different angle. From here, I'm kinda shooting back towards the way that I came. There were several people camping in this area, it looks like a good place TO be camping. I'm guessing that if the weather is nice, you'll usually find people here.

I almost missed the spot where the road splits and heads away to Strawberry Peak. (If you've got the GPS file, it's the waypoint marked as "Oops.") The road (trail) to Strawberry Peak was pretty darned rocky. There were a couple big mudholes, as well. It's definitely better suited to a four-wheeler than a motorcycle. I thought I'd dump it more than once in either the mud or the rocks.

After clearing all the muck and rocks, and once I got close to the summit, it broke out of the trees into just beautiful views of all the surrounding areas. Here, Strawberry Reservoir is visible in the distance. The area was some of the most beautiful I've ridden through. Turned out to be some of the most treacherous as well.

This is looking back through what I just rode up to get to the previous picture's location. Doesn't look too bad, does it? This spot wasn't. Hardpack, and only a few rocks. Prior to this location was pretty bad, though.

Sheep! This is RIGHT beneath the summit of Strawberry Peak. I was more than a little surprised to see sheep way up here, but they apparently weren't surprised to see me. They kept their eyes on me, but didn't show any signs of getting agitated and wanting to run off. They probably see a lot of ATVs come through this area during hunting season.

Looking north-ish past the sheep into one of the beautiful vistas beyond. I was pretty darn pleased with myself for choosing this area to go riding in.

Now, this part of the trail was quite nice. But above and below this was pure hell. If you're following along with the GPS file, there's a way point marked "OMG!" And yeah, the portion of the trail between Strawberry Peak and the waypoint marked as "Junction" is just awful. Nothing but softball-sized rocks (and bigger) and the trail is positively packed with them. I ended up sliding sideways down the trail more than once as I struggled to keep the wheels below me. I don't think I'll probably ever take this route again.

The trees were gorgeous. Green, yellow, red, orange... You name it, I pretty much saw it.

This is actually taken some point past the Junction waypoint. I had initially planned on going south at the Junction (a route I've been on before) but I still had plenty of daylight so opted to follow a trail that I had laid out for a future ride. This was taken out east of the Junction waypoint. Not sure how far... I actually did end up taking the entire extra route that I was going to use later. Took less time than I thought it would.

This is still somewhere between the "Junction" waypoint and the "WTF" waypoint. Not sure where. I need to get a GPS that can plug into my camera and automatically load the lat/long into the picture.

THIS was actually taken past the "WTF" waypoint. What was the WTF? Well, at the point I hit the WTF waypoint, there was a sign saying no off-road vehicles. I figured that since my bike is also street legal, that wouldn't be a problem. So yeah, I just kept on truckin. I did see a HUGE elk. He ran parallel with me about 15 yards away before crossing in front of me and running off. Had at least 7 points on each side. Some hunter sure missed his chance. I'm glad I saw the elk and a hunter didn't. Anyway, I belive this is Hobble Creek, and it runs very close to the road.

The sides of the ride were just littered with campsites like this one. It'd be a great place to go out camping some time. Not during hunting season, though.

MORE TREES! This was taken from the same spot as the campsite pic above.

The cows and their corral. No cows in it, but there are a LOT of cows on the road between the WTF waypoint and the end of the ride. Be on your guard. Also, watch out for trucks barrelling down the road around the corners.

The road ahead. At this point I was nearly out of the canyon. The road was (obviously) paved, and it was nice to make up some time as the sun was going down. I still made it back to Orem with a bit of daylight left. I definitely pushed my luck, though.

This was really a stellar ride. One of the most beautiful I've been on, and certainly one of the scariest. I really don't think I could be convinced to come down this side of Strawberry Peak again. At least not without a lighter bike and much better tires. It's a miracle I never dropped the bike as it is. I cam mightly close more than once. If you've got excess testosterone you need to burn off, though, this might be a good ride for you. Make sure you bring your camera and a full complement of your protective gear. You just might need both.