HOME ROCKIES KEY WEST         From left to right; Dad, me and Rodney at our camp in Golden Gate.     For almost a year, Dad and I planned our trip to the Rocky Mountains, sometimes over secret midnight ice cream rendezvous in the kitchen. After I graduated high school in 1984, our plans were implemented. We picked up a few extra bikes along the way. One was a guy just a little bit older than me, Rodney. He was a friend of one of my father’s friends that had gotten wind of our plans and wanted to come along. The other bike carried a married couple from our motorcycle club. They rode with us as far as Denver. From there they turned south and we went north. The trip to Denver went pretty well. There was a bit of rain, but the biggest surprise was needing to stop in Missouri somewhere for an emergency tooth extraction. Fortunately it wasn’t my tooth. Amazingly, that set us back less than half a day. Once we got to Denver, we went to the airport to pick up my mother who had flown out to join us strictly for the Rocky Mountain portion of our trip. The next day, we went to Golden Gate State Park to set up camp.     This is the highest paved road in North America; Mt. Evans.     Colorado was beautiful, and the riding was like a fantasy. One of the highlights of Colorado was riding on the highest “paved” road in North America on Mount Evans (14,452’). It was a long, gorgeous ride to the top. There was nothing very special at the top as far as accoutrements; just a parking lot and some rest rooms. We were on our way over to use the rest rooms when we heard a man in the men’s room scream. He then came running out of the bathroom while still buckling his pants with an angry mountain goat chasing him. I didn’t realize those wild goats were house broken, not to mention very possessive. The ride down Mount Evans was exciting. Rodney and I left Dad and Mom far behind as we flew down the mountain as fast as we had the courage to go. At eighteen years old, that’s pretty darn fast. At the bottom, we stopped and waited for Dad and Mom. When they finally caught up to us we realized that maybe Dad didn’t appreciate our adventurous descent, because he did not stop. He left us behind. This was a problem. Dad had all the money and was the only one who knew the way back to the campground a good distance away. It took us quite a while to track them down in the little town near Mount Evans. Once we did, we spent the rest of the trip keeping him in our sight. He certainly made his point well!     Sure these goats look peaceful. Just don't get too close!     While in Colorado we also toured Estes and Rocky Mountain National Parks, did some hiking, played in the mountain snow in August, attended a chuck wagon and listened to a great little cowboy band. The next leg of our trip had us riding north to the Grand Tetons and Yellow Stone National Park. It was during that part of the trip where we almost lost Mom. We originally chose to take Interstate 25 into Wyoming. The weather was so hot and there was no shade whatsoever on that route. I remember getting nauseous every time I took a breath. Mom did not take well to the heat. In Cheyenne she told us to drop her off and she would get a flight back home. Dad and I convinced her to reconsider and adjusted the route to head for the mountains again. It would be a much slower route, but much prettier and cooler. On this new route we rode through the booming metropolis of Morton, Wyoming. The sign at the “city limits” boasted a population of five. You’d almost expect to see several scratch out marks to amend the population total as people are born and die, or move. They must just make a new sign.     We felt like real cowboys riding around in these parts of the Wind River Valley.     As we headed northwest toward Grand Teton National Park, we entered the Wind River Valley. This terrain is the stuff western movies are made of; very barren and desert-like. We stopped off in a very little town in the middle of nowhere for a drink in the tavern there. The parking lot was empty except for two other motorcycles. Inside the bar there were only two other patrons; an older couple, not typical biking-across-the-desert types at all. They were from Kansas. He was a retired high school wood shop teacher, and she was an elementary school librarian. Their names suited them. They were Earl and Norma…Earl and Norma from Kansas. What a country! We left that tavern well before Earl and Norma did and hit the dusty trail once again. After quite some time, Dad, who was riding a 1984 V45 Sabre, lost power to the rear wheel. The engine was just as healthy as ever, but the bike acted like it was in neutral. There was no civilization anywhere in sight.     We made a brief stop in the Bad Lands of South Dakota at 8AM while it was still only 90 degrees.     We had a small nylon chord that we decided to use to tow Dad’s bike from mine. It was all we had, that and plenty of doubts. Just then two bikes happened to pull up behind us. It was Earl and Norma on their way to Jackson Hole! Earl had a much more substantial nylon rope that he was happy to give to us. We gratefully accepted and decided on our towing set up. I took Mom as my passenger. We wrapped one end of the rope around part of my luggage rack, and Mom held the end in her hand. The other end of the rope was wrapped around one of Dad’s forks just beneath the triple tree. That end was held between Dad’s hand and the handle grip. This way if someone on either end of the rope detected trouble, they could release their end of the rope to discontinue the errant tow. At first it seemed the tow was going to be easy right from the start. I took off down the road and everything felt fine. When I looked into my mirror, though, I saw Dad struggling to hold on to a violently swerving bike. He couldn’t let go of his end of the rope as he would be thrown from the bike for sure. I told Mom to let go and he recovered. That’s when I realized that I shouldn’t “just take off.” The initial tug on the rope pulled the one fork forward and caused Dad’s violent swerving. So we regrouped, and I took a break from driving like a teenager. Smooth and steady did the trick. It was a good thing, too. It was twenty miles to the nearest town, and (after a good night’s sleep) another thirty-five miles to a town with a Honda dealer. The spline in the Sabre’s final drive had worn smooth. The part needed to be ordered. So we split up Mom and Dad, and continued the trip. I took Mom as my passenger, and Dad went with Rodney. That was quite a sight to see as Rodney weighted about 96 pounds soaking wet. Dad is 6’ 1” and, let’s just say, at the time he easily outweighed Rodney by a factor of two. So on two bikes we had camping and cooking gear, clothes and various miscellany for four adults for three weeks. The good mechanical news was that my bike didn’t have any problems until we got Dad’s bike back in working order. Then, one dark night while riding through the Rockies, I had Mom as my passenger. I pulled over to the side of the road. When Dad pulled up next to me, I informed him that I had no rear brakes. Mom never touched the ground. She leaped directly from my bike to Dad’s. We spent the rest of the vacation frequently bleeding my rear brakes. It was inconvenient, but sometimes that the brakes (sorry). Mom’s part of the trip ended after we were done in Yellow Stone. We took her back to the airport in Lander, Wyoming. The guy that sold her the ticket also checked her bags. While he was checking her bag, he all of a sudden stopped everything. He grabbed a pair of headphones, a vest and a pair of orange flashlights, ran out side and guided the next plane in for a landing. This was not a large airport.     Me on (at) Mount Rushmore.     Dad, Rodney and I rode back East. On our way we visited the Badlands in South Dakota early in the morning. It was good that it was early, because by around eight o’clock it was 90 degrees. From there we rode into the Black Hills and saw Mount Rushmore. In the Black Hills we really loved the pig tail turns. That is where we went into a short tunnel in the rock. The other end of the tunnel was a shear cliff. A bridge carried us a short distance to rejoin land at a steep grade and a tight turn that quickly curled under the bridge we had just come out of the cliff on. It is difficult to describe in words, other than, “Whoa, cooooool!!” There was little noteworthy of the trip after that. There was the time where Dad and I almost decked Rodney. He had a back habit of complaining a lot. We were very patient with him for two and a half weeks. But somewhere in Iowa, we stopped at a rest area for a picnic lunch. Money was getting tight so we bought a little Styrofoam ice chest that I carried on my passenger seat. We filled the chest with groceries and ice. It was a hot summer in the Midwest and we made few stops once we left South Dakota. At the rest stop in Iowa, we found our groceries sloshing around in a chest full of water. Like I said, money was tight, so we ate soggy sandwiches. Rodney had something to say about it. We both told Rodney in no uncertain terms to “SHUT-UP!” Fortunately, he took our advice.
HOME	CB 750	BMW	GOLDWING