Diary from the 10th of June until the page gets too long
10th June 2007:- Today we went out of our
way to travel through the original Virginia City and it was just
brilliant. Whilst the town is a tourist destination and attraction there
seems to have been a lot of thought given to its originality. We spent a
couple of hours exploring the town and enjoyed every second of it.
We then
decided to head for Haydon Lake for the sidecar rally and got as far as
Missoula on Interstate 90 when the light rain that have been teasing
us all day suddenly decided to come down in bucket fulls. We then
stopped at the very first motel, cold, wet but with an easy day tomorrow
to ride to Haydon lake.
This is one day that the pictures give a real image of the old town..
11th June -17th June 2007:- Headed out of
Virginia City, Wyoming north to I-90. This confirmed what I already
knew, try and stay off of interstates. When we were at Bodego Bay, many
weeks before, Ivan Rider fitted highway pegs to the Ural. I was using them
on I-90 and at some time when I took my feet off the pegs I hooked up in
the throttle cable. It became obvious when we pulled off a ramp and the
Ural stayed at full throttle until I switched it off. A bit frightening
until I work out the problem (rider induced) and fixed it.
It
rained on and off all day, just a light drizzle, until the last 5
minutes as we rode into Missoula and the heavens opened. Julie
couldn't understand how I could even see to continue riding. Two very
wet riders pulled into the first motel into Missoula and spent the next
few hours drying themselves and the luggage. (Since this exercise all
luggage has internal waterproof bags that stops all possible ingress of
water)
A great ride from Missoula to Coeur d'Alene with a long stop at
the old silver mining town of Wallace, then up to Hayden Lake ready for
the Sidecar Rally. Went for a couple of great rides before the rally and
the rally was just brilliant. Made some really genuine friends at the
rally and met up with some previous ones, just hope some of them can make
it to Australia some day say we can repay their kindness.
From Hayden Lake
rode for 6 hours in continuous light rain up Highway 95 to Cranburn in
Canada. After 6 nights in the tent it was time for a motel night and
a chance to catch up on washing and tidying up. There are a few pictures
here of the last few days.
URAL REPORT:- The Ural
is running really well. It seems to change considerably with the fuel we
put in it, sometimes it will get to 60mph without even trying, then a fuel
fill and the throttle is flat out at 50mph. Had a second flat tyre, a bad
one because it happened amongst roadwork on I-90 with nowhere to
pull off. Managed to get it to an off ramp with a flat tyre and Dennis
& Chuck helped me get the wheel changed and within 10 minutes we
were on our way. Both flat tyres have been on the pusher and both with
tube failures on the seam. We make the pusher work hard, this probably
doesn't help but the probably shouldn't fail regardless. All tubes are
being changed, we seem to have had tubes from a bad batch. Mark from
Ural NW is replacing them under warrantee.
Have had the switch for the
front break fail, Ural NW supplied a new switch that I will fit in the
next few days. If we had a new Honda, Harley or BMW I don't think it could
have run any better or had any less issues.
In 7,500km
we have consumed 3 pusher tyres and now replaced the Russian tyres
with Taiwanese tyres that should give about 3 times the distance. The bike
seems better (more stable, less yaw) on the road with the new tyres. With
the big load on the bikes and lots of very winding roads I accept the tyre
wear. I also change tyres a bit before necessary because of the speeds and
loads we are carrying.
June 18th to 20th:- We made it into the Rocky Mountains.
With slightly improved weather we rode from Cranbrook to Golden on Highway
95 and it was a very pleasant experience. There were too many clouds to
see the tops of most of the mountains but this was just a teaser for the
following day when the weather cleared (not a lot of rain) and we just
marvelled at the views. The night at Golden was spent at a great little
park up in the hills away from traffic, although we could still just hear
a train in the distance. The road in, as the sign at the bottom explained,
was not designed for large trailers and RV's. The following day we rode
into the Rocky Mountain national parks and it was amazing. We rode north
about 100km on the Icefields Parkway, saw moose, Julie saw two black bears
run across the road when we were by ourselves on the road, and we paid
$1.47 a litre (that's over $5.00US a gallon) for fuel at the only
fuel stop on the road north.
That night we stayed at the camping park
at Lake Louise village, a park completely surrounded by a high electric
fence. I'm not sure if it was to keep the campers in or the bears our.
Nice park, a bit costly but with the infrastructure they have put in place
it was justified. They apparently have a major bear/people problem in the
area. There are signs everywhere warning people to stay away from bears
and if you see them on the road don't stop. We passed 3 traffic jams on
the road where people stopped because bears were crossing the road. It
made me quite cross, the signs are simple and there for a good
reason.
Went up to the actual Lake Louise and didn't like what it was,
a beautiful place totally spoilt by crass commercialism. We went up there
so we're as bad as the rest. Could have hired a 2 person canoe and gone
for a paddle at $40 an hour. It was very busy and each canoe would have
been bringing in $350-$400 a day, and I would reckon the canoes would cost
around $1,000 each. Is this what they call a tourist trap. I left feeling
very uncomfortable.
Rode into Banff, what a great little town, loved
it. Have a drink and something to eat and the prices were very acceptable.
Restored my faith in human kind.
Continue on to Calgary where we had a
bit more adventure than we really needed which I will describe in the next
chapter.
But here are some interesting pics of the last few days
June 20th - 24th, 2007:- Guess who overbalanced whilst tieing up their
shoes and managed to crack the bones in both her kneecap and her shoulder.
Julie is in hospital in Calgary, Alberta at the moment, hopefully be
out in a couple of days then we must sit quietly for 6 weeks before we can
consider restarting the journey. This is hopefully just a little hiccup in
the journey, Julie has been in hospital 4 days and wants to get out. We
are waiting on doctors reports and approval from the insurance company
before moving on to find somewhere to rehabilitate.
If you are from
'out-of-state' and need to be in hospital in Calgary it's $3,300CA per day
just for the bed.
But I'm sure we will find something interesting to do so check the web site from time to time to see whats happening.
June 25th to June 30 2007:- Life takes some interesting turns and twists as our journey continues. Julie's stay in the Foothills Hospital,Calgary dragged on for 7 days and she kept getting more 'enthusiastic' each day to get out. In amongst the collection of 'get well' emails we received was one from a lady called Janet Miller (on the right.)Her email is here:-
Now the interesting part of all this
is that Janet & Jim communicate on their web sites, or to be totally
correct, their dogs communicate.
http://www.dogster.com/ is a web site where diaries are written from the dogs perspective. It's worth a look.
Anyhow, by Janet's and Jims's dog puting their dairies on line we got to meet Janet.
What a great person.
Janet borrowed a brilliant
bike trailer that looked as though it was made for the Ural and on June
30th drove us 1,100 kms from Calgary to Hood River with her only intention
being to help stranded, injured bikers.
We would have driven ourselves
down to Hood River but in Calgary it was a week before the Calgary
Stampede and there was no accomodation, Uhauls or rental cars available in
the entire city. It was really no place for stranded tourists.
Sixteen
hours after leaving Calgary we arrived in Hood River at midnight to find
'NO VANCANCY" signs on every motel. Eventually managed to find a single
room after pleading with the desk and the three of us had to share a room
for the remainder of the night. I wonder if when Janet sent her
original email whether she thought she would be sharing a motel room,
1,100 km's from home in another country with two strangers a few days
later.
The following day she turned around and drove the
1,100km's home again. For her generosity well beyond what we could
have ever expected Julie and I will be forever grateful. I just hope one
day to be able to give back to Janet for her absolutely generous act, and
if we can't repay her, at least pass the favour forward by helping someone
else in need.
We are currently in Hood River
staying with Vernon and Amy from Adventure Sidecar http://www.adventuresidecar.com/
and Julie is recuperating well, I know this
because she is starting to order me around again. She is in fact
recovering very quickly with lots of positive attitude.
June 30th to July 10th:- We`re at Hood
River staying with Vernon and Amy and I wish we were on the road again.
It's great being with Amy & Vernon but sitting around waiting for
bones to heal is a very bland way to live. Julie has had to do it for me a
few times so guess it's just what-comes-around-goes-around. I wander in to
Hood River (12 miles) most days to do a bit of shopping, I'm cooking most
evening meals. Julie's doing a lot of reading, but Vernon & Amy have a
very large library so she wont run out of books.
I've given the bike a
full service and got it ready to go in the Black Dog Rally, wimps
division. Veron has taken a few pics whilst we are out and about so they
are posted here
These photos are off his www site at http://www.adventuresidecar.com/
July 14th, The Black Dog Rally:- Guess who came in
last at the Black Dog Rally - the Adventure Sidecar Team. But we won by
just winning after losing a bike totally to breakdown and two of the the
other surviving three suffering problems. The Ural lost all power and
after struggling for a while discovered the air filter was totally
blocked, a problem suffered by a number of bikes that day as we ploughed
through deep talcum powder type dirt which often enveloped the bike. In
the end we won a trophy for being the longest distance participants. The
amazing part about the rally was the wide variation of ages in the
participants, the youngest being 17, the oldest 77, with many riders well
over 60.
There are a few of my picture here of the rally and the
following the following two links will give you some
more.
http://www.blackdogdualsport.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=7fb2c6de6cf222a780a06feaa61352bf
July 28th - an important day:- Today
Julie got back into the Ural for a long ride. We went from Hood River out
to Mount St Helens and back via the long route, and she survived the ride
extremely well, in fact better then Graham who, having not done a
seriously long winding highway run for 6 weeks, had very tired arms and
shoulders. Julie can get into the sidecar by herself but needs help to get
out until her shoulder strengthens.
We went 199
miles for the day, climbed up and over a couple of mountains. Lots of the
roads around the volcanic mountains seem to have big dips, holes and giant
cracks. Makes for some interesting riding.
The pictures from the day
are not particularly exciting, the visit and the magnitude of the
destruction when the volcano exploded I feel can only be fully appreciated
with a visit. There's a lot of new growth coming through on what was a
moonscape type terrain, some becoming quite large, and animals grazing on
the open ground. Anyhow, here are some pics
from the slopes of Mt St Helens in Washington State.
July 29th &30th:- Chuck invited me to go the Great Oregon Steamup for a day of all things old and mechanical. Here is a video of a 97 year old man driving a 1912 3 wheeled tractor he inherited from his father. This may take a while to download but trust me, if you like things mechanical it's worth the wait. Make sure you have your sound turned up for the genuine experience. Her are a couple more videos of really old machines that are worth seeing if you like old machines. Movie2.wmv, Movie3.wmv, Movie4.wmv.
The following images are stricly for those interested in old tractors and steam engines. Be warned.
August 1st to August 3rd:- We left Hood River on August 1st. We
had almost 4 weeks with Vernon and Amy, it all went well
but we owe them big time. Hopefully one day they will come to Australia
and we can treat them to some premium road kill.
With Julie
feeling much better we travelled on the North side of the Columbia Gorge.
If you are not aware of how the Columbia Gorge was formed it's worth the
read.
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/LavaPlateaus/description_lava_plateaus.html
We went east to Hells Canyon in Easter Oregon and for
a morning ride up to the Hells canyon dam. It really is a spectacular
ride. It would have been great to do a rafting/jetboat trip down the
rapids but Julie was not quite ready for this. We also wanted to move on
before it got too hot, the afternoon before when we arrived the
temperature was 109 F, very hot on the motor cycle. There was some
spectacular riding as we passed Oxbow Dam and climbed into the mountains
again, As it was Friday and accommodation very limited in the mountains we
decide to head down to Boise to spend the weekend. I found a short cut
that added about 2 hours onto the ride over tracks not a lot better
than the logging tracks we covered in the Black Dog Rally. Then ride down
along the Payette River to Boise, watching all the rafters, rowers,
canoers and other down the river was brilliant. It did make us a bit
envious though, we were riding in 100 plus temperatures.
Anyhow, there are a few pics here.
