All around the Pacific northwest!

[heraldhamster]

wow, I missed a LOT not paying attention over the weekend. pretty certain I have a new clutch cable in the shop and as some of the long-term members here can attest, I'm always in the mood for a road trip (Albuquerque side car). I would've brought it over, but water under the bridge now. sorry.
glad you're on your way again!

[DUGG]

Ok lets get a head count. Sunnbobb you and ? Hearaldmaster are you in, how many? We'll pick up some salmon, make some Caesar salad dressing and rice. Local's byob. Mrs West what is your drinking pleasure?

[sunnbobb]

When is the question...

[DUGG]

I was thinking Thursday evening 7ish depending on the guest of honers arrival time.

[sunnbobb]

Cool. Works for me

[DUGG]

Cool. Works for me

Are you going to ride up?

[mrs west]

This is all so great!

We'll be staying east of Spokane tonight. Hoping to get some good mileage in tmrw so we have a better eta but we can definitely make it by 7.

Thanks DUGG! Any beer is fine! We'll try to stop somewhere on our way up to pick up some portobellos or eggplant to throw on the grill for me so maybe we can bring some beers too.

We'll update more from the hotel in a bit!

[heraldhamster]

just me, DUGG.

and weather should be nice for riding... cloudy, no rain in my neighborhood.

[mr west]

May 14:th

Day off due to broken clutch cable..... walk around big fork. One more night in timber motel. Relaxing... not much to mention...

[mr west]

May 15:th

After my third cup of huckleberry coffee in the resception Rick Anderson shows up with his trailer to pick us up. We get the bike from the Roadhouse and take it to the solder guy who deems it unsalvageable. We order a new cable for monday, but get Ricks wife's car to see Glacier Park...

[mrs west]

Glacier NP may take the cake...

[mr west]

May 16:th

Yesterday we only did Road to the Sun for about 12 miles so today we woke up about 5:30 to do the Many Glacier road and the Two Medicine road as we didnt have time for them when the sun went down yesterday... tired but excited we went back to the park for spectacular views. No special feeling of acomplishment as we went by car, but this would for sure been to cold by bike!

Then we went straight to Kalispell to pick up the new cable at Honda and install it at Rick's. Prepared as it was it only took 40 minutes to install it and reattach the rear wheel.

Then we were tired.... but after a moral-lifting Asian Buffet, we set off.

The clutch is great. Imagine that you wake up a hot summer day after an excellent 9 hrs of sleep. You make a big healthy breakfast, and then you put on your bike gloves. You take out the knife thats been sitting in the oven over night. Then you go out in the sunshine and cut your butter.... thats the feeling of operating the lever of a GL1000 with a new cable!

Going out of Kalispell we got hit by a rain/hailstorm. Then it cleared up a bit and got really pretty, until we took the decision to try a 12 mile dirt road shortcut to the motel...but soon the shortcut got even dirtier..what had started out as a super smooth dirt road started to crack, elevate and get muddy. As the sun went down, we wesnt more and more uphill. Snow started to fall... wind picked up... all of a sudden I noticed we were above the snowline! And the road got worse all the time...

Every once in a while I question what Im doing. And as I realised we only had gone 5 miles of the 12 mile shortcut, and I tried to manouver the 79 Goldwing with passenger and two sitars on back, through the mud, snow, and darkness, cassette radio flopping around, I realised this is one of those thingd that can go bad really quicky... I saw the news paper notice for my inner eye: "the casulties appeared to have been sitar players as two sitars were found close to the crashed motorbike on the mountain". We had to turn around! On the way down we saw plent of elk.. even running with us as we went back out on the paved road.

After realising it was much longer of a ride than expected to the motel, it all started to go uphill... for a long time too.... as we went over the Thompson pass the sun was already down, but the sky was still quite bright. it was freezing cold! And it snowed. And there was fog! And I was really scared of that ice could be on the road... It was a sense of release when a truck catched up and drove behind us. Now at least someone would be able to scrape us up from the road and report the accident to the police.

Then we went downhill for ages. But it was a really special ride that looked like something from the lord of the rings! The green pine trees, the moss, the foggy mountains, the stream along the road.....we saw hundreds of elk. It started to rain again... even though it was beautiful, the conditions made the last mile to the motel the longest ever!

We reached happy to be alive.

[heraldhamster]

wow. don't you just love those kinda shortcuts... been on several of those.
glad you're safe & sound! and warm.

[Sagebrush]

Dirt roads over the mountains never prove to be a shortcut. Seems every year someone gets led by their GPS or their own bad sense of direction to attempt a forest service road, they get stranded due to bad weather and spend days waiting for rescue which sometimes doesn't come. Never trust a dirt or gravel road because often they just end, even though maps or GPS says they continue.

[Whiskerfish]

Yep that is a proper adventure!!!