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Pretty light day, 242 mi. Rode with Cindy, Neil, Neil’s father in law, his friend and spouse. Good group. Jelled pretty well. Cindy wanted to bail after the third stop since her old man was getting off work about that time, so we jetted back to Helena early. Just as well. Opened the three envelopes when I got home and had a crap poker hand.

First, the weekend of the 10-11th, up to visit Keith and go to the New Denver, BC, Garlic Festival:

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Second, the weekend of the 25-26th, and likely overflowing into the week before or week after, out to Annacortes for the Oyster Run, including a jump over to Vancouver Island. The route is highly subject to the weather at that time, if indeed it happens at all. The weather has been extra weird this year:

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More updates to come, I’m sure.

And because 430 wasn’t enough I put on another 20 miles running out to Gene and Nancy’s house for bacon, bleu cheese and avocado burgers and blueberry pie.

The only downer was I couldn’t fit a fresh huckleberry pie in my new saddlebags.

You can where Seeley Lake is and how far things got out of hand…

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I rode this Rocket III Roadster, a Rocket III Tourer, a Thunderbird 1600, a Thunderbird 1700 big bore, and a Scrambler.

The R3T is a HUGE bike. It’s brilliant, though. Super comfortable and you can’t hardly tell it’s “detuned” from the standard Rocket III. With all the same torque it pulls hard in every gear. It’s just too big and looks too much like a Harley Road King for my tastes. The Thunderbird 1600 is a pig. Oh sure it’s plenty fast if you don’t have carpel tunnel and can crank on the throttle and the brakes absolutely sucked compared to the Rockets and my bike with the dual discs (and it does have dual discs). The Thunderbird 1700 is a completely different bike. It goes like stink and stops much better, though I suspect it has ABS (but I didn’t check). It’s also a much better looking bike than the Rockets. But the numbers just don’t add up. I’ll explain later.

The Scrambler (their “dual-sport” Bonneville) was fun as hell, a virtual “bag of giggles,” helped in part by the 2-into-1 Arrow exhaust option which sounds almost as good as my bike with the Specialty Spares mufflers. But the Scrambler had one major drawback for me: the seat was horrible. The demo was configured with all kinds of accessories and truly looked the business, starting with a matte khaki paint and the aforementioned Arrow exhaust, and adding the solo seat with rear rack, engine guards, headlight grill, and handlebar crossbar with Triumph embossed pad. About the only thing missing for me was a left-side aluminum pannier and a center stand. Some day I’ll add one of these to my stable but it will probably be an older used model that I’ll customize as time and money allows to look something like what I rode yesterday.

(Update: Forgot to finish this before I published it.)

So the gist of this is I want a Rocket III more than ever, and the new Roadster is “the one.” I really want the matte black version but they’re discontinuing it next year. The corporate guy didn’t say what they were replacing that color with if anything. It was tempting to just say F it and sign the papers, but I really need to get some big ticket items fixed on my house before I take on anymore debt (which, of course, I shouldn’t do at all). Hopefully by Spring ’11 I can be in a position to handle it. I won’t need to do anything to the bike except possibly move my Windvest windshield and Tsukayu hard saddlebags from the Bonneville America to the Rocket. Then ride the piss out of it.

(Update: Damn, I still didn’t finish…)

So about the numbers:

Rocket III Roadster: $14k
Thunderbird 1600: $12.5k
Thunderbird 1700: $13.5k
Thunderbird 1700 ABS: 14.5k

Why the hell would I buy the Thunderbird? The only differences between the top of the line Thunderbird and the Roadster, beside aesthetics (which is everything to some people)…

Thunderbird has a 6th gear
Thunderbird is belt drive
Roadster is shaft drive
Both have EFI, water cooling, dual front discs, lots of power (though the R3 is way ahead), both have ABS if you fully load out the Thunderbird. And I believe the Thunderbird is almost as heavy, within 100 lbs. of the Roadster.

Really, those are the major differences. Admittedly the Thunderbird looks a bit better than the Roadster, but there are those who favor function over form. On the other hand, the Thunderbird looks like the twin of my bike, the Bonneville America, but all pumped up and ‘roided out.

Picture hot twin sisters, Bonnie and Birdy. But Birdy decides to dedicate herself to weightlifting and goes to the gym 4 hours per day, and becomes a mid-level weight lifter. She has to get implants because her boobs disappear from all the exercise and steroids, she starts to get that horsey/manly face, you get the idea. She’s still somewhat attractive, and can well out perform her twin sister Bonnie, but she can’t come close to the physical achievements of their brother, Roady. Even with all the changes and the loss of some of her femininity Birdy is prettier than Roady, of course. But Roady can still kick her butt in head to head competition and he doesn’t spend any time in the gym. Meanwhile, Bonnie has all the boys fawning over her because she’s still just as pretty as ever. It doesn’t matter that she can’t benchpress her own weight or run with the big boys. Out of the three siblings, guess which one doesn’t get as much action as the other two? The feminine Bonnie and the masculine Roady both have a place in this world. Birdy is a bit of an outcast still trying to find her place.

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Highlights include visits with:

• John in Thompson Falls, MT (twice! unless he’s ready to ride along)
• Rocket Bob in Kent, WA
• Zdenko and Karen in Seattle, WA
• Vern and Debbie on Vancouver Island, BC
• Gordie in Surrey, BC
• Keith and ReneLouis in Trail, BC

Potential Events to work around for which I don’t yet have hard dates:

• Oyster Run in Anacortes, WA
• Garlic Festival in New Denver, BC

Target number of days including weekends: 10
Target total mileage: 2000

Wednesday (map, 415mi): Breakfast at the Avon Cafe. Late lunch at Jax Cafe in Eureka. Best burgers around. Hopefully this will be more than a log of where and what I ate. While gassing up in Seeley Lake I met the caretaker of said lake who fell in love with the bike. Happens all the time (still waiting for a cute gal to fall in love with it–so far it’s only wrinkled old geezers). Made it to Radium Hot Springs around 6:30 and stayed at the Gables Motel (yay wifi). Talked with a dude there who was on Holiday from Saskatchewan and used to race Kawasaki sport bikes. Interesting cat but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Was later reminded just how different Canadian TV can be. Some of it is like Bizzaro-world versions of our shows. Some of it is just completely “off.”

Thursday (map, 312mi): The next morning I found out they call it “back bacon” in Canada, not “Canadian Bacon.” Just 6 miles north of Golden my bike started running poorly. It wasn’t quite like a vacuum leak (though I replaced the vacuum caps anyway) and it wasn’t quite like running on one cylinder. After a little while it “cleared up” and I continued on. Glacier National Park is quite stunning (see gallery). When John and I passed through there in 2004 it was rainy and miserable and we had no idea how scenic it was. On the way down to Revelstoke had to wait to pass through single lane traffic due to a toppled over semi-truck trailer. As we got moving again three friggin jackholes on Harleys skipped the queue up to where I was and one of them insisted on running right next to me through the accident traffic. You just don’t pull that shit with someone you don’t know. Once we were in the clear I let them take off ahead of me. Gassed up in Revelstoke and headed for the Shelter Bay Ferry about a half-hour south. Due, I gather, mostly to the Nakusp Music Festival the line for the ferry was a few miles long and they only had one ferry running. Waited in line for over 3 hours with two blokes from Alberta (see gallery). We chatted about the usual stuff, bikes, differences between the provinces and between our two countries. Other than the heat, and seriously impacting my schedule, it was a pleasant enough time. South of the ferry I had that vapor lock type of issue again for a few miles, but again, it cleared up. At the time I was thinking it was a batch of bad gas. Luckily the start of the Nakusp Music Festival was still a day away so passing through there was easy and there were no cops on the road yet. Didn’t need a repeat of last year’s speeding ticket (although it appears that one wasn’t enough for ReneLouis and he had to have one for his new Moto Guzzi Norge). The rest of the day was uneventful and I arrived in Nelson around 7:30 that evening.

Friday: There were a couple groups rides I could have gone on, but I didn’t sleep well and slept in. Had a nice breakfast at the Red Fish cafe and hit the road about 11am for the Balfour Ferry with the intent of doing the Creston-Salmo loop (Google map), 154 miles. Ran into one of the groups in Creston, ReneLouis, Brad, Rocket Bob and Rich, who were setting up the Poker Run for Saturday and sat with them while they had lunch. They were doing the same loop, but counter-clockwise. I continued my clockwise loop alone without incident, well, that is until I was parking my bike back at the Grand Hotel. Every few years I have the same humbling experience, but this time it was with an extra dose of humiliation, to remind me I’m not an expert at this whole motorcycle thing. I forgot to put my kickstand down and almost dropped my bike on Keith’s new Triumph Trophy. Naturally, this was in front of a parking lot full of rally attendees. But this was good because I needed their help. I crushed my left thumb between my handebars and Keith’s bike, saving it from a nasty scratch. But that meant I couldn’t pick the bike up on my own, since I couldn’t get a grip on it with my left hand. ::sigh:: No harm, no foul, though my thumb is still sore.

Saturday: Met up with friends for breakfast once again at the Red Fish Cafe. There are plenty of other places to eat in Nelson, and they’re all good, but Red Fish is awesome. There was a group consensus to bail on the poker run and instead we did the Kaslo-New Denver loop (Google map), 169mi. The top of the pass between those two towns is just gorgeous (see gallery). Our initial party was Keith, Marty, Zdenko, Karen and Brent, with John following in the chase truck. Rocket Bob followed us up to Kaslo but went back to Nelson. We had planned on lunch in Nakusp but because SOMEBODY had to stop in Kaslo for ice cream a mere hour after breakfast, that threw us off. Just as well as the cops were out again around Nakusp and I hate doing the speed limit. As mentioned above, ReneLouis did go to Nakusp and did get nailed for another ticket. He caught up with us in New Denver as we were finishing up lunch. I also took a few shots of a couple vintage bikes on a trailer there at the Valhalla Inn, an Ariel square four and what appears to be a WWII era Norton. At lunch we were also joined by a Triumph Thruxton rider from Alberta named Ritchie (?) who accompanied us back to Nelson. What followed was some of the best riding of my life. Keith lead the way on his (now award winning) 2003 Cardinal Red America, followed by ReneLouis on his new Moto Guzzi, then me, then the Thruxton. The four of us blazed a trail through the twisties, occasionally stopping to allow the rest of the party to catch up. My bike was just singing with the bark of the specialty spares exhaust bouncing off the cliff walls and the concrete barriers separating the road from the lake below, as well as harmonizing with the exhaust notes of the other riders in my group as our RPMs rose and fell together. It was…well, as close to a Zen state as I’ve ever been. If my depiction sounds a lot like sex, well, it was the next best thing to sex and lasted a whole lot longer. That evening at the banquet the food was good as usual. Rocket Bob got the old fart award, and Keith got the Best Cruiser award. He was positively beaming. And there was a nice moment when they recognized John for returning after his crash last year.

Sunday (map), 436mi: Got a very late start, about 11am MST, after our customary Sunday morning breakfast at the Hume Hotel. They have one of the best eggs benedicts anywhere. With the goodbyes said and my stuff loaded in John’s truck, I blasted over the Creston-Salmo pass, stopping only for a photo opp at the top (see gallery) and at the border so John could catch up and I could get my passport out of the back of his truck. Interestingly both border guards, going each way, wondered how I got the license plate “BOLLOX.” They give the bureaucrats at the Montana DMV (or the old biddies who might complain) too much credit for knowing British slang/profanity. John and I met up with Del in Bonner’s Ferry, ID, for some coffee and pie. Yeah, another delay but I hadn’t seen Del in years. Unfortunately his lovely bride Janet couldn’t or wouldn’t join us (having just returned from a camping trip and looking horrible or somesuch nonsense), but he brought her lovely Bonneville SE to show off. Just outside Bonners Ferry my bike started “doing it” again. I nursed it along at about 50mph for about 15 miles before it just exploded in wild acceleration again. Soon I will be tapping the hivemind at BonnevilleAmerica.com to figure that out. After a snack at the Little Bear Cafe in Thompson Falls I transfered my luggage from John’s truck to my bike and headed for home. I probably should’ve stopped there in T-Falls or in Missoula for the night, but I continued on in the dark, watching for critters but ultimately making it home around 10:40 without incident.

Total Miles: 1486. Number of Days: 5. Average Miles per day: 297.2.

UPDATE: Zdenko’s Gallery on Flickr (don’t critique–he’s very sensitive), Rocket Bob’s Gallery on Facebook (must be his blue period), Keith’s Gallery on Photobucket.

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I purchased the Track feature for my SPOT GPS Personal Tracker, so I don’t have to hit the ‘OK’ button to mark a waypoint on my Google Map (link in the side bar). The map above is the plan. Could change a bit. If I make good progress Wednesday I might jump over to Banff and/or Lake Louise. I’m planning on averaging 360mi per day. Easy on a super-slab. A little more taxing on two-lane twisties with lots of tourist on the road. May not make it all the way to Radium the first day. Probably take Friday ‘off’ in Nelson and do a day ride with the gang on Saturday. Home Sunday.

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Also, my SPOT personal GPS tracker page shows the points at which I pressed the “check in” button. Unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to limit the page to just this weekend’s activity, so it show last weekend as well. Figured out how to delete those couple from last weekend.

Photos

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I have a couple more options/ideas, since I took Wednesday off, too…

If my friend John is riding up to Nelson, I’ll head over to Kooskia, ID on Wednesday, Thompson Falls via Spokane (and a visit to Empire Cycles) on Thursday and on up to Nelson with him on Friday. This plan would require me to cancel the Thursday night room reservation in Nelson. Thusly…

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If John is going to drive, which is entirely possible if he’s not up to riding yet, my options open up a bit. Maybe instead of hitting Thompson Falls on the way up, I hit it on the way down, and go to Trail on Thursday. I didn’t make it to Trail like I had planned a few weeks ago.

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Whatever happens, I’m shooting for nice easy 300 mile days or less.