Once again impetuousness overtook sanity, and John and I decided to ride to Denver, Colorado from our home base in Iowa. The 733 mile trek would only take us 12 hours (in our dreams !) and we would have Friday-Saturday-Sunday to bike around the back roads of the Rockies. That was the plan. We packed up the bikes with the necessary accoutrements - water, sun lotion, music cds, and ibuprophen. Since I was planning on travelling a bit south of Denver after we arrived, I brought along my camping gear as well. Including my WoolPro base layer shirts, and my newest acquisition from WoolPro: their hoodie. Actually, I could have left the hoodie at home on this trip as I never needed it. I'll do a review of it on a later post for those interested. Those of you who follow my blog know I'm a big fan of the WoolPro line. They are absolutely fantastic to wear under a leather jacket or vest while riding. They keep you warm in the cold and keep you cool when its hot. Don't ask me how (I think its some kind of alien ET type technology, stolen from Area 51). But regardless, I always try to bring at least one shirt with me whenever I ride.
John and I had planned to take off between 4 and 6 pm on Wednesday, and true to form, we took off at exactly 8 o'clock that night. Based upon my calculations, that would put us in Denver at about the right time for the morning rush hour, a prospect that was less than appealing to me. But westward we ho'ed. We went across the State of Iowa in pretty good time, crossing the Missouri River around midnight, and began our trek through Nebraska. Now, for those of you who have not had the dubious pleasure of traveling through the great State of Nebraska, let me make a few observations that may help you in the future should you try to make this ride. Firstly, there is absolutely no discernible difference in scenery between driving this route in the day time or the night time. There is nothing to see. I know this may sound crass coming from a guy living in Iowa where the typical conversations revolve around how high the corn has grown since yesterday, but I'm serious. I found myself hoping a deer would run out in front of me just to break up the monotony. We stopped every hour or so, ostensibly to stretch out legs but in reality it was so I could satisfy my nicotine cravings. Through considerable experimentation I have concluded that attempting to light a cigarette at 80 mph (oops, I mean 75 mph :) ), is an exercise in futility; so now I just pull over. Apparently even Zippo has limits on how much wind their wind-proof lighters can sustain. But I digress. We kept riding through the night until about 5 am when John decided that it was time to grab some shuteye. He tried it while riding and that was not working out for him, so we grabbed a room at the Motel 6 in North Platte. I swear John really needs to learn the fine art of taking a nap during the afternoon, then he wouldn't need to interrupt our rides with such things as motels. I jest, I was getting a little worn too.
Five hours later, we are ready to leave North Platte. There was a 4 foot rise in elevation there, and I wanted to take a picture for posterity, but John thought that was a little silly. Now no one will believe me when I tell them that I saw a hill in Nebraska. Oh well, c'est la vie. Off we rode. On the map, North Platte doesn't look like it is very far from Denver at all; and I really have no idea why it was that it took us almost 8 hours to get there.
At the Pony Express memorial in Colorado (I'm wearing the WoolPro Scout, if you are wondering)
But we arrived in Denver during the latter part of the evening rush hour and my trusty GPS had selected a route that hit just about every traffic light in Denver. None of which were green. And, being from Iowa where we consider two Amish buggies traveling side by side a "traffic jam", the veritable multitude of cars in Denver is mind-boggling. I was later told it is due to all the new people who have come to live in Colorado because marijuana is legal for recreational use. Well, if that is true, then they need to be smoking more because the traffic was anything but laid back. John and I managed to avoid running into any other vehicles and arrived at his Aunt's place on the Southwest part of town where I took a short break before continuing on south. I thought about changing out of my WoolPro Scout shirt, since I had now been wearing it for about 24 hours, but it was miraculously free of body odor and still felt fresh against my skin, so I grabbed some water from John's truly gracious relatives and hit the road again.
Up until this point, the ride had been fairly uneventful (other than the Denver traffic). As I traveled through Castle Rock and approached Colorado Springs, the weather started turning a tad bit nastier. By the time I hit Colorado Springs, fate had conspired to grant me a perfect trifecta of problems: a rain storm combined with multiple traffic accidents in a city where I had never driven before, construction at every turn in the road, and lastly, wind gusts that were blowing my almost 1000 lb bike completely into the next traffic lane. If i could have seen, I would probably been quite scared. As it was, I simply kept on riding. Managed to make it out of town in one piece and continued down to the entrance of the Pike's Peak International Raceway. It had been my intention to ride to the top and actually see some mountains, which up to this point were virtually undetectable. Alas, it was not to be. Who closes a road just because its after 8pm ? Apparently, the answer is Colorado. So, I continued south.
I spent the next two days having a great time. I didn't get as many pictures as I had wanted, but the views were spectacular. Sunday, I returned to Denver to meet up with John again and then head back home. Ran into a traffic jam south of Colorado Springs that was over 10 miles long of stop-advance 10 feet-stop- repeat. My clutch hand was developing carpal tunnel by the time I got through that mess. Apparently Coloradoeans, (I know but that's what I call them) have no idea how to merge onto an interstate from an entrance ramp. Here's a hint from my old physics class: two objects of the same relative mass cannot occupy the same space at the same time without consequences. They ought to put that on one of their billboards. Anyway, enough venting. I arrived at John's Aunt's house and we visited for a while before taking off.
I knew this return trip would be different than the trip out. First off, my GPS decides to take us on a unfamiliar route and I miss the first of several missed exits. While backtracking to get back on the route, a bee flies into my partially open visor on my helmet and proceeds to buzz around for a bit. Right, like I really needed more distractions in the Denver traffic. As luck would have it, the buzzing around stopped shortly after he stung my cheek. Yes, it was going to be a fun ride back, I could tell. John, I, and my swollen cheek, eventually found our way out of Denver, and I for one breathed a sigh of relief. John was still shaking his head every time I looked at him. I couldn't tell whether that was because of my excellent navigation skills or if he was still laughing at the gyrations I had made when I had the extra visitor in my helmet. I gave up trying to figure it out and we just kept riding.
As darkness approached we could see storms to the north of us and to the south of us. The lightning display was spectacular. We would probably have enjoyed it more if we weren't riding right into it. But fortune smiled on us. We managed to travel over 100 miles splitting between the two storm cells and never getting more that a few drops on us. Somewhere around North Platte it started getting cold again, so we stopped to allow John to add more clothes. I was nice and warm wearing the WoolPro Agena shirt, so I didn't need to do anything but lean against the seat of my bike and wait for John to get done. Now is probably a good time to mention to the people who make the Harley seats one observation that I came across at that time: it seems that the seats are a tad bit on the slick side. So much so that when a person is innocently leaning against the seat at a rest area, minding his own business, there is a propensity for one's butt to slide off the seat and hit the ground with a resounding thump. Now, I'm not going to say how I know that to be a fact, lets just say it needs to be addressed by Harley and leave it at that.
We ended up riding all the way to Lincoln before we decided that we should take a serious rest break. We pulled into a rest area, each of us grabbed a concrete picnic table and we sacked out for an hour. Too soon we were back on the road, resolved to make it home before noon. And we would have too, if I hadn't gotten us lost in a town with only 4 roads. I won't go into great detail about that other than to say it might have been my fault or it might have been a glitch in the GPS satellite system. You know those things do break down and malfunction once in a while, so I am going with that. Anyway, we managed to make it to my place safe and sound around 1 o'clock, which was well within the time John said he wanted to be back. John continued on to his home, and I put an ice pack on my bee sting, vowing never to ride with my visor open again.
All in all, a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat.