"Life is the great adventure ride. Twist the throttle hard."

July 11

We spent most of the day working on the bikes. We found a Harley mechanic who works out of his garage to put new handle-bars on Sam’s bike. He’d been wanting to do this for a couple months, and finally had the time to get around to having it done. 🙂

The new “Mini-Ape” bars and better rear-view mirrors.Â

The local Harley ship, Freedom Harley in

Denver, had a nice program where they would do oil-changes while you wait. All the other dears wanted us to make an appointment a week or two out.  We got the oil changed to

Mobile 1 synthetic, and added better rear-view mirrors to Sam’s Dyna. The ones on that came with his bike were small and had flat mirror glass.  The new ones are bigger and “Objects Appear Smaller”

Doug Ray helped run us around town chasing down parts and the shops, and we all took a break in the afternoon, and took some laps at a go-kart track. Sam won.

July 12

We decided to stay in Denver one more day, and goof off. Went over to the amusement park and rode roller-coasters and then rode out to Golden Colorado and toured he Coors brewery. Sam and Pepper went to the movies tonight. As much fun as this is, we are both ready to get on the bikes and do some serious riding again. We’re going to head-out across CO and into Kansas tomorrow.

 

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July 9^th

After coffee and muffins at a quaint little shop in town, we left for our second attempt at the climb up over the Continental Divide at the Monarch Pass. Clear skies and great weather made for a perfect ride up to the top at 11,312 feet.

After a snack of some local chocolate fudge, the down-hill run was fast and easy. With Sam leading, he came off the gas about ¼ before the speed trap that caught the guy behind us.

For those of you who didn’t know, my wife Uschi used to live in Colorado. We stayed friends with a number of great folks here. Also, another couple of our friends from San Diego, Terry and Marie, moved here some years back, so Sam and I have a lot of people in Colorado we want to visit. I think we really need more time for this trip.  Uschi ? ?

We got to Herb and Nancy’s cabin in Jefferson about 12:00, where they graciously let us stay the night. The ride up their driveway is on a switch-back dirt road, with the last 50 feet being a steep gravel path very hair raising on a street bike weighing 1000lbs loaded, and even more exciting riding down.

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Their place is a lovely cabin high up in the Rockies with an awesome view of a valley, trout-stream, and small lake below. Like many summer afternoons in Colorado, rain storms moseyed their way across the horizon as we kicked-back on their deck and talked politics and compared the world views of an 18 year-old to us old folks.

Nancy (an expert trout fisherman, who calls the lake her own) had been out fishing all afternoon, came home empty handed with some story about defective bait. Herb made us all PORK chops for dinner. Thanks to both for their wonderful hospitality.

July 10^th

We left Herb and Nancy’s in the morning for an easy 70 mile ride into Denver. Stopped at the local Harley shop to arrange an oil change and get some parts to change Sam’s handle-bars out to something a bit more styling and comfortable. We’re staying near Denver in Arvada for a couple days at Doug and Pepper’s place. Doug even moved his Porche out of this garage so we could store the bikes in there. What a great guy.

For dinner, we rode over to Terry and Marie’s home, also in Arvada. Their son Devin wore Sam out on their trampoline.

It was fun reminiscing about baby Sam. Terry and Sam exchanged dirt-bike stories all evening. I learned from Marie that my wife (when she was single and living in Denver) used to work for a guy who ended up being a serial killer, and did away with 3 wives, one of whom he met at their work. Seems she made a good choice chasing some geeky engineer out in California instead.  I love ya dear!

July 8^th

This promised to be an epic day of riding, and sure enough, it was. We slept in a bit, hit Denny’s for a Grand Slam breakfast, and then headed into the Rockies. Davidson and Harley could not have laid out a finer ride than Corez up to Telluride and over to Gunnison. The weather was perfect, and the scenery stunning. A bit surreal seeing the snow and breathing in the cool mountain air up after the last couple days.

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We rolled into Telluride around noon, and took the tram up the mountain, and over to Mountain Village for lunch. Sam found a rock-climbing wall, and worked off some energy on it.  In 10 years, if you want to find me, you’ll know where to look. This town is beautiful, full of civic pride, great restaurants, and free public services (the tram, pool, rock-wall, parks)

We cracked-up over this guy trying to fit a discarded Harley seat onto his dirt-bike he converted to a cruiser with a few pounds of duct tape.

This afternoon, we drove on to Ridgeway for a drink at the True Grit Saloon where the movie was made, and then on to Gunnison. The plan was to try to get up over Monarch

Pass before sunset. 5 mile outside of Gunnison, the afternoon thunderstorms with about a 50mph head-wind let us know it was time to turn around and get a hotel.