20 Years ago....

20 years ago to the day ( where did the time go?) I first swung a leg over the seat of a motorcycle on day one of the MSF basic rider course. 

I never ridden a motorcycle before that day, and inspired partially by the fact that a couple of my then co-workers rode motorcycles to work, and a false rationalization on my part that it would save me on gas money I decided to try it. 

Little did I know the places, the motorcycles, the people and the adventures that I would end up having over the next 20 years! 

My first posting on this blog was on August 12th of 2006 so it won't hit the 20-year mark till then. 

Since my first motorcycle, a Honda Aero which I quickly outgrew, to a BMW r1150 RT, to 4 Ural sidecars, a Suzuki DL1000 with a sidecar, a BMW R80 classic and finally my Yamaha TW200.  You might say there's been a few motorcycles along the way. 

From my December 31, 2023 post:  I had ridden (roughly) a total of 238,563 miles ridden. That works out to be a bit over 9 times the circumference of the Earth in 17 years and on nine motorcycles.  I've only ridden an additional 5424 miles since the end of 2025 and 2026 is not looking that good in terms of a lot more miles on a motorcycle.

Though my riding has tapered off quite sharply in the last few years since 2023, I hope I have another decade of riding in front of me at least.

Thanks for riding along with me.  It truly has been the people I have met along the way that I have met and become friends with in the last 20 years that made these years so much better.

Courtesy of Google Gemini and ezgif.com

I will be spending today riding with Steve of scooterinthesticks and his friend Paul R.

This is cool and slighty troubling at the same time, I asked Gemini to generate a short story after searching the blog for reported travel destinations and got this:

The open road has a way of turning a simple journey into a life-long story, and for the author of A Redleg’s Rides, that story spans an impressive map of North America.

It began in the high, thin air of Colorado, where the mountains served as a constant backdrop for two-wheeled exploration, before the tires inevitably wandered toward the rugged landscapes of Utah and the vast, sun-drenched expanses of Arizona. From there, the adventures stretched across the plains and borders of the American West—through New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, all the way to the rugged terrains of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.

The journey didn't stop at the mountain passes. The rider navigated the heartland—Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—finding unique routes and hidden gems along the way. Even the far edges of the continent felt the hum of the engine, with travels extending to Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada, and dipping down into the southern heat of Texas and Oklahoma.

Whether it was navigating a Ural through a desert wash, testing mechanical limits, or simply chasing a sunset,  A Redleg’s Rides serves as a journal of a life spent in the saddle, proving that for those who choose to ride, the destination is never just a dot on a map—it’s the miles that come between them.

Note: very little editing was needed.

Great Maps for Finding Dispersed Camping Areas

This past camping trip, I got a notification in FB reels of an offering by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

It's a series of maps which show land ownership.  For instance, it shows what Federal/State agency manages an area or if it's private.  No more wondering if you're on public or private land!

Sure, the BLM and other Federal agencies have published maps both online versions and for sale as paper maps for years and years at their field offices.  Sure, there's pay apps that show land ownership.  

But, these new and free maps, not only give you info on who "owns" or manages the land you're looking to camp in, but also shows your position based on GPS!  There's no doubt as to where you are in relation to the land you're exploring.

The maps also are downloaded to your phone and via the listed app, are available offline.  Heck, you can have it running on your phone while driving letting you know who manages the land you're driving by.  

You can zoom in for road/trail details of course once you've decided to explore an area with this app.

It's what I used, with the New Mexico map, to locate a great camping spot about 30 minutes from Truth or Consequences, NM.  The location isn't on iOverlander which is the primary app I use to find reported "wild camping" spots.

The trouble with using a popular app such as iOverlander is that others can use it to find reported spots, sometimes leading to crowding or small sites being occupied and not available to you.

Here's a link to the maps and the app: Field Maps which allow you to explore in a more certain manner for dispersed camping spots.

Free National Mobile Map Package (MMPK) Program

Finally, something really worthwhile for our tax dollars that's easy to access and use.

As stated in the link above, the 18 BLM states, basically the western half of the US are covered.  Plans are to cover all 50 states eventually.

Here's an animated gif on the process of using the app to get the maps:

source: BLM MMPK Program

Given the initial success I enjoyed using it for the first time last month, I'm very confident this will lead me to other sites away from the "maddening" crowds at "known" sites.

I know, I know, more evidence of my anti-social behavior.   Still, being certain I'm on BLM land is very reassuring when setting up camp somewhere I've never been.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas...

From past Christmas Posts:

Snow Globe images courtesy of Google's Gemini Image Creator A.I.

Remounting Umarang's Black Water Tank and Misc.

So there I was last week, trying to drain the black and gray water tanks on Umarang, the VRRV, a couple of cold days and nights after returning home from New Mexico.

The dumping of the tanks' contents seem to go fine.  I then started pushing water in through the dump gate to flush them out and clean them out as usual.

About four minutes into the filling of the black water tank, I heard a loud clunk and water started spewing from the top of the black water tank!  The forward half had come off its mounting bracket, and though the main pipe was held up by the guard I'd installed before, great pressure on the 1.5" ABS pipe from the gray water tank feeding into the dump hub broke the pipe as well.

Yep, water all over the place, luckily "clean-ish" water and not sewage!  

The next day, while back at the RV storage yard, I got the tank back up flush against the bottom of the VRRV.  What a PITA.  I failed to see if there was a seal between the tube from the holding tank and the RV's bottom though.

I believe the forward mounting bracket had lost several of the screws used to hold it and the forward edge of the tank up.  The last one failed while I was filling the tank.  

Note the gap created by the pipe's break.

A bottom up view of the dump hub where the 1.5" pipe from the gray water tank connects.  The tape you see there was an earlier attempt to seal things without actually replacing the pipe.  No such luck.

The dump valve you see is for the black water tank.

As you can see below, there's not much to stop the downward fall of the black water tank, when one of its mount brackets fails.

By Sunday, yesterday, I'd installed two steel straps to support the black water tank in the event it ever comes off the mounts again.  Fingers crossed.

I also, proactively, added a 2x4 board with a 1/8" steel plate brace across the bottom of the gray water tank, to reinforce things.  The factory mount points on the rear edge looked fine and all present.

Gray Water Tank

Dale K., a neighborhood friend and retired Master Plumber came by and made short work of removing the failed pipe, reaming out the stub glued to the dump hub, and installing replacement piping.

He said in his decades of plumbing work, he'd never successfully removed broken off stubs of plastic tubes which were glued together....neither by heat or cutting methods.  

Instead, he used this Socket Saver tool.  Very nice tool indeed and it made short work of the remnants of the tube end which had been connected to the dump hub.

Here's how things looked after the repairs were done:

Looking from rear of RV to front:

Note the steel strapping.  I think it'll be strong enough.

I hope.

You can tell which pipes are the new ones, they're

the clean ones.  :)

This morning, Monday, the pipes in question passed a quick leak test.  I then put about ten gallons of water into the black water tank through the toilet and drove the VRRV to the storage yard at Buckley Space Force Base.

Draining the water at the FamCamp dump facility went well.  No leaks seen from the drive from home.  They must have radically increased the pressure of the water available at the dump station as the black water tank filled up in less than 4 minutes and I saw water gushing from the top of the tank, not, thankfully, from inside the toilet.

I'll admit I'm a bit leery/worried that water gushed out of the top of the black water tank where it mates to the underside of the RV.  Everything seems to be fine in terms of toilet operation, water storage and such but I won't be fully confident till I go through a few fill/dump cycles while camping.  I'm thinking there might have been a seal between the top of holding tank and the RV's underbelly.

I just have to make sure to only fill the black water tank with just a few gallons of water to flush out "remnants" during a dump operation.

I mentioned misc. in the post subject line:  

So, what do the "eyes" above say to you?  Put yourself in the perspective of an approaching camper trying to find a spot to park at .... would the above sight say: Hi, come on over and set up or would it say: Go away?

Update: Nov 18:  did a test fill of the black water tank again and saw water flowing out unexpectedly from the top of tank!  Dammit.  More to follow.

Home in time for some Snow

Wednesday, January 31

RichardM and Bridget took me in their Jeep to the San Antonio airport this morning so I could catch at flight back to the overcrowded cesspool that is the Metro Denver area.

I'll be here a few days to take care of some stuff with the VA, some legal paperwork to be signed for family matters and to prepare to take the 2014 Honda CR-V (now aka Harriet) south along with Martha.

Saturday, February 3

Snow Day!  It snowed, sometimes heavily, most of the day, tapering off by mid-afternoon.  Heavy, wet snow which made the snow blower work harder.

Still, I got Scarlett out for a short ride for snow-clad trees pictures.  I also wanted to "try out" the Magic Eraser function of magicstudio.com and object remover tool from picwish.com.  I must say, they work pretty damn good!

Below is the low-res, watermarked version one can download from magicstudio for free.  It should give you some idea of how nicely it erases things.  In the below pic's case, I got rid of the houses in the background and objects behind the fence.

Another magicstudio erasing example.  I got rid of the stop sign in the pic above along with the houses in the background.

The below pic was edited using a different online tool from picwish.com, they allow a free download in a larger size and no watermark.

picwish

Magicstudio allowed me to erase the brickwork and landscaping structure in the above pic.

Here's picwish's version of object erasing:

A rather mono-chromatic kind of day eh.  Not too cold, things were melting nicely as I returned home, making things slushy on the roads.  It should prove quite icy tonight when things freeze up!

Happy New Year and 2023 in Pictures

Here's hoping you and yours have a great New Year in 2024!

2023 was pretty good for us, Martha retired and joined me more often camping.

Though I've been blogging since 2006 (yikes), I've only compiled a video of "The Year in Pictures" since 2008.  I think it was a suggestion from SonjaM that got things rolling and though I managed to forget to do it for 2009 (senior moment I'm sure), I've managed to make it happen since then.

I also record some travel/riding stats for future reference.  This year, it occurred to me (after seeing another blogger's goal to ride the circumference distance of Earth: 24,901 miles); to add up my mileage totals since I started riding.

It is actually quite surprising.  I figured it out to be (roughly) a total of 238,563 miles ridden.  That works out to be a bit over 9 times the circumference of the Earth in 17 years and on nine motorcycles.

Stats for 2023

Brigitta ending mileage: 102960 = 231 miles, way down from last year's 918 miles. (Pitiful, though I wasn't home much)

Scarlett ending mileage: 74679: 1976 Km = 1187 miles, down from last year's 2484 miles. (This was first year we started towing the Honda CR-V)

Yagi ending mileage: 20156 = 2295 miles, up from last year's 2575 miles

Total motorcycle mileage: 3713, down from last year's 5977

Correspondingly, Uma the VRRV ended the year at 99,635 = 10438 miles, up from last year's 8330 miles.

Days camping: 240 (65% of the year), up from last year's 168 days.

A Winter Solstice Compilation

 I hope you had a good Winter Solstice today.  We had warm and sunny weather mostly, which allowed me to get in some hiking along Coal Creek.

I shot a pic of my shadow at around Noon, supposedly that's the longest it gets with the sun at its highest point in the sky due to the solstice/Earth's Axis Tilt.

Views of Coal Creek and it's trees which border all along its route:

Here's a compilation of pics taken during or very close to Winter Solstice over the years since I've been motorcycling:

Rest in Peace, Jack Riepe.

I learned this morning that Jack Riepe had passed away yesterday.

Jack was a great writer whom I was fortunate to be introduced to by an article of his on the August 2008 BMW Owners Association Magazine back in 2008. LINK

He wrote a blog back then as well, which became one of my favorites:

http://jackriepe.blogspot.com

I was also fortunate to be able to review an advance copy of his first book: LINK

More of Jack's Books

Jack "painted with words".  He was a gifted writer with a somewhat biting but very humorous outlook on life, riding and adventures via motorcycles.  He made me laugh out loud with his writing.

I met Jack in person while on a trip in Pennsylvania visiting a friend of mine from my ROTC days.  Jack knew I was coming and he drove out the three hours or so from his home in New Jersey to Macungie, PA where of course, we met at a bar.

More details of this meeting here: LINK

Jack's many friends have gathered virtually on his Facebook Page to say their goodbyes:  https://www.facebook.com/jack.riepe

What can I say Jack, when we meet again, we'll go on that sidecar ride that we planned on but didn't get to do.

A Wedding and Visits with Friends in Virginia

September 1-8

Martha and I spent a week in Virginia, attending the wedding of a close friend of mine's daughter near Richmond, VA.  I've known Lee S. since we were both ROTC cadets together at the University of Miami, FL back in the early 80s.  Joining us for the wedding was Otto B., another long time friend from my cadet days.

The venue was in the country but our hotel was in the NW portion of the Richmond, VA Metro area called "Short Pump".  So all the wedding guests were transported by chartered buses:

Father of the bride: Lee beckoning us to the buses

The lovely bride Jennifer, whom I've known since a toddler,

and her husband Kevin M.

Otto B. and Joanna

After a great wedding and reception, we left the next day in the company of friends of ours from our Fort Bragg days.  Larry and Jane transported us to their awesome home in Williamsburg, VA and we'd spent the rest of the trip with them and their awesome hospitality.

We've traveled with Larry and Jane before, first on my first ever Cruise Ship to Alaska and later on a trip to Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands.  

Trained BBQ'er Larry proudly displays what would

be a really delicious Texas Brisket.

Larry and Jane's "Boomer"

A very well trained and friendly

Labrador Retriever

Though we got to the area in time for a "heat wave", forcing to stay indoors a lot, we did manage to get out a couple of times.

One day we went to see Virginia Beach and its boardwalk:

Located about the midpoint of the really long boardwalk, is this statue of King Neptune:

As part of the VA Beach outing, we came home via a more scenic route to avoid construction traffic and enjoyed a quick car ferry trip along the way:

The car ferry would let us off near Jamestown, and you could see the replica sailing ships that the colonists used to get to America:

The obelisk marks the actual landing site,

still an active archeological area.

A crappy zoomed photo of the ships.

Here's a link of a previous trip when Larry and Jane took us to Jamestown:  LINK

It's got better pictures of the ships and the associated museum/visitor center.

Our final outing was a lunch meetup with Terry H. and her sister Karen L.  Terry is another longtime friend from my cadet days.  She's married to Mike H. who was the best man at my wedding!  Mike wasn't there however as this was a "sisters vacation" trip.

Still, we had a great time, good food and it was nice to see Terry and Karen.

Today, we flew back to Colorado and to less humid climes.  A very good trip overall and Martha ensured I had a good seat with lots of leg room on the return flight:

And what makes this trip so great is that it's Martha's first big trip since retirement and she didn't have to worry about getting back to work on time!

Working on To-Dos while Home

We're keeping somewhat busy getting stuff fixed, arranged, projects started on or worked on.

Uma, the VRRV is in the shop for brake rotors/pads all around, a new serpentine belt and tensioner for the engine, new shock absorbers all around and replacement anti-sway bars in the rear.  There's some more stuff but those are the major ones.  Apparently, the rear brake pads were "metal to metal".  I really need to learn to check brake pad wear on dually wheels.  I hope to get her back next Friday.  Yes, it's going to be expensive but works out to about $800/year since 2016 when we bought her.  Also, working brakes are kind of key....

Martha and I spent a few days pulling at weeds in the backyard.  Made good progress and we'll see how things go in terms of preventing the weeds returning.

We'll be having the two big Cottonwood trees trimmed so that they pass more air through their branches.  This expense won't happen till just past mid-July as the work can't be done before then due to prior commitments on the part of the tree trimmer compay.

This to hopefully prevent the sometimes very strong wings from causing major damage.  Our worry had been that the trees would be toppled over in a wind storm, but the tree guy said they look strong and healthy.  

I laid out a circle of bricks around the patch of grass that has never grown in well, we're thinking of setting up a portable gazebo within the circle to cover up the patch.

                               

Digital Mockup of Gazebo Idea

We also outfitted the second set of wheels for the Honda CR-V with new all season tires and had them installed on the CR-V.  The wheels with the snow tires went into storage under the deck for eventual use this coming October.  Yep, more money.  

We'd been paying to have summer and winter tires swapped out on same set of wheels but now have the option of me changing them out as required.

Bought and installed replacement trailer tongue jack for the Aluma trailer.  It is definitely easier to maneuver the trailer with it on than without it!  I'm pretty sure this last camping trip was this trailer's last outing for such purposes.

Now that I have Scarlett operational again, I'm thinking of selling both her and Brigitta, my '87 R80 BMW Airhead.  In the case of Brigitta, I'm just not riding her enough to keep her healthy.  Yesterday, was the first time I'd ridden her in over six months!  As to Scarlett, I'm pretty sure she's taken her last camping trip and will also suffer Brigitta's fate in that she won't get ridden enough either.

One of the reasons selling has been entertained, is to raise money to buy a small/reliable spare car.  Allowing us the option of taking it vs the Honda CR-V on camping trips where Martha comes along.  We'll see how this notion plays out.

During recent torrential rains, Martha had reported possible issues with the Sump Pump's activation switch.  Luckily, she and Patrick had monitored the water level and had run the pump manually as needed.  It turned out to be that the pump's float had come loose from wherever it'd been mounted.  So it would just float horizontally with the rising water instead of its buoyancy eventually forcing one end up and closing the circuit to run the pump automatically!  Easy fix.