Skyline Drive Memories

Many is the time that I've ridden one of my motorcycles over to Cañon City, Colorado with the express purposes of enjoying the riding and scenery of nearby Skyline Drive.

Created by prison labor I read somewhere, it is laid astride a hogback ridge next to the town itself.

All paved, but a bit narrow, it's a one-way road which one can take to enjoy the scenery or to dare the fates as the edges of the road are quite near.

It's a nice little road to ride when in the area; whether visiting the state's prison museum or a few miles down the road, the Royal Gorge Bridge.  

US Highway 50 goes right by Skyline Drive if one is crossing the state in a more sedate manner than the super slab known as I-70 further to the north of the state.

Here's a compendium of photos from some of the rides I've done over the years:

Some of you may have missed it when I first published this video of riding this neat road.

Just a ride down memory lane.

Uraling to Kiowa

A windy and overcast day, mostly, for us here in the Denver Metro area.  Once chores were done and things were quiet at the house, I went out riding on Natasha, my Ural Sidecar Rig as she's not been ridden in over a week!

I motored east out of the suburbs bordered by the Southlands Mall, soon making my way down the dirt road bordering the Blackstone Country Club and Golf Course.

Today I was going to shoot pictures not only with my Panasonic Lumix Camera but also with the built-in 5 Megapixel camera in my company-issued Droid Smartphone.  I wanted to see/compare the qualities involved.

 Droid

Panasonic Lumix

 Droid

 Panasonic Lumix

I left this area and motored in a southeasterly direction, tracking on dirt county roads and just letting my mind wander and my eyes gaze at the absolute lack of people.  Just the occasional ranch house, some horses grazing in the fields and the ever present gusty winds.

I found pavement again, after several county roads, and headed East on CO86.  I spotted what appeared to be a used car dealership on the right as I rode, and with Gary France's recent posting in mind, my eyes zeroed in on what appeared to be a Pierce Arrow!

First though, I had to head into the town of Kiowa to refuel.  That task accomplished, I continued East just a bit more to pose Natasha near the town's water tower.

No Droid Camera version here, Natasha appeared to be a dark blob in the pictures I took using the phone.

Now heading back West, I transited back through the small town of Kiowa, under the watchful eyes of the local police car.  You have to make sure you obey the speed limits in these small towns, unless you want to make an offering to the town coffers through a "performance award".

So, about halfway between Kiowa and the town of Elizabeth.  There is located a small establishment called A1 Specialty Sales.  It was this row of cars along the side of CO86 that had first attracted my eye and with the owner's permission, I posed Natasha along the front car row.

From this point on, the pictures were all taken by the Droid Camera except where noted.  My Lumix camera battery indicator was flashing red at me and I saved its remaining charge for just a few photos.

 This fire truck was actually not part of the first row but I thought it interesting enough to pose

Natasha by it.  It's a 1971 Ward La France Fireball.

 Not a bad looking color for this old time Chevy, no info on the site about it, sorry.

 I'd never heard of a Kelmark GT Kit Car, it's a 1978 and apparently quite sporty

 I remember as a kid, watching Herbie win races on the Sunday night showings of the Disney Show

This one is a 1971 Super Beetle.

 According to their website, this is a 1936 Chevy Two Door Coupe Street Rod.

I liked its curving fenders.

Now we come to the car which had drawn my eye, it's headlights seemingly sprouting out of the front fenders, much like the Pierce Arrow that Gary France admired so much in his posting.

1988 Tiffany, hand-built by Classic Motor Carriages of Miami, FL

Apparently a replica of similar cars built back in 1941. 

These first two pictures were taken using the Droid Camera, I would end up tilting back

up the right side fog lamp for the Lumix Camera's turn 

 Here's the Panasonic Lumix's rendition of the Tiffany motorcar

The sellers claims its one of only 600 made!  Who's got a spare $29,500?  Gary?

Not quite up to the standards set by the Pierce Arrow of course, but still quite the entrance once would make into the Country Club with something like this eh?

I returned home via the usual county roads, the sun had come out by then and it felt almost warm as I enjoyed the wooded and rolling hills scenery.  Natasha got a small workout, about three hours of riding with perhaps 50 miles covered.  I hope you liked the pictures, what did you think of the Droid vs the Panasonic?

I don't think I'll be using the Droid as the main camera any time soon, but it came in handy today when I set off without a fully charged digital camera!

Uralisti at the Elephant Ride 2011

As Winter continues to grip the country, three Ural Sidecar Rigs and their Uralisti riders and monkeys rode early this morning to Grant, Colorado.  Grant is the starting point for the annual "Elephant Ride".   An informal event whereby motorcycle riders of all sorts and makes attempt to make it to the summit of Guanella Pass.

The southern end of the road which leads to Guanella Pass is at at Grant, hence it's use as the starting point.

The Uralisti comprised myself, John and Cookie and Steffen and his son Nick.  Steffen, with his low-slung Retro model with one-wheel drive would almost put Natasha and I to shame, more on that later.

We were joined on the ride to to Grant by Murph of wherethehellismurph.blogspot.com.  He was riding his 2004 1150GS as US285, which takes one to Grant, was clear of snow and ice.  He would leave his GS at Grant and would ride as monkey on my rig.  I am glad he came along.

We all arrived shortly before 9:00AM and wandered about the parking area a bit.  There was a pretty good turnout of expected dirt bikes and dualsport motorcycles along with our Urals.  The most unusual vehicle I saw all day was this trike:

Someone had scrawled "Dung Beetle" on the dirty exterior of this trike.

Murph was not the only rider to bring his GS to this event, though we only saw one GS try and make it up to the pass.  The rider of that GS had placed chains with tiedown straps of some kind.  He would actually get pretty good traction on the road up, he in fact went about a mile further than we did.

Look familiar?

The riders prepare to depart

Finally, we set off after most of the lighter dualsports and dirt bikes had scrambled first.  The first 3-4 miles were nothing but packed dirt or pavement, with barely any snow on it.  I was almost ready to apologize to Murph who was riding in the sidecar for the lack of snow.

However, we soon found enough snow to make even the hardiest of riders take pause.  It was OK so long as one could maintain momentum and not stop in the soft stuff but there were bikes and riders stuck here and there and one could not go around them most of the time!

Everybody, when stopped, would gather about the stuck motorcycle of the moment and help extricate said vehicle, sending the rider on his way to the next spot of deeply rutted soft snow which was quite deep in places!

Slowly but surely, with much assistance given and rendered between us Uralisti and fellow riders on their smaller motorcycles, we gained altitude as the road climbed up the mountain.  We "achieved our level of victory", as one passing rider put it, at around 9994 ft in altitude.

my reception committee at our high water mark

photo courtesy of Cookie and John

I'd gotten well and truly stuck about 150 ft short of where Steffen's Retro and John's GearUp had made it to, luckily, folks got me going and with determination and somewhat in control as I opened up the throttle, made it a few feet past the single-wheel drive Retro!  Honor was preserved!

John and Cookie, gave it more than the "old college try" several times at one particularly wide and deeply rutted portion of snow-covered road and they eventually agreed on the "level of victory" already achieved.

Cookie and Spat on try number 3
photo courtesy of Cookie and John

We got our rigs turned around and started making our way slowly back down the mountain road.  I was following Steffen's rig and it only got stuck twice on the way down.  I managed to not get stuck at all though almost ran down a spectator who decided the middle of the road in front of a careening rig is the best place to take pictures.  She was looking away from us and there was no stopping, so Murph bellowed out "Move!" and she moved.

We got back down to the mountain valley and stopped for these pictures:

 Natasha and I, on one of our good days together.

Studly soon to be world traveler: Murph

We all gathered back at the parking lot in Grant to exchange stories with each other and other riders.  A fun time was had by all.  So, three Ural Rigs went up, three came down and no one hurt.....a good Elephant Ride.  My thanks to Murph for letting me use some of his pictures from his posting for today's ride:  LINK

Murph, ready to ride back to Denver

photo courtesy of Cookie and John

Steffen and his son Nick ready to roll

A longtime regular at these events: Happy

Here's Cookie pretending she still likes John

Cookie and John (Spat)

2010 Elephant Ride Report

Videos shot by Murph with his Iphone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR45iyenn9c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rJgpoi7anM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EAoGNDIlzQ

Skyline Drive revisited

Yesterday was a long day of riding to and from Cañon City, Colorado. The purpose was to test out the GoPro HD video camera's capabilities along this road which spans the top of a set of ridges just west of the town.

Cañon City also has several prisons around it and is the site of the Colorado Territorial State Prison founded in 1871; so if you're curious about such things, there's a prison museum there as well.

It's 2.5 hrs of Ural riding, with speeds in the 50s and mid-60s from my home in Centennial, CO, to Skyline Rode. The weather was warm and sunny and I found myself thinking I should have taken Brigitta, my R80 Beemer instead of Natasha.

It would actually warm up to the point I had to shed all the warming layers I had on at the start of the ride!

Or, you can watch it on youtube here:  LINK

I didn't get home till way after sunset, its amazing how puny Natasha's headlight is. It's not just because I run a total-loss electrical system I believe. I remember thinking that even when the alternator was running, that the light seemed weak. Or maybe, it's my old eyes.

Snowing today, though not much expected. 2-4 inches for today, 4-5 for tomorrow. Cut that in half, and you can see, not much; though I am sure it'll snarl traffic up nicely for Monday.

Hope you got a ride in this weekend!

Update: Sunday 9jan2011:  We have snow!  About four inches so far but its tapering off I think, no more than 2-3 more inches by morning.  Just in time to snarl up the morning commute.  On the plus side, it made running errands today much more fun:

First ride of 2011: Jarre Canyon Rd and Red Rocks Park

Happy New Year!

We woke to warmer temperatures today from yesterday's sub 8°F temperatures with some sunshine thrown in for good measure.  I bundled up and headed out for a long first ride of the year.  I was also testing the durability of using 175lb Tensile strength zip ties to hold chain links to the front tire on Natasha.  Figuring on using something like this for running on ice, if I ever get the chance this winter:

The links are from an old car tire chain set I had in storage.

I first headed over to the Blackstone Country Club area to see how the chains did, all four remained tightly bound to the front tire.  I had a nice view of the mountains near Mount Evans from where I stopped and so I got this shot:

The peaks seem close don't they, actually using the 12X optical zoom on my new camera.

The main roads were mostly dry or drying on the way to Sedalia so I didn't expect the chains to hold up under that kind of conditions.  Surprisingly, I only lost one of the four by the time I got to the Parker town limits.  Soon enough though, the highways speeds needed on Crowfoot Parkway to Castle Rock caused two more of the links to break off and disappear by the time I got to Sedalia.

Past Sedalia, on CO 67, you come to a neat little bit of twisties by the name of Jarre Canyon Road which eventually takes you past Rampart Range Road.  Here's a bit over four minutes video of the 14 minute ride to the entrance to Rampart Range Road:

or you can watch it on youtube.com here:  LINK

Road conditions as you can see were not optimal for two-wheeled motorcycles; at least, not two-wheeled motorcycles ridden by yours truly!  It's times and conditions like these where riding a Ural really comes in handy!

Once at Rampart Range Rd, which is closed for the winter, I posed Natasha for these shots:

 Copying a shot angle I saw on everydayriding.org, thanks for the idea Chris!

note I still have one remaining zip tie/chain on the front wheel, amazing.

Although the road to the parking lot was plowed, 

there was a barrier stopping traffic further past the curve in the picture.

I retraced my route, heading back towards Sedalia on CO 67.  Once I exited from Jarre Canyon Road I turned right onto Oak Valley Rd and went looking for the turnoff for the county road that leads one to Bee Rock.

Snow conditions on the road past Bee Rock were pretty meager, not much snowfall in this area from the storm we had a day or so ago.  Still, it made for a nice background for this last shot of Natasha:

Bee Rock, 01JAN2011

It was now time to head northwest towards the town of Morrison to check out the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater.  I headed back through Sedalia where I picked up northbound US85 until I was able to get on the C-470 super slab westbound.  Soon enough I was cruising through Morrison (not a single motorcycle in sight, go figure) and I arrived at Entrance #3 for the Red Rocks Park.  Note, I lost the last chain link somewhere on C-470, pretty good performance I must say, of those zip ties.

I hope you enjoy the following video ride through the park.  It was a total of 24 minutes long but I edited out all the not-quite-so-interesting bits.

Soon after I exited the park, I was homeward bound using Morrison Rd to get me to Kipling which I took south to US285.  From there it was light city traffic all the way to the I-25 to I-225 interchange.  Parker Road came up a bit afterwards and I was home by 3:00 PM or so.  A bit cold to be riding today but my gear kept me warm enough, specially when the sun shone down upon me.  When riding under overcast skies and at highway speeds, I could feel the chill start to seep in on my arms which are exposed to the wind, still, not bad.

Hope you got some riding in today! 

Snow riding to close out the year...

The following photos and video took several attempts as I learned to use my new toys; the gopro videocamera and the panasonic lumix ZS7.  That, and venturing out with the wrong settings on the device, or forgetting the SD memory card or it being just really cold.  Most of the footage was taken with temperatures from 2 to 6°F.

 Helmet mounted GoPro, still tweaking the angle of the camera.  I think I'll be using this mount just for "cliff side views" when riding on mountain roads/trails; this to give the viewer a look "over the edge".

Perfect snow levels as you can see on my driveway, not high enough to cause the exhausts to "float" the pusher tire and lose traction.

On a barely snow-covered dirt trail near the Blackstone Country Club

The following video demonstrates the hazards of mounting a camera on one's helmet.  Hazard in terms of causing the viewer of the resulting movie some nausea/headaches if you don't cut out the parts where one's head is moving to check traffic.  I tried my best to remove such parts.....as I mentioned before, I think helmet mounted videos in the future will be short and limited to specific angles.

or you can watch the video on youtube:  LINK

This video was shot with the Panasonic Lumix ZS7's videocam function, it was Russian Donuts for breakfast this morning!  (The car was not as close as it looks)

or you can watch the video on youtube: LINK

So, enough foolishness.  My family and I wish you and yours a truly safe, prosperous and Happy New Year!

PS: Operation Colorado 365 is a success.  I managed to ride every day during 2010, although I only managed to rack up a total of 16,941 miles between my two motorcycles.  I guess I have to quit slacking off like this for 2011!

LINK to riding log for 2010  

The riding logs are on the right side column of the blog, lower third.

New toys and an early Winter ride to Loveland Pass

It was the day after Christmas and Santa brought new toys for this moto-blogger.

The first was a replacement camera for the 12 year old one I managed to lose recently.

source: Digital Review

After conferring with Bobskoot, this was the camera I asked from Santa.  It's specs are here.  The major selling points were 12x Optical zoom, slim form factor and really, I needed a camera for future rides.

The second toy, which my wife surprised me with with the collusion of Gary France, was a GoPro Hero HD Motosports videocamera.

source: goprocamera.com

I believe it's the same camera used in his epic four month+ journey across these united states by Gary France and a fellow uralista in Minnesota by the name of Chris Luhman.

Armed with all these electronics, I naturally headed out into the mountains the day after Christmas to see if I could find some snow.  We in the front range have not seen much of the white stuff since October though reports of hit accumulating in feet up in the mountains have made it on to the nightly news.  Not to mention the east coast getting slammed by it recently.

Got a pretty late start but managed to cruise through Morrison by 10:30AM or so, motoring past the usual towns of Idledale, Kittredge and finally through Evergreen where I picked up Upper Bear Creek Road west.
Soon I was turning northwards onto Witter Gulch Road heading towards Squaw Pass on CO103, the road which takes one to Echo Lake and the Mount Evans Road (closed for the winter).

Witter Gulch Road is a mostly dirt road with some heavily washboarded sections which threaten to shake my fillings loose in my head.  This road though was a good test of the suction cup mount pictured above for mounting the GoPro camera to the sidecar rig.  It stayed mounted securely the whole day, but I still felt good about having also attached a safety strap.

Once on CO103, I continued up the 9+ miles ride to Echo Lake Lodge which sits at the entrace to the Mount Evans Road.  Road conditions weren't exactly "great" for two-wheeled vehicles but of course, since I was on Natasha, that didn't matter as much.

These folks decided to have an extended chat near Natasha as I waited for them to move.

So, they ended up in the shot instead.

 Snow-covered Echo Lake 

After Echo Lake, I continued on CO103 to the town of Idaho Springs.  From there it was frontage road riding till I got to Dumont, CO where I checked in with my loving wife.  She confirmed for me that the road to Loveland Pass was open but with icy spots.  

To make time, I got on the westbound slab of I-70 and soon enough was exiting at the US6/Loveland Pass junction.  The road was clear and mostly dry all the way to the top and points beyond.  Lots of cars and folks at the top of the pass since the weather was pretty warm for early Winter.  Here's a video of Natasha and I riding up to the pass and a couple of miles beyond.  There is no audio for this clip.

I stopped near the Arapahoe Basin Ski resort to turn Natasha around and get these shots.

 This is the furthest point west on US6 that I rode to on Sunday

 A nice background of far off snow-covered mountain peaks

 A closer view of the far off peaks, thanks to the optically-stabilized zoom on the new camera

A-Basin down below from where I parked.

Yes, I know about embedding a music file, just trying to work out copyright issues and such.  Perhaps a fellow blogger can point me to public domain stuff that's freely available for future videos.

I am pleased to report both cameras worked great.  Now to figure out how to edit the results and produce usable footage faster.  My laptop is sure not cutting it, will have to borrow Martha's which is more powerful.

I made it home by 4:00PM by using the I-70 slab all the way to the E-470 beltway, traffic was lighter than usual for a Sunday afternoon so I took advantage of this.  

Hope you got a ride in!