ADVENTURE BLOG
“Go confidently in the direction or your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”
”
I am not a big real early morning person, but here I have been up since 4:45. I'm already packed up, geared up and have ridden up the road to watch what turned out to be one of the epic sunrises of my life on Windy Ridge near Mt. Saint Helens. Words cannot describe how happy I am here. This is the last morning of my 5 week tour and I'm so glad I rallied and got out of the warm sleeping bag to experience this. You know, "going confidently in the direction of our dreams"!
Where were we? Yes, yes I left you hanging three weeks ago in Colorado! Sorry, but I have a feeling that like many americans lives you have been busy busy and not too worried about blogs! So, let us enjoy a few rare quiet moments together to breathe and read adventure. I am going to keep reminding people about the FOLLOW button on the website. This is where you can experience vicarious adventure through me by viewing the blue dot(that's me) as it blasts around. You can also use the route that has been laid down to plan your next trip along the roads I have taken or simply use them as a guide. The 5 week tour was truly epic and of the 6,400 miles I'm guessing I was on the interstate for less than 75 miles and a good chunk of the that was going into Denver to visit a good friend. Instead all routes were two lane highway, scenic byways, single lane roads with pullouts and 500 miles or so of dirt roads. The roads in countryside America are fantastic and we are fortunate to have high quality road systems that take us to so many incredible places for adventure!
This is Lands End Rd. You can catch it just south of Grand Junction Co. This was one of the epic dirt roads of my life! Keep in mind I have been fortunate to ride tens of thousands of miles of dirt. Right here I am standing at 10,000 feet on the area they call the grand mesa and the views were stunning. Also, I love birds and there were some falcons up here that were playing around with the wind lift. The would rise up several hundred feet in a matter of moments and then tuck and dive down the cliff at their insane 100+ mph speeds. It was so awesome up here it was hard to leave and there was hardly anybody around. Also, off in the distance across the valley is the road that leads to Gateway. Traveling thru here was liking jumping into totally different terrain and reminded me of the grand canyon only instead of rafting you were floating the pavement. Super Great! Can you see it out there? It's right out there! Maybe you'll just have to go check it out yourself. ;-)
I left Colorado out the backdoor on beautiful dirt road 129 north of Steamboat Springs. This dumped me on the "closed in winter" scenic 70 in Wyoming which was a gorgeous run over 10,000 ft. and across the continental divide again heading east. This led me to Riverside, then north to the I-80 for a few miles to Sinclair where I turned north onto Seminoe Rd. Amazing road, part dirt and on this evening was one of the most amazing experiences of the 5 weeks. Nobody around, no wind, stunning geography and the quality of the light was of a Pixar animation quality. Life suddenly becomes surreal and dream like, separation ceases and the beauty of the moment melts the mind, interpretation stops and all of the sudden with out any effort it is quiet and graceful beyond words to be human. The colors in this photo have not been altered. Pure mother nature magic and it was an adventure gift to be out here this particular evening!
“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.”
When I left Denver I used the toll highway($4.76 for 30 mins of driving i think) to get to the groovy town of Boulder. I grabbed a cup of coffee and walked around the nice area where there are no roads and lots of cool shops and art. When I left boulder I was feeling good and headed for Estes Park, happy, easy cruising. And then, I know that feeling! Another flat tire and this is where adventure challenge begins. I am not a man of gossip and so I will simply state the facts for what happened next. I'm on the main road if you will. I get pulled off safely to the side, put on my hazards and start unloading gear so I can lighten up the bike to work on it. I unload everything which is quite the process. I try multiple attempts with all my might to get the bike on the center stand but I am in the gravel and Its too low and too heavy. I've been at this for at least twenty minutes, lots of people have gone by and no one has stopped. I have to fully two arm wave a guy down and talk him into 30 seconds of help to get the bike on the center stand. He says "Good luck" and takes off. Over the next hour+ of repairing and reloading I'm guessing a few hundred cars went by, 40 motorcyclist and gangs of road bikers. Not one single person asked if I was okay or needed help, let alone stop and actually get out of there car to come see if they could do anything! Hmmm, selfishness, fear, indifference, lack of care. I don't know and the reason doesn't matter. I know one thing for sure. Human Beings suffer when we don't take the time to take care of each other. Period! I made it a point on the 5 week tour to stop and check in with every single person that I saw on the side of the road where I could tell something was up. That's right, I turned around, crossed the road, took anexit and came back, or whatever it took to check on my fellow travelers. Guess what? I have two new friends in my contacts and the other people I took the time to check on all said the same thing. "You are the only person that has stopped to check on us, thank you so much we really appreciate it!" Two new friends and the others maybe had a small seed planted that helped restore their sense of humanity. I will make it a point and a practice to stop and check on everybody(with common sense in mind of course) for the rest of the Inspired Journey and I can promise that helping others on the trip will end up being one of the highlights and I will continue to share about it here or in the Recovery/spirit blog. I will add something of my own to Henry's quote above. "Be a friend to someone you don't think is your friend". We wouldn't leave our friends stranded on the side of the road for Petes sake!!
“Friends...they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another dreams.”
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”
So, I had to ride stressfully and tentatively on that leaky repaired rear tire for a day and a half. I even rode thru Rocky Mountain National Park with it which was a strange adventure of beauty and stress. I had stopped at one point to make phone calls to the various towns and I finally made a call to an unsuspecting place to buy a tire, a mechanic shop, but I was out of options. The guy answered the phone, it told him the size tire I was hoping to replace and he came back on the line and said this. "Ya, I got one that a fellow took of his bike and left here. I wasn't sure why he didn't want it because it is more or less brand new and it happens to be your size. It's a Metzler Tourance. You can come haul it off". I said "like haul it off how?" he said "come get it man! I don't have time to install it, but you can have it". Yes the motorcycle gods have hooked me up with the guy to recover my sense of humans looking out for each other. And so I rode to his shop, he wouldn't accept any money for it, we shared a few stories and he said "get out of here and have a great trip". Awesome! I tied it on and headed down the road the Steamboat Powersports and they took great care of me too! Thank you to the people who do go out of their way to help others!
The team here was nice enough to let me find some shade so I could some of the work myself to keep costs down and they remounted the new "free" tire for a discount to help out the inspired journey. The whole project cost $24. Thank you so much. I wanted to give a shout out to the guy who gave me the tire at "The Motorcycle Shop" in Steamboat. Thanks brother!
I made it a priority to go and visit some dear friends on this leg of the journey. I am going to call this "Adventure Visiting". This was a really fantastic way to journey around. I would do my thing out in the woods and roughing for several days and then right about the time I needed some personal maintenance a friendly visit was set-up. This does a couple things for you. When you roll into your friends looking pretty hammered and scruffy it gives your friends no option, but to offer you a shower. Then when you emerge clean shaven, smelling good and bright eyed they say wonderful things about how great you clean-up and how good you look in general which does wonders for ones sense of youth and vitality. Then what they'll do for you is cook you a kick ass meal and insist that you just sit there and enjoy yourself while you get caught up on each others lives! Truthfully, giving people a chance to take care of us is a lovely opportunity to break out of the norm for all. Certainly one of the highlights of my trip was making time for old friends, breaking bread in the sharing of a meal and of course there is nothing like looking into your friends eyes giving them a hug and telling them you love them! Good stuff this "Adventure Visiting"!
This here is one of my long time friends in life Brian. We were best pals in high school. Here his son Ryker is trying out my new Helinox camping chair.
The highlights for the rest of the trip were...............hmmm...............everyday! You know this kind of adventure is out of the norm even for a motorcycle guy like me and so every day feels big and epic. Sometimes when I finally get in the tent and take a review of the day, I find myself saying "holy cow was that this morning that I started back there and saw that" We are talking huge days of adventure that I was having and often on the bike for 10+ hours a day. It was certainly amazing to ride through Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. These place are a must see especially if you can catch them on the shoulder seasons. Some other highlights were Beartooth pass as you exit Wyoming into Montana. This area and road is not a national park but it could be. Also, I had never been to flat head lake in Montana. The night I got there it was doing the super storm with 30+ mile an hour winds that were blowing liquid smoke off the water and complete with lightning and thunder. I love weather and this is one of the reasons I love to adventure on a motorcycle and camping because you are right out in it! I was in a crazy lightning storm type situation in Wyoming that I had to turn around. I watched this bolt of lightning touch down and start a fire. I turned around a bailed out a bit scared and by the time I got to the beginning of the turn-off their were fire trucks galore on the way. Let's see what else? Oh yeah after all those miles of riding and crossing through Montana and top of Idaho which was very nice, when I entered Washington I suddenly realized that my home state has some killer roads. I'm not sure what it is but Washington and Oregon seem to make great twisty roads that have good speed limits to really get you groove on and put the hammer down a bit. So after all those miles as I was finishing up by coming through northern Washington and then taking the 12 from Yakima towards Rainier it felt good to be in my home state. Right out our backdoor from home is so beautiful with as gorgeous of pavement and riding conditions as anything I rode. The rode out to windy ridge I caught on a quiet evening and then watching the sunrise the next morning was also one of the highlights of the trip before I rolled down my home road of highway 14 into White Salmon to get a great cup of coffee at our local shop. Life is good! The universe also hooked me up with a motorcycle traveler at the Rowena Crest lookout just 5 miles from my parents house. He was as stoked and excited about the Inspired Journey as any strange I came across the whole 6400 miles. This reminded me that the best adventure is the one your paying attention to and the one that inspires others even if its just out your backdoor a few miles. Adventure is a way of life, a way of being. It is the sense of wonder that keeps us enjoying each moment no matter the challenge or the beauty. That's it for now! Thanks for being here!
Flathead lake just before the storm and rain started really kicking in high gear.
I had never seen a storm quite like this in my life. As I got closer out their to that sucker it was blowing really hard, and hairball bizarre lightning and huge banging thunder! Since I was the tallest thing around I bailed out chose to live over storm chasing!
The final morning of the five week tour. This sunrise at Windy Ridge looking at St. Helens was a sunrise I will remember for the rest of my days.
Mom and Dad's home sweet home is just a few miles down the road! The first leg of the Inspired Journey has been loaded with incredible adventure, people and moments that I will cherish!
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
Till next time my adventure friends!
Jason