TAT-2016 Post 41 - Sunday 31 July 2016

2 days till launch of Leg-2 (OK to CO) (actually CO to OK since we are going West to East)

Leg-2 starts the evening of 2 August around 6 pm after everyone is off work. The bikes were loaded on the trailer yesterday. We expect to complete Leg-2 on 12 August.

Original Rider details (repeat from last post)

Five riders (plus 1 support truck driver):

1.    Mike – 2015 Honda CRF250L

2.    Woodrow – 2015 Honda CRF250L

3.    Jeff – 2008 Yamaha WR250R

4.    Terry – 2016 KTM690

5.    Steve – Yamaha WR250R (2008 model I think)

6.    Marty – Driving our support truck with trailer

Some new developments since last post; Terry’s brother and nephew are joining us for the ride from CO to OK/AR border. This makes a total of 7 riders. It’s going to look like a motorcycle gang with all the noise and dust kicked up by this many bikes.

New Riders

1               Ernie (Terry’s brother) – 2016 (I think) Honda XR650L

2               Cutter (Ernie’s son) – 2016 Honda CRF250L

They won’t join up until the day before we head out on the TAT heading east so will miss the local riding we plan.

Another interesting point is they have a friend in an RV (we call him “The Judge”) who will be following our support truck between motels. He will provide a place to sleep for these two riders and in addition has offered to cook breakfast and dinner for all of us. This will work out great, as you will see when I start talking about our issues with finding motels along our route.

Trailer Loading

We made a party out of loading the trailer yesterday. It was a party for the girls but hot work for the guys who were out in 95+ temperatures for a couple of hours.

Jeff and his wife Lynn, with the bike loaded on his truck, had come from Tulsa the day before and stayed at our house. We are both early risers so at 6 am we are in the garage sorting through all our gear and eliminating any duplicate items as much as possible. We then packed our bags with the riding gear and any other items we wanted loaded on the truck later that morning. I also packed a large waterproof bag (we call them Bill’s Bag used for white water rafting) with 2 sleeping bags, 2 pads and 2 small tents. This will be used only if necessary but better than sleeping on the ground under a space blanket.

We were to all meet at Terry’s at 1000 to load the 5 bikes onto the support truck trailer. At 8:45 I get a call from Woodrow saying he needed help loading his bike onto his truck. He was using a short ramp on a pretty high truck bed and even though it was on a slope, he didn’t feel comfortable making it up the ramp. Good call because it took all three of us to load the bike. We all then headed to Terry’s and arrived right at 1000.

We had previously measured the trailer and trial fit a couple of the bikes on this trailer so were confident all 5 bikes would fit. It still took a couple of hours to get them all loaded and tied down snuggly with multiple straps on each bike. We found that loading them sideways alternating the handlebars made it possible to get more bikes in a smaller space. We used this same approach on Leg-1 to Charleston, SC. After loading 3 of the bikes we realized we were going to have plenty of room so loaded the last 2 front to end.

We will also be carrying several 5 gal fuel containers and a couple of 5 gal water containers on the trailer so have plenty of room for all this plus any extra bags that won’t fit in the truck bed. We are clearly taking much more than we would be if we were self sufficient and realize we are much better off than those hard core TAT riders going end to end in one trip with no additional support. They’re the real deal and have all my respect.

Interesting that the only bike that required to be worked on was the new KTM (see pictures below)

After the loading was completed we had a great lunch cooked by Terry and his wife Donna in their beautiful home. All the wives attended and we had a lot of fun talking about our experiences on Leg-1 and what to expect on this next leg. Another participant was Roberta (boss of Mike, Terry, Steve & Woodrow) who has been extremely supportive even though this leaves her program management staff pretty short handed until our return. This is the 2^nd time this year we have all asked for the same time off to do these rides so she’s pretty great.

Motels

Our experience on Leg-1 highlighted that Sam developed his TAT route through some pretty isolated locations. On Leg-1 from east coast to OK we could usually find a motel reasonably close to the TAT route to reduce riding time. On this leg it hasn’t been as easy.

I had already plotted out the route and all motel/fuel points (see previous posts) to be used for our route planning. Our first night was to be in Salida, CO (122 miles). When Woodrow tried to make motel reservations he was told they were completely booked due to some sort of concert in town. We wanted the first day to be short to get through the mountains and break in some of the new riders. This now meant we had to look further down the route for a motel. Next on the route was Cotopaxi, CO (168 miles). Not a big town and if you want to see how “not big” it is, Google map Cotopaxi, CO!

As luck would have it we did find a small motel/camp ground/RV park only a few miles down the highway from Cotopaxi called Sweetwater River Ranch. 168 miles is still a short riding day but there is absolutely no place to eat close to Cotopaxi.

http://www.sweetwaterriverranch.com

This place is right on the Arkansas River and the owners have been extremely helpful making reservations. We needed three rooms with 2 beds but all they had left were 2 rooms and a cabin with no bathroom. We took them and were glad we did because it was another 27 miles to Westcliffe, which would have been a 195-mile day. BTW Westcliffe was also booked solid due to a square dance taking place! The five core riders have ridden 200-mile days in past rides but it is not pleasant and all of us preferred 150 to be the average if possible.

Remember the 2 new riders will use the RV for their beds. When we advised everyone of the first night potential to have no place to eat, The Judge immediately offered to cook steaks for the whole gang. I like this guy already and haven’t even met him yet. So the plan is to ride from Lake City to Sweetwater River Ranch the first day. Stay on the side of the AR River and eat steaks and have a few drinks as the sun goes down over the mountains. Life is good! Here’s hoping all goes as planned.

One thing to remember, as you slip one day’s ride, it impacts the following days by miles to ride and availability of motels. For day 2 we looked down the route and had two choices; La Veta (122 miles) and Trinidad (199 miles). Another point we had to consider was where would that put us for day 3. The ride through New Mexico and the western OK panhandle has always been a concern due to the lack of any facilities in this area. We could only identify one place to stop on day 3 and that was Boise City, OK. This meant we had to go to Trinidad otherwise it would be a +254 mile ride from La Veta. As a result we decided Cotopaxi to Trinidad (199 miles) then Trinidad to Boise City (148 miles).

Boise City, OK is another small town with limited motels available (I only found 1 on the internet). About this time I heard about a place close to Boise City right on the TAT route called LJ’s Bunkhouse LLC.

http://www.ljsbunkhouse.com

Be sure to look at the Lat/Long of this place on Google maps to get an idea of what being in the middle of nowhere looks like. Again no place close to eat.

I had several texts back and forth with them on Facebook so plan on staying there if at all possible. They are about 22 miles west of Boise City but after riding through NM we will be ready for a short ride day. This is also dictated where we plan our Day 4-5-6 nights. As I stated in a Leg-1 post, the miles per day is controlled by terrain, condition of roads and where you find motels and gas, not on the fatigue of the riders.

As of now Woodrow has not been able to get contact with the owners of LJ’s so this is still not a firm plan.

Road Trip to CO

Tuesday, 2 Aug, Mike, Terry, Steve and Woodrow will drive to Okla City after work. Jeff will have his son drive him down from Tulsa early the next morning to meet us at the OKC motel. On Wednesday, 3 Aug, we 5 will drive 11 hours to Lake City, CO. Depending on if we actually make an early 6 am start we should arrive sometime around 6 pm. We will spend the next 3 nights (3-4-5 Aug) in Terry’s cabin at Lake City until our start of the TAT on Saturday, 6 Aug.

Marty, our support truck driver, fly’s into Gunnison on the evening of 4 Aug. It is a 100 mile round trip from Lake City to Gunnison and one of us will drive the truck up to get him.

Ernie, Cutter and The Judge will meet us at the cabin on either 4 or 5 Aug with the RV and their bikes. They are coming from Texas and New Mexico, not sure of where exactly.

Local CO Rides

The 5 original riders still plan on doing some local rides on 4-5 Aug, weather permitting, including the Alpine Loop. This is a round robin ride through Cinnamon and Engineer passes with some spectacular scenery and eye opening roads up and down the mountains. I’ve watched many YouTube videos of people doing the Alpine Loop and am excited and apprehensive at the same time. Lots of people do this loop on all sizes of bikes including heavily loaded touring bikes so our lightly loaded dual-sports should handle it OK. We hope to have decent weather so we can safely make this loop plus capture some great pictures and video of the ride. Jeff has been assigned our videographer and has three GoPro cameras he plans on mounting all over his body and bike to get some great shots. Can’t wait to get a picture of him with all this equipment mounted. I did warn him to pay attention to riding his bike when we are on some of those mountain pass roads since they are pretty narrow and a long way down to the bottom.

BLOG Updates

As I did on Leg-1 in March of this year, I plan on updating blog posts and pictures (maybe even video) every night if we have Wi-Fi access. Not real sure about day 1 and 3 but pretty sure the rest of the days will have it available.

SPOT Tracking

Again as I did on Leg-1 I will be using my SPOT during the whole trip. Jeff will also have his SPOT. This provides tracking information on a map from the Spotwalla web page. The Link to my SPOT is provided below and I will add Jeff’s ASAP. The Link doesn’t become active until 4 Aug and will run to 15 Aug.

https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=11c26579b759077ef8

One Last Note

I can’t go without at least recognizing all those TAT riders who do this ride start to finish with no outside support and many times solo, plus camping. You guys/gals have all my respect and admiration. I know how tough that is and would love to join you if I were a few years younger. Ride Safe.

Next post will be from Lake City, CO.