After spending all winter reading other peoples adventures on the interwebs, at places such as Sport-Touring,net (S-T.n) and Adventure Rider (ADV), I somehow convinced myself that touring on a sportbike was a good idea. No -- a great idea! So good an idea in fact, that I would blow a weeks vacation on a sportbike ride. After all, the net is filled with stories of people riding scooters over Kenosha pass, and ancient BMWs to Alaska, so why can’t we take two modern sportbikes out for a drive?
The destination is (generally) the Black Hills, South Dakota, with other destinations like Devils Tower Wyoming, Badlands National Park South Dakota, and a return route through Nebraska. After driving through these places a handful of times, bound for the middle of nowhere North Dakota, or some other such God-forsaken place, I decided I might enjoy actually stopping there, and seeing some of the sights on the brochures free in my hotel lobby. After all, this is the home of Sturgis, the mother of all bike rallys, it must be a good place to ride, right?
I’ll be putting miles on my 2007 Honda CBR600RR that already has a respectable 10,000 on it. Hubby is on a 2008 Kawasaki 650R. We both have frame sliders, he has a touring screen and I have a double-bubble. I also have a plastic old,fat-Captain Kirk zip-tied to my brake fluid reservoir. Of course.
With about 5 weeks total of my summer not planned with work travel, we settled on the second week in June for this trip. Definitely did not want to partake in the parking and partying that is Sturgis, and there’s still some chance I may leave for work stuff later in June. So we had a small window. We definitely didn’t mean to pick the rainiest, tornado-ridden, below average temperature week that we did. Fucking jet stream.
And we like to camp. So why not camp? We geared up to try moto camping. We even went out for a night to test out our stuff. (You can read about that here: http://www.cosportbikeclub.org/forum...ad.php?t=32180 )
Planning was done in a sortof minamalist fashion. As in, I really didn’t want to be bothered with it, and I had a general idea where we were going anyways. We made a list of the places we wanted to see, set up a general itenerary, gathered a few maps, made a few reservations and set off.
This ride report is named for a TV bit we watched on my iPod on our camping night in the rain, a stop on the last day of our journey at a Minuteman Missile Silo, and the fact that we got RAINED ON A LOT, and oh, my screen name is also a Peter Gabriel song title, albeit a more obscure one.
DAY 1
Sunday June 7, 2009
Fort Collins to Devils Tower, Wyoming
Approximate Mileage: 360
We set out at 8am. Having left a big bowl of food for the very confused cat, and our housekeys with cousins. The previous day, Saturday, had been sunny and in the 80s, but our departure morning was just making it into the 50s.
We set off north into Wyoming. I pointed out decommissioned Minuteman Missile silos visible from the freeway, and we blasted north at 10 over the speed limit. By the time we stopped to gas up in Chugwater, and hour north of Cheyenne, I was freezing. Numb. I was wearing my leathers, with a windblock fleece wedged underneath, as well as a layer of underarmour, and a base-layer thermal. Leather gloves, and the most worthless pair of Alpinestars boots ever (but I’ll complain more about these later) completed the outfit. The only part of me even resembling being warm was my palms, which were enjoying the “high” setting of my heated grips. Jim was less cold, but his hands were worse.
Downed some coffee and pressed on deeper into Wyoming. Stopped again in Lusk at the Subway for lunch and a defrost.
North into Wyoming it got worse. Leaving Lusk you start to climb into the Black Hills. Happy that the road was finally not as straight as an arrow to the horizon, I was also sad as I felt the temperature drop even more as we went up. We could see rainy spots in the distance, but managed to only get a few drops on us for the better part of the journey. At this point I really started to feel like I had put some distance between me and home. Sure I was cold, and my ass was starting to remind me that CBR seats are not for touring, but I was adventuring.
The fun began about 20 miles outside Sundance, the closest city to Devils Tower. A flat valley in the hills, temps dropped easily into the 40s, the clouds were low, and it started raining. I was frozen, and staring at my odometer, the miles seemed to be passing by impossibly slowly. Now you should understand, I love being on my bike. I rode to Pueblo once to corner work a track day, and even those 3 hours each way in one day on the interstate were fun to me. This cold was significantly lessening my fun.
By the time we were passing though Sundance, it was pouring. We defrosted in a gas station, then put our heads down and made a final push to Devils Tower. Thinking we were very close, and that the rain would let up, I didn’t put on all my rain gear.
The plan was to camp at the campground at the base of the tower, which is first-come-first-served, and I was crossing my fingers there would be a spot, as the alternates were a KOA (ick) and a Forest Service Campground at Cook Lake, about 20 miles away. Into the driving rain, we ran the curvy road to Devils Tower at a pathetic 30 mph.
We arrived at the park about 4 pm and paid our $20 to get in, and easily found a spot in the nearly empty campground. Made for cars, all the driveways are on mushy wet dirt. We used my sandals for something I don’t think they were intended for. In the rain, we unloaded, put up the tent, and got out of our gear. Yum, wet leather is a joy. My pants had done an excellent job collecting water to drain down into the funnels that are my boots. My leather gloves were soaked. I had meant to grab some extralarge rubber gloves from the office to put over them in the rain, but I forgot.
We cooked dinner in the tent vestibule (yum, dehydrated chili-mac and coffee), and I hid under my sleeping bag. We got bored and the rain didn’t lessen, so we watched an episode of Brit motoring show, Top Gear on my iPod -- the episode that features one of my favorite bits “Did Communism Ever Make a Good Car?” Reminding myself that I was adventuring, I continued to hide in my sleeping bag trying to get warm until the sun came up the next morning.
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I want to do some touring up that way on the VFR.
