The next memorable ride was to Wickahoney Stage Station in south Owyhee County on April 10. Our group of eight riders were “buzzed” by two A-10 Warthogs while at the site. On the way back to Boise, some of our group stopped at Higby Cave located on the Idaho Army National Guard Training Area. It is now gated off near the entrance.
I could open up the throttle during the straight-aways but I had to pay extra aPen&on for the sudden dips around the old bridges. During one stretch, a paraglider circled and buzzed us. On their last pass they threw out a streamer weighted with a large washer. I was feeling lucky since I was the first to retrieve it. I just didn’t consider if it was good luck or bad. A while later I found out.
What constituted a site visit was a photo of the participant and/or the participant’s bike displaying this year’s purple Challenge bandana at one of the op&ons above for each county. Credit for a site visit was only given to those participants who uploaded their photos to the appropriate 2015 Challenge site at motoidaho.org on or before December 31, 2015.
All 44 of the counties in Idaho were now checked off my list but I s&ll had &me for a few more B sites. One of my favorite sites of the year was Indian Lookout in Adams County. The ride in to the lookout along the Little Weiser Road was good gravel road and the smaller Forest Service roads were in good shape until about a mile below the The next morning with temperatures hovering around 36 degrees I was in no hurry to get out of camp. With only Teton County remaining to complete the Challenge, I took my &me riding to the last Challenge site.
I sat in my office staring at an Idaho map that I have on the wall. It is one of the maps I use for planning, and it was covered with little sticky notes attached to the challenge sites I was planning to visit on my trip. I realized that if I was going to achieve my goal of gold, I had to completely rethink how I was going to accomplish it. I began putting sticky notes up on all of the challenge site locations on the map. Labor Day was in a week. I had a three day weekend that I needed to make the most of.
So sold was I on the obvious superiority of the new technology that I’ve recently joined the company that creates the so[ware I’d been using, Gaia GPS. Some of you probably saw my post about it in our Facebook group. With that background, I hope I can offer tips to evaluate your existing phone or tablet as your adventure GPS device.
Traditionally, I have used a Garmin GPS (Zumo 550) for my motorcycle navigation. It has worked well for me the past 8 years. Most motorcyclists I know who use a GPS also use a dedicated Garmin or TomTom device. During a recent IAMC GPS Clinic (March 26, 2016) put on by Ron Schinnerer, I had an “aha moment” when David O’Neal discussed the use of smart advices (phones and tablets) as a dedicated GPS device, and he reviewed some of the so[ware apps available for this.
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
There is nothing about the aging of motorcyclists that makes them immune to the inevitable deterioraOon of both physical and mental faculOes experienced by the general populaOon as it ages. At age 40 or 50 you may say that you will never stop riding, but at age 60 or 70 you might find that your priorities are changing. Five to fifteen years down the road (depending on your current age), there are realities to face, such as lengthened reaction time, poorer balance, fuzzier vision, and ongoing medical issues. As you age, your priorities will very likely be shifting from motorcycling to health.
In the years I’ve been riding, and those few that were off-road, I’ve been given endless lists of advice from folks much further from the “beginning” than me. Most have been heeded, but more surprisingly, I’ve learned a lot on my own. Though I’m still no expert, I think my wings are developed enough to leave the comforts of Novice and take off into the Capable.