The MisterEd 8000; Grande Tour of America

August 18, 2003 - Salina, Utah to Albuquerque, New Mexico
11 hours, 25 minutes.  602 miles

TODAY'S MAP:  (from the H.O.G. members trip planner & MapQuest)



Just off I-70 between Salina and Green River, Utah

The ROCKIES!!  The TWISTIES!!

Other than some construction and a few slow trucks near that construction site, this was an awsome day.  The stretch of US550 between Montrose and Durango, Colorado, which I discovered later is called the "Million Dollar Highway", has some amazing sections that climb to a high point of nearly 14,000 feet.  You're doing maximum turns on roads carved into the sides of the mountains.  Roads that often don't have guard rails.  It's gotta be one of motorcycling's "heaven roads" - and, as I also found out later, was named in the top ten when Buell America polled its owners to find out their favorite Twisty Roads.  And to think, I just stumbled across it 'cause I wanted to stay off the interstate that day.


Just outside Ouray, Colorado

It's hard to take good pictures of twisties except from the air.  The left turn you see heading into the hills there is the start of a series of about 60 tight hairpins that go up the mountain for the next 25 miles or so.  This was the last turnout before starting up the hill.


Looking down into Ouray, Colorado from the hills above

The ride got suspended near Durango, Colorado later in the afternoon when a couple of good thunderstorms blew through.  I'll ride in rain, no problem - lightning, however, is another matter entirely.

The one thing that marred the day very slightly was the loss of the rubber pad off my left footpeg.  If you've been reading since day one, you may remeber that I had some loose hardware that I had to attend to right at the start of the trip.  Well, apparently, I wasn't agressive enough with one screw.  Somewhere in southern Colorado, the rubber pad left the bike - unfortunately, I didn't notice this until some many miles later when I started wondering why my left foot felt so funny on the peg.

Well, without a spare pad for the peg (and it's rather vital on my bike - it's amazing what a single 3 square-inch piece of rubber does to make you comfortable and secure), Albuquerque sounded like a good place to stop for the night.  And, as luck would have it, there was a Harley-Davidson dealership about two miles from my motel.  But, also as luck would have it, said dealership closed for the day about 25 minutes before I hit town...

Another whopper of a thunderstorm came through Albuquerque late that night - around midnight.  Rain so hard you couldn't see the other side of the parking lot and plenty of thunder and lightning.  It was so warm, however, that two hours later, everything was dry and you'd never know a storm had come through.  Ahhh, the monsoon season in the southwest.

The H-D dealership opens at 8:00 AM the next day -

A few links