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GixxerJasen goes to California, and other places...

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gixxerjasen said:
Day 12
Eventually I roll in and check into my room at the Red Roof Inn+ in Williams Arizona
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On our departure day from GCNP we had lunch at the Route 66 Diner almost across the street.
It's one of those 50s-themed diners. Food was what one would expect from a greasy spoon but the staff was friendly and looked like the locals like eating there too.

One of these years, I will do a great tour of the west.
Thanks for taking us along. Great job on the photos and narratives. :thumb:
 
Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, nice places. I've been to Meteor Crater too. Some think it's just a big hole in the ground, which it is, but it was made by a meteor!

Thanks for sharing.
 
gixxerjasen said:
I considered it, then thought "Nah."
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Already been there or just no interest? They have a great souvenir shop right across the street where you could buy stickers and magnets. :lol2:

Winslow is also home to one of the last "Harvey Houses"... the La Posada Hotel. You could have had some good Mexican for lunch in the Turquoise Room and AMTRAK still stops there to pick up / drop off passengers.

2021 TOH La Posada lunch.jpg
 
I got stopped by a cop in Winslow. Got off the interstate and made a right turn on red without seeing the sign prohibiting that. We chatted for a while and I got a warning. That's all I remember about Winslow.
 
Liteitup said:
Probably another thing I misremember from my past. I have a distinct memory of struggling to get the FZ off the centerstand because of how thick the gravel was. Can't find any pics though

Awesome report btw, forgot to mention that.
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I'm not completely losing it! There was gravel. Maybe different areas had different surfaces in the garage?
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the trip I've dreamed about since buying the FJR and have had to experience vicariously through the ride reports of others in the past. This time it was my turn

I love this. It hits home with me. Reading others' reports is fun and inspiring, but then then making your own experiences happen changes everything. And it helps you understand and appreciate reports from others even more.
 
Jarrett said:
Awesome trip. Thanks for posting. Very inspiring.

I'm hoping to do a micro version this coming week to get my feet wet and this trip inspired it.
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Ride hard, ride safe, eat ice cream, take pictures, then show us how much fun you had. We'll be working and need the inspiration for the next trip.
 
Jarrett said:
Awesome trip. Thanks for posting. Very inspiring.

I'm hoping to do a micro version this coming week to get my feet wet and this trip inspired it.
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A micro version of someone else's trip is way better than no trip. "The world is like a wonderful book. The one who stays home reads the first page." Misquoted, but the essence is there.
 
Nice ride Mr. Gixxerjasen! I was wondering where you disappeared to while I was out romping around in Utah. I missed your interactive banter and cheer squad while we were in the thick of it. This kind of ride and the places you went are on my brain. Someday!
 
KsTeveM said:
Nice ride Mr. Gixxerjasen! I was wondering where you disappeared to while I was out romping around in Utah. I missed your interactive banter and cheer squad while we were in the thick of it. This kind of ride and the places you went are on my brain. Someday!
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I definitely need some DRZ time in Utah.
 
gixxerjasen said:
Ride hard, ride safe, eat ice cream, take pictures, then show us how much fun you had. We'll be working and need the inspiration for the next trip.
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humanrace said:
A micro version of someone else's trip is way better than no trip. "The world is like a wonderful book. The one who stays home reads the first page." Misquoted, but the essence is there.
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This rain looks like its not going to give me enough break to make this trip unfortunately.
 
humanrace said:
If you can ride your DRZ on the trails ridden by KsTeveM, you are a very fine dirt rider. I've never been a dirt rider, but even in my prime, l'd have to had to have a calculator to keep up with my crashes.
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A dirt bike is the best "learn to ride" tool ever invented. Every street rider needs one to actually learn to ride a motorcycle.
 
Irishcoffee said:
A dirt bike is the best "learn to ride" tool ever invented. Every street rider needs one to actually learn to ride a motorcycle.
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I know, I watched Kevin Schwantz and Colin Edwards both transfer their dirt riding skills into world championship road racing skills.
 
10 years ago i showed up in moab on my gsa and a buddy who has a place there loaned me a drz with 48000 well earned miles on it for a couple laps around the white rim trail. The bike now has 80k on it but yes with a new piston and rings at about 70k. Ill never laugh at drzs again. Nothing really exciting about them but they carry you around on two wheels in the dirt quite capably and with stellar reliably.
 
I kept thinking about DRs not being ridden as hard as a KTM. It can be done. Me in the mid 90s......snow

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Quicksand....that was no joking matter, but my buddies thought it was hilarious.

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And these last couple of pics, I was doing adventure riding on the DR when it wasn't called that yet. Strap a make shift backpack on the tail and go. Heck, the last pic, I'm on the Arizona BDR 20 years before it was called a BDR ha ha. I can see big honking blinkers on the DR, I crashed it and broke off the cool little ones, had some blinkers in my stash from a XT350 I parted out, man that looks hideous, I still feel bad :-). Looks like I could land a plane!! Moral of the story, you can ride hard on anything, tuck in and go!! Anybody spot that Bell Moto4 helmet? Classic. I still have it, hangs on the wall in my Dad's barn.

p.s. if anyone has a cherry 94 DR350, I would like to drool all over it, loved that bike!!!!!!

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I finally finished editing and publishing my video of my motorcycle trip from 2021. It was a difficult one from the start and has taken me longer than I'd have liked it to.

To start off, when I went to Montana, that was my first time trying to film and record my trip. I'd turn the camera on and let it run capturing as much as possible. Often, I'd let it run the battery out, then swap the battery and maybe record some more. As a result, when I got home, I had hours and hours of video to glean through to try to find some nuggets of interesting bits to string together into a final product. It was a painful process that I swore I'd not repeat again.

On my trip to Colorado and California I utilized the sleep feature of the GoPro camera. Essentially, it'll sleep, and then when you see something interesting, you push the trigger, and it wakes up and starts recording and when you hit the trigger again it'll stop recording and go back to sleep. This not only makes the battery last longer, but you have an easier time when you start the editing process. What I didn't realize was that there's a few seconds between hitting the trigger and when it starts recording. So, I came home thinking I had all these nice 5-10 second clips and they were usually one or two unusable seconds. I also had a few times that I didn't realize I was trying to record with a dead battery (Moab) or the GoPro had locked up and I lost half a day of video including following a rider though a collision with a dust devil. I was super bummed about all that I lost that I gave up and put the video folder away and resolved to not make a trip video out of the trash I had.

I learned a lot and used it for my Spring Arkansas video last year and was very happy with how that came out. Over the last year and a half, I've pulled the California project out from time to time to try to see what I can salvage. The link below is my end result, and while it's not fully representative of the trip, I have to work with what I have, so I'm happy with how it turned out.

 
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