Scheduling Leg 5 is tricky. Want to wait so that the trip to Needles and Barstow CA, and the Mojave Desert between, is not under conditions of 115 F. Yet, it would be nice to leave and return Denver without facing freezing conditions, or worse, snow/ice. Threading this needle is not so easy:
First freeze can occur in Colorado any time in October, while Needles CA can still reach daytime highs of 110 F.
Leg 5 begins, in a very practical sense, back in FL, packing. Motorcycle touring packing is a little more complicated, and heavier, than ordinary travel. And so Mr. Southwest Airlines guy politely informs me that Big Red, my Ogio rollaboard bag, is quite substantially over the 50 pound limit.
There is, however, a friendly SWA solution: buy another bag ($25), repack such that each of the two bags is below 50 pounds, as (then) both bags ‘fly free,’ and I can carry on an antique anvil collection so long as it fits in one carry on bag and one “personal item.” Lesson learned.
Arriving Denver, some more to do’s were needed: confirm that Wadsworth starts after several months of storage, buy proper riding pants and boots, a motorcycle tank bag (Wolfman Explorer Lite), install the new custom ordered motorcycle seat (Terry Adcox), and repack everything to squeeze into two Wadsworth cases and the go anywhere backpack (highly recommended “5.11 Tactical RUSH 72”). And install the FL license plate to be legal to ride.
Here’s Wadsworth with the new seat, which made a huge difference in riding comfort.
Riding gear is expensive and important. There’s a motorcycle credo known as: ATGATT, All The Gear, All The Time. There are too many sad stories for those who took exception with it. Mine was eclectic: Harley boots (size 15 thanks to some huge Denver dude who ordered them but passed on buying), BMW pants, KLIM (Polaris / Indian jacket), full face Zox helmet, and Walmart gloves (you try to economize where you can–but I ended up also springing for some serious leather riding gloves for cold weather).
The key design feature of the riding gear are the special padded inserts. They are somewhat flexible if bent slowly, but harden if there is an accelerated impact as there would be with a ground ‘landing.’ The idea is to balance wearing comfort with impact protection. There are a total of 9 such pads (7 shown).
Packed and heading out with 800 miles on Wadsworth’s odo (which was my entire 21st C riding experience, not counting the few round-and-round the course miles in Motorcycle Boot Camp):
Immediately below and elsewhere on this “Colorado” page are several GoPro videos that I shot using a body mounted GoPro Hero+ cam. I did not have a mic for the GoPro nor a working remote on/off. So there’s substantial wind noise and my gloved hand appearing to work the on/off switch in some cases.
The first several videos are taken in the western slope are of the foothills of Colorado’s Rockies. It is quite flat here which makes it a favorite spot for (pedal) bikers.
I left Denver on a Saturday morning so this appears to have coincided with some form of bike rally.
Palmer Lake, Colorado
At Colorado Springs, there is a turn off to the mountains on the West, which leads to my target ride, the famous Gold Camp Road.
The paved road ends. Here is where generations ago miners with burros, horses, and on foot trekked back and forth across the Colorado Rockies looking for promising places to pan for silver and gold.
Gold Camp road west of Colorado Springs into the Front Range.
After 10 miles or so, the old dirt road turns back into blacktop and leads to Helen Hunt State Park. Below is a GoPro view of the final portion of my ride to that Park.
Helen Hunt Falls (not that Helen Hunt, but a famous Colorado pioneer woman)
Below, exiting the park, and the Colorado foothill region, returning then to I-25, heading to Texas. (And, the last Go Pro video I took on the entire trip. Had I prepared better, I would have secured a working remote, a better charging system, and a more straightforward way of getting the videos out of the Go Pro storage card and into Apple’s Photos. At the time it felt as working the video cam was taking away from simply enjoying the ride.)
(I took the below as a sign…upon leaving Colorado)
Next is Texas, here: