Slackin' around the west

[slackmeyer]

These are a few photos of a recent trip I took. It all started with my dad- he rode his old bmw down to california to visit friends and family, and I figured I'd ride back up to washington (where he lives) with him, and keep going from there. After all, I thought, I've only had my motorcycle in three different states, and the west was a big place, with many beautiful sights.

So the plan: camp in Markleeville on friday night, where my wife was training for the death ride. Next morning, ride up to Truckee to meet my dad. On the way there, I met this chap:

After a little talk (and a ticket for 71 in a 55), I met my dad, and we hit the road.

It's a beautiful ride through eastern california and oregon- mostly we stayed on 395, exept for taking 49 out of Truckee for a while. We got a few hours of rain coming into John Day, OR, so we got a hotel for the night there.

Still raining the next morning. So no shots of the beautiful ride from John Day to the columbia gorge. Use your imagination. No, more beautiful. There, you've got it.

Later in the day, eastern washington- Yakima river canyon:

Wait a second, isn't this supposed to be an adventure ride? Ok, I did a little dirt too: Colockum pass is a beautiful 4wd road between ellensburg and wenatchee:

After a night in eastern washington, I set out over North Cascades pass (hwy 20). A stunning ride, right through North Cascades National Park.

Everything was perfect, blue skies, clean roads, glorious mountains. It couldn't last. And it didn't- riding down from rainy pass (slowly and sanely, I might add), I heard a funny rattle from the back of the bike. And I noticed a lot of play in the driveline. 1/2 mile later, a lot more rattle- death rattle. And my engine is no longer connected to my rear wheel. I coasted to a trailhead turnoff, and confirmed my fears:

See those little peices at the bottom of my swingarm tube? That's my U-joint. Ouch.

I won't do the whole blow by blow, but I parked the bike, managed to hitch a ride within 2 minutes of walking out to the road, and got myself to bellingham, where I have friends and family. Thanks to some excellent people (advriders came through to help me), I borrowed a truck to pick up the bike, and borrowed a garage with most of the tools I needed to fix the bike.

That's what a broken BMW driveshaft looks like. I had a new (used) driveshaft overnighted to bellingham ($150 driveshaft, $75 shipping). A few hours later, it was in, and I was on my way into Canada. Broke down at 3:00 PM Monday, on the road 3:00 PM wednesday. Not too shabby.

zak

 

[slackmeyer]

So, I cross the border into B.C. about 4:30. I've got rather large trip planned, and I just lost a day and a half, so I'm anxious to cover some ground. The bike is back running tip top, and the sun at northern latitudes is quite cooperative.

350 miles or so later, beyond Kamloops, it's 9:30PM, and I've just found a nice campsite.

Next day: Jasper and Banff National Parks. What can I say. Everything here is Huge and Magnificent. These pictures don't really do much for the place, but I'll stick em in anyway.

And then, after riding through a couple hundred miles of that, and leaving the park, what do I get, but more stunning scenery, going over highwood pass:

Found a great campsite that night down a main dirt road, and chatted with a german/canadian guy who rode his xr250 from Calgary to SF and back last year. Hardcore.

Next morning- more stunning views in the akakanasis range.

And with that, I was back in the U.S., in Montana, east of Glacier N.P. Sadly, going to the sun road was closed, so I rode around Glacier to the south. And the skies opened up, and there was rain. Lots of rain. And endless construction zones. So I got my camera out again in Missoula, where there is a wonderful bakery (Le Petit Outre), a fantastic coffee shop (Butterfly Herbs), and for a short time, one dirty yellow bike:

And then I'm back on the road, and back in the rain, to see how far south I can stretch the daylight, and try to escape this rainstorm. No luck on that last part, but the bitteroot valley and the Salmon river area are beautiful nonetheless. I got a room in Salmon, Idaho.

To be continued. . . .

 

[slackmeyer]

All right next morning, and what do I wake to but pouring rain. Well, this is par for the course for a slackmeyer vacation. It rained when I went to Baja. I'm fairly well mentally and physically prepared for crappy weather 100% of the time when I'm on vacation, and thrilled when the weather is nice.

Leaving Salmon, headed to Wyoming:

Still in Idaho, but with a sunny patch of sky and a view of the Tetons:

More typical slack view of the Tetons:

So on I rode. I put the camera away, since the rest of Wyoming was pouring rain and 60 mph sidewinds. Nice otherwise though.

Found a sunny spot in Utah, and decided I was stopping for the night on account of no rain:

It actually stayed dry in that campsite, even though it looked like it was raining a mile away. So I drank my Rogue Brutal Bitter, and heated up some Trader Joe's Indian Fare.

The next day, I had a great ride through Eastern Utah. I got onto some road between Roosevelt and Wellington, shown on my map as paved, but fortunately for me, it was 70 miles of mostly dirt road. Beautiful carved canyons:

And then a short jump onto the freeway towards Moab, and off into Arches N.P.

Wolfed down a quick lunch in Arches, reveling in the 95F heat, after days of rain. And then got back on the bike, and headed to Canyonlands N.P.

That's the White Rim- now I've got to go back and ride the white rim trail.

I made it another 120 miles or so to Monticello that night, where I found a great campsite, and spotted a killer little cafe for breakfast the next day.

After my great little hippy breakfast at the Peace Tree cafe, I headed west on hwy 95 and hwy 12.

Lots of nice canyons:

Lake Powell at Hite:

Stopped to see petroglyphs at Capitol Reef N.P.:

Escalante/Grand Staircase area:

 

[slackmeyer]

And then Bryce N.P.
Bryce was stunning, and it wasn't really on my original plan, but several people told me that it was a must see. It was.

See those little people at the bottom of the picture?

If you go to Bryce, make sure you get out of the view areas and go for a hike in the hoodoo canyons. It's totally different to be down there walking in the canyon.

I left Bryce at about 6:30, and made a brief stop in Zion N.P., but it was too dark for photos to turn out well. And then I rode until about 10:30 on a bumpy dirt road that didn't go where I thought it would, and found a spot to sleep by the side of the road.

The next day was my day to make tracks back to Berkeley- I left my campsite in southwest Utah at about 6:00, rode the extraterrestrial highway across Nevada (the state that makes 120 mph feel boring), and had lunch at the Tioga gas mart, in Lee Vining, CA. Up 395 to 108, and I took Sonora pass home. By the way, Sonora pass was the best twisty riding of the entire trip- it's hard to beat that road.

Totals-
11 days, with a couple of those being broken down
11 national parks (3 in Canada, 8 in US)
5,100 miles
Lots of fun

zak

more pics here, if you're interested: http://picasaweb.google.com/zaksteig/MotoTripOfTheWest?feat=directlink

 

[DefyInertia]

Awesome

 

[boney]

Excellent!

Glad you got the bike fixed quick! I missed it all over there.

 

[slackmeyer]

Yeah, fixing the bike was actually a fun part of that ride, in a way. I posted something in the NW regionals, and a lot of people offered help. It's always cool to meet people in a situation that you didn't really expect to be in, and throw yourself upon the mercy of the world.

At least that's cool if it works out in the end.

zak

 

[MAD mike]

simply beautiful man! thanks for sharing

 

[mikeedesign]

Nice trip. Thanks for showing the great pictures. Mike from richmond annex.

 

[Nemo Brinker]

Nice! It's awesome that adv folks helped you out and you got a disaster turned into a mere inconvenience. Great stuff--thanks.

 

[slackmeyer]

Thanks for the kind words. The trip was far more beautiful than the pictures- I don't often stop to set up nice shots, almost all of my pictures are snapped left handed at speed.

Pictures are great, but they're no substitute for getting out there and seeing the world.

zak

 

[boney]

Thanks for the kind words. The trip was far more beautiful than the pictures- I don't often stop to set up nice shots, almost all of my pictures are snapped left handed at speed.

Pictures are great, but they're no substitute for getting out there and seeing the world.

zak

amen

 

[augustiron]

I'm in the market for a 2006 r1200gs and I was loving your post until I saw the rear drive failure. I've been seeing way too much of that mentioned when researching the r1200 line.
If you have a moment could you answer some questions? was your's the same failure that keeps happening all over to the r1200 final drive? what year is your bike and how many miles do you have? was there anything that could have prevented this like checking torques on bolts, more frequent drive oil changes, etc? could the failure resulted in a very unsafe riding condition, ie: wheel falling off at speed? I plan to adv tour somewhat with my wife and I could never ride in peace knowing that the rear drive is a ticking time bomb and I have precious cargo aboard.

thanks and keep up the great trips!
I want to get a bike to a

 

[boney]

I'm in the market for a 2006 r1200gs and I was loving your post until I saw the rear drive failure. I've been seeing way too much of that mentioned when researching the r1200 line.
If you have a moment could you answer some questions? was your's the same failure that keeps happening all over to the r1200 final drive? what year is your bike and how many miles do you have? was there anything that could have prevented this like checking torques on bolts, more frequent drive oil changes, etc? could the failure resulted in a very unsafe riding condition, ie: wheel falling off at speed? I plan to adv tour somewhat with my wife and I could never ride in peace knowing that the rear drive is a ticking time bomb and I have precious cargo aboard.

thanks and keep up the great trips!
I want to get a bike to a

What happened to Zak isn't the typical failure. He had a failure of the drive shaft at the u-joint. This isn't so common, and usually happens only to the high mileage bikes. The other drive shaft failures tend to be the rubber damper when the u-joints aren't "indexed." Both are an "easy" fix, in that you just slap a new assembly in there and go.

The final drive failures we've all been accustomed to hearing about are bearing failures within the final drive assembly itself. From what I can tell, there is no "magic bullet" preventative action, and the failures seem to be in the very small percentage range- meaning your chances of having one are slim (and yes it would suck to be "the one." I'm going to add that you never hear from the people who's bikes don't break, so the number of reported failures vs. the number of bikes without failures appears disproportionately on the internet. ) If you find a used bike with 20k on it, chances are it's a good one. But don't expect it to last forever, even with proper oil changes they'll eventually wear out. Mine is an older model which was subject to about the same numbers of failures and I expect a good 100k before I'm going to look into some preventative parts replacement. Zak's bike is even older, and I have no idea what his mileage is.

 

[slackmeyer]

Boney covered it pretty well. My bike is a 1995 R1100GS, with about 106,000 miles. (102k miles when the driveshaft broke). Driveshafts don't break very often, I've only heard about a couple breaking in the last few years. I guess I do too many wheelies. Also, my shocks raise the bike up a couple inches, which would put a bit more stress on the U-joint, where it broke.

BMWs have had some problems with the final drive unit this last decade, but the final drive on my bike is original, as far as I know- it still works fine, with no play in it, and no metal in the gear oil. It is annoying that there's very little preventative maintenance to do for the driveshaft and final drive, and it's hard to forecast when they will fail. But I give it credit for lasting 100k miles of hard riding with only basic oil changes and the occasional spline lube.

I did just buy ktm adventure, so I'm going for a chain drive bike now- I think chains are much better when it comes to off-road riding (easy gearing changes, easy preventative maintanence, easy to know when it's time to replace a chain).

Oh, and too your final question- the wheel can't fall off the bike when the final drive fails, and I've never heard of it locking up- the bearing self destructs and makes it feel like riding rumble strips. Not a particularly dangerous failure.

zak

 

[augustiron]

great, thanks for the info guys. My friend is loaning me the bike tomorrow to check out for a few days to see if I like it. I don't know how many miles it has but I assume they are pretty low. Any other BMW GS specific things to look out for besides the obvious?
I'm used to sportbikes, supermotos, classic hondas and dirtbikes so this will be my first 'heavy' bike (well, some say my RC51 is heavy...)
We'll see how it goes.

 

[WoodsChick]

Wow...:wow Wonderful photo-story, Zak! I love Utah and the wild landscapes there!

So...have I been under a rock somewhere? How long has this Adventure Forum been here? Some of my reports in DirtyBarf kind of belong here instead..sort of...



WoodsChick

 

[slackmeyer]

Yeah, post in the Adventure riding forum! We need the traffic! I think this forum has been here for a month or so. A select few frequent it, so far.

zak

 

[WoodsChick]

Yeah, post in the Adventure riding forum! We need the traffic! I think this forum has been here for a month or so. A select few frequent it, so far.

zak

Okay. Maybe I'll cut and paste a few of my ride reports over here...



WoodsChick

 

[Gester]

Hey zak,

Your sense of adventure is very contagious. Thanks for the awesome photos and equally stellar report!

:thumbup