Tour of Utah needs your help. I got a call from T-Mac (Terry McGinnis), Race Director of the 2008 Tour of Utah bicycle stage race. This is a multi-day pro-am cycling event on the prestigious NRC calendar, and will draw all the best U.S. domestic bike racers. Local icons like Burke Swindlehurst (T-Bird) and Jeff Louder will likely be gunning for glory, but there will be only one king crowned after the final ascent up Little Cottonwood Canyon, the same climb as the annual Snowbird Hillclimb. My best finish in the Snowbird Hillclimb was 3rd, behind Dave Z. and T-Bird, but that was just starting at the bottom and racing to the top. These poor bastards in the 2008 TOU will ride a hundred miles or so AND THEN duke it out up the final climb. With a $75,000 cash prize list and a grand prize of a new car to the winner, TOU is back after a hiatus, and from the looks of it, living large indeed. But putting on a multi-day pro bike race all over the state is a messy affair of tangled logistics, and T-Mac needs some motorcycle riders to volunteer for various support duties, such as assisting UHP in traffic marshaling, neutral support, and chauffeuring race officials from one spot to another. I will likely volunteer for a day or two, but T-Mac needs all the help he can get. If you are a Utah-based moto rider with any sort of scoot, email T-Mac and offer up some assistance. Now let me tell you a little bit about my friend T-Mac: we were former team mates in our younger days on the X-Men Cycling Team, and T-Mac helped me win a lot of races at the Rocky Mountain Raceway “Tuesday Night World Championships.” T-Mac was tenacious then, and is even more tenacious now as he continues to fight some nasty cancer. And, did I mention he is race director for the grandest bike race Utah has ever seen? This guy is tough, but needs a little help.
View of my old arse. Stage 1. 2006 Tour of Utah. Photo by T-Mac.
Although my KTM 640 Adventure hasn’t seen much dirt since the Trans-America Trail ride, it has proven to be a good commuter over the past few weeks. With the price of Premium Unleaded hovering around $4.50 per gallon in Park City plus the nice summer weather we have been enjoying, I have been riding the bike to work two or three times a week. It would be better if there were some dirt roads to get me to and from the work place, but all things considered, it adds a little fun to the work week. I just bought a new Dunlop 908 Rally Raid (RR) to replace my worn out rear. The previous Dunlop 908 Enduro tire didn’t last long, only about 2,000 miles. I’ll probably wait until the next dirt adventure to install it, so stay tuned for a full evaluation after I get some miles on it. It appears to be quite a bit beefier than the old 908, and Bartman has had good luck with one on his 950 Adventure, a bigger and heavier bike.
So my phone rings and it’s an unfamiliar SLC number. Turns out, it is founder and CEO of DZ Nuts chamois creme, Dave Zabriskie. Dave is a professional cyclist with Team Slipstream and a former winner of the Maillot Jaune in the Tour de France. In that opening time trial a few years back, he shocked the world by beating all comers including a retired, silly well-known Texan (see Dickipedia) and everyone’s favorite recreational drug-using former Eastern bloc talent-squanderer Jan Ullrich to claim the leader’s jersey in dramatic fashion in the world’s most televised biking contest. Dave has had his flashes of brilliance on the bike since that historical moment, but some who know him well would argue his real talent is in making people laugh. Here’s to Dave and his wife and new baby, and to a speedy recovery from a nasty fall in the Giro d’Italia, right after helping his team win the opening time trial (editor’s note: Dave is still the only American to have won a stage in all three of the Grand Tours). Shaka.
As I write this, Darth Nater is in India, on a family trip to volunteer in a part of the world where every day is an adventure. Darth, wife and children are on a mission to teach English to children and spend some time in a Leper colony. Obi-Ben is knocking about in Egypt. My solo motorcycle adventuring might be a simple ride on the KTM to run some errands in Park City after listening to my new Porcupine Tree cd. Our dualsport motorcycle pilot lights are all flickering, waiting for the next gathering to twist the throttles and explore. Until then, make every day an adventure of some sort.
An affiliate adventure posse from Oregon, led by Rob McCready, sent in some photos and commentary about a recent outing in Oregon. Rob had looked me up, after hearing about our recent Trans-America Trail ride into Oregon, wondering if we had crossed the Discovery Route and ran into any snow. Turns out, Rob used to work with my friend Gary Huck at Summit, and Gary put us in touch, being familiar with itsallaboutthebike.com. Rob and company were taking the Discovery Route #4, from Prineville to Seneca, Oregon, all on dirt. And mud. And snow, as you can see below. Rob was riding a silver KTM 950 Adventure, his buddies on various BMW GS models: Scott Norton on the red GS, Pete Day on the black Adventure, and Dave Combe on the black GS. Click the photos below and they will link you to these and some more recently uploaded images of this adventure in our Flickr gallery, along with colorful commentary from Rob.
Darth Nater’s video of how we crossed Bilk Creek. Obi-Ben was the first to attempt the crossing, and it took all three of us to get his bike unstuck from the mud.
After returning from the Trans-America Trail trip, I had very little desire to touch the KTM let alone ride it. It was a reliable steed that saw me through some good times and some trouble, so it was nothing personal. Part of it was that last day from Burns, Oregon to Park City, Utah all on the pavement. Seemed like my wrists and hands were still buzzing after a week. Also, the bike needed some maintenance. My Dunlop D606 front tire and D908 rear were totally hammered, both from the aggressive and sometimes rocky off-road riding, as well as the road riding. My rear sprocket is worn to the point of replacing, and I decided to have the dealer do the 2nd big service, because it involved a bunch of things over my head, like checking and adjusting the valves. The head KTM mechanic at the Edge Motorsports, Victor, seems like a really good dude, passionate and knowledgeable, and most importantly, certified by KTM. They did forget to rebuild my clutch master cylinder, which is one of the main reasons I brought it in, but that wasn’t Victor’s fault. The service guy who wrote my ticket must have spaced it. That’s about it for the boring maintenance report. While I was picking up my bike, I just had to check out the new KTM 690 Super Enduro and ponder how it would have performed out there on the Trans-America route. No windscreen might have been tough to handle, but with enough room on the tail for some soft bags, this thing looks like it would have devoured the dirt.
3/4 view of the new 2008 KTM 690 Super Enduro. Big, bad, dirtbike. I like.
Clearly, Darth and Obi-Ben have pulled their weight by uploading some of their photos to our Flickr Photostream. And clearly, I should have gone all the way to the coast, based on what I missed out on. After viewing all 500 or so photos, I missed a lot of action on the trip after Crater Lake. And some fine dining. Posh lodges. Bad haircuts. Getting bikes stuck in the sand.
Great Basin National Park, Day 2, Trans-America Trail. Photo by Ben Rafferty.
During my 9 days riding with the group on Darth’s version of the Trans-America Trail from Utah to Oregon, I saw places off the beaten path and met some great people. It would be impossible to remember them all without the reminder of the photos we took along the way. Here’s one we took that has become known as “The Band Photo”, for when we release our first album. This was taken between Utah and Nevada (not exactly sure where we were) at a crossroads marked by Mater, the broken down old truck.
Keeping the posts updated on the road proved to be a challenge. Until I have a chance to go back and place images in the context of the posts, you can see a sampler of photos I took with an iPhone on Flickr:
