From this Summer: Gravelly Ride

I found this in draft form on here and finished it up to post..figured it is good to remember about the summertime during the winter.




The Gravelly Road

This road has been lurking on my map of Southwest Montana ever since I bought my KLR, and I never got it together enough to plan and go ride it until this summer. I knew it would be good....



Sunday morning. Woke up on my bro Cory's couch to a fuzzy head from the evenings merriment at the Claim Jumper Saloon in Ennis Montana. After recharging with eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, I filled the camelbak, geared up, and hit the road on my trusty 05 KLR650.

Destination: Ride the Gravelly Range Rd south from Ennis to the Centennial Valley and return via the Upper Ruby Rd.

It was cold out! Thermometer on my bike said 40 something. I had on normal pants. Oops. It was pretty cloudy and windy out.


As I climbed towards the beginning of the Gravelly Rd, I entered the clouds since they were so low. So now the temp goes down even more, and I have to keep my faceshield up due to condensation issues. It was reading down to 36! I got cold. And I was in the clouds, so I couldn't see very far at all. This continued for pretty much the first hour I think. I had to go slow too due to the cloud-fog.



All I saw was some cows, a few hunters camped out, and a lot of grey! I had second thoughts about continuing as I was freezing my face off, and couldn't see anything cool at all like a view or something! I pushed on though on the hopes that it would burn off as the day heated up.

Finally it broke and I had super awesome views of my Montana home in all directions.

This road has got to be on the top 10 of any I have ever been on. It's right up there with the Beartooth I think, and maybe better cuz it's all dirt, and there are very very few people. If it hadn't been hunting season already, I doubt there would have been anyone hardly at all.

The road just keeps going on top of the mountains for miles and miles. It's unbelievable! I was hooting and laughing with glee inside my helmet at what a good time I was having.


After another hour or so I was further down the range and ran into a giant amount of sheep sleeping in the road! I hadn't ever seen that many sheep at once before. They were just hanging out and had two dogs with the flock to keep them out of trouble I guess. I shut off the bike and took my helmet off and just stood around for a bit watching them and absorbing the mellow sheep vibe. They looked pretty happy just chilling out up there on top of the world.



After the sheep I kept on rolling down the road and actually finally started descending down out of the mountains. I was using a color copy of the Montana Gazeteer map for the area for my navigation and it worked pretty darn well. I am a big fan of good ole maps. No GPS for me. I think a map works better, doesn't run out of batteries, and you can see way more area at one time.

I got to an intersection though that had some signs about this road and that road and I had to gamble on a left turn onto what I hoped was a shortcut to the Centennial Valley, FR 209. It looked on the map like the same size road I had been on, but when I got on it, it was way smaller, just a worn two track with a bunch of ruts. I had a moment of indecision, as I was paying close attention to my odometer for my gas gauge. I knew I wouldn't find gas where I was headed and had to turn around if I hit 100 miles and wasn't on my way back already. I was at around 60 something i think. I said F-it and kept going on the two track.


I won my gamble and was dumped out on the road I was shooting for on the north edge of the valley. It was pretty damn cool, and I want to go back and explore around the wildlife refuge another time. After more indecision I headed east to see if I could find a road across to the south side of the valley that appeared on the map. Said road did not appear in reality, and I ended up turning around after a few miles.


Now my way was clear and I blasted west at 65 mph back towards the Ruby valley road. I love the KLR on dirt roads, and these were like dirt highways! I had at this point been riding dirt for about 50 miles and 3 hours. The road up high had been pretty twisty and somewhat loose so my speed was maybe around 35 tops. Once in the valley though these roads were wide, and way more straight, so I hauled ass for a while! By the way, I discovered that antelope can run at least 40 mph. It's funny when animals try and run away by running parallel to you. I suppose Mr. Antelope isn't used to anyone being able to go faster than himself.

In short order I got to the turn for the Ruby road I wanted. The next 15 miles or so were maybe the funnest of the day as it was open country, medium curviness of road, and it undulated a bunch up and down. I could keep good speed and was really riding the bike with all the road variation. It was super fun! I never rode a dirt bike when I was younger so lately I have been trying to learn to slide the rear under power around corners. I got plenty of practice in that section. Still can't do it super well yet. I am running TKC 80's front and rear and I think I need to air them down some to get the right action with the traction.

I made it back to Ennis safe and sound, and continued back to Bozeman. It was long day, but one of the best rides I have ever taken, and one that I am sure I will repeat many times in the future.

10 Ways I Save Money

Been thinking about saving money lately....

I am a bit of a gear-whore, and have problems buying tons of crap related to my many sporty hobbies: snowboarding, motorcycling, mtn biking, road biking, etc. I feel bad about that sometimes. On the other hand I am really a frugal fellow in many other ways. Here's what I do or have done recently on the savings side of things:

1. Cancelled gym membership 35x12=420/yr
2. Returned leased welding gas cylinder. Haven't used my welder in over a year! And I can still use flux core wire if I need to use it without gas. =40/yr
3. Have no car payment. I have a 20 year old Toyota 4x4.... savings here is 200-400/mo depending on your choice of cars. 2400 to 4800/yr
   
4. Cook at home. I cook at home a lot. At least one big meal a week, which gives me usually 2 more meals of leftovers. I always eat breakfast from my kitchen. Lunch is sometimes out when at work. Usually it is leftovers or a can of soup or a sandwich. Dinner out maybe 2-3x per week, but often that is 6 bucks for a few slices of my favorite pizza. Meals i could eat out but don't 21 total meals per week, lets say 3 lunches out and 3 dinners....so that's 15 meals that I could eat out but don't....10 bucks avg. per meal...150 bucks per week savings.
   
5. Bought a season pass to the local ski hill. This seems like it would go in the spending category, but I think it saves me money by me going snowboarding all the time, and not going shopping or whatever else, and i am so tired at night I just hang out at home and go to sleep early instead of going out. Oh, wait, maybe that part is just from me getting older! It also promotes excercise and health, and then I have less medical expenses. Actual savings amount is hard to calculate, but I will put it at at least 1000/yr.
   
6. Buy the Best Stuff. When I do buy gear, I do massive research beforehand, on what is the best product. This saves me money because the best stuff is often the most durable and most high quality. Buy something good that lasts, instead of five of something that falls apart or breaks......Then I do massive research on the best deal for said best products. Example includes a recent snowboard purchase, my second new board in....hmmm....6 years I think. I found a nice Nitro for 230 shipped on Ebay. Half of retail price! It took me months to find that board though. Also last winter i got a 200+ dollar Patagonia shell jacket for 100 bucks at their outlet store. This winter i found similar pants, again at half retail at 100 bucks. I won't need to buy ski gear for I bet 5 years at least and maybe forever, due to Pati's exceptional quality, and lifetime warranty. I have had the same guitars for over 10 years, nice Fender Strats....Last mtn bike I bought lasted 8 seasons and still is rolling. Buy good stuff. Keep it for a long time. Simple really!
   
7. Netflix. If you watch a lot of movies you already know what a deal this is.....
8. Eating good healthy foods. I eat mainly unproccessed foods or minimally processed foods. Results are that I am a healthy weight, and have good cholesterol levels. Heart attacks are expensive and I am not going to have one!
9. Simple entertainment: on Sundays during the summer to relax I go for a motorcycle ride through the backroads of Montana. Cost: 8-10 bucks in gas for 2-4 hours of awesome scenery and thrills! Or I might ride my bicycle from my house for a few hours. Cost: free!
   
10. Living in an out of the way place in a smaller town or city. I grew up in Maine. Cheap! I now live in Montana. Cheap! I live in the expensive part, which is in-town Bozeman, but it is still cheap compared to many other cities. There are less places to spend money....so you spend less money. The smaller the town the better this effect is.

Okay, that was fun!

Until next time,
Lincoln

Christmas in Montana

Christmas Eve I got up and went right up to Bridger to go snowboarding with Stephanie. I left at 11 to go get Arlo at the airport here in Bozeman. We ended up at a local watering hole and had some celebratory beverages with Steph. Back at my house for dinner: I made Panang Curry Pork Roast with vegetables and rice. Arlo went to bed at 730 pm! He apparently was tired. We woke up on Christmas and got right into the present opening. I got a hockey stick and a nice graphic design book from Steph, I gave Arlo a Robert E Howard Conan book, and I gave Steph and nice picture of the two of us, and a super sweet pair of goggles for snowboarding. Arlo gave me some computer accessories for my recently purchased MacBook.

After breakfast we headed right up to the mountain to go snowboarding. We spent the day cruising around Bridger and had some good runs over on the new Slushmans lift. After we were tired from shredding the gnar we headed back to town. Dinner that night was at Steph's great uncle's place in town, with their kids, us and her other relative Buddy. It was a full on holiday feast with turkey, all the fixins, and much laughter with her boisterous family! We had a really great time and a really great meal.

When we left their house we went out to the car and found a good 3-4 inches of snow with more falling pretty heavily. It was a good sign for the next day's riding.

Waking up on Friday we found nearly a foot of snow outside! Woohoo! We got rolling real early and made it to the mountain at about 930. A really fun day of riding was had in the foot of fresh on top of 5 or 6 inches from the previous few days. Arlo claimed it was the best day ever! We rode all over the mountain and had a great time!

The video below is a from the past few days of riding. Not the best quality but you can get a good idea of the fun time we had.

Notes From Gustav

My roomate Jen has been down in Baton Rouge for two weeks at her family's place. She was supposed to be back yesterday. I got this text.

Got stuk n huricane b bak thurs

Doh!

KLR maintenance day

On Sunday I futzed around with my moto all day with various maintenance tasks. After discovering the running light filament on my taillight was out I read a few msg board posts and headed to the auto parts store. I bought a 1157 bulb for the tailight, and a Sylvania Silverstar halogen headlight bulb....also some blue locktite.

I got back and figured I would try cleaning my air filter, which I have never done before. The mechanic at my recent servicing said I really should clean it regularly....and after I opened the airbox and looked at it I know why!! It was covered in dust. I maybe have 500 or so miles since the service so it must be all the dusty dirt roads I ride. It was pretty easy to clean, I just followed the directions in the manual. I cleaned it with brake cleaner spray, and then washed it with detergent in the sink, and then reoiled it. Took maybe 10 minutes.

Headlight replacement I did because I read all these posts about how if you get this certain bulb that it is like 200% improvement. I always have been unhappy with the stock headlight output so I figured for 20 bucks it was a good idea. I had to mostly unbolt the front cowling and the indicators, and after some swearing finally got the old one out and the new one in.

Tailight swap out was 2 minutes.

A few days ago I relocated my license plate up to right under the license plate light. I saw a great mod on ADVrider where the guy moved the plate up right under the tailight and then got rid of the black subfender underneath. I figured what the hell and went for it. Drilled holes for the new location, loc tited the bolts, and then hacked off the subfender as far up as I could reach with my trim saw.
I think it looks way better now, and the damn plate won't get bent up anymore from big hits. I took the plate light off altogether and just unplugged from the bullet connectors before I cut off the subfender.


Last night I rode the KLR back from my girlfriends house in the dark and got to check out the new bulb. It seemed fine on low beam in town, lots of streetlights and hard to tell, but near my house I turned onto a dark street just to see. I flicked on the high beam and it was like frikking daylight! Holy crap is it better than stock. I am amazed. Best 20 bucks I have spent on that bike besides gas! If you ever ride at night you should get this bulb!