My first ride report! Ken Webb and I just completed a fantastic ride around Colorado. We took two weeks with the COBDR (Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route) and Browns Park as the main focus of the ride. We put on 2264 miles. We both rode our Terra's and started the ride from my house in Divide, CO.. We have both done extensive work to the bikes to prepare them for this type of ride (search TERRAFORMERS). I do not recommend this ride for a stock Terra. At the very least, replacement of the front tire and install of a 15 or 14 tooth primary sprocket should be done. Crash bars, skid plate, and bark busters should be installed as well so the bike can take a hit....or two. Here is all the good stuff about the bikes: Ken's bike features a seat from Seat Concepts, Motosportz skid plate with wings, Excel Tagasako wheel set, Dunlop D908RR rear tire, T8 front tire? I think?, Motosportz bar risers, Pro Taper KX High bend bars with Highway Dirt Bike top clamp, hand guards, and bar end weights, KTM fold away mirrors, Altrider crash bars, Wolfman enduro tank bag, expedition dry saddle bags, and small dry duffel bag. Custom parts are the luggage racks and the extended length kick stand (3/4") with a larger round foot pad. He has 15 tooth (16t stock) primary sprocket as well. I am sure I am forgetting something....the bike is trick! My bike features the super crappy stock seat (I know this for a fact now), Motosportz skid plate, Pivot Pegz with CS Designs peg extensions, Pro Taper KX High bars, Cycra Pro Bend hand guards, Dunlop D908RR front and rear tires, 14 tooth primary sprocket, Giant Loop Fandango tank bag, and Wolfman expedition dry saddle bags and medium duffel bag. Custom parts are also the luggage racks and extended length kick stand, but my stand features a super sexy Husky logo for a foot pad!, 1" bar risers, carbon fiber rally screen, and crash bars. We had a blast and had lots of good riding. Lots of rain provided little dust, but also mud in some very remote sections. It also washed the road out right in front of us and turned the green of the Colorado river to brown right before our eyes. We hiked in to a medicine wheel and petroglyphs. We learned some great history and went to places on the outlaw trail. We took our bikes as high as 12960 feet. We camped and stayed in cabins or hotels. We found out our bikes motors could be completely submerged in water and still run. We helped people fix their bikes. We met a man in Leadville with a love for old machinery and he literally "cranked" em all up for us! We saw Wyoming and Utah for a short time. We ate tones of good food. We drank approximately 30 mochas at different coffee houses and had about 30 cups of regular coffee. Ken smoked about a hundred cigars! We have much to tell.
wowo! Great pics and sounds like a very cool ride you are describing ... All that coffee sounds good, but how was the Coors? At age 21 or so, a couple friends and I rode a bus from AR to OK just to get a Coors...
I think only one beer was consumed Ray and it was a Guinness....not a Coors. Man, my dad sure loved his Coors!
Hey Woodsy! I don't spend much time here in the Report section, but I see you do. I won't get much done on this report if I keep reading others.. Super addicting!
I guess so on your Dad ... it was a big, really big deal back in the days when we only had bud, miller, and schlitz to drink once-upon-a-time in the USA when a new beer came forth! ... Brewed with fresh rocky mountain spring water? It was not gonna be another bud stump-water clone ... Found out OK has a great people also ... -- I'm sure there is more than one person here happy to read about your engine-under-water testing ...
Indeed Rocky Mountain spring water! The Coors facility is built right over the top of Clear Creek here in Golden and it is still going strong. My engineer friend does a lot of vibration analysis there at the plant. We often meet in Golden when he is through working for some mochas! Good news!....I have video footage of the deepest water crossing. I need to figure out how to youtube first though.
Ken showed up a couple of days early so we could make sure everything was in order and to get the finishing touches on the bikes done as well. I still had to build my RotoPax mounting system and add my peg extensions. We had a great time building these bikes and cured a lot of the expected little issues they have out of the box from a first year production bike. We couldn't be happier with the Terra's. They took everything we threw at them, rocks (They truly are the Rocky Mountains), sand, mud, water, and just good old fashioned abuse! But, as most of you know, I can not state it enough that these bikes are not stock and are as listed in the first post. The seat was my only complaint and will be remedied soon. High speed dampening in the forks would be nice, but not really necessary for the additional $1000 in cost. Flex bars will be added instead this winter along with a Scott's stabilizer. The addition of wings to the skid plate is also something that I feel is necessary due to where I live. My case took some pretty hard hits with flying rocks. Ken also wants to bring his fender down low like a Strada to give the radiator more cooling. They were working hard climbing the rocky passes and with very little air, they got pretty hot. We just kept them moving and if we couldn't, we turned them off. This isn't a problem isolated to the Terra....all bikes run hotter up there. On the other hand, we did not have any huge power loss issues that a carbed bike would encounter. They always had all the power we needed and more on hand and ran flawlessly. You could still lug it down on a hair pin and ramp it up with no clutching. The massive torque down low is why we love these 650 thumpers and they are the ultimate tool up here. We saw one big bike on the whole trip attempting the BDR and he was down in the flats trying to decide weather or not he wanted to attempt a mild section. Due to the excessive mud we advised him not too and he agreed and opted for an alternate route. KLR's, DR's, DRZ's, and WR's are what we saw on the BDR because they are the ultimate tools. We were the only Huskys and they made a huge impression. They got everyone thinking about replacing there bikes. XCRider from ADV even states it in his report and SuperDutyGS also could not get over how awesome the bikes were and said it many times. My battery is low so I have to wrap this up for now. Here are some pics from the first day out. This guy on a 610 saw the Husky logos and pulled in to say hi and check out the bikes.
Keep it up Fab! Meanwhile I am stuck here in Moab, camping while surrounded by Young German girls (touring the US) and they are not shy about where they changing clothes, don and doff swim suits, etc. Maybe I will stay here for a while! Yeah, I know, back to Husqvarnas.
Burger world, TIG welding, young GER girls, Husqvarna brand bikes, this thread has it all! ... PS -- The drinking age in OK might have been 18 at the time we rode over and that would have been another good reason to cross over the state line as AR was probably 21 ... That Coors was soooo good when it first came out ... We thought years later when that brew was sold in other states that they changed the ingredients ..
Man...I can't leave you alone for even a couple days and your already into mischief! And we're just gettin started! Burger World in Canon City has, by far, the best burgers in the state. It's worth the trip....no matter where you are!
OK, enough about the spectacular bikes and lets hit the road. We left my house on Weds the 10th and headed to Cripple Creek. This set the tone for the whole ride as it was 50/50 dirt and paved roads to get there. Our whole ride was 50/50....perfect for the Terra's. Cripple Creek is in the back ground. From there we took off down Shelf Road. This is a great way to get to Canon City. I have posted pics from this road before, but here is one with Ken. You will see hardly any pics with me in them. I think Ken took maybe 20 pics the whole trip. We hit Canon City and had some burgers and chatted with the guy on the 610 who lives just down the street in a pink house. We didn't ask, we just listened. Off to Salida. We road mostly dirt to Salida and found a great route that drops you right in town. We got a late start on the day and decided over coffee that we should go ahead and stay there for the night. Ken prefers hotels and I prefer camping. I didn't budget for hotels, so Ken will need to cover most hotel nights and he agreed to get some camping in. This was our first and only compromise we had to make. He is camping now in Moab, so maybe he likes it after all. Here are some shots on the way down to Salida.
Thursday the 11th. Today we get to go over our first dirt road passes. First, Marshall Pass and then down to the town of Sargents. At this point we still didn't know each others skill set. I was leading and going at a conservative pace which apparently was too slow. Ken blew past me. When we stopped I said "not going fast enough for you huh?". He said "I like to go fast off road!"....Well alright then...here we go! The pace increased dramatically. Every time I looked back, Ken was there, but he assured me I was not holding him up. We found that sweet spot in the dirt both of us were comfortable doing safely, but yet still a lot of fun! Then onto Hwy 50 and into Gunnison for some coffee and relaxation. I can't say enough about Gunnison. It was my favorite place in the world at one time and still is a great place to be. Little has changed there in 20 years which is very unusual for Colorado towns. I tried to find a way to make a good living here several years back, but the average employee here is in poverty level and it did not make sense to start my type of business there. On to The Bean coffee shop! Continuing on Hwy 50 until we hit Cimmeron and took a left. This route is dirt and goes over Owl Creek Pass and into Ridgeway. I asked a guy walking down the street where to grab a bite to eat. This guy was full of all sorts of information and told us where to park. As we parked he told us the original John Wayne movie True Grit was filmed here and showed us to the True Grit Cafe and pointed across the street where they shot the hanging scene...or where they use to hang people in the town,..can't remember which.. Our new friend invited us to sit with him at the bar, but we had all our gear and needed a table. Anyway, the atmosphere and food were real good and so was the piano player! After that we slabed it towards Telluride in the rain. We wound up at Woods Lake and found a nice camp ground. We set up camp in the rain and it rained off and on throughout the night. This first pic is on the way to Ridgeway and the second is Woods Lake. I am the one taking pics, so there will be a lot of pics with my bike in them...sorry..sort of.
That's another thing that got chewed up in our capitalist world ... Home-grown places to eat ... -- Really cool looking terrain in the last couple pics ... What's with that small fox? You look awfully close to that wild critter... That front rail around the radiators on the bikes, did you make them also? How is the suspension doing on your bikes? WC mentioned her's a little stiff I think I remember her saying but she is a light a potato(e?) chip now on hers... EDIT: Some words I found on that pass ... pretty high altitude ... Marshall Pass, elevation 10,842 ft (3,305 m), is a mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains of central-southern Colorado. It lies in northern Saguache County on the Continental Divide between the Sawatch Range to the north and the Cochetopa Hills to the south. The pass is part of a backcountry alternative to U.S. 50 between Salida and Gunnison. Marshall Pass was discovered by and named for Lt. William L. Marshall, of the Wheeler Survey, in 1873.
Nice addition with the Marshall Pass info Ray...Thanks! So true about the home grown places to eat. If people would just look a little harder, they could find them. I swear I have trained myself to look right past a "brand". We only ate at one chain restaurant and one chain coffee shop and that was because the Broadway Burger Station and The Java Peddler were closed on Sundays. Too bad too because I drug Ken 140 miserable miles just to get to Rock Springs, Wyoming and enjoy those places. We had to settle for a Village Inn and a Starbucks. Funny story in that Starbucks though. This guy full of testosterone walks in with his girlfriend (I am assuming) and they go up to the counter and order. Just to show that I am not being judge mental, my Dad always wore Wrangler jeans, a western shirt, and a black Stetson hat. He was tall and handsome and liked his coffee black. You would only catch my Dad in a Starbucks if someone drug him in. Well this guy was much the same only he was fat, wore a ball cap, and was ugly. Anyways, his lady friend kept staring at us and he was getting extremely ticked off....at us!...not his girlfriend! What is with chicks like this and guys like that? It's like they work as a team to stir up some trouble. Well we just avoided eye contact and made it no fun for him and all was well. We got a kick out of it though. The fox was a ways away. I have a great little camera that I keep handy in my tank bag. It's a Canon SX500 IS. It's tiny for what it is and light. 30x zoom with image stabilizer make it great for shots like that. Here he is again a little farther away. I have another zoom shot that is pretty classic of a black and white bear....well sort of, ok not really but I don't know if I am going to post it. It's sort of tasteless, but Ken and I got a kick out of it. I did make the crash bars and I am very proud of them. Here they are in the build process. This is pulled from the TERRAFORMERS thread.
Friday the 12th. First night camping! It was wet, but we managed. We made some coffee and left the camp set up. We are right off of the BDR and camped at the end of the first section so we will loop back around and be back here tonight. Very convenient! Now off to Telluride for some breakfast. I will keep my thoughts of Telluride to myself. Lets just say I won't be back unless I am just passing through. Vail and Aspen are on that same list. The last time I was here was 13 years ago and it was nothing like it is today. Damn shame. We ate our over priced breakfast and got the heck out. Unfortunately I will be back through this town, but for good cause. In the below pic you will see some switchbacks above town on the right. That is Black Bear Pass and it is on my to do list for next year. Leaving Telluride we headed up to Lizard Head Pass and over into Dolores. The COBDR actually starts in the Four Corners, but we didn't see the point. It is all pavement to get there and the dirt starts shortly out of Dolores. We hit a good burger joint and then climbed out of town. The terrain is mellow and has some silt and sand that kept things fun. There were some gates to open and close and all in all an un eventful day. We made it back to camp a lot sooner than we thought. I tried the fishing and didn't catch anything, but it was worth a try. This first shot is Wilson Peak and it is very impressive in real life. The second is our camp at Woods Lake. Lets get to sleep because tomorrow will prove to be the best day of the whole trip! Ray, I forgot to answer your question on the suspension. With the bikes loaded full of gear it is perfect. I wish it had a high speed dampening adjustment, but other than that its very good and performed way better than expected when we hit big rocks at big elevation...more on that tomorrow!
I will second Fab's opinion on the suspension; loaded for a trip it is very good as the bike is designed for two up. I think we were both a bit surprised. I don't think I ever bottomed the front but probably did the rear, though softly. Fab did use all the front once as he knows how to twist the throttle. I tried to pack really light for this ride but still had too much. When camping the weight is hard to avoid, plus I carried front and rear tubes and a complete chain breaker set. Other than an extra pair of sox and tee shirt I don't know what could be eliminated. No flats or chain issues on the entire ride. Neither of us was looking forward to breaking down our Dunlop 908RR rears and that is an understatement!
Another comment on the 908RR rear tire. This was the first tire install in my life that I couldnt complete myself. It felt like I was going to damage the bead trying to get the last bit over the rim. I capitulated and had a bike tire shop do it. Maybe once stretched it would be easier but I doubt it. Others may find something different. Great tire though, tough and good miles with it so far. I carried one long tire iron just in case and should have strapped on two. Will do so next time. My regular shorties would never do the deed for me on that particular tire!
