Other Places …
Over time, we've traveled through 48 states and 5 Canadian provinces on our motorcycles. I thought you might enjoy a few photos from some of these trips. They're not always the best photos, but they mean a little more to me for one reason or another.
Rocky Mountain National Park - Memorial Day 1999. This was the first day the park was open in 1999. We accompanied Rick Hall on this ride … had a few scary minutes following car tracks down the mountain during a hail and snow storm. Gave the folks in cages something to talk about while we cruised on down. Yup, there may have been a white knuckle or two somewhere nearby..
Major Trips:
July, 1981 - Our first and only road trip on the KZ-750. Laurel, Maryland to Raymond, New Hampshire, via Cape May ferry, Verazano Bridge, Long Island, New London, Warwick, Rhode Island, and Attleboro, Massachusetts. We came back over the Mohawk Trail (Rt 2 in Mass.), down secondary roads to follow the Hudson River to NYC, onto the "Jersey Pike," and I-95 through Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore. This "2-up" ride on a 750 cc made a pretty convincing case for a bigger motorcycle. A couple of University of Maryland coeds solved that by talking their way through a red light on US-1 in Laurel, MD. They totaled the 750, and smacked my 11-year-old son and I to the pavement. Another 4 inches would have removed my left leg at the knee (or so the dent in the KZ's gas tank seem to indicate). We were awarded only sprained wrists and a couple of scrapes for our efforts .. . oh, and a generous insurance payoff sufficient to purchase a KZ-1100.
March-April, 1982 - I transferred my job in the Washington DC area to the same job in Kansas City. Motor needed our only car in Maryland while the kids finished school. This gave me a good excuse to ride my almost new KZ-1100 from Laurel, MD, to Kansas City, MO. I made this trip almost entirely on the interstate highway system and it taught me to avoid the "slab" as much as possible on later road trips. I started out on a warm March day, about 70 degrees across I-70 in Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and into Ohio. to Somerset. I visited my Mom there for a few days while the weather turned colder. I rode through Columbus, Ohio, and then on down to Louisville, Kentucky, to visit my brothers. The cold got got even colder - I nearly froze my butt off crossing Indiana and Illinois. I arrived in Kansas City on a snowy April morning and rode the bike to work covered in snow. That's not always a good way to make a first impression on your new boss. Oh well ….
August 1983 - I took my son down to Padre Island near Corpus Christi, Texas, on the KZ-1100 to go camping and fishing. August may sound like a foolish time to visit Padre Island on a motorcycle, especially with a tent and a 13 year old. It was. I foolishly allowed our neighbor to talk me out of taking a motorcycle into the Colorado Rockies.
1983 - 1988. We had a long drought for motorcycle road trips. I took the kids on short trips on the KZ, such as camping near the Buffalo River in Arkansas. As many of you are aware, kids have a way of using up all available resources, so there was little money for me to play on the KZ. I even sold the 1100 to keep our collective insurance premiums down when both kids were in high school and driving their own vehicles. The drought ended in 1989 when I thought "the heck with this" and bought a brand new 1988 Kawasaki Concours. My third Kawasaki and the best bike I ever owned.
June 1989 - Kansas City to San Diego and return. Shortly after purchasing the ZG, Motor and we decided it was time to head west on it. The kids were both living at home, but out of high school and into college. We didn't know if our house would survive the trip, but we went anyway. Everything came through fine. We avoided the interstate highways as much as possible on this and subsequent trips. Our route took us through Kansas, a strip of Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, to Tucumcari, New Mexico. We meandered down to El Paso, then across the bottom of New Mexico into Arizona. We visited Motor's sister in Huachuca City, Arizona, before we joined the slab and rode it to San Diego. We returned to Kansas City via the Salton Sea, Joshua Tree, Las Vegas and Hoover Dam, Zion National Park, Four Corners, Wolf Creek Pass, and the Royal Gorge. We learned first hand about hail-dented motorcycle gas tanks in Cody, Colorado, before joining up with the slab again at Oakley, Kansas, for the last leg to Kansas City.
June 1991 - Kansas City to Wyoming and Colorado and return. Motor and I took a 1-week ride through the hinder lands of Nebraska, then on to the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Devil's Tower, and the Rocky Mountain National Park. The ride was great and we really enjoyed ourselves, but a ticket by the Thomas County Nebraska Sheriff's Department still pisses me off. I don't mind paying 'em when I earn 'em, but this one was a "scanky-ass" cheap shot for revenue ... and the old bastard grinned the whole time he had me pulled over. Seems he had a thing for red motorcycles because he mentioned it at least five times. We also got a few cowboys excited north of Cowdrey, Colorado. I saw this fellow on a horse riding hard toward us as we neared the crest of a hill on a narrow state road. He was waving his hat and seemed pretty excited. We slowed down and stopped at the crest of the hill and saw the reason for his agitation. He and a few others were moving a couple hundred head of cattle on the highway toward a cattle pen just down the road from where we were. It was plain to see that they didn't think it would be a good idea for me to ride my bike into the herd. I couldn't have agreed more. We parked the bike next to the road until it was cleared of beef. They waved us by and we waved back as we scooted by, but those boys weren't feeling too friendly just then. It wasn't like the ZG was loud or had busted pipes; we riding along pretty quietly … oh well …
September 1992 - Motor couldn't get time off work, but she took pity on me. She told me to take the ZG for a run for a few days. I took a week off to run the ZG north to International Falls, Minnesota; over to Ely and Silver Bay; then along the northwest shore of Lake Superior to Duluth. I went across the top of Wisconsin and upper Michigan to the Mackinac Bridge, then down the east coast of Michigan before giving in to the slab (I-75) at Bay City. I followed the slab to Findlay, then down to visit family in Columbus and Louisville, before heading home to Kansas City. I had a crazy experience riding through Detroit accompanied by a nut driving a GTO and a blonde in a Cadillac. That was the craziest rush hour I ever experienced. I don't think I could survive another ride like that one ... don't ever want to try either.August 1993 - See the pages about our ride through the great northwest.
June 1995 - Kansa City to Key West, Florida, via Vicksburg, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; and Fort Walton Beach and Sarasota, Florida. A hurricane past behind us on the Florida Panhandle and another one was brewing for an attack on Key West. We left Sarasota for a visit with friends in Jacksonville, before heading south again to Key West. On the way back, we traveled up the east coast to Myrtle Beach, then west through South Carolina to a small leg of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smokie Mountain National Park. We finished our ride on secondary roads from Knoxville, Tennessee, back to Kansas City. This was a great trip that I need to write more about some day.
May 1997.- Moved into a condo in the middle of the city and sold the 1988 Concours. It was a sad day, but I thought my motorcycling days were done - no place to safely park the ZG.
March 1998.- Oops, an extra large parking space was available in our indoor parking garage. It took about 10 minutes to get down to the Kawasaki dealer for a new 1998 Concours.
September 1998 - See the pages about my 1998 ride through the west.
September 1999 - Kansas City to Nova Scotia and return. Motor flew to Boston to visit with friends and family. I made a speed-run over the Slab to Boston, via the New York Thruway and the Mass Pike to meet up with Motor at her parents place on Pine Island in Newbury, Massachusetts. The next day, we followed US-1 and 1a to Bar Harbor, Maine. We caught a ferry to the southern end of Nova Scotia and rode up to Halifax. Then we followed the coast around to the top of the island and headed south on the Cabot Trail. At Pictou, NS, we found a ferry to Prince Edward Island, then followed the road across the almost new bridge to Montoc, New Brunswick. I took Motor back to Boston and she flew home while I headed north again, across New Hampshire's Kancamagus Highway and Vermont to Burlington. and US-2 to the Canadian Border. I crossed into Quebec and rode through Montreal and further north and west to hook up with Canadian Route 11 in Ontario. I stayed a night in Longlac, Ontario. Then, I made a nonstop run from there through Thunder Bay and Minneapolis to Kansas City. This turned out to be an inadvertent 1000-in-1 final leg for the trip.
Spring, Summer, and Fall of 2000 - Too much stuff going on at work to play with the ZG on a meaningful road trip. I did manage to ride out to Colorado to frolic in the Rockies one last time with Rick over Memorial Day weekend.
April 2001 - I'm losing control of my hands and legs and then I'm diagnosed with a potentially disastrous (non motorcycle-related) condition. I'm advised to stay off motorcycles for life - too high a risk for paralysis from even a minor accident. Okay, so I took my last ride and sold the ZG to a fellow in Minot, North Dakota. On May 1, 2001, I went under the knife to regain control of my appendages. The surgery was a success, but I am and will remain in increased danger of accidental paralysis. I'll try to be prudent and stay off motorcycles. I've promised my wife that this will last until at least August 2004, when I plan to retire. Who knows ??? All bets are off after that ….
Yippee-Ki-Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!
