I found some photos from that last day’s ride in Slovenia when we rode down to the Skocjan caves. These were from Lejla’s camera and I forgot all about them until I found them the other day.
What a gorgeous day that was!
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This afternoon I rode to Tacoma to visit NW Motor Scooters to check out their LA based GoGo Gear line of protective gear. Go Go Gear claims: Motorcycle and scooter jackets no longer have to be unattractive! Harley Davidson or Vespa, motorcycle or scooter, biker men or women, scooter girl or guy, GoGo Gear brings fashion to protective, armored, abrasion resistant riding gear and accessories. Naturally, I was curious. Protective gear for women that’s functional and looks good? I tried on their Military Jacket (liked it a lot!), Trench Jacket (didn’t quite work for me) and Hologram Jacket (I’ll let you decide for yourself). :P All jackets had solid armor in the back, elbow and upper arm area (all CE approved). The armor in the shoulders didn’t quite fit snugly on any of them. Their size 6 was slightly bulky on me especially in the shoulder area, so I tried a size 4, which was a bit snug in the arms, but I like my jackets tight so that it doesn’t shift in the event of a crash. Speaking of crashes, my biggest concern was of course how well these designer jackets would hold up in worst case scenarios. The jackets are made with either 600 or 1000 denier cordura, which is then covered up with the nicer material – wool, knits or acrylic. This appears to be in keeping with the specifications of the average, mainstream motorcycle jackets out there. I could see myself wearing one of these jackets for in city low speed riding when the option might be to skip gear altogether, but I definitely wouldn’t make any of these my main jacket for either touring or dual sport riding. I can’t imagine how long this elegant designer wear would hold up on a wet, muddy ride. I’m also a gear nazi and I wear only the best protection I can buy – dual layer mesh kevlar custom made by Motoport (not big on looks but very functional). My other concern was the hip length of the jacket which is fine for scooter riding, but might be awkward for swinging a leg over a motorcycle. Fortunately they had a Kymco 250cc motorcycle on display, which I sat on, and the jacket seemed to be fine and the length didn’t appear to get in the way. They did after all ride motorcycles wearing those big great coats back in WW2. :) To summarize, I didn’t buy any of them, but I *am* tempted to get the Go Go Gear Military jacket for casual around town riding. With a $375 price tag though, I’ll have to think about whether I’d rather spend my money on one of these or that retro RevIt jacket that I was eyeing a few months ago. Here are some photos of me in some of the coats that I tried. This one was my favorite by far.
Click below to see the remaining images.
I haven’t gone dirt riding since Memorial Day weekend when I went riding up in the Leavenworth area. This was almost five months ago, so I’ve been chomping at the bit to take the XT out on some dirt. The hard part is actually getting to the roads. Most of the really good ones are almost a couple of hundred miles away via freeways and riding the XT that far isn’t very much fun. This leaves the option of taking the bike there via truck/trailer which involves enough logistics that I never really tackled it. Which is why I was delighted when a couple of co-workers mentioned that there were several forest service roads in the Seattle area that we could get to via backroads. We decided to meet on Saturday morning at Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie Falls and set out from there. I left home at 9:00AM (this used to be the norm back in the day when I rode all day every weekend, but is more of a rarity now). I took 520 and 202 towards Snoqualmie. As I passed Fall City, I started feeling the bike sputter and realized that I was on 120 miles and I wasn’t going to make it all the way to Snoqualmie. I’ve always wanted to find the exact range of this bike and I guess now I did. Either I don’t have a low fuel indicator or it doesn’t work. :P I knew there was a gas station in the neighborhood that I always fuel up at, but I couldn’t find it. All of a sudden I was out of fuel and coasting down the hill without power. I managed to turn left into a parking area and turned off the bike to think. I had passed a gas station half a mile before and I really should have stopped there instead of looking for the other one. Unfortunately it was uphill and pushing it all the way up was not going to be fun. And then I had the brilliant idea (:P) of checking to see if I had a reserve. The last two bikes I have owned didn’t have one, so it’s not something I’m used to thinking about anymore. Turns out that the XT did, so I rotated the knob to RES and it started right up. Yay! I rode back up the hill, found the 76 gas station and refueled. I mentally calculated that I had gone 120 miles in 1.8 gallons, meaning that I was getting a good 67 miles to the gallon on this bike. Not too shabby! It had started to rain now, although it was Seattle rain, more like a light misting and drizzle which didn’t bother me too much. I got to the parking lot in Salish Lodge in ten minutes and found Dave and Nikolas waiting, the former with a Husqvarna and the latter with a DRZ450. I’ve never seen a Husky up close. Those are some fun looking machines! Of course, I am partial to red and black bikes. ;) Nikolas’ bike was neat looking too, looking more like a dirt bike that had been ridden unlike mine. He had a bunch of gadgets hooked up too, which I made a mental note to get for myself in the future. Dave led us to the start of the forest service road. The entrance was full of loose gravel and I felt the bike starting to slide around alarmingly. As always, I had that feeling of “Why the hell am I here again?” and “There are people who do this for fun?”. After a little while, we emerged onto more packed road and the bike settled down. Nikolas passed me and they both sped on. I lingered and went slow. They waited for me at intersections, of which there weren’t very many, so for the most part it felt like I was out for a ride in the forest alone, which is a rather nice feeling. :) I think I kept a steady 25-30 mph pace, painfully slow for those roads, but more within my comfort zone. The route itself wasn’t very technical, but it was a good place to brush up on my (mostly non-existent) off-road riding skills. We stopped in a few places, tried one side road that was uphill, gnarly and to my relief, blocked by a landslide so that we had to turn around. We ended the ride at the end of 5700 where we parked, got off and walked a little and climbed onto a broken bridge to catch a glimpse of a waterfall. As with hiking or snowshoeing, I always do like to have a little “reward” at the end of a trek. The ride back was mostly downhill and I found that going uphill was a lot easier than going downhill. It was here that I finally started standing on the footpegs and was amazed at how dramatically I felt so much more stable. No more sliding all over the place and veering around puddles and potholes. The bike’s suspension took everything the road could throw at it and I barely felt any of it. Theoretically of course I know that standing is better than sitting, but it still feels so unnatural to me that it takes a while before I can muster up the courage to do it. I also get tired and my legs cramp after a little while of standing. More reason to work out those quads! We reached the end of the trail and Dave slowed down indicating an area off to the right, which I understand is usually closed off. It looked like a good place to go practice dirt riding skills. Unfortunately, it was sandy and I wasn’t going fast enough and I washed out. We got the bike up, but then it wouldn’t start!!! We tried and checked everything we could, with no luck. Press starter button -> nothing happens. No sound of even trying to turn over, indicating a faulty switch somewhere. It boggles my mind how a little tipover could cause something like that. Push starting didn’t help either. It made a sort of sound, but never fired. We think it could be a matter of a bad switch plus a fouled spark plug. Dave lived pretty close by, so he offered to come back with his trailer. Nikolas and I waited on the side of the road, getting soaked in the rain until he returned. I was relieved to get a ride back to Seattle and secretly a little frustrated at having yet another bike that didn’t start!! I have had the damndest luck this year. :| So I guess I’m delighted that I could go out and play in the dirt, but really bummed about not ending the ride in a more satisfying way. :(
Fun little motorcycling video. ;) Thanks to Brad for linking it. To be filed under the “Why I adore my Garmin Zumo so” section. Today I plugged the Zumo in while leaving work, only to find that it wanted to speak another language. Observe. First off:
Uhh… no. Not really. And then:
But I could at least continue to listen to music all the way home.
I rebooted and it fixed itself. Why it chose to crap out is anyone’s guess. The weather perhaps? I had lunch with my friend Dmitry today who told me about this Russian motorcyclist he ran into who just rode around the world over 100,000km. He had quite a few colorful stories to recount, involving biker gangs in Australia and being sliced up by machetes in Africa. Unfortunately I missed meeting him because this happened around August when I was gone from Seattle. He does have a blog though, although it’s in Russian, which I don’t suppose any of you read: http://www.filosof.md/route/. Clicking on the US flag appears to bring up an English version of the blog that someone appears to have translated: http://filosof.md//eng/. There’s just a few entries though, and the translation is rather sketchy. It’s a shame – it would have made for pretty entertaining reading. If nothing else, watch this video of him stitching up his face in a hotel room with a needle, floss and pliers. I made it about halfway through before I started screaming. :P For no reason at all, I’ve been looking though the internet to see what kind of retro looking motorcycle jackets are out there. Searching for a good quality jacket in women’s sizes is always an exercise in disappointment, so I was a little surprised to find at least two candidates. Hmm… decisions decisions. Go ahead – vote for one.
And while I was at it, I looked up helmets too. I’ve worn solid helmets for as long as I’ve been riding and I’d really like a change. I dislike most of the graphics on regular helmets though. Suomi seems to have been the only brand that made nice looking designs, but you cannot get them anymore. I did think this Arai looked a bit retro and would match either of the jackets rather well. Thoughts?
I haven’t had new riding gear for at least 3+ years and my current silver Arai I’ve been wearing for maybe 2 years, so I don’t feel like I’d be splurging too much by picking up something new. I’m back home in Seattle after a series of trans-continental flights. Trying to get adjusted to Pacific Standard Time and heading out now to do what I’ve wanted to do throughout last month – go get a big American breakfast. :P
I woke up in San Vito di Cadore at a respectably late hour, gathered my motorcycle from the garage and rode it out to the front to load up. Checkout was quick, and after a last wave to my hosts, got onto the road. In spite of the gorgeous surroundings, I felt a little unwell and my heart was not really in the riding. Maybe the euphoria of the previous day had been a bit much to handle. If that were true, I pondered what an entire week in the Dolomities might do to my system. It didn’t bear thinking about. I decided to ride to Tolmudin before setting on a route for the rest of the way back to Slovenia. The road was every bit as fantastic as could be, with the added benefit of zero traffic on the road at that early hour. What few stragglers I did encounter, I could easily overtake. It still intrigues me that Europeans didn’t mind getting passed by motorcycles at all. Some of the stunts I pulled would have gotten me shot in the United States (land of the free). Anyway even despite my groggy state, I enjoyed the few passes and switchbacks I rode through. By noon however, I was ready to stop and get something to eat. After getting lost a little in Tolmudin thanks to the GPS continually routing me onto a road dug up by construction, I spied a bright, gleaming cafe called Cafe Leopoldi, went around the block and came back again and pulled onto the sidewalk across the street. A few drops of rain fell as I walked into the cafe. I ordered my usual panini (ham and cheese sandwich) and water (still water from tap, no gas) and sat at a windowside table. After finishing half the sandwich and poring over my maps of Italy and Slovenia, I laid my head down again, still not feeling very good. I had originally planned on routing through the middle of Italy to enter Slovenia at Socka to ride up north through the Soca Valley and Verzic pass to Bled and finally to Ljubljana. It seemed more than I could do though. I could have split the ride into two days, but they predicted heavy rains in Slovenia the next day which was now becoming increasingly tiresome, and I made the same decision I made in North America the previous year when I was faced with the prospect of riding the Skyline Ridge through a rage of thunderstorms. I decided I’d rather skip that ride than ride through it in miserable weather and not see very much anyway. I routed instead through the northernmost tip of Italy over straight roads to reach Slovenia at Kranjska Gora. From there it would be about 40 miles to Bled to see the famous lake, and then a short stint to Ljubljana. Straight roads necessarily meant a great deal of dullness and passing of cars and trucks although I was lucky in that there weren’t very many of either out on the roads. It was a dull, lacklustre day although the mountains and crisscrossing bridges still provided a certain thrill. Before I knew it, Italian road signs changed to Slovenian and I was on the west end of the Slovenian Alps. The roads gradually narrowed, the surface appeared more and more eroded, and traffic increased as I passed from one little town to another, gingerly testing the waters to see if the good Slovenian people had the same indulgence to eager lane splitting motorcyclists as the Germans and Italians did. They appeared to, so I continued. Traffic ground to a complete standstill and stop-go pattern as I neared Bled. Far ahead in the distance, the reason was apparent. A tall construction truck with blinking lights crawled along at approximately 5mph and speeding cars in the oncoming lane negated all attempts at passing. I ground my teeth with frustration as I crawled with the traffic, before I finally gave up and pulled in to a gas station to refuel. I texted Tadej to see if he was back home from his travels and received a response that he was still at the airport and wouldn’t be home until late that evening. I called his brother who said I could come over to his place and spend the night, an offer which I gratefully accepted. I got back on the road where traffic was now flowing normally and rode to the lake in less than 5 minutes. Even in the dull, lacklastre light, it gleamed green and clear. Ducks floated on its surface and little boats plied across the waters towards the island at its center. A castle stood in the distance in a matter of fact manner, as they do in Europe. I walked by the bank and took a few pictures before leaving.  70 more kms to Ljubljana. On the freeway, I could do it in less than an hour, but the freeways in Slovenia require one to have a vignette (paid for a week, month or a year), which I didn’t have and had no intention of procuring for an hour’s ride. I set the GPS to turn off “Toll Roads” and headed southeast. To say that I flew through the rolling hills and backroads would be an understatement, but my ride possessed a certain fluidity and although I’m not a gamer, it had that feeling of playing a video game where you didn’t really care how many lives you got because you knew that just the one would be enough and no matter how dangerous a casual onlooker would deem your rate of acceleration, you knew you could do not wrong. For here I was in my element, in my favorite type of roads – low, rolling hills, corners aplenty, rural farmlands and green trees and gray cracked tarmac for as far as the eyes could see. I was on the outskirts of Ljubljana before I knew it, a few lumbering trucks ahead of me signaling that the dream ride was over. I slowed down and rode the last few kilometres to Pegamova, pulled up outside Matej’s apartments and called him. End of the ride and a meeting with a familiar face! :D There’s no better feeling than this. I parked and we carried my stuff upstairs, laughing and joking all the way. Deep down, I was a little sad at the thought of the epic journey coming to an end. I knew that I would still ride in Slovenia for a couple more days with Tadej, but those would be day rides. The major part of it was over. ———————- The next day the skies open and it poured down all day long. Riding was out of the question. Even walking was a bit much, so I mostly stayed indoors and unpacked my luggage, blogged and slept. Matej and I got lunch at the city center, which was the only time I emerged outdoors until late that night when Tadej came over to pick me up to stay at his place the last two nights. ———————- The forecast for the next day was glorious sunshine all day long with temperatures of 20C, a little on the cold side, but perfect for motorcycling. We planned to ride southwest down to the Skocjan caves, where I would stop to look at the caves, while the others went on to Osp to climb Apparently every Slovenian – man, woman and child is a mountain climber. It’s in their blood, bewildering as it was to me. I declined their offer to be taught how to climb, preferring rock solid terra firm myself. We planned on either riding to Piran on the seaside later, or turning back towards Ljubljana if time didn’t permit. Since we had a super late start because of a myriad of trip logistics and we were on road a little after 11:30PM. There were five of us on three bikes, me on the BMW, Tadej and Darja on his Yamaha, and Lejla and Borut on his Honda. Want a truly good ride? Go talk to the locals. And the locals didn’t fail to deliver as we wound through small tight unknown backroads that I would never have discovered on my own. All this without the help of any GPS even. I rode in the middle, content to follow and enjoy the ride. It was slow going because of the nature of the roads. We reached Pradmaja grad by 2:00PM where we proceeded to get a lunch that went on for far longer than we had expected. By the time we got out and headed to the caves, it was already 4:30PM. We parted ways here. I got my ticket and waited for the tour to take me through the caves.
The caverns reminded me of the ones I had seen in Missouri many years ago at least in the first two “silent” caves. Then I reached the huge cavernous ones, gulped at how far below the river waters were, admired some rock formations that looked like an organ and others that formed a cascade of little pools. It was a good experience although I wish someone would have warned me that walking for two hours up and down 900 steps would be part of the experience. I might at least have brought a change of shoes along. I was completely exhausted when I emerged at 7:00PM.  Courtesy of Wikipedia Tadej and Darja were still climbing, so I decided to head back to Ljubljana. I knew that I should probably stop and rest because I was bone tired and hungry, but I wanted to make it back before the light started failing. The backroads would be no fun when it got cold and dark. I navigated to a gas station to find that it was closed. I was momentarily chilled and wondered if all gas stations here closed early like they reportedly did in Italy. The next one I tried was open though, to my relief. I filled up and bought some nuts and chocolate, said hello to another motorcyclist who was stopped at the door and chatting with someone, and sat at a picnic table to eat. It wasn’t much, but it would keep me going until Ljubljana. When I was ready to walk back to the bike, an older guy at the station gesticulated at me excitedly. Apparently he had heard from the young guys that I was from the US and was excitedly telling this to another guy who was fueling up his car. I walked back smiling, but a bit puzzled. He all but grabbed me by my arm and dragged me into the station, brought the gas station attendant with us to a back room and asked him to pull up Google Maps on the computer. They typed in “Seattle, Washington” and laughed with amusement as it came up. I helped zoom in a bit further and showed them where I lived. More uproar and laughter. He spoke a bit of English and told me that his father was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but he had never been able to visit there. I told them who I was and why I was there. It was all rather sweet and amusing. I asked them if I could take a picture of them, to which they consented, and they asked me how they could find me on Facebook. Ah, modern times! I wished they spoke better English (or I spoke better Slovenian). I bet I’d have had a grand time with that good bunch.
This incident perked up my spirits considerably and I set off for the last part of my ride feeling refreshed and cheerful. This ride again was not unlike the one from two days before, with the flying and the video game effect. It was good going until it grew dark, as I had predicted. I love riding at night, but only in the cities. I was a little paranoid of the forest rats (deer) emerging onto the roads, and I was a little annoyed at the headlamps of oncoming cars glinting onto my visor and blinding me (I wonder if the Pin Lock I had installed had anything to do with it?). It got some annoying that I finally decided to bite the bullet, risk a 300 euro fine, and got on the motorway for the last 25kms back. Fortunately, I made it without getting caught, and made it to Gameljne unscathed. It was freezing cold now. My GPS couldn’t find Tadej’s place, so I waited at a neighboring pub, Medo Bar for him. Unfortunately they had stopped serving food, as had probably every place in the region on a Sunday night. I ate the remnants of my nuts and drank water until he finally arrived. We went back to his place, made a rude meal of a tuna sandwich and a tisane and chatted with his mum until the small hours of the night before finally calling it a night. The next day was more rain and wind and freezing cold. It made me think that I had ended my tour had the perfect time. Any more of this weather would have been unthinkable. I spent my last day doing my final packing, buying some small gifts, walking around Mitelkova and the city center, and hanging out with Tadej. We met Matej for dinner later that night for (some very odd) pizza and Union beer.
And then it was over. This morning I caught a plane out of Ljubljana to head back to Seattle. Back home again. Just when I was getting used to Europe too. I cannot wait to come back here again. I updated the links to my Facebook albums so that non-members can view them. Let me know if anything still 404s! Ljubljana, Slovenia: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=186501&id=549764425&l=a602c6aab9 |
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