KLR Ride - Old Stage Road, Gold Camp Road, Shelf Road, Phantom Canyon, May 17, 2010
Laurie needed more seat time on her KLR, especially on dirt roads. The last time she rode her KLR on Gold Camp Road (a couple years ago), she had a tumble in the mud and a truck ran over her head. No kidding.
So, with the goal of finishing that road on that bike, and then adding a few new roads to her experience, we planned a day-long ride. This is one of the last shake-out rides we'll do before Laurie and I ride to Alaska in a couple weeks. There are still a few things to finish on the bikes, but they are mostly done.
We posted our ride plan online and invited other riders, and we were pleasantly surprised to find Dave at our starting point on Monday morning. He had recently been at my last KLR tech day, so we had briefly met.
After breakfast, we took the Interstate down into Colorado Springs and went around the Broadmoor Hotel to pick up Old Stage Road.
Laurie getting ready for the dirt.
And Dave was already ready to go.
It was a great day for the ride. It had been very cool and wet lately, as if Winter was reluctant to end and Spring wasn't going to get a chance at all. Fortunately, it was a mostly clear, sunny day.
The washboard road surface on Old Stage Road was as bad as I have ever seen it--maybe worse. Thankfully, we finished crossing the first couple of ridges and things got easier once we were merged onto Gold Camp Road.
I think this is the area where Laurie had her crash two years ago. Anyway, somewhere in this stretch.
She was doing much better than before. She had been riding her KLR (mostly on pavement) for a couple weeks now, since I finished the 685cc motor upgrade. She was showing more confidence than before, but still staying in 2nd and 3rd gear most of the time.
Dave rode tail gunner for the early ride, but I traded with him at times.
The later sections of Gold Camp Road were in great shape.
Once we hit pavement again, we zoomed through Victor and stopped in Cripple Creek for a break. I noticed that my instrument panel had come loose from its mounting, and found that both nuts had vibrated off, lost somewhere in the washboards of Old Stage Road, probably. It would hold where it was until I could get it secured later. (I hadn't carried any 5mm nuts with me for this ride.)
Dave then led the way as Laurie followed him onto Shelf Road. She has never seen this road (or Phantom Canyon) before.
There was only one section that caused Laurie a problem. A fairly steep drop with a hard right turn in the middle of it. I was behind Laurie as she locked up her front wheel, so I got to see her dump the bike in the road. She was okay, with only a bruised elbow, so I directed traffic as a few cars went around us. The spill took most of Laurie's confidence away, and she rode the rest of the day in 1st and 2nd gear.
When we got to Canon City, Dave led me to the Ace hardware store where I got some nuts to secure the instrument panel. Since he lives here, we said our good-byes and he headed off. Laurie and I buzzed down US50 and picked up Phantom Canyon Road back toward Victor.
I stopped to catch Laurie coming out of one of the tunnels, then I followed her for a while.
Phantom Canyon was in great shape, and I finally zoomed past Laurie to enjoy the ride more.
When she got to where I was waiting for her in Victor, we decided to call it a day and stay the night in Cripple Creek. I was surprised that the Imperial Hotel wasn't open. Was it out of business? Maybe renovating? Bummer. One of the big casino hotels would have to do.
The blackjack table wasn't kind to me.. Enough said.
The next morning, we stayed on the paved roads and headed home before the next weather front came through and thumbed its nose at Spring again.
The bikes ran fine. We'll be due for new chains and sprockets before we head north for a few weeks, but we already knew that. Also, Laurie will have some hard saddlebags mounted by then, so we'll have at least one more long ride as a final ride test before we head for Canada and Alaska.