David’s Riding The Edge blog

Ed brought by about 7 hours of raw footage to go with the meager footage I shot on our motorcycle trip to Death Valley. I have started sifting through our tapes and have put together day one of our adventure, it is fun reliving the journey as I go through the tapes. Here is a link to episode one with more to follow.

We made it back from our Death Valley motorcycle trip in one piece although not entirely unscathed. I had developed some kind of heat rash on both feet, with a fair bit of swelling, I could not feel my fingers in my right hand and I was so tired I could not function well for a couple of days. I guess you could say that was a proper motorbike trip.

We are starting our journey to Death Valley this morning. As early as this morning we had not decided which direction to head, do we take the rainy coast route or cold eastern route that makes us cross over a pass that as of six-thirty was 25 degrees. We took what was behind door number two and will go east riding away from the rain. We may have to wait a while for the ice to clear on hwy 58 and thats ok because there is no big hurry. This will be the biggest shift in temperature I have ever experienced in the course of a week, riding in the thirties in the north and the possibility of 110 degrees at Death Valley.

It appears we are changing our planned route to Death Valley. The new route to Death Valley takes in more of the state of California.
Initially we were going to go down the east side of the Sierras and come home the same way. Now we have decided to go down the coast then cut over to the west side of the Sierras and take the foothills down on Hwy 49 which looks like a fun road. Then come back to Oregon on 395 on the east side of the Sierra Nevada range.

Ah... a beautiful sunny 70 degree day sitting in my front yard, sipping a cup of tea, admiring my freshly cut lawn and listening to the sound of birds singing. Ok, all that peacefulness comes to a screeching halt as all I can hear now are the loud  pipes on some freak-in cruiser a mile away. With the warm weather comes the parade of obnoxiously loud bikes that had been absent during the winter months. Do the pipes really need to be this loud? Some day soon the levels of noise from these bikes will be illegal and they will only have them selves to blame. Know one really needs to hear you coming from a mile away. 

I have been making a little series of light-hearted videos about some of the finer points of motorcycle touring. I am calling the series Rules of the Road.

Many of you may know by now, the plug was pulled on our 7000 mile Hwy 20 project. It was big company bureaucracy that did us in,  we are licking our wounds and moving on. What we are left with now is a hole for where to ride this summer. The guys are getting together Monday to hash it out, I will check back in when we figure it out.

As my rides have increased in distance, I have become aware that my aging body does not bounce back as fast as it used to. It has become clear to me that if I want to push my rides out further I am going to need some sort of physical fitness regiment. In the past I would run for my training needs but over the last few years my knees have decided that they don't like the pounding so much.  
Earlier this year I decided to give tai chi a shot. Even though I thought this martial art looked cool, I was skeptical of its use for actual physical fitness. I thought the meditative aspect would be good for my mental state but all those slowwww movements couldn't possibly do much for me physically. After my first class my eyes were opened, I was so amazed at how much my body was screaming and how much flexibility I have lost over the years. I describe my tai chi experience as the most I have worked doing so little.

I am hoping that the practice of tai chi will help me get more out of my motorcycle experiences.