When I was at the Central California Beemer BASH, east of Sacramento I met Dick, W and Pat, you can find 2 of them on the June 94 front cover of BMW owner NEWS. W and Pat promised me that they would show me around in the night life of SF before I left - and so they did - They took me to a Club called BONDAGE-A-GOGO, the name describes the club pretty good, it was a very strange place, I mean I have never before been to a disco where they served Japanese raw-fish.
I also met Kari Prager the owner of CAL BMW in Mountain View, so I went down there to have my bike serviced. There I met Bernd Tesch a german world tourer, who have traveled more than 100.000 km on a m/c through Africa, and in 1992 he was the first person to cross the USSR on a m/c. He own the largest library of mc-TRAVEL-books and has published a book with summaries of 262 books. Although it is in German that would be a good a starting point if somebody would plan a trip like mine - but then again I don't plan. One day I drove down to Monterey to have my Corbin seat customized. They modified the seat to be 2 inch higher and longer, so now I have nice soft seat which fits my size - and I think nobody will be able to steal my bike now because the would not be able to reach the ground. I can highly recommend Corbin, it took them half a day to make my seat and they charged 85 $ - So if their seat won't fit you they will fix it.
After Las Vegas I drove out to see the Hoover Dam build in the early
30'ties to tame the Colorado river. This must have been an amazing
project at the time it was done, the project was finished 2 years ahead
of schedule and under budget - This certainly would not happen to day.
While visiting the Dam I also learned some new measurements,
try to figure this out, the dam is capable of storing 28.5 million
acre-feet of water, and the dam contains 3.25 million cubic yards of
concrete. That night I camped out in the open on the shore of Lake
Maiden (the result of the dam). This was very nice and peaceful and
just what I needed after Las Vegas, and the sky was really spectacular
as the sun set.
The next morning I moved further north-east towards Denver, the sky
was getting a bit angry and a lady stopped me and warned me about
the storm and that there already had fallen snow further north,
so that day I was moving east right in front of a big storm.
So I more or less just drove the Zion National park, and decided to spend
the night in a motel - a very clever decision. Here I learned that there
actually was two storms on their way the first one coming from the
southwest and then the big one coming from the northwest. The first one
was expected to pass that night and then the big one would arrive one or
two days after. The next morning I set out driving in the wet tail of
the storm just passed by, afraid to be catched by the storm behind me.
For this reason I only made a short stop in Bryce National Park,
a very spectacular scenery, but I had to move on.
After a very cold trip over a 9200 feet mountain I finally stopped in Green River. The next day it was raining the whole day, so I stayed in my motel room, until I was moved to another motel, due to a gas-leak under the motel caused by the heavy rain.
The next morning it was almost dry so I decided to move on to Denver, I knew that I had to be driving at 10-11,000 feet I was a bit worried about the temperature, so I bought long thermo under-pants and a hunters hood (could also be used to rob a bank), and with that I set out to attack the Rockies and it worked, the road was clean and the snow first arrived the day after so I made it to Denver.
In Denver I had been offered to stay at Deb Lower's house. Deb Lower had responded to the mail/posting I send out from Denmark and I actually met Deb at the Finger lakes rally in New York on labour day week-end. Deb Lower is the secretary of the BMW MOA organization and a very busy person, she has only been home for one day during may stay in her house.
I has been very nice staying in a real home for a change, Griff McClure
who also lives in the house has teached me a lot about how my bike works,
and how to maintain it, something which definitely will come in handy
when traveling through Central and South America if/when I go there.
Griff also got me in contact with people who actually have traveled
through Central America (on beemers of-course). I really like it here
there is a lot of crazy people here, they must be, in February they
have what they call The Elephant Ride ",
they drive up into the Rockies
camps out for the night and during the next day they drives through one
the passes, which naturally is closed at that time of year, it is needles
to say that the crash-bars on your GS comes in handy.
Right know I am staying with some of their friends down in Colorado Springs
an it is snowing heavily outside. Yesterday I was out practicing my
"Western Dancing", I almost master the Texas-two-step, but there is still
a lot to learn. Tomorrow it is Halloween so we are trying out costumes
I think I might end up as big bumblebee.
At the end of the week after the roads clears I will try to fight my way
south, but right know I am writing one of the last lines in this mail.