My Weekend In Colorado

[cOoTeR]

Last weekend a group of friends and I went for a weekend trip to ride in Colorado. We stayed in Durango at a hotel called the iron horse inn. Named for the steam engine that passes through every morning. Ok hotel with a decent price.

Saturday we rode the million dollar highway interstate 550 from Durango to Ridgeway. That section of road was awesome with long open sweepers and really tight corners and hairpins. Most of the curves had cliffs right off the side of the road so there was a nice incentive to stay on the road. Then we continued on 550 to Montrose where we grabbed lunch and stopped for gas. Between Ridgeway and Montrose was pretty open and boring with a couple of sweepers here and there. We passed several bikers going the other way that warned us of the state trooper up ahead so we had slowed our pace to a reasonable speed. Just before Montrose we had a close call with a trooper heading the other direction but he didnt take any notice of us.

When we left Montrose the guy on the Ducati 1198 had issues with the high speed anti theft device and the imobilizer would not allow the bike to start. 2 of us didn't know he was having trouble and started down the road. When we noticed they werent behind us we rode slow hoping they had just been held up by traffic leaving the gas station. But then we missed a turn and had to go around the block to get back on track onto 149. Now we didnt know if they were ahead of us or still behind us. We assumed they had made the correct turn and were now ahead of us. We started trying to catch up assuming if they had an issue they would have called us.. We came to a section of road construction and were stopped for about 20 min waiting to go through. Then when we went through they had the road tore up and it was all gravel. So we rode about 10mph in traffic for about half an our on a gravel road. Then when we cleared the construction zone we had to work our way through the traffic that had backed up due to the construction zone. This wasn't too bad due to traffic giving room to get by and in Colorado they allow you to pass on curves that you can see through regardless of how tight they are. So that was a lot of fun. Once we cleared the traffic the road was very nice with some open sweepers. Then as the road tightened up it began to rain but my Michelin Pilot Power 3's held great. We came to the town of Lake city and stopped for gas and decided they would have waited for us there so we waited and got some coffee. They showed up a little while later and explained the issues they had.

We continued on 149 to pagosa springs having a blast weaving through the mountains in the rain. We hopped on 160 which was nice because it had quit raining but the roads were still damp. The ride to Durango was pretty uneventful other than a close call with a state trooper parked on the side of the road. We were cruising around triple digits and came over a rise in the road where he was sitting. I was the last to see him and grabbed a handful of front brake and started to endo before letting off. Then when the rear came down it was locked and started squealing and smoke as I slowed to a legal speed. I thought for sure I was going to get a ticket for reckless op and speeding but we never saw lights so he must have been impressed with my stunt work. We reached Durango after 398 miles since we filled up in the morning.

My battery is dying so I'll fill you in on days 2+3 later.

Edited August 30, 2013 by cOoTeR

[cOoTeR]

So day 2 we woke up and it was raining with no sign of it clearing up. 1 guy was hesitant to ride but decided he would go. Then we were all ready to go and the1198 would not start. We tried several fixes from the forums to no avail. The only option was to input the override code but the my friend had no clue what it was because it was at home in his safe with his spare keys. So he said he was fine not going out and the guy who was timid about riding in the rain decided to stay back with him.

So 2 of us set out to ride in the rain. We took the million dollar highway to ouray where it finally dried up. We headed upto Ridgeway where we hoped on 62 to placerville. We hopped on 145 to telluride and it started raining on the way but the road was pretty fun regaurdless. The road was pretty awesome to rico and would have been even more of a blast if it was dry.