Maddog62's Blog

This is our annual Colorado Utah ride. last year we did the ride through Southern Utah so this year we were back in Colorado for another fantastic ride.

This year we had a few different riders we had Deb, John, Scott, Jannell, Brent, Deanna, Ken and Sherry rode with us from Salt Lake.  It’s the first year we have not had Pat and Staci with us.  We really did miss them I hope they can go next year.

We all met at Britton’s for breakfast, we have found Britton’s to be a pretty good meeting place because the food is great, they have a lot of parking and it is very easy to get in and out of on our bikes.

We basically took the same route we always take because I love to ride Wolf Creek pass and I really like HWY 139 from Rangely to Grand Junction.

We stopped in Vernal for lunch and so Brent could look at this bike one of the HOG members wanted him to buy.  I kind of wish Brent would have bought it because the next time we see the HOG group that is all we are going to hear about is the bike Brent should have bought.

If you are going to take the route from Rangely to Grand Junction stop in Rangely for a potty break because there is not a place to stop for about eighty miles.  As soon as we stopped Scott felt the need to get a little closer to Mother nature.

He only needed to go about fifty more feet.  But I know as well as anyone the closer I get to fifty, when you got to go you got to go.  Sorry Scott….

The rain gods were with us all of the way.  Every time it looked like we were going under a rain cloud our route took us another direction.  We never did get wet all of the way to Grand Junction.  We stopped at the Mother Ship (HD) for a while until I heard a little thunder.  I told Linda let’s go so we did.  We had no sooner parked the bikes when the sky opened up and the rain came down hard.

We all made it under the Hotel awning before the rain hit.  As you can see from this picture it was coming down hard.  This is where we met up with Ken and Lisa, Jim and Shauna and some new riders John and Grace.

We always stay at the Grand Mesa Hotel because the rooms are nice it’s easy and close to the free way it’s close to the mother ship and they have a great bar.

This is the group having dinner across the street from the hotel at Enzos Pizzaria and Italian Cafe they have great Italian food.  We also had a mystery person buy us dinner that night.  Go figure I wonder who that person could have been… We blamed it on the old guy sitting behind us.

It took the group about ten minutes to get comfortable with each other  we knew this group was going to get along great.  I think everyone at one point or another was giving someone they just met a little shit about something.  Hearing all of the conversations and laughter you would have thought this group had been riding together for years.

Case in point.  Here’s Deanna and Shauna having a “boob Off”

Even Jannell couldn’t watch these boob master’s square off.

The good news about a boob off is everyone wins!!!! Jannell wanted the next round.

The drinks kept on coming and what do you know they ran out of lamp shades so the beer bucket was the next best thing.  I think this is the first picture I have of Scott smiling. I guess he just needs a lot of beer and a bucket.

Everyone seemed to take a turn with the bucket,

This is the new way to pick up girls in Grand Junction first you put on the bucket and then you touch your nose with your tongue.  Brent says it works every time.  Heck he got Deanna so I have to think it works.

Here we all are in front of the Harley dealership in Grand Junction.  This is where the ride started and what a great ride it tuned out to be.  Along with the “Bug Card” Game Jim came up with a BINGO game on his IPad. It was a lot of fun Jim would call out five new numbers at every stop.  Scott won the BINGO game and Jannell and Linda won the Bug Cards. 

We left here and headed to Lake City the route was so beautiful and the roads were so fun to ride as you can see from this picture.

With all of the water Colorado had this year everything was so green and you would not believe the flowers they were everywhere.  Funny thing is I never really looked at flowers too much on our rides until Brent pointed them out on a ride to Laughlin.  Now I look at them all of the time.

We stayed at the Matterhorn Motel.  Nice place and the people running it were great we did take up most of their rooms that night.  But they did make the stay enjoyable although if you stay here just know the bathrooms are very small.  The showers are so small that I bent over to grab my shaver and shut the water off with my butt.

Here we are just hanging out in front of the hotel telling jokes.  Ken has a great joke about a Mother he might tell you if you ask him nicely.  Romero also has some of the funniest “mexican word of the day” jokes that just crack me up.

This is Ken and Jim going out to get some beer.  There is a real funny story about this picture but I don’t have the time nor the writing talent to put it into words.  Lets just say that Jim is not a good passenger and leave it at that.

Evidently the Salt Lake crew didn’t think Ken and Jim picked up enough beverages.  Funny thing was we ended up packing a lot of this beer all around Colorado.  Scott had about five beers blow up in his tour pack.  You know it’s bad when you open a tour pack and your rain gear is floating in beer.

Here’s a good picture of Ken double fisting.

I still don’t understand this picture maybe some body who reads the blog can tell me the story about the red wagon hooked to the pole.

Here’s a great picture of Ken and Linda just outside of the Mocha Moose where we had breakfast before we started out to Durango and on to Ouray.

As you can tell by all of the coats we climbed up to 12,000 feet.  You might have to click on the picutre to see everyone.

If you click on the picture you will be able to see some of the 14K peaks behind us.

Here we are with Jim and Shauna and Ken and Lisa.

Another good picture of us with Brent and Deanna.

We also met up with of folks from Australia.  These guys were a crack up they just love America.  I some times forget just how good we have it here.  When you break it down we have so much more to see in America than these other country’s do.

This is one of the places Ken stopped at so we could take some pictures.  The real view was of the mountains on the other side.  But this water fall made a great background.  The guard rail isn’t that cute but I like the picture.

See what I mean.   Absolutely  beautiful.

On our way to Ouray we stopped at this look out point.  The view of the mountains was so beautiful I took full advantage and took all of these pictures.

Brent and Deanna

Here we are with John and Deb

Scott and Jannell

Here we are with John and Grace

Jim and Shauna

And here is a picture of the Utah folks.  I know I had someone take a picture of us with Ken and Lisa and Ken and Sherry but it’s not here.  Now I know why we have Sherry in charge of taking pictures.

Here we are in Telluride just getting ready to leave for Grand Junction.  HWY 145 is the best road for motorcycles there is really not any traffic it follows the San Miguel river and the corners are so much fun to ride through.  Ken and I would let the group get about a mile or so up the road and then we would take off and go as fast as we could.  I have never had so much fun on a road before you have to experience the ride to understand what I’m talking about the  corners are so smooth.

We ended up back at Enzos the same restaurant in Grand Junction for dinner. The service was fantastic and the food was good, so why not.

From there we went back the Grand Mesa for drinks and Karaoke.  This was our last night but everyone seemed to still have a lot of energy because everyone seemed to get into the Karaoke.

Here’s the girls putting their groove on.  They all took turns singing and dancing.  They found their talent was in dancing because just about everyone else who sang wanted the girls to be their backup singers and dancers, even total strangers.  That’s when Deanna got the idea to send the all girl group on the road to Vegas.

If you click on the picture it says Send the girls to Vegas.  Deanna took the cup around the bar collecting money from everyone.  Funny thing was everyone was giving her money for the road trip.  Not sure if they just wanted the girls to leave or if Deanna is that good raising donations.  Either way the server got a nice tip when we left.

Ken and Jim got into the action as well.  believe it or not they actually sounded pretty good.  I guess when you spend a little time on the back of another guys bike you become pretty close and the love songs just seem to flow a little better.

I’m pretty sure the girls had more fun dancing than the people did singing.  As you can tell from this picture of Jim and girls they are really getting into it.

Although Ken did put on quite a show when he got up there.  He was so funny when he told everyone “I’m going to be here all week and to please remember to tip your servers because they work hard every day”.

John and Deb waited all night to sing their favorite song to each other Don’t go Break’in my heart.

Looks like Deb was the big winner.  Not sure what she had to do to get the dollar but look at her smile.

After all of the fun we had to say our goodbyes and head back to Utah. We just took I-70 to Scolfield over Fairview Canyon and home.

like I said everyone had a fantastic time the ride was great the route was outstanding and the company was even better.  Like most of our rides the ride is fun the time spent with friends after the ride with where I get most of the enjoyment.

Thanks again Ken and Jim for a great trip!!

Next year the trip will be in Utah.  We thought we would head back to Moab in mid June and ride all of the parks down there.  We are also going to mix it up a bit by adding in some other activities like river rafting and stuff like that.

This entry was posted on August 9, 2011 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.