Joy Dutta’s blog

Just back from our longest motorcycle trip together on the goldwing. The excuse to visit the goldwing rally at Canon City, CO made us do a fantastic 7 day trip covering 3200 miles.

Trip route: Sunnyvale CA - Wells NV - Longmont CO - Salida CO - Tuba City AZ - Needles CA - Sunnyvale CA

Trip summary: Colorado mesmerized us. The rockies are breathtaking. Royal gorge is awesome as well. We also visited Mesa Verde, Four Corners, Grand Canyon and Sunset Crater Volcano national parks. This was supposed to be a camping trip, but we ended up taking motels and a friend’s place. So much for the preparation. A hitch and cooler rack to carry the tent, then the tent got melted by the straight exhausts. Elevated the rack platform as a temporary fix, then bought a 90 degree downward exhaust tip at the wing rally to fix the issue forever, and even bought a new tent. Still we didn’t hit a campsite at the end of a riding day.

Day 1: 615 mi, Total 615 mi, Sunnyvale CA to Wells NV on the boring I-80.

Day 2: 730 mi, Total 1345 mi, Wells NV to Longmont CO (record distance for me in one day so far). Stayed at my school senior’s place, they are a fantastic couple and we had a blast with two most amazing golden retrievers they have.

Day 3: 135 mi, Total 1480 mi, Rocky mountains.

Day 4: 235 mi, Total 1715 mi, Attended goldwing rally at Canon city, then visited Royal gorge bridge and park, then off to Salida CO. Beautiful mountain road (US-160) along the Arkansas river.

Day 5: 485 mi, Total 2200 mi, Mesmerizing US-160 through Colorado, visited Mesa Verde NP, then off to Grand canyon. Saw Four Corners on the way. Reached Tuba city at nightfall after catching magical glimpses of rainbows over the canyons. Windy, thunderstorms, no camping place nearby, barely checked in to Greyhills Inn, a student operated hotel, with common bathrooms downstairs.

Day 6: 435 mi, Total 2635 mi, Visited Grand canyon in the early morning with fantastic views. Spent a few hours hopping to the view points. Saw Little Colorado river gorge as well. Then went to Sunset Crater NP. I have been to both these places back in 2004 with parents, and the memory came up like it was yesterday. Off to home on the I-40. Had patches of rain. The moment we crossed Kingman AZ, the temps began soaring as we approached Needles CA. We watched the temps rise from 91F to 106F and at Needles I could not believe it was 108F at 7:30pm and I wanted to camp in the desert ! Motel 6 had a small pool cramped with people, and we happily jumped there right after checking in.

Day 7: 565 mi, Total 3200 mi, Needles CA to Sunnyvale CA. I finally found a solution to my drowsiness on the road. I could not drive or ride 50 miles without falling asleep, till I figured out that red bull actually works.

This is our best/longest trip together. Would not have been possible without an amazing bike like the goldwing.

Pictures:
- Priti’s flickr set
- My flickr set

Our manager Scott once sent an email outlining some of the finest scenic roads around San Jose, Morgan Hill and Santa Cruz. Piyush wanted to try them out with his brand new tires. We planned to do a relaxed afternoon ride.

The highlight of the trip was the amazing roads as shown in the map: http://tinyurl.com/5dypfv

It was hard to believe we got out of the urban jungle and was out in the country in almost no time at all. We took CA-85 south till just after CA-17 at Los Gatos blvd exit and the fun started right away. Shannon road, Hicks road, McKean road, Watsonville road and then Hecker pass / Mt Madonna, with hardly any traffic made an excellent ride.

We had donuts at a small shop in Santa Cruz before taking CA-17 back to home around 7:30pm. Big mistake ! Most part of the 17 was a parking lot, and splitting lanes was a pain. Nonetheless the 140 mile trip is definitely worth doing any day.

At home Piyush was eager to download movies from his new bike cam, but it turned out that he left the SD card at home after testing the camera before the trip. Poor guy.

Pictures: priti’s flickr set
Video: will be uploaded soon

I somehow have this habit of tweaking (butchering) things to have them function exactly the way I want. Even a newly acquired fine motorcycle can’t escape that fate. I cut 2 inches off the top of the shield on my Concours just one day after getting it in my hands. Of course its stock shield was just plain horrible. Instead of putting on a regular aftermarket shield like everybody else, I had more fun in trying out my version and finally ended up having a terrible looking but perfectly working 4″x8″ extension bolted on it.

The ST1300 was lucky, it had electrically adjustable shield which worked fine till I started 2-up riding. Ofcourse an aftermarket shield could help, but the bike had to go so I could have my goldwing.

The wing has a manually adjustable shield, but the lowest position was still too high for me to look over. So it went through the same fate today. I was intimidated about doing this on such a fine machine, but after watching a few pics on someone’s blog, it was a matter of pulling the shield out, putting masking tape on and merrily using the jigsaw. The result came out pretty well. Time will tell how good this mod turns out to be.

Pic: cutting the goldwing shield

Update (7-Aug): The modified shield is working perfectly in town and not too noisy on the freeway. I can just pull it out to full height for the long trips if I want to ride without earplugs. So far this has been the best comfort mod on the bike.