de tour 2006 overview and intro

[Dave Svoboda]

At 04:04 PM 1/24/2007 -0800, Mike Brodhead wrote:

>I spent a week in Hawaii over Christmas and found that I missed my >bike every time I was on the road. Next time I'll have to see about >a rental.

My wife and I used to visit Maui once a year or so, until our daughter arrived, and I did look into it. Only rentals I could find were scooters and Harleys. Not a place for a scooter, and no way I'll sit on a Harley, esp for $100/day. - Dave Svoboda, Sandy Eggo [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Don S]

Just couldn't see yourself lethargically wheezing off into the sunset with a roar of thundering flatulence, all aglitter on your tinsel and chrome steed? For $100.00 a day, were they going to throw in a pair of (cough) ass-less chaps? (cough) Dave Svoboda wrote: At 04:04 PM 1/24/2007 -0800, Mike Brodhead wrote:

>I spent a week in Hawaii over Christmas and found that I missed my >bike every time I was on the road. Next time I'll have to see about >a rental.

My wife and I used to visit Maui once a year or so, until our daughter arrived, and I did look into it. Only rentals I could find were scooters and Harleys. Not a place for a scooter, and no way I'll sit on a Harley, esp for $100/day. - Dave Svoboda, Sandy Eggo [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --------------------------------- We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love (and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[jjonz]

Someone mentioned they couldn't find m/c rentals other than Harleys and scooters on Maui. I was there this summer and got to rent my ultimate lust object - a KTM 950 Adventure. There are also other smaller dual sports and he does some guided tours. Check out www.mauidualsport.com I did a short ride report on Adventure rider at the link below: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=163793&highlight=maui Jeff Jones

[Jeff Saline]

KLR Listers, I've been trying to get this to the list four times. Sorry if this ends up being a repeat. Jeff <><><><><> <><><><><> Below is the first trip report about De Tour, taken by myself and Steve Rankin from 30 May though 15 June 2006. You may have seen the trip reports when they were first posted last summer. But I'm thinking with winter finally upon many of us, a few riders may find the reports a fun way to escape from winter for a few minutes at a time. If you don't care to follow Steve and me on this journey please feel free to press your delete key. For Airheads... this trip was taken by two airheads and we met a couple of airheads along the way, but we were riding Kawasaki KLR650s. I've checked with the airlist admin and got the go ahead to post these trip reports to the airlist. I hope you enjoy. Trip reports like this always seem to be a bit better if photos are available too. KLR Lister Greg McKinney in Tennessee has graciously offered to host the photos on his server for a while. What originally began as an idea to just have images available has snowballed into a small De Tour site. Greg has spent quite a few hours setting up pages for each day, showing images, and also making the narrative available. So if you'd like to see some photos from the trip, or just can't wait for the next days trip report, go to Greg's site at: http://70.60.188.86/de_tour.htm and cruise along with us. I'll never be able to thank Greg enough for is generous offer to host the De Tour reports and photos for a while, and also for his hard work in making this available in a nice format. THANK YOU Greg! Finally, all the grammatical and punctuation errors and misspellings are mine, and mine alone. All the trip reports, like seen BELOW, are the same as were posted last summer. I'm just forwarding them for your reading pleasure and plan to forward one each day or so to the list and those friends that have requested being added to the list. Hope you enjoy our ride. We sure had a fun time on it. Best, Jeff Jeff Saline ABC # 4412 South Dakota Airmarshal Airheads Beemer Club www.airheads.org The Beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota 75 R90/6, 03 KLR650, 79 R100RT <><><><><><><> <><><><><><><> I recently returned from a GREAT!!! trip with Steve Rankin. He and I have ridden together on a trip each of the last three summers. First was summer of 2004 for the Great Divide Ride. Last year was a tour in New Mexico and Arizona and then over to Oklahoma for a small Airhead BMW rally. This year was De Tour. Steve first contacted me last fall saying his brother-in-law John in Chino Valley, AZ had asked him what his next trip was. He came up with a blank. Shortly after that we began planning what I first dubbed as Da Trip. During the second day of actual riding we renamed it De Tour as we were hitting them fairly regularly. So all last fall, winter, and into this spring we've been e-mailing back and forth, routes and also our thoughts and ideas about this ride. We decided we wanted to start the trip from my home in the Beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota and then visit Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and end the trip in Oklahoma. Steve would then head south to West, Texas and I'd head north to South Dakota. We both had ideas of how we envisioned the trip and made a few changes to our ideas to make sure we were both getting the trip we wanted. Planning with only two people involved is pretty easy. So for about 8 months we developed routes trying to stay mostly on dirt roads when possible and we both realized there would be some problems putting the electronic routes to use on the ground. We developed a numbering system for the routes to help identify them and keep them in order on the GPS receivers so they would be easy to select as needed. We made adjustments to the route as needed along the way. Some were due to private property issues or terrain too rough for us on fully loaded KLRs. A few times we had roads closed due to fire dangers or fires in progress. This was supposed to be fun and we tried to keep it that way. The trip ended in New Mexico and just seemed to come to a natural end. Steve got to ride home most of the way with his son who was in Canyon TX for a few days. I got to ride home through the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado. Here's the short version of the trip. Steve came to South Dakota and we did an Airhead BMW tech day. After everyone left we cleaned up and took a day to work on a few bike projects. We left on Tuesday, 30 May. Day One: We left and headed through the Black Hills to Wyoming. Hotel. Day Two: Up to the Hole-in-the-Wall near Kaycee WY. Camp. Day Three: Down to Caspar WY and then Independence Rock and on to Muddy Gap. Camp. Day Four: Through the Great Divide Basin to Wamsutter, then south and west to Flaming Gorge. Camp w/showers. Day Five: Oil changes in Vernal UT then south till about 6 pm. Camp. Day Six: Continue south of I-70 and then west in the dirt to 128 and into Moab. South to Blanding and west. Camp. Day Seven: South to Valley of the Gods, the Navajo Indian Reservation to Flagstaff AZ. Camp KOA. Day Eight: West of Flagstaff head south to Chino Valley. Sponge off in-laws. Day Nine: Steve buys a used 2006 KLR in Prescott AZ. Sponge off in-laws. Day Ten: Swap stuff from 97 to 06 KLR. Takes all day. Sponge off in-laws. Day Eleven: Head east towards Jerome then over to Strawberry and along the Mogollon Rim. Camp. Day Twelve: Over to Forest Lakes and south to Carizio, north to Showlow and then east to Springerville. Hotel. Day Thirteen: South of Alpine on 191 then east towards Reserve. North to Pie Town and end 15 miles south of Grants. BLM Camping area. Day Fourteen: Change oil. Go about 25 miles north of I-40 and the road ends. Head to Albuquerque. Sponge off friends. Day Fifteen: Bike maintenance, visit BMW dealer, relax. Sponge off friends. Day Sixteen: De Tour is over. Steve heads to TX. Jeff heads north through mountains in NM and CO. Camp. Day Seventeen: Head north through CO, WY and into South Dakota. Home at about 6:45 pm. So that in a nut shell is De Tour. More to follow as I get rested and write up each day. I also plan on doing an equipment review of some of the items that were used. Best, Jeff Saline ABC # 4412 South Dakota Airmarshal Airheads Beemer Club www.airheads.org The Beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota 75 R90/6, 03 KLR650, 79 R100RT