February Riding.

So with the Presidents Day long weekend and the SUPER nice weather we had, I was able to get out and do some yard work, till up the flower bed, AND!!! Dig the bike out of its winter cocoon. Got the plates renewed on Tuesday, and rode it to school Weds, Thurs, and Fri. Weds was super cold but doable. Thurs and Fri were great- but of course I look out my window Friday afternoon and see this...


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Didn't last long or stick, but sheesh.  60 degree temps in February?!  Then it drops back down to the mid teens.  Dang tulips don't know what to do- noticed today that they are poking up already.

Side note- Son 1 is now playing the trombone and rides home with me after school... So I'm sure that makes for an interesting sight as we go through town with the 'Bone strapped on the rack and us with our backpacks and coats on, in February.  Did I mention its only February and we are RIDING!?  ;)

Back to the Grind...

Well, its official.  Started back to school last Wednesday.  Couple of meetings under the belt already, and 8 mind numbing hours of helping with registration spread over 2 days.  Didn't get anywhere near as much as I'd hoped done in my room but we are making progress.

Now that I'm back "on the job", that means project time has totally dried up.  I've got a few things I want to post about over the next week or two from summer, but in the meantime here's what I've been working on most recently.

The Monday before I was supposed to go back to school, my wife and kids were already in school.  That left me home all alone.  Boooorrrriiiinggg... Time to go for a ride! So I got all loaded up and headed out on this:



To do this:



I was under 700 miles to go for my goal this year, this would have put me within 400 . The last couple of miles was hoping to rack up riding the 7 miles to work and back.




Ride started out great. Roads were clear, found a fun little detour, clearish skys, nice weather. Had a little niggling feeling though that maybe I should head home, get some stuff done, and save this for another day.



Nah, it'll be fine.

15 miles later.



The hole is almost the size of a quarter, and you can see clear into the tire. I hear a *BANG* and felt the bike kind of lurch, but just thought that I ran over something. About a mile later, I decided something was wrong, and started slowing down from about 70. Once I got down to about 45 the back end started to wander ALL over the place. Kinda scary, but I got it stopped and managed to get a ride into Soda Springs and get things figured out.

3 hours later, thanks to some family that lived sorta nearby, we got the beast loaded in the back of his BRAND new pickup, which made it a pain because we had no ramp and he didn't want to scratch his new truck.



Made it home, but I think the bike'll be down for a while... Can't afford a new tire right now.



Only made it about 90 miles into the 300 mile trip.  Bummer. Guess I'll just have to ride 'ole paint.  I wanted to haul things though, so that means I had to camouflage my KTM as a KLR... Think anyone will notice?



That worked great for a couple of days, but really... I can't handle that.  SO... Dug out the set of panneirs and Happy Trails rack I have for the bike that got mangled when I got rear-ended at a stop sign a couple of years ago.

Started with this:



Applied some heat,



Welded up some cracks,



Added some hopefully rear-ender deterrent:



Slapped a coat of paint or 3 on the rack,




And ended up with this:




Turned out pretty nice!  Even got it relatively square.



 




Now I can lug my lunch to school in STYLE!  Hoping to get a new tire for the ST soon, as I still want to hit my goal of 60,000 miles (6,000 of them this year).

I'm getting excited for school- got all kinds of idears tumbling 'round in my head for things to try and change this year. Hoping for a good batch of kids who want to learn, but I have to remember its more MY attitude about that then it is theirs that makes it fun for me.

Could be a pretty rough year though.  I have 17 computers, 22 desks, and TWENTY FIVE students in most of my classes.

Twenty five students? You might say, "thats ALL!?" Yeah.  Try having that many in my classroom with the amount of different things going on and sharp objects / power tools all over the place.  The rest of my beard may actually go white this year.

Wish me luck!

Fun Roads and Finally Home!

Day 5- Last day of consecutive bike trip.

Woke up pretty early. I think we timed the previous day perfectly- we got to the good riding late enough that traffic was at a minimum, and by the looks of the amount of bikes at both ends of this stretch of road, it would have been jam packed during the day.

Hog Catcher, lookin a little tired but ready for the day.



Road a short distance, to the Top of the World.



And of course, Road construction.



Gave us an opportunity to look around so we did. Pretty place!







The pilot car finally showed up. The guy told us it would be 20 more minutes before we could go, pulled over, and promptly fell asleep. We un-geared and went on a quick little hike up the mountain.

Little ways up,





Still going,





Running out of time.



View from the top.



Back down at the bottom. We went up to the top there in the middle.



Got to do a short stretch of dirt riding,



And then we were off! Look what we get to go up!!!



At the top!





Coming down was real fun too. Longish straight stretch followed by a 180 degree hairpin turn. Repeat 6 or 7 times.









Finally down out of the fun stuff.





Red Lodge, MT. Pansy Harley riders had to use hotels.



Apparently was some sort of rally going on, because the town was litterally end to end bikes, the entire length of both sides of the main road.



Past Red Lodge you get into your more typical Montana:



Still fun though.



Went up to Columbus, got on the interstate and road to Bozeman. At Bozeman, we dropped down onto the back highways again and went through the corner of Yellowstone where we had the luck to almost rear end some looki-loo's around a blind corner that stopped to admire the scenery.



Kept on keepin' on, went through West Yellowstone and hit Island Park.



My brothers mother-in-law's (ex)store that the new "owner" had a small accident with. We'll leave it at that.



After an uneventful trip down through St. Anthony we made it back to Rigby, unloaded Steveo's crap, and took one last shot on the hog.



Road with him down to the Harley shop, dropped it off, and went on my way. 25 more miles! Butt was getting pretty sore by this point.

Lava's, that means I'm only about 15 miles away!



MY EXIT!!!! TWO MORE MILES!!!



WHoooly cow, I made it!



Odo at the end:



Map for the day:



Totals for the day:

Odo start: 58,173
Odo end: 58,616
Total Day 3: 443 miles.

TOTAL: 1,921 miles.

Money spent (Gas, Lunch, Gas, stuff): Estimated $60. Was so tired when I got home I didn't fill out my log.