Loopy in Wyoming

View Larger Map

Snow had made some of the closer passes impassable. So when it was time to blast off for my first big ride, I decided to go north to Wyoming on a slightly longer ride that still had dirt aspects, but also had some paved roads. The trip got off to a late, but not so uneventful start. Just before reaching Clark, I felt a sharp burning sensation on my inner thigh. The poor bee was bouncing around on my leg like bungee jumper hanging from a ceiling fan. I brushed him away and tried to remember the best method for getting a stinger out. They say if you pinch it and pull it out it shoots more venom into you. I have also heard that the more we get stung, the lower our tolerance is. After a few minutes with no anaphylactic shock, I decided that I still wasn’t allergic to bees. Thank goodness.

About thirty miles north of Steamboat, Hwy 129 splits. I was hoping to take the right fork and check out Big Red Park. I hadn’t been there since the Rainbow Gathering two years ago. Unfortunately, there was a locked gate. When I went to the other fork it said “road closed ahead!” There was no gate, though, so I decided to keep going and try my luck. I figured that I could always pull my “journalist” card and say I was reporting on the road closure. I had to laugh, Paulie, my business partner, had written an article the day before that talked about entitlement. http://www.thesteamboatlocal.com/article.php?id=604 It was a good article, and I felt like its subject. Regardless, five, ten, fifteen miles… still no sign of a closed road. Sometimes they just forget to take signs down. I stopped for a few minutes at Three Forks Ranch to take a photo of an eagle and some antelope when a fishing guide and his client stopped to say hi. I asked if the road was closed ahead and they said no. I wasn’t going to be blocked from my goal! The rest of my dirt miles felt like I had just won the golden ticket. I was getting used to the bike and feeling comfortable with a little speed. Eventually I got to a paved road that said Bags one way and Encampment the other. I opted to take a right. My Colorado Atlas and Gazetteer stopped at the border. I would have to rely on signs. Hopefully I would find one that said “Walden” at which point I would take a right.

The next 20 or so miles climbed up to over 10,000 feet. When I reached the Continental Divide there was still deep snow on both sides of the road. The views were breathtaking and the forest service had the road lined with interpretive signs. One of the signs was the site where Thomas Edison got the idea for the filament in his incandescent light bulb. I didn’t think I’d find anything up there, especially the site of a significant event in history. I was glad there was virtually no traffic on the road. I must have looked drunk weaving from one to the other side of the road reading the signs. One of the few cars that passed was full of pretty girls waving out of a sun roof. The adventure was getting better all the time! At that point I decided that I would have to stop at a bar in one of the little Wyoming towns to have a ceremonial beer and check out some of the local wildlife. Some of their older sisters, perhaps? I just had to remember the cardinal rules: Don’t talk about religion, and don’t talk about politics. It’s amazing how far talking about the weather can get you.

I cruised through Encampment, population 400-something. The bars had little windows that I couldn’t see through. It’s awkward to walk in a bar, decide you don’t want to be there after making eye contact with the very reasons you DON’T want to be there and then turn around to walk out. I kept riding.

At the end of town I saw the sign I was looking for: Walden, and took a right. There were two bars that looked full of life. I stopped at one, parked right in front and walked in. “No more talking about politics,” I heard someone say when I walked in. Another guy ordered a Guinness. I followed suit. This wasn’t such a bad place after all. Still, I decided to take my beer and sit outside where a gentleman convinced me to ride 20 miles out of my way to Saratoga where there was a free hot spring. I’d no sooner pass up a hot spring in Wyoming than I would pass up a Guinness after crossing the Great Divide. The soak felt great to my road-beaten body, but the sun’s position in the sky afterward wasn’t reassuring. Despite being the third longest day of the year, I wasn’t sure my motorcycle and I could beat the sun to the horizon. We were no match for its speed and by Walden, it was almost dark… and getting very cold! I stopped at a gas station to fill my jacket with crumpled newspapers, an old survival trick, and got back on the road. About 20 miles later I was disappointed that I didn’t stuff more newspapers in my jacket. Not nearly as disappointed, however as I was that I didn’t think to get GAS at the station. I had read that the KLR got 300 plus gallons to the tank. I was only at 216 when the engine started puttering. Fortunately, it has a reserve tank that somehow got me to the top of Rabbit Ear’s Pass. At that point, I put it in neutral where it wouldn’t use too much gas (and was quiet enough so that someone upstairs may hear my prayers). At mile 242 I coasted into the Shop ‘n Hop at the far end of town. I was frozen, I was exhausted, but I was home!

The rest of the weekend was full of excitement. Cutting beetle kill down in the National Forest, getting my motorcycle license in Craig America, going to the sheriff’s wedding reception, a few days of gondola laps on the mountain bike, but nothing could compare to the first big journey on the motorcycle.

Tomorrow I go away for four days to Life Skills Camp in Estes Park with a bunch of middle-schoolers. There’s no telling what stories will come from that adventure. I better get to sleep.

Seventh Day Adventurist

Here's my latest editorial for The Local. I'm planning a nice long ride today so I should have some good photos.

Seventh Day Adventurist

“SLAP,” well, that’s the sound it made, at least, as it hit my cheek. I didn’t know what it was at first, but as soon as I felt the furry creature that was stuck in my helmet move, I pulled over and slid my brain-bucket off gingerly. The bee fell to the ground. This isn’t a story that would have happened last fortnight. A lot has changed since then.

Two Fridays ago, after we got the papers distributed, I went to Boulder for a magazine conference. Editors from some of my favorite adventure magazines were there sharing information about what the magazines are interested in and how to best pitch your ideas. It was a really interesting and informative conference, but most importantly for me, was the inspiration with which I was left. It reminded me of how fertile Steamboat Springs is for adventures and great story ideas. This should have been more apparent, just look at writers like Eugene Buchanan, Jill Murphy Long, Joe Carberry and Jennie Lay who have all been published outside of the Valley. But when the editors mentioned how foreign and adventurous our lives seem to the typical Manhattan magazine editor (not to mention all of the readers), I looked at life in the Yampa Valley in a richer, more Technicolor way. I left the conference with some great connections, some new skills and best of all, the realization that if I could up the ante on my Yampa Valley adventures, it would make my stories more interesting and possibly be my ticket to getting paid to have some adventures in far off lands. On the drive home, I decided that the next logical step in this process was to create a blog. That night when I got home, Idle Thoughts and Epic Adventures was born.

I never thought I would have a blog, but only writing one column every other week isn’t doing much for my writing, and Idle Thoughts aren’t lending themselves to enough adventure. If you put “Epic Adventures” in the title, you have to have some, right?

Blog-night-one got me thinking about adventure. By blog-night-two, the adventure had begun! This adventure personified itself in the form of a 2007 Kawasaki KLR 650, a motorcycle known to be great for cross-continent travel both on and off-road. I’ve ridden motorcycles intended for dirt before and I’ve ridden ones made for the street, but the possibilities that present themselves when you have one that can go almost anywhere are like a triple shot of espresso for a dreamers mind. I love my Toyota pickup, but when I wake up in the morning, twist the key on the KLR and push the magic button, its engine hypnotizes me. In the past week I have gotten lost on the way to the grocery store and ended up on both Rabbit Ears and Buffalo Pass, missed my turn to go home and ended up at the hot springs, and taken the long way everywhere else I’ve ridden. I haven’t needed it to get to adventure; the adventure has been in the act of getting there. I’ve also become aware of others riding the same motorcycle. I have probably seen five a day, and most of them carry saddlebags and have license plates from far away. Seeing them sends my motorcycle and me from jeep roads in the tundra to trails through the Amazon with the ease of a fly fisherman whipping his fly from eddy to eddy. It takes all my strength just to reel in the line to little jaunts around the Flattops or through Big Red Park into Wyoming. It seems these Idle Thoughts have been popped into gear and thoroughly revved. It’s time to squeeze the clutch and apply the brakes liberally.

It’s my intention to hone my writing skills as well as my riding skills while not forgetting all of the other fun adventures there are to be had in the Yampa Valley. I can hear the muffled whimpering of the other toys in my toy box, even over the rumble of the KLR’s engine.

Feel free to check out my blog at scottglackman.blogspot.com. If you read it I’ll be compelled to write in it. Let the epic adventures begin!

I just remembered that I started a blog last week and haven’t added to it in five days. Tomorrow I have to write a new editorial for the paper. Here’s the last one from two weeks ago. Washington seems like a distant memory. It’s good to revisit it.

What I did on my summer vacation


The cuts on my hands from shucking oysters are almost gone and so is the sunburn on my neck. Now as I sit here on this 45 degree rainy day I feel like it’s fall and I’m writing a “what I did on my summer vacation” essay.

When I left Steamboat two weeks ago the Yampa River had already found its bed to be too small and was rudely encroaching on people’s back yards and even some roads (see last issue’s cover). At that time Mt. Werner above the Gondola had no bare spots, and to make things worse, the skies were full of snow. If it cleared up and got hot for a few days, Denver news teams would be featuring the Dream Island Yampa River Regatta. Just as soon as the last of the Locals were delivered, I high tailed it to Denver to catch a plane to Seattle. Whatever natural disasters that might have happened would have to happen without me. I had a race to run… or rather, to ski. (see Idle Thoughts issue 8.10)

Besides missing my flight by four minutes and spending an additional half hour assisting a fellow passenger and her two small children, the trip was uneventful. Before I knew it I was at a restaurant in a yuppified version of the town where I grew up. The assortment of wines and cheeses was Kirkland, Washington’s version of fast food. It was delicious but it didn’t take my mind off of the impending race. It did, however kick off my birthday festivities. Birthdays are a great time to go home because people feel obligated to hang out with you. A few hours later my friend Kirsten and I met up with some friends on a sail boat on Lake Union sipping tequila. Something about the combination of the two successfully took my mind off the race.



The next day started like any post birthday should, with a few asprin and an energy drink. Soon I was up in Bellingham meeting the members of my race team, Boogie Universal’s Electric Mayhem. We spent the evening ironing out logistics and sorting gear. Turns out my brand new boots didn’t fit my borrowed skis so I had to borrow boots too. I was glad I tested them out that night. I was the first leg of the race, and no skis would have caused our whole team to have to forfeit. I spent the next four hours sleeping the kind of sleep you would imagine sleeping if you were 35 feet up in a tree house the night before your first race.



The drive to Mt. Baker was awe-inspiring. The mountains around Steamboat look like molars. That region of the Cascades looks more like canines chipped by Gobstoppers. By 6am it was already t-shirt weather. My job when the starting gun went off was to charge the undulating four and a half mile figure eight loop and hand my timing chip to my teammate Tim, a.k.a. Santa Bunny. The race was half Alice in Wonderland, half James Bond ski chase. I managed to finish well ahead of Guy-In-Tutu and just in front of Umbrella-Hat-Wearing-Lady-In-Dress, but Man-In-Cow-Suit managed to finish just ahead of me. By 9am, Santa Bunny was charging up the mountain with snowboard on back and I was catching my breath wondering why I was so freaked out about this race and if someone had put something in my coffee. Our team finished somewhere in the middle, but due to our team spirit, Eric our road biker’s photo ended up on the cover of the Ski to Sea section of the Bellingham Herald the next day.



The rest of the Northwest portion of my summer vacation consisted of wine tasting, oyster feasts and ferry rides, but due to lack of space, I think it is best to get back to Steamboat.



Back in The ‘Boat, things had not gone as planned. The “Epic Floods of ‘08” were cancelled (or postponed) due to cold weather. Apparently, after hearing this, a suicidal raccoon decided to cause a disaster of his own by getting intimate with a piece of equipment with 12,000 volts running through it. I was sorry to have missed that. I heard Lincoln Avenue offered some brilliant star gazing opportunities.



It has only been a week since I got back to Steamboat, but thanks to long warm days, I have managed to fit in two weeks of work on the paper and a trip to the desert to roof a friend’s A-frame. The town’s spirits are high with everyone in kayaks, rafts, on bikes or lazily walking the streets. Now that I have a moment to relax and gaze out the window at this second day of rain I finally have time to look back fondly at my summer vacation. What day is it? June 4? What am I doing looking back at my summer vacation when summer doesn’t even start for two more weeks? I better wrap this up. I still have some spring to enjoy!

I woke up this morning to a collective, “You’ve got to be shittin' me!?!” I know, I didn’t think there was such thing either until I pried apart my blinds and saw bona fide snowflakes falling down to meet their compadres who had already set up shop on the ground. After witnessing this, I retrieved my Palm Trio for the day's inaugural email check . The first thing to come in was Michael David’s “Can you believe IT?!?!?!” email. The sentiment was indeed collective… in so many words.

I usually don’t look at weather reports unless I have a big trip planned. I like to be surprised and I can usually get a pretty good idea by looking up once and a while. Now that I feel compelled to use more two-wheeled transportation, I may be looking a little more closely at the forecast. Looks like today and tomorrow will be hovering in the 50s and the sun will be peaking his head out again on Friday.

You know how if you want it to rain you wash your car? Try buying a motorcycle and see what happens.

Beginning of a New Cycle

Traveling from the Arctic Circle to the southern tip of South America by motorcycle has been a dream of mine for over a decade. It hasn’t been a constant thought, but it has definitely surfaced every year or two. Last month when a Columbian friend told me he wanted to return to Columbia by land I brought up joining him on motorcycles. He thought this would be a good idea. A week later I found out he would be leaving the country before I could go with him, but it didn’t stop me from researching what kind of motorcycle would be the best one for the journey. All of my research led to the same bike: The Kawasaki KLR 650. The KLR is cost effective, dependable, relatively light (compared to the BMW), easy to work on and also the motorcycle used by the US military. This is an on/off road motorcycle that gets between 50 and 60 miles per gallon. I have to admit it has become somewhat of an obsession for the last four weeks, even seeping into my dreams.

After my daily Craigslist and Ebay perusing, I began to get frustrated. The specific KLRs that I had been watching were gone and in there place were only a few older models from Denver, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Though I was ready and willing, the thought of hitchhiking for half a day to buy a motorcycle only to find the there was something wrong with it was disheartening. Wouldn’t it be great to find a KLR right here in the Yampa Valley? On my way back to the office I checked out the Wheels and Deals for the Western Slope… nothing. I had finally resigned to the fact that this was not the time or the place to buy a motorcycle when I picked up the daily paper. This paper always had a list of three motorcycles, which never included the Kawasaki KLR 650, never that is, until today.

2007 Kawasaki KLR, 1300 miles. Kept in garage. Was all it said but I couldn’t have asked for a better description. I called immediately. Message machine. I expected a call back promptly but had to wait just long enough to begin to lose hope. Who knew how long this motorcycle had been in the classifieds? He probably sold it. Just as soon as I got immersed in work, my phone spurted out the ring that means “unfamiliar caller.” It was him.

Twenty minutes later I was tooling around on a monster bike. Twenty-two minutes later I had agreed to buy it. “Will you take off $300 so I can buy a jacket and some gloves?” I asked.

“I would if another guy hadn’t called after you offering full price.”

The KLR was in beautiful condition and they are becoming harder and harder to find, especially with gas prices going up as they are.

My afternoon was the beginning of a love affair getting to know something that I knew I would spend lots of time with, for better or worse. I don’t know when I will get to go on the grand adventure from Arctic Circle to Chile, but I did take care of the first step. I now have a motorcycle and it’s the perfect one for the job.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” –Lao Tsu

I just finished writing my first blog entry which ended being a small novel. Looking up at the quote on top of this entry, I decided that if this huge journey does, indeed, start with a single step, I had better make the step really short. Besides not wanting to give myself something too huge to live up to every entry, I surely don’t want to pull a muscle. You know how dangerous it is to go too hard right out of the starting gate. So here it is: the first step. What will the journey look like? Only time will tell…