KTM 950 Retrieval Trip, Feb 19 – 21, 2010

So I decid­ed to take a gam­ble and go to Cal­i­for­nia to retrieve the KTM I pur­chased 3 weeks ago. It is a 2006 KTM 950 Adven­ture with 4000 miles on the clock. The weath­er reports looked OK, if not stel­lar, but I have good gear, and I warned my boss that i might not get … 

Preparing to go ‘walkabout’

As some you already know, your obe­di­ent scribe is plan­ning a trip, what my wife and I refer to as ‘going walk­a­bout’ after the aus­tralian tra­di­tion of ‘see­ing what’s out there’. In this case, I’ll be using a KTM 950 adven­ture for trans­porta­tion, and ‘out there’ is shap­ing up to mean­ing most states west of … 

KTM 950 Overnight Camping Shakedown cruise (17 april 2010)

Depart­ed home slight­ly after sched­uled time, sit­u­a­tion nor­mal, right? Stopped in mon­roe for fuel and to meet any­one who might have decid­ed to come along and not told me. There is no one there, so about 12:40, I head­ed east towards stevens pass. light driz­zle, but noth­ing bad. As I get clos­er to the pass, … 

day 1, in which very little exciting actually happens

well, day 1 went pret­ty well. I sit here in the pala­cial liv­ing room of my friends Joce­lyn and Steve, after a nice din­ner, steal­ing their inter-tubes. two tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties reared their ugly head: the GPS anten­na can­not live on top of the radar detec­tor: the radios inter­fere with each oth­er. so, att the first … 

Walkabout Day 2: In which I went down the drain. drain, oregon. really!

447 miles today, a lit­tle longer than I usu­al­ly like, but there were Issues. It appears that rain is head­ed for the north­ern cal­i­for­nia coast tomor­row. In con­sid­er­a­tion, today’s plan was to get far enough south that cut­ting inland could be done fair­ly ear­ly tomor­row, in an attempt to stay dry. Look­ing at the weath­er forcast … 

Walkabout day 3: in which there were snowflakes…

  307 miles today, but it felt a lot longer, most­ly due to toren­tial rain, cold, and even a lit­tle snow just north of Lay­tonville, CA. Yikes. Wait­ing this morn­ing in the hotel in Eure­ka, I real­ized that I hate doing noth­ing. I could have spent the day in Eure­ka and avoid­ed all the unpleas­ant­ness, but … 

Walkabout day 5: Sierra Nevada foothills and Tehachapi Mts.

Arose this morn­ing at Chez Grrrl­dogs in Galt to a beau­ti­ful morn­ing, at least out­side. Inside my head was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, I was a bit blue and home­sick. This usu­al­ly hap­pens to me on a trip, about day 5 or 6; I wake up in the morn­ing, and won­der why the heck I didn’t …

Walkabout, day 6: wind farms, switchbacks, and rainbows.

Woke up ear­ly this morn­ing, but not in any par­tic­u­lar hur­ry, as my des­ti­na­tion for the evening was my friends Mark and Ln’s place, Sun­fire, in Escon­di­do. GPS says 202 miles. I get a road rec­om­men­da­tion from Mark (Fort Tejon road up into the Ange­les for­est, high­ly rec­om­mend­ed), and head out. I avoid the free­way and … 

Walkabout day 7: it gets hot in the desert…

Had a leisure­ly after­noon yes­ter­day with mark and the dogs. Got a pair of tires ordered, and it looks like they are going to the right place in texas, and will beat me there. yay! Got a fair­ly ear­ly start this morn­ing, leav­ing Sun­Fire at about 7:30. Head­ed up to Warn­er Springs, then over the …