Mark and I were back in the Southeast from July 11-18 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Deals Gap and surrounding areas. We can't seem to get enough of the roads down here. The purpose of the trip was to hit the BMW MOA rally in Johnson City, TN. Total distance was 2,156 miles.

Mark is taking a solo trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway this week on his BMW R1100S.

Winter 2008/2009

My 2004 BMW R1150RT was exhibiting signs that the original OEM battery was about to fail. It was starting to crank a little slow and needed extra time on the battery tender. Five years is outside the service lifetime for this battery, so I decided to replace it before it failed while I was out on a trip somewhere.

Looks like rain for the weekend, so I took Friday off from work and headed up to Mt Baker on my BMW R1150RT. This is one of the best motorcyle rides in Western Washington.

The goal for the day

Smokey Mountains Motorcycle Trip 2008 6/27/2008 - 7/2/2008

The Goal
The goals of this trip are simple: Spend 6 days riding through the mountains of the Southeast, USA.
See some great sites. Avoid radar toting police and park rangers. Don't crash or run into any suicidal deer.

Mark sent me this picture from his 70F Thanksgiving Day ride in DE.

I've been neglecting this website lately. So I finally get around to doing some maintenance work this morning and after filtering through the 500#@#! spam messages in my inbox I see a note from kick-ass programmer and all-around nice guy, Russell. He bought a really sweet looking all black K1200R. Nice bike! It's always great to see another BMW rider in Seattle.

I like this picture.

I got in a quick ride today between monster rain storms. Rode around Alki Beach in West Seattle, then south towards Tacoma. Here are a few pics.

Seattle from Alki in West Seattle, near Salties restaurant:

Just back from a week long trip with Mark from Seattle to Monterey, CA to watch the 2006 MotoGP races at Laguna Seca. Mark flew out from Delaware and rented a Harley-Davidson Ultra-Classic. We rode the HD and my BMW 1150RT - swapping bikes roughly every gas fill-up.

I had PIAA lights installed yesterday on my BMW R1150RT. I also had them install an Autoswitch (turns lights on/off with the turn signal and adds a status LED to the dash) as well as ultra-bright low and high beam bulbs.

Riding The Red Rollercoaster - Australian Outback Riding Technique

[The bikes were two Honda NX650 Dominators]

In the Australian Outback there is a requirement to leave a considerable gap between bikes on dirt roads, but I felt Andy was too far back, travelling too slowly.
My relief at seeing him appear in my rear-view mirror soon turned to concern. He was too close to the edge of the track.

The two foot high sand drift along the edge of the track to Mungo National Park New South Wales, was not a good place to ride a heavily laden 650cc overland trail bike.

My 2004 BMW R1150RT is in the shop. I was riding on Denny St in Seattle Thursday afternoon when I suddenly lost all power assist to my brakes. After narrowly avoiding pancaking into the delivery van in front of me, my heart was pounding about 200 bpm. The brakes came back but failed 4-5 more times while I nursed it back to the office. It's in the shop now. They say it's a failed ABS brake modulator. That's just not something you ever want to happen to you.

Globe Busters is a motorcycle expedition company out of Britain run by Kevin and Julia Sanders. They organize motorcycle expeditions - looks like mostly in the Americas. What a fantastic way to live your life.

Their claim to fame is:

Kevin and Julia Sanders hold two Guinness World Records™.

Why I ride a BMW motorcycle to work everyday.