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There and Back Again! Part 1
35+ years ago, my younger brother and I vowed to make a motorcycle trip from our home in Aubrey, TX, to the Grand Canyon and back. At that time I had a '69 Rocket Three and he had a Honda 175, I think. So hopefully we were planning to get different bikes but my memory is hazy on that part.
But life happens. Brother John moved around a lot, I was injured in a motorcycle wreck, I didn't have a bike, we have families, and we worked a lot. I injured my right knee on a snow mobile and can't hold up much more than a mo-ped now. The the trip was all but forgotten for a long time. Then Brother John, after several other bikes, got his late model Road Glide. Then I built this trike. Then in June 2017, we did the trip.
But before we left, my trike needed washing. Thanks Eagle HD in Corinth, TX:
I had planned to leave on a Saturday and be back home by the next weekend. But Brother John needed to go to a wedding on Sunday, which put us leaving town on Monday morning:
and went west to our first stop at my cabin in Cuchara, CO. My usual route would have taken us over Raton Pass in NM. But in March there had been a huge rock slide on the pass road, I-25, see Ch. 9 news photo below. By the time of our trip, only one lane each direction was open and there were reports of long delays getting over the pass.
Being on a trike with no heating problems I could have tolerated (but hated) the stop and go traffic over the pass, but Brother John would have suffered a lot and it would not have been safe on that steep incline. So we detoured north at Claude, TX, up to Springfield, CO, and then over to Trinidad, CO.
From Trinidad, we took Highway 12 (the Highway of Legends) over to my cabin which is on Highway 12. Hwy 12 has some great curves over a small pass and down to the cabin. Surprisingly I could motor through the curves as well as or better than my brother. I know he was impressed, but he blamed his poor performance on the setting sun.
Hot and very windy first day of travel. We spent over 12 hours in the saddle--675 miles. Trike seemed to be doing OK, but my mpg is horrible. I had added a 2.5 gal aux tank on the rear, but could not get better than 25 mpg, and in the wind only about 20 mpg. As far as I can tell I have stock gearing. One exhaust nut did vibrate off near Claude, and we lost some time repairing that after trying to get a nut at Tractor Supply and then finding an O'Reilly's in the small town . Tuesday, I went hiking the Dike Trail in Cuchara with my wife, who had driven our SUV up to the cabin.
On Wednesday, we got up early to leave only to find that I had left the ignition switch on overnight and ran the battery down. Having a well stocked cabin garage, I had a battery charger that we hooked up to the trike and got it started. Slightly risky because I am running a Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery, but it worked and the battery has been fine since then. So, off we went.
End of Part 1
