A Sunday Morning Ride

This past weekend my friend, you all know him as Supe, was visiting family who live in the same area as I do.  Not wanting to miss an opportunity we decided to go for an early morning ride on Sunday.

Supe arrives at the arranged gas station, with the love of his life Suzi, and his girlfriend.  Suzi is Supe's Bandit 1200.  As all motorcycle rides start with a trip to the local gas station, we met at the Sinclair station, as it is the only gas station within 5 miles of my home.  Another is being built accross the street but is not yet completed.

After filling up we headed up the road to Zion National Park.  This is the most popular ride when we have limited time.  Which can be translated into when my wife did not know I was going for a ride. 
I have a confession to make.  I am attempting to determine the best way to format this blog.  I have decided that I like a format consisting of photographs with captions explaining the photos, however, I would also like to take some videos and post them.  I do not want to say that I will become a Vlogger, as the videos will likely be limited to action shots which have been edited and overlayed with music, like a sound track.  However, I may decide to post videos of the longer rides in a more travel log style, with riding footage with a sound track followed by a monologue of one of the participants talking about the ride or the day.  We shall see.  Anyway this is my first real attempt to capture pictures while riding, so forgive the poor quality of my pictures, I am no artist.

Supe and friends riding toward Zion.



Riding through a sleepy town which feels a little like a step back in time.

Riding into Zion.

If you look closely at the above pictures you will get a sense of the winding road through Zion, there are numerous turns and twists, as well as the odd decreasing radius turn.  I only wish they had the signs like on the Blueridge Parkway.  "Do you know what a decreasing radius turn is?  Don't find out the hard way."

So if the road is the reason we love Zion, this is the reason we hate the summer time, RV's.  There is nothing worse than riding such a wonderful road, which they have recently repaved so it is track smooth, at 10 miles an hour behind a rent me RV.  As Canyon Chasers say "Save our canyons from RVs."

While I have apologized for my lack of photography skills, I attempted to capture some video with my point and shoot. I must explain that this camera is really old, as my wife would not appreciate me holding her new camera off the side of my motorcycle while riding through Zion.

Here is my attempt at video, hopefully I can get a GoPro or other mounted camera system soon.

Once we got to the otherside of Zion (locally known as "The Park") we bought a motorcycle trip meal

and then turned back around to head home.

On the way back down, while we were waiting for motorhomes to go through the tunnel

 we ran into a group of riders from France.  As you can see the motorhomes are too tall and have to drive down the middle of the tunnel, making everyone else wait at one end or the other.  While I believe that anyone can exercise their right to buy and drive a motorhome around, I also believe they should exercise their right to pull the hell over whenever a motorcycle is behind them.  The riders from France had apperantly rented motorcycles, 13 of them, in LA and were riding around the Southwest, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and the like.  It was great to talk to them, however, they were riding Harleys, which are not ideal for highspeed passes through decreasing radius turns, and were taking pictures.  It goes without saying that they were holding us up. 

If you look closely you can see them in front of the black Mustang (one of their chase vehicles)

and off to the left between the trees.  While I do not fault motorcycle riders for riding their own pace, there are many a people faster than me, it was slightly disheartening that they did not pull over to let us pass.  I would have thought that other riders would have experienced the frustration of following slower vehicles, and either pulled over or simply moved to the far right of the lane and waived us through.  Regardless, we only got about four turns where we were not hindered by much slower traffic.  Lesson learned stay out of Zion on a sunny late spring morning.