August 6th, 2005
Its been seven years...seven years since the start of the HondaShadow.net online resource and forum. A gathering place for Honda Shadow owners to come and express their views, offer their expertise, ask their questions, a place for building online friendships, arranging rides, and buying or selling parts. There is such a sense of community as you get to know others in the forum, learn of their families, their trials, and sometimes fight like brothers and sisters. Many personalities have come and gone, many remain, few have fallen from our ranks. A few touch our lives in a way only they can.... and to this point I dedicate this to Woody....
As the 7th Year anniversary approached, Albert, the webmaster over HondaShadow.net posts to the 4100 registered members that we should have a rally to commemorate this achievement, and the brainstorming began. Several rallies sprung from this original idea, and three gatherings were born. This is my story of our trek to the West Coast Rally in Colorado.
Of the five of us from Texas that had planned on attending, three of us set out early on Friday the 5th. Leaving an hour and a half behind our planned departure time mainly due to me not finding my way around in my own town at this time in the morning and having left the lights on too long while doing some wiring on the Valkyrie the night before. I rolled her down the drive at 5:20a.m. into the alley and shut the gate to start her up as quietly as possible only to get the infamous tick tick trick tick tick of a low battery starting attempt. Rolling the loud metal battery charger down the drive I laugh as I think about how quiet I had tried to be....next time she will get started in the garage!
With Erin straddled on back, sitting comfortably on the Ultimate seat and passenger armrests, we head out to meet my brother Dave and biker brother Mike (Ruhk). We have breakfast and head out about 7:20. It is a pretty uneventful trip as we make our way to Amarillo to meet up with biker brother Ken (wkenneth) who is joining us on this cross country trek from Oklahoma City. Pretty uneventful is relative though as we did have to stop and suit up for a couple small showers we rode through. Along the way I ride with one hand and pull a CD from the Discman, pull the Discman out of its carrying case, open the back, and pull out the new batteries, and proceed to chuck it to the side of the road. I refrain til we get to a gas station where I have Erin toss it..piece of crap. Maybe it is time for an MP3 player...
Also meeting us in Amarillo is our biker forum brother Kyle (Kingham) who lives in Amarillo and he takes a long lunch to escort us to the Cadillac Ranch for a photo op, and then shows us the way out of town on a short cut that proved quite enjoyable.
The meeting spot is Sharps Honda in Amarillo. Here are a few shots when we get there. From left to right are Dave (be looking for him joining the forum as GonzBro!!), Ruhk, Wkenneth, Kingham, and yours truly.
We hit a fuel up and head to the Cadillac Ranch. You've probably seen this in videos or commercials. For all the info you want on this place go here... http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/TXAMAcadillac.html The original intention was to take a can of spray paint with us and some decals to spell out our forum name, put the decals on, spray paint over them, and pull the decals off to expose graffiti painted letters of the forum just for fun. Chance had to back out so we didn't get these letter done in time...maybe another run to Amarillo is in store!!
Since I am putting Cadillac taillights on my Shadow project, I searched out the 1959 model first.
Heh heh, this reminds me of a rock video! LOL R-L GonzBro, Ruhk, Wkenneth, Gonz, and Kingham
Erin and I get a photo of the both of us for a change!! GOT To remember to do this more often!
While observing this strange piece of art, a couple ride up on a Beemer...
Next we head to a Mexican restaurant. Mariachi frogs adorn the front. A photo op for Erin who collected frogs all last year for her classroom!!
Inside we have some great Mexican food and get to know Kyle a little better. He is a fine young guy with a great sense of humor, and a great host! Kyle picked up the tab for lunch for everyone in our group!! While leaving, Kyle solicits a large black woman to grab a shot of us. She was funny with her sister barking out how to take a photo!! She didn't do a bad job at all did she?
Kyle leads us out and heads back to work. SO long my friend and we will reciprocate in a month when you come down for the Stevie Ray Vaughn bike run and concert.
This is the first part of the trip where we got to take photos since it was too dark when we left and then soon ran into storms. With that burning off we decided it safe to pull out, and stow away the rain gear. Here are several shots of the next many miles of West Texas panhandle.
The roads Kyle turned us on to were nice and twisty. He suggested that the next bit of rain would likely be near Raton NM due to its elevation, it gets rain often. The whole day and trip across Texas has been very cool, unlike most Texas summers. Very strange indeed. I had put on a tank top expecting to shed the jacket as soon as the sun came up. I didn't take it off the whole trip!
There were a few high points where we could see a ways across the plains...
Strange clumps of hilly areas adorned the landscape.
Pretty darn flat out here...what can you grow without water? Here is a heck of a sprinkler system. I told Erin we need to get one of these in the front yard!! LOL
A pretty decent shot at 80 mph!! Ruhk, WKenneth, and Gonzbro...one of these days I am going to ride with someone who has their own picture taker so we can get an action shot! ;-)
A running joke...we are driving down the road and see a bail of hay and I shout and point HEY!!! Kids are like "What?" HEY!! Can't you see it? LOL
Finally some mountains!! Uh..yeah....in West Texas these are mountains, but nothing compared to what we will see this weekend.
This could have been a postcard!
We watch another storm form and decide to stop and on our raingear again. As we suit up a large group of bikers heading to Sturgis come rolling in to do the same. This trip has been pocked with bikers heading north. "You going to Sturgis?" became the running gag. NO WE ARE NOT GOING TO STURGIS!!!! We started asking others this when they would pull up in the pick'em up trucks!
http://www.gonzos-garage.com/bike/Colorado/
So we stash the camera for the rest of the trip up. We go through this storm and get into Raton and fuel up and get some free coffee to warm up. A large storm is forming just southwest of us and heading right at us. We decide to deny the rain gods their entertainment and jump on the highway to stay ahead of it. As soon as we ascend into these mountains there it opens up and dumps on us. I cannot see the speedometer, much less the road ahead, but the sound of the engine tells me we are doing about 40-45mph. Going down hill we are cutting through about 7 inches of standing (running?) water. We were glad to get out of that system and out of those hills where we could see again. I pried each hand off the grips and tried to relax for the rest of this cruise. That was the worst part of the whole weekend and I am glad we are here to talk about it!
Click below to go to the pictures and part of the trip you came here for!!
Gonzo
02' Shadow Spirit "Vicious Cycle", 98 Valkyrie "Eragon"