On a road to nowhere this morning, just for fun…
We crossed 500 miles on the odo!
I put 24 miles on it today, mostly off pavement, and ow my ass. Also, first sunburn of the season.
You might recall we had some electrical problems last summer that took the bike out of circulation for about a month. Poorly-soldered harness connection shook apart. I see an awful lot of washboard dirt roads so it could happen again tomorrow, life is pain and uncertainty but I can say nothing but good things about Rad Power Bikes customer service so I’m not going to let it bother me. I like this bike, and it allows me to get out and around with a minimum of noise and fuel expense.
Saw a funny sign on a side road…
…and at a watering tank far from the Gulch, a disconcerting sign that the cattlemen haven’t forgotten us.
That was empty last time I saw it, less than a month ago. Summer is coming, and maybe some grass, which would bring my least favorite cattle. Oh, well.
I got burnt as well yesterday, mowing the grass. Oh, wait—that’s this green plant that grows out of the ground in thin blades, so densely it covers the ground…..
J/K. I know you grew up in Michigan, and undoubtedly cut your share there & elsewhere.
Congratulations on the bike’s continuing functionality! Nice to have an alternative to the Jeep for distances too long to walk.
What is your backup plan if the bike quits on you well more than walking distance from home? Just curious. I’m paranoid enough about that situation that I carry a small dirt bike across the back of my 4×4. I’m too freakin’ old to hike 30 miles out of the trackless mountains!
Your weather there makes it more dangerous than it is to me, here in Idaho.
Chain it up somewhere out of sight of the road and use my phone to bug neighbors for a ride to the Jeep. For verily I say unto thee, woe be unto he who keepeth not a positive karmic balance with his neighbors when bad times befall him. There his weeping and wailing and the gnashing of his teeth shall be.
Thou doth presumeth the existence of a cell phone signal. Yea verily, this is not nearly a given around here in the deep mountains.
Which is why the motorcycle 😉
DO you have past articles posted anywhere esp regarding your ebike? I am curious as to how things have gone with your ebike so far. I am interested in getting one but they ARE Pricey. So I am trying to learn all that I can about them. The more I can learn about them the better. ( Partly, I know I get em….saddle soreness….from a regular bike. Enough discomfort that I rarely ride one. So again before I buy an ebike I need to figure out a seat that is truly comfortable.
I never got into doing tags but if you search the blog for ebike you’ll find everything I wrote on the subject.
That’s an elaborate watering tank!
Having had goats, I appreciate that funny(?) gate sign. 🙂
Malatrope – From Idaho also. I have a pretty hard and fast rule that has served me well: Never drive motorized equipment alone, further into the mountains than you are prepared to walk back out.
That being said, I’m very physically fit and do multi-day 60 mile backpack trips for fun, so I’m more than capable and willing to walk 30 plus miles out if needed. However, you won’t like that much if you go in unprepared, so whereas you take your dirt bike, I take my pack, outfitted with a few MREs, a water filter, a tent, and clothing necessary to keep my arse alive given whatever weather I’m facing. I also have a breakdown fishing rod and lures in the pack, to supplement foods if needed (which only really comes in handy when the creeks aren’t frozen)
I also take a satellite linked text messaging device with me so I can send a text message from anywhere on the planet that can see the southern sky. It came in handy last year, I was in three feet of snow doing a snowshoe whitetail hunt, and got my truck stuck on the way in. I was about 15 miles from the nearest traveled road, on snowshoes, in nasty sleeting cold weather. I sent a text, telling my buddy to come meet me about 5 miles from where I was (further down in the valley where the snow wasn’t so deep) and plodded my way down there. It was about 5 hours before he came to get me, I was sitting by a little fire field dressing a 3 point buck by the time he showed up.
Hindsight being 20/20, I probably shouldn’t have shot the buck. Dragging it out about 2 miles in 3 feet of snow on snowshoes was a complete sonofabitch. But I’m a dumbass, when I’m hunting, it takes a lot for me to pass up on a critter, even in a situation where I really should be focused on getting my ass out and safe.
I shot an elk one year right at dark, and spent until midnight quartering it and hauling it out, only one mile one way, but an elk takes three trips, minimum. I had wolves howling all around me for the entire time, so I didn’t want to leave it until morning. By the time I got everything out to the wheeler and back to camp, I was legitimately scared. Not nervous, not worried. Scared. The wolves were definitely interested in what I was doing. I caught eye shine off my headlamp multiple times, and on the last trip out it was so dark that I got lost walking out and wandered in circles for quite a while.
Walter;
saddle soreness is something that goes away with time. Kind of like building up callouses to a new pair of boots (new boots don’t really “break in” so much as they break your feet in), the more you ride, the less of an issue it becomes.
My first few rides when i started biking a lot ended up being half miserable. Now I go 30 miles in a pop without any discomfort at all (same seat as before).
Goober, good stories…and not uncommon around here. At almost 70, I don’t go into the mountains in winter anymore (winter: September through May, heh). But when I was 40, I routinely hiked 30 miles a day with an 8000 foot elevation change, so I do feel the change. Wish I didn’t have to worry about it.
I’m waiting for mobile Starlink…
Malatrop: Be aware that your Starlink Antenna/terminal equipment takes some 100 watts of power 24/7! That makes it a non-starter for many off-grid applications unless you are willing to turn it off between uses. We can only hope that future equipment will be less power hungry..
Cell coverage is a problem out here to an extent, but when you’re mobile you can work around it. It’s one reason everybody – even those older than me – prefer to text rather than use voice. Even if you find yourself in a dead zone, you can generally get enough signal to at least text if you get to the top of a ridge.
Ben: 100 watts for 10 minutes is no big worry, but I’ll be waiting for the mobile version of the thing that they are certain to come out with when they discover how huge the market is. Selling to the RV population alone would pay for the development cost.