Charlie, doing what a dog does

This is Charlie the basset hound who tagged along with his owner James Jantti, of North Kansas City, Mo. to come to the rally.

Travel log time

With my departure for Wyoming only four days away, my thoughts are turning to gathering all of the stuff I want to pack.

That's why I printed a couple of weeks worth of trip log sheets from my For Two Wheels Only software. I've been using FTWO to track my motorcycle travel, maintenance and general operating expenses since 2001 and never leave for an extended trip without a sheaf of log sheets in my tankbag.

Here's the first log page for my ride to Colorado last August showing I left home at 5:48 a.m. and spent the first night on the road at the U.S. Center Motel in Smith Center, Kans., with fuel stops at Crawfordsville, Ind., Monticello and Barry, Ill., Charleston, Mo., and Seneca and Smith Center in Kansas.

The next day saw gas stops at St. Frances, Kans., and Byers and Silverthorne in Colorado, arriving at Tim and Linda Balough's place at 4:20 p.m.

And once again, it shows my gas mileage improves with altitude: 38.22 mpg at Smith Center, Kans., 39.27 mpg at St. Francis, Kans., 43.53 mpg at Byers, Colo., and 45 mpg at Silverthorne, Colo.

Back to Devil's Tower

I'll almost certainly pay a visit to Devil's Tower while at the BMW MOA International Rally at Gillette, Wyo. in July.
I shot this the last time I was there - in July, 1995, when I was riding Western highways to Portland and to the BMW MOA International Rally in Durango, Colo.
My first visit was in 1990 during the 'MOA rally at Rapid City, S.D.

Why do these people look concerned?

I took this rather unflattering photo of my parents at Yellowstone National Park during the summer of 1956, somewhere around my 11th birthday.
I guess the best way to characterize their look is "concern." Thinking back, I realize the probably spent a lot of time looking at me that way.
In this particular instance, it may have been because I was working my new Kodak Brownie camera while on crutches. I was recovering from a broken leg that I suffered in April when I rode a bicycle into the path of a Cadillac a couple of blocks from my house. I was chasing/racing a friend and I was on a borrowed bike with multiple gears and hand brakes instead of my own bike, which had one gear and a coaster brake.
The good news was that the Cadillac was being driven by one of the town's two doctors. After checking in with my parents, he drove me the 20 miles to Home Hospital in Lafayette, Ind.
My father would have been 46 when this photo was made. I'm 16 years older than that now and I think I still look younger than he did then. But then that's how the filter of memory works, isn't it?
My dad has a cigarette in his right hand. It would have been a Winston. He's wearing a two-pocket sport shirt and a windbreaker - standard 1950s tourist garb. I learned my pants pocket contents system from him, so I can be fairly certain his change and his Zippo lighter are in his right front pocket and his keys are in his left pocket, wallet in back left and handkerchief in back right.
My mother, of course, is holding her purse in her right hand. She pretty much never went anywhere without her purse. In later years, she grew more cautious and carried it tucked up in her left arm like a football.
Somewhere in the parking lot where they're standing was our 1956 two-tone green Ford Fairlaine.
Yellowstone was a very different place in the '50s. Despite warnings from rangers, people routinely fed bears from their cars. Consequently, bears are a common sight along the road. Like morons, we fed a couple of them from our car and lived to tell about it. We were in the park about two days and counted 49 bears during that time. This was also before America became litter-conscious and it was common to see people toss trash - sometimes paper grocery bags full - from their car windows as they blazed down the highway. Even then, I knew it was wrong and was shocked when I saw a blizzard of trash explode from the window of a car we were following across the Wyoming countryside.
Just to give a little more historical perspective, Dwight Eisenhower was in his first term in the White House, cars had AM radios and no seatbelts and rock & roll was a brand new phenomenon.

Planning

If the weather forecast were more favorable, I would be somewhere in central Tennessee right now, heading for the Georgia Mountain Rally near Hiawassee, Ga.
But the storm warnings are out and I'd the focused on keeping ahead of the rain, only to greet it when it arrives at the rally tonight or tomorrow. Rainsuit rallying is not my thing.

So I did the next best thing this morning.

I went online and registered for the 36th annual BMW Motorcycle Owners of America International Rally July 17-20 in Gillette, Wyo.

I was forced to miss last year's BMW MOA rally in Wisconsin because Maria and I were contracted to shoot a July 14 (my birthday, too) wedding. That's the one for which I finally completed the album this week.

Gillette is about a two-day ride from here with an overnight somewhere around Omaha or Sioux City, S.D.

Now the challenge is to block out time on either side of the rally for some fun riding in the West. Other than a week in the Colorado Rocky Mountains with my Indianapolis BMW Club friends last August, I did very little riding last year.
I haven't seen the Pacific Ocean from a motorcycle seat since July, 2004, and I'm really itching to get back to Big Sur. Plus I'm overdue for visits to my sons in Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas. Clearly, I have some serious motorcycle riding to do this year.

And I aim to do it.