When Things Get Tough Motorcycling Alone

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That was pretty easy getting up here to the top of Georgia Pass .

That's where I'm at right now .

This is just what I was looking for .

I wanted an easy , no stress , no drama ride .

Get up into some beautiful high country without a lot of other people around and that's what I found .

So this place ticks all the boxes for me .

Give you a little tour of my campsite and my bike here .

So this is my 1200 G S that I wrote up here .

You can see , I've got a few of my camping things set out .

I've got my camp kitchen over here .

My tank bag is filled with all of my charging devices .

The inverter batteries , battery chargers , that kind of thing .

This is how I'm carrying my camera gear right now .

I've got this case and it's like a pelican case , but it's by a Canadian company called and I really like this case .

It's waterproof and it's got this padded insert on the inside of it .

So it keeps all my gear organized and protected .

And one of the things that's really nice about it is that the latches on here .

Unlike a Pelican case , they're actually pretty quiet .

You can hear when it closes like that .

It's just pretty silent .

So I like this case .

It's going to work out really well for me .

I think I've got my little single person tent all set up here with my new extra comfy , big thick insulated air mattress and my 15 degree down bag .

So no cold nights , no matter how it gets up here on the pass , I should be nice and warm .

I have to be honest with you guys , it was kind of a tough day today and you guys will understand when I tell you about it , but I woke up on Rollins Pass this morning , which is probably 100 or so miles from here .

And I spent the whole day just driving through towns and on the interstate and through traffic and all of those kinds of things that as motorcyclists we just have to put up with and I don't know about you .

But like for me , the whole reason that I like to ride motorcycles is to get out in the back country where there's no one else on the roads , there's no traffic or billboards or anything like that and just come out here in a place like this , this is what it's all about for me .

And so it took me a while , I guess that's what I'm saying .

I spent the better part of today just dealing with that kind of stuff .

And that's not the kind of stuff that I really want to share with you guys because that's what we're all trying to get away from , I believe .

And when I turned off the main road and got on that dirt road with the mountains in the distance , my heart just started to sing .

You know , that's what it's really all about for me .

And like I felt this sense of relief like this pressure left my body .

And finally , it's like , wow , this is what I came for to be out on this kind of road .

And so I , I notice , you know , that happens quite a bit in my motorcycling and you guys probably don't realize that .

Or if you're a motorcyclist , maybe you do realize it , but I don't really talk about it .

I don't share that kind of stuff because that's the normal everyday modern world .

And I try to make these videos more about the beauty of what we're experiencing when we get away from those kind of situations , when we leave our everyday lives behind and come out to places like this .

And so there's always some level of that kind of challenge , that kind of difficulty to go through .

And I just want you to know that it happens to me too , but it's always worth it .

It's always worth it to take those less traveled roads and get out to places like this because for me .

And probably for you too , that's what it's really all about .

Places like this are for whatever reason .

On a Tuesday night you can come up here and nobody is here .

There's hundreds of thousands of people just miles away down in civilization .

That's the way it is now .

It's definitely changing .

I think more and more and more people are able to get out in the back country and desire to get out in the back country .

But for a person like me , you know , you can still get on your bike and with a little preparation , a little skill , a little determination , you can get out and find places like this and have a night like this up on a pass all by yourself if that's what you're into .

Ok , bear spray .

I finally got a can of bear spray .

I picked this up at the lodge .

I was staying at a few nights ago .

It was in sort of the give and take pile and I've never had bear spray before , but now I've got some bear spray .

All right .

It's time to start cooking some dinner and on the menu tonight , we've got some shitake mushroom top ramen .

I'm going to add a little bit of red pepper to that and some green onions .

It should be pretty darn tasty .

Well , the sun just went down .

It seems like a perfect time to cook this dinner .

So , what are we going to need ?

We are going to need a little knife for some prep work and down in this little compartment , I've got my pants , frying pan plate and a little cutting board .

So I think we'll use the frying pan and the cutting board tonight .

Course , as you can see , I've got my fire box stove here , but there are just fire bans all over the place .

So , no campfires tonight , we're not going to use that .

We will use the pot grabber .

Definitely gonna use that .

And we need a fork and a spoon .

It's my new titanium fork spoon combo and that's it .

We don't need a can opener .

Maybe a little spatula .

We might need that .

Probably not going to use the Bush Craft saw tonight or the fixed blade knife because we're not cooking on the fire box .

If I was going to cook meat , I'd use my tongs .

Got a wooden spoon because you never know when you need a wooden spoon .

And down here some fire starter , things like that .

But again , no fires tonight .

So I got just what I need right here .

There we go .

Hm .

Hey , honey , you're on youtube right now .

Yeah .

See my camera .

Are you ?

No , I'm not doing live but I'm recording this .

How funny .

Say hi to all the good people on youtube , Eva .

I'm talking to my girlfriend right now on cell phone , which is always kind of nice when you have service in a place like this .

Hey , Hey , everybody out there on youtube .

I slept absolutely wonderfully .

Last night , it was so comfortable in my tent and my air mattress in my sleeping bag .

I got a really good sleep and I just woke up right as the sun was coming over the trees here .

It's about 77 30 in the morning .

And a , I'm going to linger , I'm going to linger here a little bit this morning .

Get things packed up slowly and then see what today brings .

See where to head .

I've got this little microphone here and I'm thinking about putting it inside of my helmet so that I can record some voiceover on the helmet cam when I'm going down the road .

And that isn't something , something that I've done in quite a while .

But I was just thinking today , maybe I will do that and try to try to get a little bit more of that in helmet commentary along the way , just a little something different .

So this road on this side of the pass leads down to Breckenridge , Colorado .

It's definitely a little harder on the north side here .

The side I came up yesterday was super easy .

You probably could do it in a passenger car , but I would not say that you could do that on this side of the road .

There's a cool log bridge .

There we go .

At some point .

I should check my guy at GPS app just to actually verify that a little mud puddle here .

Ok .

We're just going to go through this one .

There we go .

Tires are wet .

I always remember that when you go through a big mud puddle , that tires are wet and you might hit some rocks and have to climb up out to the other side and it might be a little slippery , an even bigger one .

Yeah .

Wow .

Ok .

It is getting a little crazy .

Let's pause and check GPS .

OK ?

I am not on the right road .

Shit .

I have to go back up .

Ok ?

Not what we wanted to deal with today .

Not going to be easy to turn around here .

This is going to be a multi point turn using the little bem here to get some , some backwards momentum right up the bem .

Let the bike go back right up the be ok .

Now this is where Sterling has to concentrate and go back up .

What we just came down , who got completely wet there ?

I hit a little rock , got water in the boots .

We're gonna go around this one .

Ok .

So you guys are getting a real crash course adventure on what I deal with because now I have this microphone mounted inside of the helmet wouldn't even have known about this little drama that I'm dealing with this morning .

I was pretty certain that this was going to be the road down and it turns out that it wasn't , fortunately it wasn't too bad , too steep , too rough .

That I can't go back up it because that's one thing you really need to be aware of when you're doing this kind of riding is if you encounter a really steep loose rocky downhill section , you better make sure that it's going where you want to because you don't want to have to turn around and go back up it and that can really bite you .

That's a real , that's a real danger out here doing this kind of riding is you get yourself in a situation you can't get out of .

So if you ever start to go down a really bad steep loose rocky hill that you think might be too hard to go back up , think twice .

That's kind of thought .

Number one as I'm heading down here is that I think I'm on the right track .

But if I'm not , for some reason , I'm going to have to come back up this hill and this part here doesn't seem too bad , although it is really steep .

And of course , the camera never shows how steep it is .

But trust me , when I tell you , this is pretty steep right here , I don't really want to have to ride back up this hill , to be honest .

So I'm really counting on being able to get out the apps that I were using to get some information about this road did say that the south side was super easy and it was the north side was a little harder and it is that said they didn't make it sound like the north side was too terribly hard .

But that is an app for four wheel drive vehicles .

And I have noticed that the rating scale is different .

There are a lot of roads that you can do in a four wheel drive that would be immensely difficult on a motorcycle .

And funny enough , there are some four wheel drive roads that I think are easier on a motorcycle .

And it's kind of hard to know the difference until you're out there .

Some four wheel drive roads that are just open , maybe on a trail with embedded rocks .

It's kind of easier on a motorcycle because you can just pick your line and go through the rocks .

Whereas on a truck , you have to go a little slower because you have four wheels and you can't just find that smooth line .

But when it gets really difficulty with rock gardens and rock crawling , even though you're going slow on a four wheel drive vehicle , it might be a lot easier .

This road so far is not bad coming down .

But like I said , man , I do not want to have to go up .

Now .

I'm really counting on the fact that this road goes out because it is pretty bad loose rocky and I really hope that it evens out here , which I , you know , I see a couple of switchbacks , I'm thinking maybe once they get done it'll straighten out and smooth out .

Ah , no shit .

Ok .

Yeah , this is not sterling is not going up this .

Oh , if I knew it was this difficult , I might have just went down the side that I came up .

Huh ?

Ok .

Ok .

At some point I just got to get my Mojo on and get going .

Ok .

Ok .

Well , there you go .

This road is rated as one of the easiest off road routes or passes in this area and I would not want to write up that .

Ok .

So that's good to note that there are side by sides coming up .

Number one , pay attention and number two people use this road .

So if something were to happen to me and I got stranded , I might be able to get a little assistance .

But I'm going to be honest , this is not , you know , this is not what I'm looking for .

You know , it's good to have a little drama and make it through some hard sections .

But that section back there was not what I like to be doing when I'm out by myself having an adventure .

And again , it's one thing going down .

I am not wanting to go back up that other side .

So again , I think this is pretty cool having this helmet camera audio still seems to be rolling , which is good giving you guys a little , a little additional perspective on something that I would not have filmed .

Otherwise I just , you know , when it gets that challenging , I can't take time out to film , I could , but it would just be extremely difficult , time consuming .

Ok .

So the sign is pointing that direction again , we need to make sure we're on the right track .

It says 355 , that's the name of the road .

And it does look like it's a pretty straight shot down into civilization .

So , here we go .

I thought I was going to get the drone back up , but it doesn't look like that's going to happen .

So I still have the controller mounted on the dash , but it is working to hold my phone so that I can look at the map .

Ok .

It's definitely getting rockier .

Oh , this is gonna be tough .

This is a full on rock garden , huh ?

Oh , this is where it is hard to handle a £600 motorcycle going down this kind of stuff , man .

I got to tell you this is a lot more rugged , steep , loose rocky than I imagined that I thought about .

And I think I'm getting pretty close to getting out of here , maybe a mile , two miles and it's a straight shot from here .

But I hope it doesn't get any worse than that .

And that is a classic scenario where I would not want to go back up that I don't think that would even , I hesitate to say I couldn't do it .

But no , no , we're , we're going this way that's the reality of these kind of situations .

I'm going to keep riding .

We'll talk more about this later .

But I still got some miles to do to get out of here .

Yeah .

Yeah .

Wow .

One misplacement of your tire and you're going over and I'm not out here trying to prove that I'm any kind of a bad ass , far , far from it , you know , like I said , had I known a little bit more about what I was getting into , I might not have even done that because my point isn't to show you how good of a rider I am .

It's to have a really good ride , a stress free ride , a safe ride to set a good example .

And I'm out here riding solo and I want to set a good example .

You know , it would be a different thing if I was on a 250 dirt bike and I was with another buddy or two , something like that could be a blast .

You could tip over , you could help each other .

You know , even that said , if I was with a few other people on big adventure bikes , it would be a different story because you have that support of your team , that team work , that camaraderie and the ability to encourage each other .

Not to mention just picking up bikes when they inevitably fall , my bike fell one time and it was just a tip over , but I had to pick it up myself .

It wasn't hard .

It's usually not too hard .

The first time , the second time , it was a little harder .

The 3rd and 4th time , get harder .

And by the time I pick it up five or six times I'm getting kind of wiped out .

It's morally discouraging and physically exhausting .

Ok .

I think we are almost out of the woods now .

So , yeah .

Very interesting .

Very good to have you along in my helmet for that little example that you wouldn't have seen otherwise , like I mentioned , I wouldn't film .

I'm just checking to see if my helmet camera is still running .

Sometimes I glance in the mirror and see if the red light is on .

Um Yeah , my point is is that it definitely takes a lot of a lot of mental brain power to film through situations like that .

And the last thing I'm going to do is worry about setting up the camera on the tripod or getting the drone out and trying to film something like that .

It could be done , but it's more work than I want to do for a little reward and lots of headache and risk .

So the go pro seemed to work pretty good in that scenario .

Yeah .

In the home stretch baby , I can smell the bacon and eggs down in Breckenridge waiting for me .

Second cup of coffee .

It is going to be good .

This little adventure turned into an adventure .

I'm going to sign off from the road .

Rest assured that I made it out of this one and I will be back very soon with another video from Colorado as I continue this fun kind of crazy little adventure .