Burma Road South Central Alaska

April 29th it was decided to do a short ride without doing a lot of highway riding I had suggested going down Burma road. Going in from Big Lake it is a real neat twisty route and a lot of sport bikes ride the paved part just for that. We how ever are going to extend the ride to a primitive back road. The orange underlined items are short clips.

Burma Road 

A friend of mine put this film together and since he has a lot better skills then I have, I asked for permission to add to my blog, Thanks Noah

The Route via Garmin

This is a snapshot of the total ride that I uploaded from my Garmin
It's neat because you can zoom in and move around on the map


Part Of The Ride Itself

A idea of what the ride was about

Meet up at Big Lake exit from Parks highway

Getting ready to hit the road

The ride is on


Water Hazard

Near the Port at Point Mackenzie 

Across the water is Anchorage

I thought this was a neat picture with a military plane prepping to land at Joint Base Elmandorf 

The Bikes

The Riders



Before we called it a day I took the guys to a place I've been going for about 4 years.
A trail through the woods will take you to a point where you can get right up to Cook Inlet

But the trail down was all chewed up by pickup trucks, the wheel spacing on the side car is a little narrow to follow the same tracks. So I didn't drive down.

Beautiful Location

The View Anchorage in the distance

And then it was time to get out and get a burger

But First



Getting a little stuck

Getting out of the mud bog





Four Years Ago Same Road By Myself

180 Degree turn around in a 10th of a second

Talkeetna Alaska 2014

On April 5, 2013 my friend Bostjan (aroundtheworld.si) and I took a ride up to Talkeetna Alaska.
We were the first bikes of the season.

A week or two later went up with a friend of mine from NuttyNu his screen name of
ADV rider

A couple of weeks ago a friend that I had met on ADV Rider got together to ride up to Talkeetna.
It was pretty warm and I decided to take my muffs off my handle bars. Jeff mentioned that he hadn't installed his heated hand grips yet, I have them on my bike.  So we gave it a go, well the temperature during the ride was 34deg F our speed was 60-65 MPH. The temperature across our bodies was -8Deg. My heated grips were not doing the job Lol. We only got half way

I put the muffs back on, Jeff installed his heated grips And we decided to do it again.

4-15-14

Going to Talkeetna

We picked up a new partner

Noah with his Ducati Monster

Jeff with his Kawasaki Versys

Me and the Raven

Ducati Monster With TKC 80's

Jeff with his Kawasaki Versys 

The Raven

Notice the muffs on my bike made a big difference

First Bikes in Town this year 2014

Welcome to Talkeetna Sign

Ice Cream at Millers Market

Having Fun In Talkeetna

Stay Tuned for next installment

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Sharon found a new friend

We had a new friend show up at our house yesterday

Sharon of course thought it would be a good idea to give her a apple

You can see the hackles are up and the ears are down, you can't see the hair on the back of Sharon's neck

Nerves are a little tense on both sides

But everything seems to have calmed down at this point

Ended up spending the whole day

Looking in the front door Sharon told it to leave 

March 1 2014 in Alaska hard to believe

The Raven
Our Sidecar Rig

This past saturday was absolutely beautiful in south central Alaska. I decided to take the Raven for a quick ride up to Hatcher Pass. The temperature in the valley was 41-43 deg F up at the top it was 36-38F

Parking lot at the Hatcher Pass State Park.
Family's come up here to do cross country skiing and sledding
Pretty clear ground

Views on the way down

The Chugach Range with Palmer Alaska under the fog

More views on way down

New approach to the HatcherPass that people visiting from Anchorage. Its a great road allowing folks to avoid local traffic

Click on the item below it is a file from my Garmin GPS

I'm using the Garmin Base Camp  and was curious if I could use it in this format and have it  be functional. If it works works well I'll use it on our trip down the PCH Pacific Coast Highway 

Trip made on March 1 2014

Video Sun Glasses My new Toy

Went out yesterday the sun was shining and I wanted to try out a new set of video sunglass that I ordered. But first I wanted to get some pictures

Palmer Alaska State Fair Grounds

What a day clear no wind  34deg

A classic picture of downtown Palmer

(And my sidecar unit Raven)

A close friend of mine picked up a set of video sunglasses

And let me take them for a trial run, I typically ride my bike with a full face helmet.

But the lens on the glasses is a kind of wide angle and I was getting to much of the inside of the helmet. That I found distracting, but without the helmet on it turned out pretty good 

What is neat about the software in the glasses it automatically breaks the video to 10 min. segments

which is great because I like to cut the videos' down to 5 or 6min. Because it gets boring

Below are the two 10 min sections 

Enjoy and I would appreciate any feedback

Trip Planning for 2014

In January we started making our trip plans for 2014

Last year we went to Prince of Wales Island Alaska via the Alaska Ferry and had a great time. 

It was our first experience taking the ferry that long of a distance, we've taken the ferry before, going on trips to Juneau and Skagway and had good experiences. So we thought we would do it again this year. But my thought was to start the trip from Whittier Alaska (which is right outside of Anchorage) and go directly to Bellingham Washington. Well that for us is a little easier said then done. There is only one boat that is ocean rated and does the trip between Bellingham, Whittier, and then goes out to Dutch Harbor Alaska. A total of 3,500 miles. I was able to secure reservations that covered Sharon and myself and our bike/sidecar unit. They wanted the payment completed by the end of the month. In the meantime a friend of ours from Chicago, Julie, called and said that she and a friend were thinking of coming up for a visit, and they were planning on coming up the inside passage via the Alaska Marine Highway, leaving Bellingham and coming to Whittier.

I let my reservation expire and tried to set it up again. Now that I had some better dates locked in and with guests coming up to see us. I tried to make the same reservations again. Well nothing was available that would get us and the sidecar unit on the boat between Whittier and Bellingham Washington.

The Alaska Marine Highway System between Bellingham and Dutch Harbor all 3,500 miles

My next option was getting a reservation between  Haines Alaska and Bellingham Washington

I was just trying to avoid driving to Haines, but the 700+mi are really beautiful and I saved a little over $1,000.00 so everything worked out. 

We will be traveling on the MV. Columbia, the ride to  Bellingham is four days  

Our plan is to camp out during our trip to Washington either in the recliner room or in the solarium. We did this last year  and found it suited our purposes.  

Additionally there are showers available on board.

Recliner Lounge

Solarium Deck

Both areas have lockers available for rent and we usually use them so we don't have pack a lot of stuff around with us on the boat.

Our plan is to ride the Pacific Coast Highway starting in Washington , Oregon and finally into California and then back to Alaska. 

We're planning on camping the whole trip. In fact there is a whole community that supports the motorcycle traveler. I've got a fellow that we're staying with the first evening after getting in to Washington state. I've already contacted him and gave him the dates that I'm going to be down there

This is what he had posted on the site

I have a two bedroom home with two acres of tent space. The home is empty. Has fridge, washer, dryer, stove whatever you need. Large shop with enough tools and welders to build a bike if need be. 

Trailer for rescue.   

Give me a shout as to when you might want to hang for a day or a week. 

Below is the tent space map and I'm listed on it myself. Over the last three years Ive had a couple travelers stay with me

More to follow