Colorado Hwy 69 To Westcliff

Colorado has been a bear this winter, snowing one day and sunny the next. Yesterday it was sunny - however not exactly warm in places. I decided to go for a ride to sort out my gear before I head out for the TexasMac ride in 3 weeks. Sort out my new video camera set up, and my new autocom sound system. Both were in need of refining and testing. I took of for Texas Creek up hwy 50 and had some lunch at the café (see my blog last month) good lunch. I was alone today and so I like I always am when I am alone I ride aimlessly, just going where ever on a whim. Today I decided to head to Westcliff and stop at a rather well photographed spot on hwy 69 - as seen from the photo above. This little section of road has appeared on the cover of many a motorcycle magazine. I just happen to know where it is so I took my own shot.

Right off the bat my autocom is set up wrong, its always mic on, so I stop and fiddle with the vox control till it only comes on when I talk loudly. I can tell I wont be singing along to the latest songs cause - well I can here myself know and boy it wont go over the radio too well!~ HEH I tried the radar detector with it and it was just too noisy, I ordered a ground loop filter and a power smother from the Electrical Connection to hopefully get radar warnings without a whole lot of noisy interference. I turned it on in the areas I know are patrolled and turned it off the rest of the time. I got home and dug out a bit more Styrofoam from the ear wells cause the speakers just irritated my ears to no end, now the are snug but comfortable. I KNOW don't do that, but it wasn't much it was just a bit to make the speakers not stick out so far.

Now on to the new video cameras setup, I added some more ram mount balls for more camera positions and tried out one from off my Givi rack its stable and it gives a right hand forward or backward shot from the rear of the bike. The new Sony hc-30 (new to me) camera with its lanc worked great, turning on the camera when I wanted it to be on and pausing it when it did not, and I rewired my camera switch (dual setup) to work with the new camera. I took some video of me riding sort of quick, well allot quicker than the cages on that road (perhaps I wont say how much)

I stopped at the intersection at Mckenzi Junction to take a swig of water and noticed I have a blown fork seal, oil all over the fork tube. OH well it lasted 3 years and I really need to freshen up the fork oil anyway - so I stopped at the dealership on the way home and stocked up on fork oil and new seals. I guess I have some extra work to do.

NEW VIDEO

:media: The Road To Westcliff Video - this High Resolution video runs about 5 minutes and has a song from the movie soundtrack "Once" hope you like Irish folk! ( I am half Irish / Hispanic)

youtube

The Route

[map=AARTsJqFvJdFZ77MhM8oiJNQs7U6Q7itbQ]http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=2190822805370928413,38.405437,-105.584706&saddr=CO-69+%4038.405437,+-105.584706&daddr=38.144008,-105.324898&mra=mi&mrsp=1,0&sz=12&sll=38.163716,-105.301895&sspn=0.156293,0.374908&ie=UTF8&ll=38.256515,-105.534668&spn=0.624372,1.499634&t=p&z=10[/map]