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My first tour on my old 79 1000 was the type of thing that stays with you. You remember all the sights ,the smells...the feeling.
I had maybe three days to travel, I had no plan, just the simple things, a sleeping bag,bed-roll,nap-sack of non-foods(chips,cheetos, junk-food)
I was just going to head to the coast to see what would happen, maybe turn south if I felt like it and camp wherever I felt like. Here in Oregon you merely turn off-road a little and your in the great outdoors.
It was a rare warm summer on the coast and after a whole day of running all up and down the spit on the south side of the mouth to the Columbia River, I started to scout out places where I could "camp".......well the whole place was labelled with large signs "NO CAMPING"..........about every 200 feet......Yeah, OK. Right.
Cops were actually patrolling up and down the two miles or so of the area just itching to find someone to bust trying to settle in.
After one patrol car passed & was out of sight, I turned the big 1000 onto a sand road.....looking like a dune-buggy road, I started motoring away off the road. the five-hundred plus pounds digging the tires into the soft sand just required a little more throttle to keep it going just fine. The path started ascending at an angle I surely didn't want to navigate so I stopped to see if I was off the road enough to find a place to hide the bike from the authorities "looking for me. I found a scraggly looking thing that would function fine as some sort of camouflage some dozen feet or so off my path. I parked her looking all around to see if the location was suitable being careful that the kickstand wouldn't dig in & topple my machine.
The path seemed to change from a 4X4 type path into a ATV type path that ascended in places almost vertical.
With sleeping-bag in hand walking up the path in the quickly fading light I found where the path crested the dunes. I flipped out the bag unrolling it on one of the "tire tracks". As the light faded I wondered aloud what might occur had a vehicle come roaring up one side or the other while I slept there......too steep this one section, I thought ......probably an abandoned road......With the lights of Astoria at the head of my sleeping bag and the ocean crashing at my feet on the other end I fell asleep wondering what the next days ride would bring.
Rick..............
I had maybe three days to travel, I had no plan, just the simple things, a sleeping bag,bed-roll,nap-sack of non-foods(chips,cheetos, junk-food)
I was just going to head to the coast to see what would happen, maybe turn south if I felt like it and camp wherever I felt like. Here in Oregon you merely turn off-road a little and your in the great outdoors.
It was a rare warm summer on the coast and after a whole day of running all up and down the spit on the south side of the mouth to the Columbia River, I started to scout out places where I could "camp".......well the whole place was labelled with large signs "NO CAMPING"..........about every 200 feet......Yeah, OK. Right.
Cops were actually patrolling up and down the two miles or so of the area just itching to find someone to bust trying to settle in.
After one patrol car passed & was out of sight, I turned the big 1000 onto a sand road.....looking like a dune-buggy road, I started motoring away off the road. the five-hundred plus pounds digging the tires into the soft sand just required a little more throttle to keep it going just fine. The path started ascending at an angle I surely didn't want to navigate so I stopped to see if I was off the road enough to find a place to hide the bike from the authorities "looking for me. I found a scraggly looking thing that would function fine as some sort of camouflage some dozen feet or so off my path. I parked her looking all around to see if the location was suitable being careful that the kickstand wouldn't dig in & topple my machine.
The path seemed to change from a 4X4 type path into a ATV type path that ascended in places almost vertical.
With sleeping-bag in hand walking up the path in the quickly fading light I found where the path crested the dunes. I flipped out the bag unrolling it on one of the "tire tracks". As the light faded I wondered aloud what might occur had a vehicle come roaring up one side or the other while I slept there......too steep this one section, I thought ......probably an abandoned road......With the lights of Astoria at the head of my sleeping bag and the ocean crashing at my feet on the other end I fell asleep wondering what the next days ride would bring.
Rick..............