It's on!  I had to postpone it last year, but this year we're going.  It'll be about a 3,000 mile round trip from Spokane to Colorado and back.  We'll be gone nine days and that gives us lots of time for side trips and just making it up as we go.  And hey, the band is back together!:  my brother Dave, Bill Motsenbocker, Tim Pontius, and me.  That's the confirmed list.  Possible additions are my brother-in-law Jay Moen and great friend Grant Collins.  It'll depend on their availability which won't really be known for a couple months.

Dave and I put the route together by just listing some cool places we'd like to visit, then stringing them together in a route.  The destination was always the Colorado Rockies.  We'll head first to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in southeastern Montana, then continue that direction until we get to Devil's Tower.  Ever since watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" I've always wanted to visit.  Next, since it's so close, we'll ride over to Mt. Rushmore.  I don't want to insult anyone from Wyoming, but the east side of the state doesn't have much for us, so we'll zip down to Colorado as quick as we can after Mt. Rushmore.  That's where the fun really begins - Loveland Pass, Mt. Evans, Estes Park to Granby, Leadville, Aspen, and more.  We'll be there for three days exploring some of the best riding and scenery in the nation.  I have a general route written down, but really we'll be deciding from day to day where we'll go.  I originally only had two days there, but we've decided to make it nine days total, so we have an extra day to explore.  After that we'll make our way north to the Tetons in western Wyoming, west into southern Idaho which is familiar territory for us and back home.  Click this link if you want to see a general Google map of the route.

We'll be camping the whole way and mostly eating at the campsites.  There's something about camping and sitting by a fire talking about the day that puts a nice cover on a great day of riding.  No computers, nothing geeky - just bikes and lots of riding.  That's my idea of a great time!  I'm going to try and do some filming on this trip and put together a bit of a travelogue when I'm done so I have a fun record of the trip and so that my wife can see what the trip was like.  I plan on buying a GoPro camera to allow lots of video while riding.  I'll also have a normal handheld camcorder as well as a little digital camera for taking stills.  I'm no film producer, but I have a daughter that knows how to edit and she can help me put this together in decent form.

Until then, I have to keep working and get the large project at work done and released on time later this spring.  That'll make the trip even sweeter - a hard fought battle getting our application finished well and ready for our customers, then a bit later, a nice long motorcycle trip to reward myself for our team getting it done.  No matter what you do for a living, when you've worked hard and accomplished something worthwhile at your job, it makes a vacation feel just that much better.