RevZilla gift card giveaway winner

                                                     The winning shot is Bones!

 

                                              I want to thank all you guys for sending in your great bike pictures!!






So RevZilla  got a hold of me a few days ago and said they would love to do a gift card giveaway with a little photo contest right here. Click the RevZilla link and check them out. Personally I ordered a Bluetooth headset from them recently and guess what it showed up!! I never had to ask if it was shipped and I can't say that about the other on-line supply shops. The coolest part of the site is the ADV section. Here's a little link to there new Bell helmets. Anyone want to by me a retro Bell lid???

OK so you will have one week to get your best photo sent to me. The simply rules are this: your bike in any setting but it has to be your picture!! You being in the picture will add bonus points with the five judges. No Photoshopped pictures!!! Please one photo per entry. The winner will be picked 8/31/11.


 I will post the photos up on the blog in the order they come in and only use you first name and a location of the photo. Please send to Fattkaw@hotmail.com and include ALL your info if you want the gift card. If you sent me a picture and I have yet to post it please let me know. One guy I know is having issues.  I also use thie E-mail --- klrfattkaw@yahoo.com 
Good luck!!

                                       Mike and Jill at Red Mountain Pass, Colorado. Thanks mike!

 

                                                Micah, south on 550 out of Ouray, CO.
                                      
                                            

                                                                 Mike in southern MN.

                                          Andrew (taking picture) and Joe (pictured) with our KLRs near Yellow
                                                     Mountain north of Highlands, NC.

                                                        Glenn at the Grand Isle out on Rt-1

                                               Dennis at Theodore Roosevelt National Park N. Dakota


 

get the trucks off of RT-129 Deals Gap

The terrain and layout of US Highway 129 is mountainous with multiple sharp curves, many outside the limits of tractor trailer vehicles' maneuverability. Because of this, the driver of the tractor trailer must compensate for the curves by utilizing the lane of oncoming traffic. This action often times results in vehicles being ran off the road, wrecks, and fatalities. Such a fatality occurred on Wednesday, August 3, 2011. Dwight "Ike" Woodard, a seasoned, experienced, and habitually safe rider, was enjoying a ride with friends on his Triumph Speed Triple. According to law enforcement reports, a tractor trailer rig attempting to utilize US Highway 129 failed to maintain it's lane in a series of curves. The tractor trailer rig crossed into Ike's lane of travel, almost taking up his whole lane. Ike's motorcycle was ran over, but he survived. However, Ike lost his life en route to the hospital due to complications from the wreck.
http://www.change.org/petitions/ikes-law-restrict-use-of-us-highway-129-to-non-commercial-vehicles

Stick in the mud but not too stuck

So I know I posted of a trip heading out to Colorado but once again it turned into a no-go. The reason is pure and simple that the wife is pregnant with our fourth child and she is uncomfortable with nerve pain in her back. Plus she would be chasing our three other kids around and I just couldn't do it. Of course I couldn't be really upset since I got to do the NC gap trip with the Ninja. 
I already took the week off so it would be a week of day trips but nothing really new or great. My son and I took off for one night at the Johnson Sauk trail that is about five miles north of kewanne Illinois. It really is in the middle of nowhere.

                     Just a little stop at my favorite breakfast place but too late for that but a headset                                         adjustment on Garrett's helmet because the ear pieces were hurting his head. 

          I have to say the campgrounds were beautiful with fifty year planted pines. No one was there and the only sounds was the wind pushing through the pine tops and really took a little time to get used to it. I kept looking up for airplanes!! :)

                                                   Garrett's crossing of the Delaware.

               Cool barn but all I could think of was brain surgery at the start of the nineteen hundreds. You know that had to of not gone too well back then.

      The last thing I was happy for Garrett to of seen was this crop duster buzzing us. These guys are nuts as you can see how low he is while he shoots just over the power lines.

Also I just want to say sorry to my friend Jim for putting the skids on the CO trip...

The Grotto Run

 A few weeks earlier the wife and I were back in Galena IL staying at Chestnut Mountain Lodge. It's kind of our place, the place we go to escape home and our three kids. That's not bad to say but everyone needs to run away from time to time. So anyhow I picked a tourist pamphlet and they had a picture of the Grotto and the story behind it. Unfortunately we had no time to head up north to see it but now I had free Sunday..

Just a little breakfast for Jim and I before a three hour ride west to get to roads that aren't straight and that requires a lot of coffee to get there. :)

 The banks of the mighty Mississippi River with Jim

 ME....

 These kids were just hanging out on the boat launch but they were having a good time playing with crayfish. All Jim and I thought about how cool it was seeing kids doing this. My  kids only seem to care about gaming and not getting dirty or sweaty.  

 

The Chestnut Mountain Lodge runs Alpine slides in the summer and is a ski resort in winter. This was the first taste of speed I got when I was a kid here back in 1984ish. Me and my Dad would race all day and one of us would always get burned from the track. Even these days I still push it and get burned.

This was back in 2009 and it feels just like road rash and showering with rash will make you scream. 

 Unfortunately or maybe not Jim and I grabbed bummer sleds and it was super slow and he didn't get the true feeling of how fun it is. 

 Next stop was the Dickyville Grotto in Wisconsin. Grotto info~~~~~~

 Here's Jim moon walking across the Grotto entrance! OK, he's not..

 It reminds me of something that should be around the Day of the Dead down in Mexico. Up close it's just loaded with color.

Looking at the whole place as art is the only reason I came and it was really interesting. Rolling back to my house at 8:30 at  night and 420 mile for the day felt great. We found some great roads that I didn't even knew live in northwest IL. Thats one big thing the GPS can do, You can ad-lib your route and something a lot of anti-GPS bikers will never know what they are missing out on.