Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127855
.RIDE By Mark Hoyer Photos by Kinney Jones he staccato pop of a barel y muffled big twin reverber ated off the picturesqu e reddish-brown stone walls of Zio n Na tiona l Park's breathtaking rock formations. Motoring down the road toward u s wa s a m an on a full y custo mized Harley -D avid son . It w as tough to tell what m odel he'd started w ith . What h e en ded up with w as a kicked-out fronl end, very lowered suspension , custom yellow-and -blue paint, chr om e, dr ag bars fo rcing an incredibly lon g rea ch from the almost non existent seat, a bobbed rear fend er made all the more dain ty-looking by a huge, 200mm J wide rear tire (all the custom rage these_ d ays ), and a fue l tank that look ed to hold all of three quarts. The racket wa s unbelievable. As he rod e by, he wa ved hi. arm in the air, turned his m irror-shaded eyes and ba ndana-shod head toward us, and yelled, " It doesn' t get any better th an this!" Yes, actually, it does. It ge ts a lot better. Try stereo, my friend. Ergonomics. Cruise control. Range. Storage. Comfort. T A s far as we were concerned, our :-. CJ ..0 S CJ ..... 0... CJ r.f) 24 gathering o f fu ll -r ig tou r er s w as it. Maybe his truck and trailer were tu cked away on the s ide of the road somewhere outS'ide the park bounda ry - in which case, ma ybe he really was experiencing so me kind o f disco mfort-induced epiphany. Or ma ybe the happy ps ycho actually rode here from somewhere, in which case he was definitely ex periencing some kind of discomfort-induced epiphany. If he did come from far away, he co u ld hav e made better use o f hi s obvious bu dget. For the mone y he probably s p e nt, he co u ld have chosen ·BMW·s KllOOLT o r Rll O ORT Harley, David son 's Ultra' Classic, Honda's Gol d Wing or Kawasaki' s Voyager XU: big bikes for big miles ana big scenery. Just what th e doctor ordered for a gang of overworked, und erpaid motojoum os in need of som e serious re laxment . We came from Los Angeles, with eat ing miles in mind, via Jerome and Sedona in cen tral Arizona, before we arrived in southe rn Utah' s Zion National Park. In ge tting th e re, we ra n th e ever-love ly Interstate 40 past Kingman in wes tern"A rizo na, then opted for D and Bvminus w ads wh enever practical > and e v en w he n impractical - for ou r a fternoon-and -in to -n igh ttime trip into ' Je rome, a quain t litt le fo rme r m in in g, town perched on a hillside just this side of Sedona on the twisty an d treacherous Alt 89. If we'd known just how treacherou s it was (lots of sheer drops and steel guardrails), we probably wo uldn't have been goi ng quit e as fast as w e w ere in th e dar kness. We ded icated the second da y to photos, after drafting a mysterio us te st passen ger (k no w n on ly as "Clarkdale Liz" ) wh o also happened to be wai ting on our table in the excellent Jerom e Gra nd Hotel restaurant. Ku do s to her mom for having the cou rag e (or being nuts eno ugh) to send her daughte r o ff w it h a ga ng o f sc rubby biker trash for the da y. We racked up a signi fican t number o f mi les going back and forth over the local i500-foot mountains above Jerom e for the Bake of more rid in g a n d p ho tos, th ou gh a t a sl ig htly slower pace than we had been maintaining the night befo re, givi ng our passen ger plenty of second-seat time - and the occasiona l fright - in the process.' After another delici ou s brea kfa st at th e h otel , w e set o u t for Kanab via Flagsta ff and th e 89 north throu gh the Paint ed Desert, past Echo Cliffs (which