The Top 5 US roads

I recently read a post on a the American Motorcyclist Association website about which roads in the US had been voted as the top biking roads in the US.

Here are the top five. I am very lucky to have ridden some of them.

Number 1 – The Beartooth Pass.

On the Wyoming / Montana border, this is US Highway 212 which runs 69 miles between Red Lodge in Wyoming and Cooke City in Montana. Rising up to 10,947 feet / 3,337 metres, the road climbs and falls quickly. Even though I rode the Beartooth Pass in August, it was cold and very windy on the top of the mountains, so careful riding was a must. Snow was still on the ground and the temperature had plummeted thanks to the strong winds. The term windchill factor takes on a whole new meaning when you are exposed to the elements on top of a mountain.

Occasionally you hear people say they are “feeling on top of the world.” On Beartooth Pass, I truly felt it was – as the overall impression when looking down from a mountain upon other tall mountains is – quite literally, like being on top of the world. It is a remarkable feeling to stand and gaze out over so much land. The road surface was in tip-top condition and the overall feeling of riding the road was simple – wow. Just wow.

No wonder it was voted as number 1.



Number 2 – The Blue Ridge Parkway

I haven’t ridden this road yet, but it is very close to the top of my list of those I want to do. The road is 469 miles / 755 kilometres long, mainly along the Blue Ridge mountain chain. The road connects the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. Its construction started in 1936 and took 52 years to complete. Those who have ridden it tell me the scenery is wonderful and the bends sweeping. The parkway is often closed from November to April due to the harsh weather.



Number 3 – The Tail of the Dragon

Photo by Tim Vines

From the longest road in the top five to the shortest. At just 11 miles long, you might not think this is much of a road, until you find out it has 318 curves in that short distance. The road is a section of the U.S. Route 129 along the Tennessee - North Carolina Border. Notorious in the biking community, this is one of those roads that people travel a long way to ride. I look forward to riding it one day.



Number 4 – The Million Dollar Highway

Part of US 550, the Million Dollar Highway runs between Silverton and Ouray in Colorado. As it cuts its way through the San Juan Mountains, the 23 mile / 37 kilometre road has many hairpin bends, narrow lanes and steep unprotected drop-offs, which is precisely why it is so exhilarating. There are very few guardrails. Cresting at 11,075 feet / 3,376 metres on Red Mountain Pass, the most exciting part of the road is at its Ouray end, where it passes through Uncompahgre Gorge and the roadway clings to the side of the mountain. One slip here and it would be curtains for sure. The scenery and views are dramatic, which adds to the effect and, of course, the thrill of this exciting road. My video of riding this road gives just a taste of what the road is like.







Number 5 - California State Route 1

I have ridden the main part of this road, between San Francisco and Los Angeles, twice. It is truly spectacular.

Sometimes foggy, this road runs alongside the Pacific Ocean, right next to beautiful beaches and the stunning rocky coast.

 Very remote in places, some of the best parts are Big Sur, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Carmel, Santa Barbara and many others. With so much to see and take in, this has to be one of the most relaxing, chilled out roads anyone could ever ride. The ocean has some of the best surfing waves in the world and there are plenty of opportunities to see surfers in action alongside the road.

These are some of the best roads in the USA.  Have you ridden any of these and what did you think of them?

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2011 Moto-Blogging Awards. And the award goes to....

Another blogging year is coming to an end.

I have enjoyed reading many people’s motorcycle related blogs again this year, so much in fact that that I have decided announce the 'Flies in your Teeth 2011 Moto-Blogging Awards'. Sort of like the Oscars for Motorcycle Blogging, but not really.

These are just for fun, carry no prizes and the judge’s decision is final !!!!

If you are not mentioned, then that is probably due to my bad memory.

So, in no particular order......



The blogger that made me laugh the most in 2011. Jack Riepe of Twisted Roads. Keep it up Jack.



With all of his food pictures, the blogger that constantly made me feel hungry, Bobskoot of Wet Coast Scootin, with a special mention also for Lucky on his Pizza Crusade



The person with the coolest blog name. Brady from Behind Bars.



The blogger that gets more exercise than most and makes me feel guilty for not doing more myself, is bluekat, who writes about bluekat’s journeys be they by bicycle, kayak, on foot, or on a motorcycle.



The blogger that makes me feel cold, due to his Polar Bear rides. Chris (where's that snow?) Luhman of Everyday Riding. Brrrrr!



The bloggers that are nearly always on the road. Donna and Stu, who are hauling it around while they take a 5th.



For posting pictures that make me want to travel half way around the world to ride on another island. Roger, aka Raftnn, who has All Things Rogey.



A blogger that doesn't post often, but when he does, I always read it. The Arizona Harley Dude.



The blogger that has finally seen sense and bought a Harley-Davidson. And she takes great photos too.... . Sonja. who has (re-)discovered motorcycle riding.



The blogger that I want to meet on the salt. George was originally from Mozambique, now living in the USA, who writes about Riding the USA.



Canajun, who is the Ottawan blogger On Two Wheels that has a happy humidor.



My favourite blogging couple. Troubadour and Trobairitz



The blogger that I so want to pass his IAM qualification. Geoff, who shares his confessions here.



The blogger with a great balance between ride reports and life in general, motoroz who isn't just an ordinary biker.



The blogger that does the best interviews. Stephanie, the Iowa Harley Girl.



The top sidecar blogger (and the blogger with the most names). Dom/Redleg/Charlie6. of Redlegs rides.



The most technical blogger and Chapter photographer. Axel, of Road King UK.



The blogger that took the most inspiring trip in 2011. V-Star Lady. What a great adventure she had, riding her V-Star.



The terrific writer that often makes me sit back and think about what he has written, FLHX Dave from the Road Grits Cafe. He also makes great coffee!



The fun-loving brand-loyal blogger. BeemerGirl, who has the Love of a Motorbike.



A new biking blogger that enjoys sharing as he learns. Circle Blue who has Twists and Leanings.



The blogger that moved from a warm place to a cold one, that used to write about exercise, but now mainly writes about riding his BMW, Richard.



The blogger with attitude who says what she thinks. mq01 from over at Ms M's Place.



The blogger that I learn from, irondad, The Intrepid Commuter.



The blogger with the coolest custom motorcycles. Ian Solley, of 7 Ages Custom Motorcycles.



The blogger with the most impressive beard, WooleyBugger of Wooley’s Rants and Sonic Cleaning.



A very keen moto-blogger, who writes about riding her Scooter experiences, Princess Scooterpie.



The blogger that disappeared for a while and then came back. Baron.



The blogger that is on the mend. Jimbo, who will hopefully soon be back to Premeditated Scootin'.



The blogger with many years of biking experience, Doug, who has spent more than Forty Years On Two Wheels.



Plus of course, all other bloggers that I have failed to mention.



and finally, my favourite blogger that doesn't even write a blog. Mrs France.



Thank you all for your terrific blogs and I look forward to reading more about you and your adventures in the year ahead.

It only leaves me to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a terrific New Year. I hope you all have many great rides in 2012.

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For those that don't know how do it manually

I recently changed the name of my blog and some of you have noticed the link from you own blog back to mine is still called USA Tour on a Harley-Davidson.

I assumed that these links back to my blog would automatically update to the new name somehow, but they don’t. You have to change it manually on your own blog and I have noticed that many of you have already done that in your own blog so the link to mine reads correctly. Thank you for doing that.

If you don’t know how to do make this change manually, here is how you do that, assuming you are using Blogger....

You know where you add a new link to your blog list? That is also where you change the name of a blog on your list

It is in your dashboard (which is also called Design, depending on which version of Blogger you are using), go there and click on ‘Layout’ (which again depending on the version of Blogger, may be in a drop-down menu) and this takes you to how you have laid out the various elements of your own blog page. On that layout page, find whatever you have called your blog list – some may call it, ‘The Blogs I Read’, ‘Blogs of Interest’, or something like that. Click on edit and that takes you to where you add new blogs to that list.

Next to the names of the existing blogs, you can edit or remove the existing blogs on your list. Find ‘USA Tour on a Harley-Davidson’ and rename it to “Flies in your Teeth”. Then click on Save to close the box and then it’s all done.

Many have already done this, so try it. I will be checking up on you to see if you have successfully changed the name!

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Time for a Change

When I started this blog, I gave it a very specific name to reflect the tour of the USA I was about to undertake. Now that that trip is well and truly over, the title long longer fits, so it is time for a change.

I hope you like the new title.

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100,000 and counting!

Wow.

I just noticed the counter on my blog has clicked over the 100,000 hits mark.

When I started this little blog I wondered if anyone would read my stuff.  It is just about a guy travelling on a motorbike.

Many thanks to all of you that have taken to time to look at my blog and sometimes write a comment about it.  Without my readers, it wouldn’t be worthwhile doing, so a BIG THANKS to you!

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Blogging from an iPad

I have discovered that yes, it is possible to write and publish posts on a blog using just an iPad plus a camera.  The post below this one (about Vincent's and Velocette's) was created entirely on my new iPad 2, but I have to say it wasn't easy as I had to do many things considerably differently than with a normal blog post from a computer and had to find a few work-arounds.

The good news is it does mean that blogging while on the road is possible if you want to leave your laptop behind. It would be a mistake however to think it is easy, because it it not.

I use Blogger so what I have written here won't apply to all systems, but for those of you thinking about getting and using an iPad for use with Blogger, then this post is for you.

The first thing you need to think about is how to get the photos from your camera onto the iPad.  There are no standard cable connections on the iPad, so you need to buy an iPad camera connection kit.

The two parts of the connection kit allow you to either connect your cameras USB cable or SD card to the iPad. I used the SD card connector and it was easy to move the pictures I wanted from the SD card onto the iPad.

Easy so far, but it  was about to become more challenging.

There are two ways of using the Blogger software on an iPad. First by using the iPad's web browser, Safari, to connect to Blogger.  Or second, to use the Blogger iPhone App.  Your will note I have said iPhone App for as yet there is no Blogger iPad App.

First I tried the main version of Blogger using Safari on my iPad and it worked reasonably well, but I couldn't work out how to incorporate pictures.  On a laptop I would simply browse the relevant drive and select the picture I want.  But an iPad doesn't work like that so another solution is needed.  I had seen that within Blogger you can link to a picture already on the web, usually on a photo uploading site like Photobucket, Picasa or Flickr.  I already had a Picasa account, so I tried that.  I couldn't get it to work and in fact I couldn't get anything to work to import my pictures into the normal web version of Blogger using Safari on my iPad. That was really dissapointing.

So, I turned to the iPhone App version of Blogger to see how well that works.  For uploading pictures, it was easy.  Sort of.  The really good thing is you can upload them directly from your iPad without the need to go through a third-party photo uploading site.  The bad news is the pictures are added to the bottom of your post but you cannot see them until you publish, which is completely ridiculous. So, I could easily upload the pictures using the Blogger iPhone App, but couldn't see them....

Okay, there is a way around that.  I imported each of my photos I wanted to use in the post I was creating into Blogger using the iPhone App, saved that as a draft, shut down the iPhone version of Blooger, then switched back to Safari and re-opened the web version of Blogger.  Opening the previously created draft, I was then able to incorporate my words and the post was nearly ready to publish.  There was however one further problem - I could now see the photos I had previously included, but those photos were not in the correct position (all at the bottom of the post) and were all too large as when I imported them via the iPhone App, there was no facility to sort them into order, or to resize them.  I therefore had to move the pictures around and resize them, but only by using HTML code which I am not very good at, but learning fast.  It is not possible to use the 'compose' view in Blogger on an iPad like it is when using Blogger online a normal computer, so HTML is the only option you have.

It was no doubt a challenge to create the post on the iPad, but at least I worked out it could be done.  It took way longer than it would normally have taken me, but it would probably become much quicker as I got more used to doing it.

What is really needed is a much better App, written specifically for iPad, that includes all the features available to normal computer users.  I can't believe that will take long to be launched and in the meantime, I will continue to use the work-arounds needed to solve the current problems.

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To Flickr or not to Flickr?

I seem to have been very busy recently doing, well, a wide variety of things, mainly un-related to motorcycling. Sure, I have been travelling a little, but without a motorbike. I have been helping one of my sons move into a flat and helping another with his ideas for starting a bicycle business. I have been writing my book again and my third son has been helping me with creating the maps for that. My brother and his wife have been over to see us from Switzerland, so there have been some family get-togethers. I have recently booked two motorcycle trips for next year, one predictable and the other not (which will be the subject of a separate post).

Jackie and I were meant to go to Germany to meet up with some previous work colleagues, but that had to be cancelled due to a death in my family – an Aunt that I was quite close to.

I had put off looking at and dealing with a substantial amount of paperwork and I just had to tackle it. Boring, essential, but way too time-consuming for me.

All of these things has meant I have been neglecting my own and others’ blogs recently, but I intend to begin to put that right, starting now.

I would like to ask for some advice please. Does anyone out there reading this use an iPad for their blogging?

Due to no longer wanting to carry a laptop with me on my bike trips, I have recently succumbed to the delights (jury is still out on that one) of an iPad and I am testing how to use it for my blog posts when on the road. I can see how to do most of this, but I am struggling with one aspect and it is that I want some advice on. I use Blogger and I am not going to change from that – it works for me and I follow the adage ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The trouble is when adding pictures to a blog post, you have to specify the location of the picture file on your computer and well, as far as I can see, you cannot do that on an iPad. So, I have looked at the other way of adding a photo to your post and that is by linking to a picture already on the web. I have never used this method, but it looks as if I will need to do so. I believe I will need to upload my photos first to something like Flickr and then link to them there.

Okay, here is the advice part....

Have I got it right about uploading to something like Flickr and then linking to the photo on there?

If I have, is Flickr the best system to use, or do my wise readers have a better solution? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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