Harley-Davidson Trip Las Vegas 2010. By PdJ

Sep 25, 2010

Written by Bart de Jong

Read 5705 times

Going to Las Vegas for the 10th time sounds boring but you have to make the best out of it. So Andy Zeiss and me hired some Harley's at our friends from Eagleriders and hit the road on our Low Rider Dyna and Street Glide's. We planned this for a long time and our route to San Barnadino CA was already in our head....but we changed it half an hour before we took off and went the other direction towards Arizona. Riding the Rout 66 is always good so we decided to ride the "66" loop from Kingman to Williams. The weather was in the 100's so even riding with a t-shirt was too hot but you got to wear something. Our "DOT" Biltwell helmets (NOT!) were doing a good job and weren't sweaty at all. The route to Kingman is a long one but for us Europeans its never boring, passing cars on the right hand side is fun for us and even the desert is like heaven for us. The bikes were great and my Stereo was awesome, I never thought I would have a radio on a motorcycle but its an awesome feature.

In Seligman on Route 66 we decided to stay at a Motel for the night and found one right away. Seligman is very very small and all shops/restaurants were closed at 6 PM except for the "Roadkill" Bar. The "You kill it, we Grill it" slogan was very obvious with all those deer/possums/hogs heads on the walls and we went for a Buffalo burger and some "Grande" Buds before Andy said to a guy "you want our attention?!".

WTF I thought, the guy was watching a 49 Charger Football game and annoyed Andy with comments etc but I totally missed all of that and thought Andy was going for a barfight! I never go for fights but this time I was ready to attack the guy if he would hit Andy but it never happened. It was funny though that I missed what was going on and we laughed for a long time.

Only 100 miles it was to the Grand Canyon south rim so we decided to go for it. The Grand Canyon is very nice and we took some pictures before we went to Vegas again. I lost Andy after 2 minutes and he thought I was ahead of him so he hit the road with 95 mls/hour to Kingman. I ride in motorcycle groups for years and we always have a rule to go back to the point

where you lost someone but for Andy this wasn't an option. Calling wasn't an option either while phones don't work at the Grand Canyon so I went to Williams and got connection but couldn't reach Andy at first but after half an hour we had contact and found out he was 100 mls further down the road so I had to catch up 100 miles! But 100 miles is just an hour if you hit the throtle so I was passing cars left and right and the bike was shaking everytime I hit the reflectors in the middle of Interstate 45.

The gas meter on the bike went from Half Full to Empty in 30 miles and I still had to go 15 miles to the gasstation where Andy was waiting. I'm the "out of gas King" of all time so of course I ran out of gas again, luckily just 1 minute from the gasstation so I only had to push a couple of feet. A homeless lady with at sign "I need food" was being with the answer: "And I need GAS!" and filled up the bike with 89 octane gas. After finding Andy at the next gasstation we had a smooth ride to the Hooverdam and saw that the

bridge was finished but not in use yet. Andy used the GoPro camera for a nice ride over the Hooverdam and 30 miles later we were in Las Vegas again for a well deserved beer in the jaccuzi.

This is the best way to make something boring into something exciting, don't go for the "I do that later" but do it while you can, you only live once.

-PDJ