The Switch

I have switched this blog to mostlybymotorcycle.wordpress.com. So go and check it out.

I know this has not been updated for a while but I've been a busy girl and some things just had to slide. So lets see...finished work for the season...applied and received education assistance from Parks Canada....went to Winnipeg to visit the Hudson Bay Company Archives and the Parks Canada Western Canadian Service Centre....got to do some basic conservation on some ceramics from a dig near Jasper....
took some pretty cool pictures...created and published my new photo book....the link is at the bottom of the post...and I finally recieved my first University course and have been working on that. So you see I haven't been siting around on my butt doing nothing.

The Aesthetic ...

2008 in Photographs

By Andrea Jarman

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Okay...Okay

I know it's been a while....Life here has been extremely busy and we are just now getting a chance to update everything. I have put off soooo many things over the summer that it has taken me some time to get the list back into priority.
John and I did another small bike trip in July for my birthday. We did the cascade loop in Washington and the weather was hot and sunny.....until we got over the Cascades and got all that lovely coastal weather. At one point we had to stop because the rain was coming down so hard we couldn't see. There was no place to stop so we had to pull over under a tree at a rest stop. 10 minutes later the sun came out and we continued on to Lisa's house, where we had left the truck and trailer.
In August the weather held up for the most part and when we weren't at work we were on our bikes. We had a family camping trip with John's siblings and nieces and nephews...what a production. Then a couple of weeks later we went on a quad trip with his mom and dad and aunt and uncle for an afternoon. We ended up on the top of a mountain about the middle of Stewart Lake. It was fun....on the way home John and I went through a puddle that turned out to be bottomless and we ended up being soaked from head to toe...good thing we were about 5 mins from the truck.
September was busy as well. I had to finish up things at work for the season and we had several bike events to attend.
The first weekend was the Harley demo ride...fell in love with a 09 Rocker. Then the Vanderhoof Toy Ride and then the PG Ride at the end of the month.
October 1st was my last day of the season and the 4th was the last bike ride for the season. I am going to Winnipeg at the end of the month for some training and just waiting to see what happens next......Stay tuned....
PS Check out the link on the right "My Other Pictures"for more photos.

A Weekend of Firsts

This past weekend John and I attended the 1st Biker Ride for Hospice in Vanderhoof. I guess in the world of Bikers Friday the 13th is also a significant thing, thumbing your nose at the notion that everything will go wrong on Friday the 13th. (In the biker world things going wrong could be even worse. Imagine getting a flat tire on your car....then imagine on two wheels going 110......get the picture) So it was my first Friday the 13th rally.
Then on Saturday there was a show and shine, Bike Olympics and a poker ride. A show and shine is were you shine up your baby and brag about it to all the other proud owners of chrome......I got second place.....but it was my first.
I then participated in two events in the games, the potato grab, and the slow race. In the potato grab, potatoes are placed on the tops of pylons, spaced about 10 feet apart and you have to lean over and grab them, while going slow, without putting your foot down, and operating a clutch.....its a lot harder than it sounds. They I tried it with a passenger....my first....it too is a lot harder than it sounds. Then the slow race ....trying to go as slow as you can without putting your foot down...I almost won.....then I put my foot down......First Bike Olympics.
On to the poker ride.....never played poker or have gone on a poker ride before.....didn't win but it was still fun.......sort of.....It poured and I mean poured and I think somewhere in there it hailed. Now I have ridden in the rain before but not when it was coming down in sheets and never in hail...more firsts. By the time it was over we were completely soaked and ready to go home and take a very hot shower......I would have pictures but the camera got soaked as well.

PS...I noticed that I had not disabled the "no anonymous posts" on the comments....so I disabled it.....now you can post anonymously.....but tell me who you are.....I hate guessing...."anonymous" just mean you don't have to have a blog to comment.

Published

I know it's been a while but I have been busy with all matter of things. One has been the creation and publishing of a book about the trip to the Baja. You can check it out by clicking on the link below. Gotta run.....

baja motorcycl...

photographs by and...

By words by andrea ja...

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Back to the Grind

We have been home for about 4 weeks and we are ready to go back. The weather here has been less than cooperative and we haven't been able to ride our bikes since returning. I had hoped to ride it to the first day of work but it was only 4 degrees and I freely admit to being a wimp when it comes to the cold.
It has been busy for us though.....we have had dentist appointments, tire changes, birds set loose in the house by the cats, a garage sale and my friends Pam and her daughter Isabella visit from Finland and a friend that I haven't seen since college come from Ottawa. I tell ya just having a baby at my house for a couple of days was exhausting. I don't know how they do it and reason #7659 why we are not having children.
Oh and I did sell the Nighthawk......I rode that from storage to the guys house.....and it was ridiculously cold!!! I don't know if I mentioned this before but...remember that ground hog that said we were going to have an early spring.....I think he was on crack!!
!!Flashback!!
One of the things I remember about our trip through the States on the way home from Mexico was when we were going through the Mohave desert and the wind was blowing so hard our bikes were at a 35 degree angle...I'm not kidding! I thought my bike was going to blow out from beneath me! I think that was the only time on the trip that I was a little scared.

Rember the sunburn......

From San Ignacio, the long gasless crossing and then El Rosario and Mama Espinosa's for dinner and on to San Quentin.
We had agreed that we would get up early and head to Ensenada to do a bit of shopping then cross the border and head up to Palm Springs were we were going to meet up with some friends from home. So we are up early and almost packed and when John says he has a bit of a stitch in his side. I say take some deep breaths and walk around a bit and you'll be fine..... and 30 seconds later he is doubled over in pain and losing the dinner we had the night before.
So of course I freak and we think it might be appendicitis and then I really freak and with my bad Spanish I am trying to find a doctor. Luckily there is a clinic right around the corner.....but of course being in a little town in Mexico they only speak Spanish and my Spanish is okay when it comes to everyday stuff but to have to deal with doctors and nurses.......
Down the street is a restaurant and hotel that is owned by Ray, who speaks perfect spanish and english...I drag him down to the clinic to translate for me.......and John because he drinks only Coke and had a bad sunburn and has been riding a motorcycle for a week is severely dehydrated and has developed crystals in his kidneys....painful but not life threatening....but I am going to kill him for not drinking enought water and putting me through that.
So he spent a day and a half in hospital and we are off again the next afternoon and spend the that night in El Centro on the US side of the border. Not that I am happy to be in the US, but at least if anything goes wrong at least I can understand what is going on.

The 4th picture is Paul and Ray.
For those of you just joining you can leave comments if you go down to the bottom right and click on "comments" at the bottom of each posting

Out of gas??

Next stop was San Ignacio. I stayed in San Ignacio 10 years ago when I went down the Baja with some friends from University and I have to say for 10 years it really has not changed much. There is more development near the highway but the center of town itself has stayed pretty much the same. The mission there is quite simple but still pretty. It was finished in 1786 and was constructed from lava rock.
We got into town parked the bikes across the street from the mission and went in to have a look around. Then we went to have some dinner in one of the places just off the square. When we came back to the bikes there were 3 little boys sitting across from the bikes. They pointed and asked for a ride but John and I had stuff on the back seats of our bikes and Paul didn't. So to make a long story short there was 3 then there was 15 and Paul gave rides (just around the square) to all of them. It made everones day, including ours. The next morning there were two kid waiting by our bikes for another ride, so I took their picture.
There is not much on the highway between San Ignacio and San Quentin. There are some stretches were it was long and very flat. There is even a section of about 400 km with no proper gas stations. John's bike will do about 250 km without running out of gas and mine will do about 280-290 km (We had a jerry can so I never really did run out of gas so I don't know for sure) and Paul's will do it but running on fumes. So we had to buy gas from a guy selling it out of the back of his truck. On the way down the GPS said there was a gas station at about 300 kms at a road junction, but when we got there it looked like it had been closed for about 3 years. There was a guy there and boy did he make money on us. He charged us about double but what were we going to do?? On the way back we passed him and stopped in Cantavina, not really a town, it did have a gas station but it too was closed. At least the guy that sold us gas this time sold it at the going rate.

Continue.....

From Todos Santos we continued on to La Paz were we stopped for the night. We consulted "the planet" and found what we thought would be a suitable hotel for us and the bikes. We always had to have safe parking for the bikes....this turned out to be less of a problem than we thought...but the hotel we picked was full so we asked the guy at the desk to recommend another. He sent us to the Lorimar. For 35 dollars we had a basic room, but came with the best parking. When we asked about parking for the bikes the guy told us to bring them through the lobby and into the courtyard of the hotel. How safe is that??? Paul's big Harley wouldn't fit through the doorway into the courtyard so his sat right by the front desk!!

From La Paz we were aiming for Mulege but ended up staying in Loreto and we were glad we did! Between La Paz and Loreto we stopped at a beach we had seen on the way down and went swimming. It was hot and I think we all got a bit sunburned, some more than others, and it would catch up to us later......
As we were looking for a hotel in Loreto we heard about this "biker bar" so after a shower and a clothes change we headed off to the cantina. We met Kathy and Primo the owners , who pointed us in the right direction for dinner, the Super Burro which turned out to be the best place to eat on the entire trip.....John's sissy bar had suffered a break and Primo welded it for him the next morning. We have met the coolest people on this trip!

By the way if you check out the map feature on my flickr site it will show you where all the pictures were taken!

Cabo

We pushed ourselves hard to get to Cabo San Lucas by Paul and Shelly's anniversary on the 2nd of April. We rode from Santa Rosalia to Cabo in one day! That's over 800 kms. So the evening of the 3rd day in Mexico we rode into Cabo. We stayed at The Hotel Santa Fe where we spent a whopping 78 dollars a night. We had to go down to Cabo Wabo and take some pictures because everyone we know would ask us if we went there and we wanted to make them all jealous. We ate some good lobster (We had flan for dessert but John had more lobster) in this little restaurant in one of the back streets and we enjoyed the heat and sun. That's the four of us with our feet in the Pacific at the southern most place on the Baja. We spent a few days there and then we decided that Cabo was just way too touristy and we decided to ride to La Paz but this time take our time and stopped at some of the interesting places along the way.
The first stop after leaving Cabo was Todos Santos. This is the the supposed location of the mythical Hotel California written about in the song by the Eagles. We parked out front, took some pictures and did a bit of looking around before finding a place to have lunch. We also visited the mission there and I took a pretty interesting picture with the sun behind the bell tower.

El Rosario

Like I said I got ahead of myself a little bit. Before stopping for the night in Santa Rosalia we stopped for breakfast in El Rosario. This little place is one of the check points on the Baja 1000 and there is a little restaurant called Mama Espinosa's that was the perfect place to stop for breakfast. We met a woman from Ontario who was travelling solo in her Taurus station wagon and bowler trailer on her way home. We also met a little girl selling bracelettes to collect money for the orphanage that was supported by Mama Espinosa herself, who by the way was over 100 years old and still, we were told, as sharp as a tack.
Back on the road we stopped in the desert to take some pictures. This place was all rocks in the middle of a perfectly flat desert. It was like someone picked up a handful of bolders and dropped them in the middle of the desert. It was pretty interesting landscape and I took quite a few pictures of the cacti. More pictures at www.flickr.com/photos/andreajarman

Back Trax

So I have to back track a bit because I forgot a few things. ( I might have to do this a bit because I have a great memory but it really is short) Back in Oregon one of the D-rings for the tiedowns in the floor of the trailer we were transporting the bikes in snapped. My bike fell over and the wind shield got broken and John's tank got a little scratched. We fixed the scratches with some black nail polish but my windshield was another story.....now this is really quite vital even though it is a motorbike. Try to imagine driving your car without the windshield.....same effect on a bike.
Jim and Jean (the friends we left the trailer with) took us to several bike shops to try to find another without luck. The last Yamaha dealership we went into there was a lady waiting for some parts and overheard our dilemma. This wonderful woman named Lisa offered to give me her windshield so our little gang of bikes followed her to her house and in her garage was a perfect windshield for my bike. (she has a Honda Shadow) Turns out she is an artist and she gave Shelly, Jean and I a tour of her house and artworks while the boys fixed my windshield. She is a wonderful person we just happened to meet at the right place at the right time. (Lisa if you are reading this leave your email. I can't find yours!)

Shelly was also taking pictures like a madwoman. I am glad she did because with riding our own bikes we didn't really have a chance (dangerous!) to take pictures from the bikes. So here are some of her pictures of the border and a sneaky shot of one of the military check points. And we can't forget about the most memorable stop, about 1/2 way to Ensenada we stopped at a guy selling oranges out of the back of his truck. All of us agreed these were the best oranges ever!!