The Mobius Trip

You got that right........Oh but there is soooo much more to come.
LDF

This stage in a mobius trip is like xmas eve.

You have seen the box and heard the rattle and know you're going to love it.

It's sooooo hard to wait for morning.

Nite all

Nite nite

I hope he does not have a mic on LDF. I have`very sensitive ears.

I always feel ride report pix never adequately show the "steepness" of what we ride. The good Doctor's slide backwards is about the best illustration of incline I've seen to date. True 'hill climb" antics!

Out of an estimated 20,000 threads (40 per line x 500 pages) Yes i see that there are 733 pages, a bunch seem to have been moved.

There are currently only 11 Ride Report threads that can claim the additional fame of being members of the 1 million + views club.

Glen is way closer to his 3 millionth view than the 1 mark.
Doug is here twice...looks like your dirtster is a bit more popular than the panhead.
Clayton appears to engage his readers so much in his stories that they are to mesmerized to reply.
David and Francine - Best RR overall IMHO

Would be great if the mods could let us know how many subscribers each of them have.

Thread Title - Start Date n Time - Replies - Views
Striking Viking bumming the world (On the road again) 05-12-2004, 01:43 AM 7,022 2,988,422
Quit my job to go on a "little" ride....US Tour '07 02-11-2007, 12:42 AM 5,363 1,837,533
Seattle to Argentina on a KLR650 05-07-2006, 05:01 PM 1,264 1,610,653
The BAM Road - ultimate test of man and machine 12-14-2009, 08:00 AM 1,646 1,538,485
Can a Harley make it to Magadan? 04-27-2011, 03:04 PM 2,490 1,441,766
The Mobius Trip 05-23-2008, 06:33 PM 4,880 1,367,401
From Estonia with love (Round the World awesome ADVenture!!) 06-30-2009, 11:05 AM 2,559 1,318,875
Angola, it's not like they said. 09-23-2007, 03:40 AM 1,175 1,237,584
Sydney to London on a105cc Honda callled Dot 05-04-2009, 07:47 AM 2,878 1,204,865
Siberian Extreme 2010 - Back for More 07-21-2010, 08:27 AM 1,820 1,076,804
The WRONG Way Round.... on a Chopper! 05-07-2009, 07:26 PM 1,583 1,067,433

feels like I'm watching the ketchup slowly creep towards the mouth of the bottle, you know, before we had the squeeze kind. Even smacking the bottom of it doesn't seem to make it move any closer towards the edge. Can you hear it now? "Anticipation, anticipation...it's keeping me waiting".....

Checking in every day.........I know it will be worth the wait

Been reading this RR for two weeks now - neglecting the bathroom I'm trying to renovate at home and sleep has also been a bit less important, working fulltime.... I was surprised that I caught up with you guys finally and now..... Mobius9 - come on I can't wait reading about it, you really are the shit please give it to us. I must say I admire your stile and how nice that you are in it as a couple - sweet I'd say! Beeing a Swede it's biketime now with summer and you really inspire to do some dirt.... Loveya!

Oh, the anticiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.......

This is just a cool picture. My wife and I started riding a couple of years ago. We are still doing trips on the pavement, but one day.

Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed report. It's a fun read.

You guys sure aren't doing a very good job of perpetuating the New Yorker sterotype. ;-)

Is it something we said?

I'm starting to feel like a kid on prom night waiting for my date to come out of the bathroom....I hope she didn't leave with the football team again.

caught back up. Cant' wait for the rest of the story behind the vid. Again, thanks for taking the rest of us along.

something tells me the wait is almost over

I'm just as excited as the rest of you about this new installment of the Mobius adventures. However, please remember that when Doc and LDF get back to NYC, they have real jobs that they must go back to. Yes, they are superstars to us but we must give them time to get life going again.

I asked for a bone, we were thrown a great bone and got everyone excited...Dr. Rock did a great job there.

You have to remember in their small community, internet is someone unreliable. The one phone line to town could break when a hummingbird lands on it.

Patience for the guy who has patients, and has to teach too. His students should be graduating in a couple weeks. Everyone will get dressed up to go to the local grange for a party!

J

It's been a busy few weeks since we've returned. Every chance I've had I hack away at the photos and video, but it's slow going. I've processed images from the start, up to our arrival at Crater Lake which represents the halfway point of M9. I think that's enough of a photo cache to get started writing up the RR, so here goes.

If i can't keep the photo processing ahead of the report writing, we might have a little intermission while I get caught up, we'll see when we get there.

Hopefully Questor and AlbertaStrom (and LDF) will chime in with commentary (and images as they see fit. Dave is producing some high-quality vids which are simply outstanding.

If you haven't already seen Q's ride report of the first few days of M9 that he joined us, check it out -- I'll be covering those days as well, so you'll see a slightly different perspective.

Right, so here's to it

-- Click on the underlined links to go to:
Mobius 9, May, 2012: [Idaho Falls, ID - Great Basin Loop]

M9 Corporate sponsor announcement, some during-trip banter, some previews, and the official M9 prelude
Departure from ChezQ, rerouting at McCammon, cowboy camping with Q. Riding canyons to the City of Rocks,
Almost Blocked by snow, the giant web camp, really blocked by snow, the great go-around, cow-poking, then into
and out of Bruneau Canyon. Gerrying our way to Jordan Valley, Rattler on the old ION, the Pillars of Rome,
Lava fields, buckarooing (before we even knew the term), Mr. Jenkins and the Round Barn, crappy camping at
The Narrows. Crossing the Malheur refuge, passing Llewelen Moss trees, Sheeprock and Fandango to Christmas Valley.
Ranching re-routes and a bit o' pavement getting to Crater Lake. Klamath falls, Northeast California, to Blue Lake camp.
Crossing on Buckhorn road and Buffalo Creek into Nevada, gas at Gerlach, Painted canyon on the Applegate, the eclipse
cowboy camp, sheep hill climb, Battle Mountain, shortcut to Crescent Valley, Cottonwood canyon, and the rancher incident.
Garcia flat, Hastings cutoff, to pick up the Pony Express, through Cherry Creek, saved by Tatiana at Langes Station.
Morgan Pass, Bunnyville salt flats, Lucin and the Transcontinental past Kelton Cemetery to Golden Spike,
Pioneer camp, two miles of hell, through Paris, Crow Creek road, T2 from the ID border back to Questor's @ Idaho Falls.

It had been a long winter. Not particularly cold, but still, lots of time for planning, plotting, scheming, and fine tuning our next leg. Looking back on our trips across the states, and then up into the northern hinterlands and back down, we were able to formulate some opinions about what we liked better and not so much.

While Alaska and the way-up north-is stunningly beautiful, and remote as heck, and we have absolutely zero regrets hauling ourselves up there, the riding for the most part isn't particularly challenging, and the routing and navigation couldn't be simpler.

M8 gave us some insights into what really makes these trips great. The first was the technical challenges of riding rough terrain (once we got to the Tour of Idaho), as well as traversing vast areas on little traveled roads, not really knowing whether they go through or not. The second was the social aspect of riding with other people. LDF and I agreed that having folks ride with us here and there on M8 (and other sections) really added to the experience, so we were really looking forward to having Dave join us for the whole two weeks of M9. Having Q join us for the first few days was a welcome bonus.

I think we're pretty explicit in our descriptions of how we roll, but if I had to guess, maybe Q, but especially Dave (and maybe even LDF ) had to re-calibrate expectations of what it takes to ride along with the Mobius traveling circus. This was a tough one. Take the hardest riding we did on the TAT, make it 50% harder, throw in at least one massive obstacle per day, and then don't take a single day off for two weeks.

I kinda had a feeling I'd be routing us on some tough stuff, and at times it was way over the top, and my riding partners probably wanted to kill me, but I gotta say, I think I've got this routing thing pretty dialed in. All said and done there were very few reroutes at all, and the ones there were were mostly due to snow... only a couple of locked gates, though there were times that we all had our doubts that the trail (or as Mr. Jenkins calls them "roads") would emerge back into civilization.

More on Mr. Jenkins at a later date.

There was a lot of history all along the route, from the old ION trail to the Pony Express, to the Trans-continental railway. I'm not a big history buff, but every time we spend time at one of these places, I'm surprised to find that I get all stoked to learn more about the places when I get back. For instance, Kelton cemetery left a big impression on me for some reason.

The great basin. Personally, I love the place. The riding is the bomb, the scenery austere, the weather pretty perfect for riding in May. Could use a few more gas stations, but whattya gonna do?

2-weeks... 2347miles. Probably fewer than 100 on pavement.
(click on image for a larger version)


It was like the Dakar... only not a race. And with luggage. And way slower. And with no day off in the middle.