On Wednesday I woke up very early to catch the sunrise, too early actually, 5:45am. I didn't realize that the sun rose at about 7:30am here, so I sat on a couch in the ‘living room' of the hotel, that had massive windows that showed off the view of the mountains, and sat sipping a hot chocolate with marshmallows until I saw the first rays hit the mountains. I only had about 7 minutes of shooting the mountains before the clouds came in and cast a grey gloom on the day.

I packed up and left the posh hotel at around 8:30am and took south. It was a nice drive, not too cold I stopped for lunch in Vernal, Utah (middle-of-nowhere) and took highway 40 east into Colorado toward Denver.

I only made it to Steamboat Springs before I had to stop. My eyes were dry, I was nearly falling asleep and above all my ass hurt from sitting for so long. In downtown Steamboat I stopped by the first hotel. The receptionist said he had only one room left - a 700 square foot apartment style room for $140 a night. I took it. It had plasma TV's everywhere, a full kitchen, a massive bedroom and wooden log furniture, Cool! So far this has been the ‘most posh' trip I've ever had. I watched CNN (the Republican Convention with McCain's under qualified Barbidoll Vice-Pres as the lead speaker).

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On Thursday I ate some donuts in the hotel lobby and took off early toward Denver on highway 40. I passed through the Winter Park area that has about 10 switchbacks and took them fast for a little adrenaline rush. Soon after I hit I-70 then C-470 and found myself in Parker within 4 hours after leaving Steamboat.

I'm very impressed with the bike but it's quite different from the bike I took from Colorado to Argentina. That was a street touring bike. This is a duel sport touring bike so it doesn't have the ‘pickup' that I'm used to for passing cars and handles turns differently and I cannot take it faster than 70 without it feeling weird. But it gets 250 miles before I need to fill up (78MPG!) and sits higher so I can hit speed-bumps and curbs much easier and it's built like a rock.

It's exactly what I need for my next trip - shipping the bike to Australia with Bob and Wayne in November - the guys I met in Mexico and Panama and rode with in Colombia.

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So, I'm back in Parker, Colorado getting work done before I head back down to Buenos Aires, Argentina at the end of this month to finish my trip down to Ushuaia, Argentina (southernmost city on Earth). Then I need to be back here at the end of October to fix up the Dakar to ship to Oz. That's the plan.

The above was copied directly out of my hand-written journal.