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Couple of months ago, on my birthday

Colorado is blanketed in forest fire smoke this month. No rain, single digit humidity and high temperatures and making the forests rather dry. But this morning, the smoke looked thinner than usual so I set out on a ride to the ghost town of Tin Cup. Can almost see the hills...

All in all, a great day of riding - around 300 miles....

After this traffic jam subsided, it was smooth sailing the rest ifteh way home...

Taylor Dam - which creates the Resevoir...

The creek alongside the road wasn't too dry...

Passed Taylor Resevoir on the way out - water levels are really low but it makes for a nice campsite....

Headed back home along the dirt roads...

A food truck was in town to feed all of the off roaders. Pretty cool...`

Town Hall / Church still looks good...

Of course, I could use some fuel and as usual; none available..

Turned down a dirt road and followed it about 10 miles to Tin Cup. Tin Cup is an old mining town but the unique part about it is that it's still inhabited. The old homes are mostl;y used as summer homes and are in pretty good shape considering their age and how they were constructed...

The roads were smooth as you like....

Made it up to the Pass at 12,126' above sea level. Nice and cool up here today and no smoke...

No idea who this guy is, just happened to ride by as I was taking pics...

I didn';t ride this area last year as there was so much road coinstruction going on. That meant that this summer's ride is on new asphalt that is super smooth. Like it...

Being a Monday, there was little traffic out today. This isn't all that popular of place to go anyway as it's kinda remote....

I rode about 125 miles south of where I live to Buena Vista and headed west towards Cottonwood Pass....

Talking to a client the other day who's in the Tourist Industry and she commented about the abandoned railway stations and villages as she'd seen them on FB. I told her that I wasn't aware of anybody else who was doing anything similar within the motorcycling fraternity. And she said that there's actually a whole genre of holidays and excursions that are put together to cater for these unusual type of places.......it's called Dark Tourism. And the destinations would be places like Death Camps, sites of natural disasters, or man-made disasters like Chernobyl etc. Interesting concept for sure! She suggested that I start a Dark Motorcycling tour business running trips to these grim and bleak places. Because nobody else does it. I told her there's not a hope of me doing something like that.......which essentially is dragging a bunch of fucking dickheads across Southern Spain, arranging accommodation , translating etc. The whole premise behind going to these places is to totally escape, and be in complete solitude with nobody for miles around. Not pandering to a bunch of selfie-taking twats who would just ruin the atmosphere of the whole thing like they're now doing on the rail tracks at Auschwitz. However, it's an interesting business concept for somebody......though whether people would stump up the dosh to make it worthwhile I'm not sure. But the upshot is that I seem to have created a new genre of biking.......Dark Motorcycling! You won't get this shit on Buttrider you know! Tell 'em @Tym

If you did it for a living it would probably become a chore very quickly. i know it would for me, bikes are strictly for pleasure

I'd assume they do. But in the dark, in an unfamiliar place and also assume they don't train - they're not much of a threat. Handguns are really hard to shoot accurately and hit something more than 10-20 feet away unless you practice a lot. Most thieves have no idea how to properly shoot and handle a gun. Can they reload it in the dark? CLear a jam quickly in the dark? Do they have night sights installed? Probably not. And if the home owner has a long gun or better yet, a shotgun, then the theif is in serious trouble.

You've come a long way since 2005 Pedro.......

They are old miner's homes, so probably only 1-2 people lived there. Some aren't much bigger than a garden shed. Doesn't look like they get broken into as they are pretty remote and I can promise that everyone that lives there has guns - lots of them. Break in and die. Colorado does have a Castle Law. My home is at 9,300' feet or so and yesterday's high temp was like 75F / 24C. So This was around 70F / 21C - perfect for riding. Denver (5300') was around 97F/31C yesterday -it's the warmest time of year here.

Probably about 112 mph .

More excellent pics @Earache! Thank you for taking the time to share them!!!

I need a safe space! Bully proof windows, troll proof doors....

Oh god.....he'll go and shoot somebody now!

After @Pedro showed me where to eat a nice snack in the middle of a 500 kms ridding day, I went back for more! I dont take almost any pictures ever! But here are some! Sao Pedro do Sul, where we had lunch last week and the others are from a gorgeous place really North next to the border with Spain, also recommended by @Pedroand he was not wrong when he said it is breath taking! Plus a view point with my own name, the egocentric in me says, whats not to like!! The only thing missing was @Pedro himself that this time was otherwise engaged and didn't join me for the ride! there are a lot of videos, however will not bore you with them

Actually, thats where i crashed back in 07

We disagree. That would be true if the main thing in motorcycle tours would be motorcycling, but it's not. The main thing in motorcycle tours is to hold the hand of hopeless people that are too afraid to tour even a civilized western country on their own, motorcycles are just the vehicles in that business.

Exactly! When your hobby/interest becomes your living it changes everything.

Dark Tourism is a big thing here as well. Loads of supposedly "haunted" places that the geeks tour. Dunno if I'd wanna take them along on a bike trip though. I'd love to do a regular touring business on bikes though - would be fun and I know all the good places to go.

It's a doorway.....possibly a time portal as well. If I could guarantee I'd get 1973 I'd be through it like a shot. Knowing my luck I'd get something like the time of Kennedy's assassination or Pearl Harbour!

Great pics and history with new roads to find it. Oh yea, and a big XT. Bloody marvellous.??

Creek? that's a full blown river here lol

That's a sweet Bike Fred.....?

Basically, my home is my castle - if you come into my castle uninvited, I can shoot and kill you without fear of prosecution. Cops show up and say "nice shot". I've oversimplified it, of course. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine It's the reason we don;t have a lot of break-ins, bikes aren't stolen from homes, etc. Thieves know they will most likely get shot.

Ha ha where I was brought up the former was often the result of the latter. ?

Remember back in the day? If one of the boys had a suit on it was either court or a funeral!

Shouldn’t laugh, but ......

HELL YES!.....dirt everywhere...................... ahhhhhhhhhhhh RUN AWAY ?

ummmmm...ya, great stuff guys... ?

On the hunt for old Railway Stations again......and this time it's Baza! This was a large station in it's day, with a lot of passenger and goods traffic. The station itself has been restored, and the engine sheds, water tower, and turntable still remain. Like all of them it's been closed since the end of December 1984. Here's the updated map of stations visited.......the green spots mark completed. This is how it looked in 1894....... ........and how it looked in the 70's! Now let's go right up to date!

Grassy Arse my old gringo, bloody boneos idlios, that's your trouble. I googled the name of the company mentioned and it said that it was built using British money. I suspect the hand of either a Brit engine designer or something built under licence based on UK designs. "The GSSR was a British undertaking, built in southeast Spain at the end of the 19th century. Its original purpose was to link Murcia in the province of the same name with Granada, also in the province of the same name. A lack of money and an underestimation of the terrain to be crossed meant that the final project only linked the three towns of Lorca, Águilas (Murcia) and Baza (Granada). The remaining sections of the line were eventually constructed by other companies. Although the termini were in other provinces the major part of the line went through the scenic Almanzora Valley in Almería."

Took a run through the cave house region of Galera......and it was bloody hot. In fact it was too hot to take a load of pics, but I think the vid will give you a general idea of what cave houses are like. Don't ask me the logic of wanting to live in one........I live in a house! They're mainly popular with foreigners as they're seen as fashionable.......and with gypsies because they're cheap! In their case, if they find the family keeps growing and they don't have enough bedrooms, they start digging and create another one.

managed to wrangle a couple of hours off this afternoon and as it was only 25 odd degrees rather than the 35 odd we had earlier in the week I went for a short ride to explore a trail I had started discovered but not explored along by the river a while ago. it starts with a poorly paved road down to the river north of Joigny and the trail proper starts here someone was water skiing on the river a bit of limbo dancing allowed us under this one but the trail was getting narrower and gnarlier I was beginning to wonder how wise it was to continue on, taking into account that i'm alone, running road tyres ( ok it's dry so that's not reeeely an issue, but still...) i have a fucked back, left shoulder and left knee... i don't know if I'm even still capable of picking tigger up if I drop her. well that answers that question, I don't think I can get under that one Nope definately not. I did think about how to do it but before tring I walked forward a few hunderd meters to see if the trail opened out further down or not, and came across this and no sign of widening now I know Fred would have had a saw with him to clear the path ( there's also a potentially live electric cable to deal with...) and Bob would have fitted under anyway but given my lack of ability and knowledge my only reasonable choice was a turnaround. "Oh Cock" you might be able to make out from the above pic that the path is not wide, there's the river on one side and a large ditch on the other. How the F am I going to turn Tigger round? I had a long hard think about this cos I couldn't aford to get it wrong and would only have one shot, and didn't want to risk my back or shoulder which are, (quite seriously for a moment) dangerously close to rupture. Jacket, tank bag helmet and gloves were hung on a tree and I pushed the bike back about a meter or so where the path was marginally wider and a tree growing outwards from the river bank lessened the chances of throwing the thing in the river. with some pushing and pulling I managed to more or less spin the bike on it's side stand ( took 3 or 4 goes as it kept sinking in the ground and had to be repositioned each time) and after not a little sweating and grunting we got turned around and i rode out to a wider grassy section having cooled down I had a plaisant bimble back to the road and tus home via an easy trail shortcut that i know and love, as a reward for not having drowned us both in the river, and having taught tigger how to spin on her sidestand, trick which I've seen but never tried before. a couple of hours out in all and about 20 km off road I guess.