WeSTOC 2000
Day 5 (Durango, CO to Ourey, CO and back. Last official day of WeSTOC)
After the previous days ride of almost 16 hours, I decided to sleep late. Despite that intention however, I still managed to wake up at 6:00 AM.
Later in the morning I bumped into the gang and we decided to make a trip to Ourey. The first order of business however was to go eat breakfast at a place in town where Thane had been waited on a couple of days before by a nice looking mini-skirted waitress. We all agreed this was a good idea :-) .
After breakfast we followed Dom to Handlebar Cycle in Durango to get some new rear brake pads. While there, we saw Don Feyma who had gone there to get a new tire. The mechanics discovered while taking off his old tire that his wheel bearings were shot. The staff at the shop were really busting tail trying to get these "walk in" STs back on the road. I couldn't help but think that at most shops they would have told our guys to leave their bikes there and pick them up in a week or two. Also while at the cycle shop, I met Mike Sipes on his 2000 model ST and invited him along for the ride to Ourey.
We finally hit the road to Ourey about mid day minus Dom who had to take care of what I presume was a business emergency. The road to Silverton and Ourey was awesome and somewhat hairy in places with twisty roads that had very little shoulder. Along some of these roads, there was nothing but a drop off of several hundreds of feet on the other side of the shoulder. It was definitely not a place that you wanted to run wide on. Finally we came to Silverton, which sits in a high moutain valley.
Mike Sipes by the side of the road as we look out over Silverton, Co.
Our bikes in Silverton. Mike Sipes and Tomas Perez in the background.
After eating lunch in Silverton and walking around a bit we hopped on our bikes and headed back into the mountains to make our way to Ourey. This road was even more twisty and challenging. To make it more interesting, it began to rain. We arrived in Ourey and walked around for just a few minutes then decided to head back so that we would be sure to be back in time for the WeSTOC closing ceremonies. The ride back was a blast as we sped up the pace a bit. We arrived back in Durango in plenty of time for the banquet.
The food at the banquet was great and afterward door prizes and awards were given out. The award that sticks out in my mind was the "Dan Weber Scofflaw Award". The award was named after Dan because of his "performance" at a previous WeSTOC gathering. Seems Dan managed to get two sets of tickets within twenty minutes at that event. He got the first ticket for speeding in one state then twenty minutes later received two more tickets in another state. The last two were for illegal passing and speeding at 125 mph.
The ceremonies ended with the announcement of next years WeSTOC to be held in Kimberly, British Columbia.