Panthera Tigris Iguanidae Iguana SCAS. . .

SCAS.: Sudden Cage Acquisition Syndrome. A derivative strain of the much more virulent SMAS (Sudden Motorcycle Acquisition Syndrome). Subject exhibits the uncontrolled development of four-wheeled growths in the garage and/or driveway of their domicile. SCAS is generally milder than SMAS as the growths tend to replace old growths, only newer, with more fiddly-bits. SMAS generally presents with multiple non-regenerative growths, often of varied types, sizes and styles.

What all that means: We got a new car. Or truck. Or whatever you're supposed to call the crossover/tall wagon/short SUV category vehicles these days. Based on a number of factors (all of which I won't get into here), we traded in the Nissan Sentra on a brand new 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan. The marketing folks at VW decided to meld the name of two animals based on a poll done in Europe. The first was Tiger (German word = Tiger...). The other was Iguana, and Iguan is apparently German for Iguana. Their conjunction into Tiguan is even weirder than the big-brother Touareg being named after some nomadic tribe from the Sahara.


At any rate, it doesn't exist without photos, so here's a walkaround.
Driver's front:


Driver's rear:


Passenger rear:


Passenger front:


I took some interior images with the wide-angle camera, but since it was late in the day and I was running low on ambient light, they mostly came out blurry. Here's the best one, showing the cockpit layout up front:


Badges? We don't need no steenking badges!


Basically, we had either done the 'monkey bars' thing or actually test-driven pretty much every vehicle in the class, or anything near it. Dodge Caliber, Journey, and Magnum; Mazda CX-7 and CX-9; Jeep Compass, Toyota Venza, FJ Cruiser, and RAV4; Honda CR-V; Ford Edge; VW Touareg, and the Tiguan.

Here are some impressions of the various vehicles (the ones we drove), in the order we drove them:

Ford Edge - Composed, good driver, adequate though not exciting V-6. Roomy, and reasonably well laid out. A good all-rounder priced a bit above where it should be to be competitive.

Toyota FJ - Stylish. Good V-6 power. More toward the Jeep Wrangler end of the handling spectrum. Atrocious visibility. Felt like driving a pillbox.

Dodge Caliber - Peppy, even with the I-4. Automatic transmission was reasonable.

Dodge Magnum - Very planted, with little body-roll and ample power from the mid-level V-6. Hemi would be nice but gas mileage would have been pretty bad. She thought the roofline was too low and would be an issue loading kids in the back seat.

Jeep Compass - Caliber re-skin. Exact same motor, except instead of a competent slushbox, they decided to fit a rubber-band (CVT). Worst. Transmission. Ever. Period.

Dodge Journey - Most capacity hands down (only one with 3rd row of seats). Storage everywhere. Mildly anemic, with body-roll issues. She liked it better than the Magnum, and I would agree, as long as you never have to drive it anywhere.

Toyota RAV4 - The 2nd generation car adds an additional 2 feet to the vehicle, which means it comes second behind the journey for interior space. Best laid out. Best motor. Major torque-steer issues. Otherwise handled okay.

VW Touareg - The Touareg we drove had some engine issues (check engine light came on), otherwise it would probably have been in the running for best motor. Handled well, felt muscular on the road. Not actually that much more space than the Tiguan, though the one we drove was loaded with options. Pricier than we were looking for, which is why we test-drove a used 2005.

VW Tiguan - Best handling and drivability of anything we drove, period. 2.0-liter turbocharged I-4 isn't quite as beefy as the V-6 from the RAV4, but mated to the 6-speed manual transmission, it will get out of it's own way with sufficient hustle to keep this adrenaline junkie happy. Very minimal body roll, corners much more adeptly than the other options. Simplest rear seats available (pull one tab and fold seat all the way forward until it locks). None of the "pull latch, twist knob, remove headrest, stand on one foot and squawk like a goose" nonsense that seems to pervade the seat design with most of the other cars we tested.

Other than the manual gearbox only being available in the FWD S-model and not the SE or SEL (nor with the AWD option), the only real issue we've noticed is a loud thrumming that occurs when you roll down one of the rear windows w/o opening the opposite front window. Wind flow past the window causes a "Whop-whop-whop-whop" beating noise similar to a Chinook landing on your roof.

In the mountains near Mexico

Holiday weekend = Get off your ass and ride! During my usual snooping on the beginnerbikers.org forum in the morning, I have noticed a distinct dropoff in traffic over the past few days. Hopefully that means folks will have pictures of their Memorial Day weekend adventures to post come Tuesday. We've got some, and we've even got another day left!

Day 1: Mountain Picnic
I took some of the guys from work to the Sierra Vista Range for some trigger time. One of the guys hadn't shot anything since he was in Iraq last year, so he was sorely in need of a trip to the range. Those of us in the office who actually own guns were more than happy to oblige. We got done about lunchtime, and luckily for me, Amanda hadn't planned anything yet. So, I took the opportunity to suggest that we do a picnic lunch... and that she'd need to put on some riding clothes to get there. After packing up some drinks at the house, I dropped her at the commisary to get some lunch material while I filled the bike.

And we were off! Back across the west side of Fort Huachuca, out the west gate, down Cimmaron Road and then south on 83 toward Parker Canyon Lake. Created when the river was dammed in 1966, it's a little hideaway I had heard about, but not visited. Stupid, stupid me. Here's why:


Nice shadetrees, some 60 camping spots in the campground, boat launch, fishing dock... all in all a pretty little place. Of course the lake is situated some 6 miles as the crow flies from Mexico, which precipitates the following:


Of course, the reason to ride anywhere on the bike is well, the ride. One of the other reasons it's a shame I hadn't gone out there sooner was the road. Good pavement, nice sweepers... except for the pesky speed limit, it's pretty nice. I had been out Cimmaron road before, since I'd seen it on a map and wondered "Hmm, could I get to the intersection with 83 and back during lunch?'. Turning from 83 onto Cimmaron shows why it's so nice:


DAY 2: Around the Huachucas
Having now seen the road from Cimmaron down to the lake, and having confirmed that the turn-off onto W Montezuma Canyon Road is indeed dirt... I set out to circle the Huachuca mountains. I went on the Ducati, mostly because it is the lightest bike we've got, and has the best ground clearance. I really, really wanted to get video with my helmet-cam, but Murphy showed up and I managed to snap off the latch that holds the protective housing closed. I had been smart enough to bring my point-and-shoot, so all was not lost.

Think of the worst washboard road you've ever been on. Now overlay that road surface onto the side of a mountain, with single-lane 'bridges', switchbacks, and no guardrail between you and a couple hundred feet of serious 'ouch'. I would love to go back on a KTM or KLR, or maybe in a rally-prepped Subaru Impreza. Had the road been any worse, I would have had to classify it as a 'trail'. I have driven some trails, and thus this was not the worst surface I've covered on 2 wheels, but it was close. And it was long. The ascent started without too much trouble (save the broken camera latch):


The canyon runs just north of the southern end of the Huachuca mountains, dropping over into the San Rafael Valley at Montezuma Pass. Looking back to the East from the pass, you can see the dirt road as it snakes its way up the valley below:


Continuing West, you pass a number of canyons on your right as you wind back down the mountain range. Towering over Copper Canyon, this pile of rock drew my attention with the bright green on the sides. The picture really doesn't do it justice:


Past this point, there were a number of the aforementioned switchbacks and one-lane bridges. Due to all the washboarding on the road, entering some of those corners downhill had me feeling like Wile-E-Coyote riding a jackhammer. Having learned my lesson about front brake use in the dirt (short lesson: DON'T USE IT!!!), I did pretty well. By the end, I was rolling through most stuff in 2nd gear, and beginning to be able to steer with the throttle again. Basic concept is, as you are going through a corner on the dirt, if you spin up the rear tire it will slide to the outside of the turn, which can help rotate the bike and tighten a line that may (for whatever reason) be drifting wide.

I stopped for a water and snack break when I reached a crossroads about halfway between the pass and the lake. And yes, the mountains in the background are in Mexico...


I plan eventually to ride back down to this turn-off point and head down as close as the roads will take me (some 500 feet) to Mexico, but that's for another day. Plus, knowing now that it would be much, much faster and easier to go by way of the lake than by way of the pass, I'll go the 'short' way. I would be remiss to not mention that my convenient water-break location was near some trees, which it seems are a convenient water-break location for other travelers in the area:




Anyone guess in what language the label is written?


Yes boys and girls, that's Spanish. Also note the convenient carrying rope attached to the top. I had of course seen 3 Border Patrol trucks between the pass and where I stopped for a snack, so there was some presence there. Suffice it to say, I was not rolling around 'empty-handed' as it were...

Oh, and the ride back up Parker Canyon Lake Road was a bit more 'spirited' on the Ducati than it had been some 24 hours prior 2-up on the V-Star.

Vegas... um... yeah. Whatever.

Road trip last weekend. Headed out to Las Vegas, as apparent penance for buying the track bike last month. I was less than impressed. Honestly, after living 10 of the last 14 months in an 8' by 20' metal box in the middle of a shit-stain of a country, Vegas just kinda seemed like ringside seats to the impending end of civilization. Think Times Square on PCP. Lots and lots of PCP. Strung out, in your face, overly combative, and manic like a speedball, the Strip was almost disgusting. Don't get me wrong, the two shows we saw (Terry Fator and the Mystere Cirque du Soleil) were both great, and I have nothing against casinos, in fact, I rather enjoy playing blackjack. But there is definitely a threshold for 'too much' that I passed somewhere between the constant "Fully Nude Strippers Direct to your room" cards being handed out along the sidewalks and the herds of people out and about who were completely oblivious to 'the real world' as I like to call it.

Just didn't work for me. They can keep it. Amanda and Susan both enjoyed it, it just wasn't my thing.

We did stop on the way and see the Grand Canyon, which is only called 'Grand' because the standard naming convention only allows the use of one adjective, and thus precluded "The most collossally giant hole on the face of the planet" Canyon being used. I actually WANTED to go base jumping after seeing the cliff faces that just begged for a freefall and parachute ride to the bottom. Vegas pictures will be at the end, but Grand Canyon pictures will be the substance.

For starters:

Since I've discovered the panorama-generating functionality in the Windows Live Photo Gallery (download at Microsoft.com), I've pretty much given up on the Canon Photostitch software. WLPG actually color-corrects, positions, skews, bows, and rotates photos so they line up with their adjacent bretheren perfectly. I had a couple of focus issues with the giant panorama I'll be posting further down, but that was because one of the images had focused on the tree 20 feet below me instead of the canyon floor some 2500 feet down... oops. This picture isn't technically the Grand Canyon itself, but the Little Colorado River canyon that opens into the canyon proper some miles to the north. Still, a 1000 foot sheer cliff face is pretty intimidating...

Next we have the standard 'hold the camera at arms length and shoot self' of me at the first overlook you come to in the national park itself:


Amanda didn't like getting quite as close to the edges as I was comfortable with, but still sat on the boundary rocks for some nice pictures:


Here the small tree and bushes made for an interesting portrait:



The Canyon money-shot:

This is a severly cut-down image to kill load time. If you want to see the entire original picture, you can download it here. Be warned though, it's 13,719x4062 pixels, which is a 53.1 megapixel image (file size is a shade under 32 megs).

The Hoover Dam on the way from the canyon to Vegas was rather anti-climactic:


And approaching from the southeast:


And of course any first trip to Vegas would be incomplete without the prerequisite pictures of the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign:


I need another trackday to cleanse my soul...