Westbound Part 1: 10,000 Miles Across the U.S. on Ural Motorcycles

Westbound I remember when we pulled in for breakfast in Port Allegany and she came over to greet us. There was an immediate shift in energy. To this point, we were all silently asking ourselves what we’d gotten ourselves into. It had been two days and when we took our helmets off, I could see it on Greg’s face and in Mike’s blank stare. I could hear it in my team’s whispering of doubts back in NH. Here’s what I learned most from traveling 10,000 miles into the American West over 37 days: I didn’t really know what I was doing.

After packing away our sleeping bags, we rolled through an unfamiliar town and found just the spot to shape what I would come to know most about this trip. It started in a small diner with a late twenty-something single mom who brought an energy to her small-town life that I completely fell for. She owned a mule, had just bought herself a ’74 Yamaha enduro, and she bragged wholeheartedly about her town, her work, and her son.

She looked to me the way you describe happy. It was refreshing to start the day over breakfast following her around while she got everyone’s mood up, running around like Bambi refilling hearts and mugs. We cleaned our plates and finished our coffee quietly and got back on the road. In the solitude of my helmet, I fantasized about selling off my belongings, packing my bags, finding simple work, and living out my days with her, her mule, her son, and her disposition. I asked myself: what makes a life?

A road trip will give you all sorts of answers. For me, it happened riding through everything America could throw at us in just over a month’s time. When I’d left, I was eager to witness the enormous landscapes of the West and mostly what I found was the enormous diversity in how you can go about answering that question.

It seems to me that when you free yourself from a single idea of what makes a life, you open up possibilities. And when you embrace the life you have, you open up to happiness. I left my driveway with two of my best friends and the life I had carved out, not really knowing what I was doing or what I might find. As we rolled back home on day thirty-seven, I believe each of us saw the uniqueness of the lives we made for ourselves with fresh eyes.

It’s been said that the best journeys answer questions that, in the beginning, you didn’t even think to ask.

Preparing for Battle “You’re doing what?” I asked Brett. Again, he told me they wanted to fully outfit two side-car motorcycles as adventure bikes and take them on an extended trip west—10,000 miles to be exact—and that we needed to get moving on some customizations quick. To boot, they also had a truncated timetable (or what Brett often refers to as “an opportunity to push yourself ”).
I’m no stranger to Ural motorcycles, the Russian sidecar manufacturer. In fact, the boys at Iron & Air weren’t either. They’ve had some twisted love affair going on with Ural since we pushed one through rain, snow and ice from Portland, OR to LA two years ago. This time, the plan was to simply equip two Urals (a CT and a 2WD Gear-Up) with all that the crew would need to embark upon a 10,000-mile journey. I was game.

Out of the crate, the Ural is fairly capable. Listening to the guys describe the intended terrain, I knew we wouldn’t have to do anything drastic to them. Urals are much like little tractors (and need to be treated as such, I’ll add)—they shift clunky and they’re not quick, but as long as you respect them, they’ll take you virtually anywhere you want to go. And, that’s what Brett and the crew wanted to demonstrate—that the Urals could take them anywhere.

Starting at the front, we swapped out the stock bars in favor of a set of heavy-duty Biltwell Moto bars and grips. This changed the rider position to make for a much more comfortable and controllable experience. Besides, who else puts Biltwell gear on a Ural?

We made custom seats (for both rider and sidecar) with more comfortable foam and gave each a custom covering. Then we fabricated a myriad of racks, guards, and tie-down points, ensuring maximum gear storage and anchor points for all the Nemo camping equipment they’d take on the journey.

We also built custom 2-into-1 exhaust systems using tubing and mufflers from Cone Engineering, and with the help of Ural New England, remapped the bikes, squeezing as much torque and performance possible out of the cold-blooded boxer twin. We could actually sustain 75 mph on them after the modifications. Pretty impressive, if you’ve ever piloted a Ural.

To top it off, we added almost every OEM accessory available. Jerry can holders, push bars, auxiliary lighting—you name it. We also integrated a solar charging system by Goal Zero that allowed the boys to keep their digital devices topped off for the duration of the five-week trip.

We spent 72 hours (with virtually no sleep) in Florida with the 2WD bike—building and prepping all the custom parts—then drove non-stop without sleep to Iron & Air HQ in New Hampshire. Once there, we immediately started outfitting all of the bikes (surviving solely on French press coffee, pizza and arm-wrestling), then proceeded to take the Urals on a 1,000-plus-mile break-in and shake-down run through the White Mountains of NH. Yes, an opportunity to push yourself, indeed.

The Ural is a fascinating oddball of a motorcycle. Once you ride one, you can’t help but fall for it. Despite its quirks and idiosyncrasies, it’s part carnival and part tank that provides plenty of smiles while taking you almost anywhere you want to go. The boys were setting out to prove it.

Though the time frame, odds, and variables were less than convenient, we accomplished our goal—getting the bikes finished and the guys on the road. In the end, that’s all that really matters. Getting on the road, allowing ourselves to be stolen away by the world, its hidden treasures, and all the adventure that awaits.

G. K. Chesterton said, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” After experiencing this, I couldn’t agree more.

Spending a shotgun weekend with Standard Motorcycle Co. cutting, drilling, re-mapping, and assembling the bikes we planned on riding into the Great American West proved to be a wise move. It familiarized us with the intricacies of the bikes in a way that only frantically disassembling something can. Also, we just can’t leave good enough alone. SMC built them to chew through miles and miles of whatever terrain might end up in our path. Good thing too, because we didn’t plan on sticking to the freeway.

While we decided to demonstrate a machine of a different kind as an adventure vehicle (the Ural), we knew we needed something of the two-wheeled variety to join us. A custom 2015 Triumph Scrambler would do the trick. It was equipped with dual-sport tires, upgraded suspension, and a new exhaust (among other things) to eat up miles of pavement and whatever backcountry our trip would throw at us.

This article first appeared in issue 22 of Iron & Air Magazine, and is reproduced here under license | With selections by Brett Houle and Jason Paul Michaels
Selected photography may include works by Brett Houle, Gregory George Moore, Michael Hilton, Daniela Maria, Jenny Linquist, Becca Skinner, Kevin Bennett, David Mucci