Editor’s Note: The Overland Expo Team was excited to get the 2024 Ultimate Overland Motorcycle into the hands of our longtime friends and adventure motorcycle legends Bill and Susan Dragoo. This great read was written by Bill, and photographed by Susan. Be sure to be on the lookout for more on their trip in an upcoming issue of OutdoorX4 magazine.
Each year an Ultimate Overland Motorcycle is built for Overland Expo under the direction of Eva Rupert to promote the sport and benefit the Overland Expo Foundation when the motorcycle is auctioned off at the end of the year.
This year, in a twist on the motorcycle theme, a Ural Gear Up sidecar rig was chosen for the project. The Gear Up is one of several models currently available from Ural and has the added benefit of two-wheel-drive, which significantly improves grip in marginal traction environments. An expert was needed, so Mark Tetreau was engaged to help. Mark’s Kalaber Creations, in Prescott, Arizona, is known for selling Urals and offering expert tutorials on how to maintain them, and Jim Burian, Mark’s right-hand man, fabricates many of the accessories himself. Luggage racks, sidecar doors, winch mounts, belly armor and a spare tire relocation mount are among these and show up on the 2024 build for Overland Expo. My wife Susan and I had the pleasure of field testing the Gear Up over 850 miles of twisty pavement, groomed backroads, and rugged trails through the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Our experience with the Ural opened a whole new world of opportunity for unique adventure travel.
A Proper Ural Adventure
Trust. It’s an essential element when you bolt a pillion seat to a motorcycle fender and climb aboard. It is even more important when your wife hunkers down in a bucket strapped to what amounts to a WWII Russian war machine… with a few modern improvements.
“You’re riding this thing like a dirt bike,” Susan relayed across the windy void that separated us. Gravel sprayed from the tires as we bootlegged another left turn, the back end stepping out like a dirt track racer. She was three feet to my right and fourteen inches below…a compromised, if not helpless, position. I was in full control, or so she thought. And she trusted me.
An oddity for the task at hand, the Ural is as close to a piece of farm machinery as any motorcycle built except perhaps the chain-driven two-wheel-drive Rokon. But the Rokon lacks a sidecar and is more tractor than motorcycle. The IMZ, as the Ural was first designated by the Soviets, was unknowingly designed for them in 1938 by the Germans, who never expected their beloved boxer-motored BMW R71 to be dismantled, copied, and rebuilt by their enemies’ engineers to fly the hammer and sickle from its fender. That’s exactly what happened in 1940 when Russia wanted a small and agile machine to take them to war. They essentially stole the design and made it their own. Manufacturing began in Moscow but soon moved to the Ural Mountains, hence the name.
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Susan’s comment about the dirt bike was prompted by some youthful exuberance expressed through my newly acquired familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of this 41-horsepower behemoth. I liked the way the Ural drove.
Sidecar rigs aren’t normally considered nimble, but once all the quirks that normally make folks shy away from them are sorted out, they can be fun to ride briskly, even in the rough. Without the ability to accelerate quickly, I found myself hesitant to slow down much on turns as long as I had ample sight distance to safely zip along. Our fun began as we left Lake City, Colorado, north on Highway 149. We ducked into the hills south of Blue Mesa Reservoir on the bypass created for traffic redirected from a bridge closure on Highway 50. It was a Sunday morning, and we were alone on a magnificent stretch of graded gravel, making good time. Highway workers and a ball of traffic greeted us at the intersection back on Highway 50. A thumbs-up was common from the guys in safety vests and hard hats and from many drivers caught up in the wait to cross the single-lane bridge. This machine just shouts, “I’m having a blast!”
After a brief stint westbound on Highway 50, we made our way to Big Cimarron Road and turned back into the hills. We continued on to Owl Creek Pass on this 45-mile shortcut. The route cuts out Montrose, busting south from Highway 50 a few miles west of Blue Mesa Reservoir, then turns back west before intersecting Highway 550 at Ridgway, ten miles north of Ouray. Stunning views surrounded us. Again, out of the traffic, I pulled over, and Susan took a turn at the helm.
What goes around comes around, and I was able to see the world from a whole new perspective, experiencing the transformation of a motorcyclist into a sidecar jockey. As pilot, Susan struggled at first but caught on quickly, initially fighting the handlebars with acceleration and braking…wobbling when she shifted and taking a moment too long to upshift, allowing the rig to slow down again on hills and requiring yet another downshift to keep the kettle boiling. Momentum is your friend, and without it, we were forced to slow down and downshift again until she found her rhythm. Eventually, she began to read the machine and became a little more aggressive. After gaining a bit more elevation and as we entered increasingly challenging terrain, she pulled over and relinquished her authority back to me. She’d had enough for the time being.
Cowboys drove herds over this road in the late 1800s, and John Wayne showcased the area in the 1969 movie True Grit. Spruce, fir, and aspen added their majesty to the ambiance as we tooled along past Silver Jack Reservoir, Chimney Rock, and Courthouse Mountain. The well-groomed road begged the bike to flow like warm milk through the endless curves. Left turns urged us to come in a touch hot, then tap a brake to set up the slide. The sidecar tries to pass the motorcycle when decelerating or braking, so why not use this tendency to our advantage? Rather than fighting the handlebars, with this method the Ural would easily glide into each left turn, we imagined, like Ricky Bobby doing the “Shake and Bake” in Talladega Nights. I found the slides easy to control, and Susan soon relaxed and seemed to enjoy the rally.
Right turns required a different approach. We would hug the inside line, using the drop-off to hang the wheel, holding the car on track like a slot car. I would occasionally fly the chair with her inside, but it didn’t take long for her to reach the edge of her comfort zone. Mind you, all this took place at or below speed limits, but with marble-like gravel, it didn’t take much speed to have a lot of fun. And, we were more conservative when sight distances did not allow full view through the turns.
All too soon, we found ourselves back on pavement on Highway 550 just north of Ridgway. There we topped off the Ural and grabbed a burger at the True Grit Café, named in recognition of the movie. We continued over the Dallas Divide on Highway 62 before making the loop over stunning Last Dollar Road. As we stopped at an overlook to view Utah’s La Sal Mountains across the valley, a cloud rose from below. We were momentarily engulfed in the mist before the Western view unveiled itself before us.
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The Ural bumped and bounced its way over the pass around and through deep ruts cut by recent rains. We needed two-wheel-drive on the toughest parts of the trail but the stoic beast kept heaving its way forward. Just above Telluride a rainbow greeted us, deepening the gratitude we experience each time we come here.
From Last Dollar Road, we looped back to Ouray for the night, meeting friends for dinner and soaking in the hot springs pool before turning in.
The next day, we rode the pavement back to Blue Mesa Cutoff. The route took us south of Blue Mesa Reservoir through rocky canyon walls and past ranches with yaks and other oddly horned bovines grazing lazily by the side of the road. We took it easy here, careful not to raise dust or frighten the animals. Just short of Highway 149, we spied an abandoned railroad bed running along the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River. It was once a spur of the Denver and Rio Grande Narrow Gauge Railroad and connected Lake City to Sapinero. These days, the road disappears under a rock slide a few miles north of County Road 25, but kiosks tell the story of those who labored here in the 1880s to blast this treacherous passage through the canyon.
Rolling slowly along, I noticed the sidecar making a strange banging noise. A bolt had worked loose at the forward ball joint connecting the car to the bike and Susan was hanging in a bucket only loosely attached. A quarter-mile back, we had met a fisherman setting up camp so we went back and stopped to borrow tools. Bill Martinez and his dog Chaco were more than willing to help. Soon we had the car firmly reattached and began making our way to back to base camp.
Earlier, we had met two other fishermen who invited us to stop by their camp for dinner. We declined at first but, passing their camp, the smell of fresh-cooked fajitas reeled us in. We looped back and enjoyed dinner, fellowship, and a fireside serenade with singing, guitar, and harmonica. As the evening waned we said our goodbyes and rejoined Highway 149 for the final run down to our cabin.
The Ural introduced us to new friends and allowed us to relax a bit in the open air, showing us a completely different perspective on a place we thought we knew. We had traveled these roads many times by motorcycle, Jeep and even hiked the trails leading high into the Uncompahgre but this was a first. I had never ridden here with my baby in a bucket, strapped to a dirt bike.
