I was invited by Dan Denchell to be volunteer staff for Desert Valley Powersports grand opening today. His move from Sunnyside to Prosser makes his business much more attractive to Tri-Citians and the new space is phenomenal. Dan and his business have been incredible supporters of the FJR community and Iron Butt Rally including being a checkpoint over the years.

A great turn-out by any measure!

Some of the FRJ folks there. It was hard with the 1000+ people to stage a photo of just FJRs and riders, but here’s a few. In fact, the right two folks are Lisa and Tobie, and the blue bike Warchild is mugging from are all in this year’s Iron Butt Rally.


The show was phenomenal…..and the pictures turned out better once I figured out some exposure settings on my camera.

Just to be clear about this shot. He’s going from right to left……not left to right. Figure that one out.

I took so many shots that didn’t turn out…..this is one the timing turned out pretty good.

How does one build-up to a trick like this? It helps when you have a kevlar scrotum….

Zoomed in….this guy is about 30 feet above the ground with legs flailing. Notice the lack of arm armor……it must just get in the way.

The wonderful thing about being volunteer staff for the day is that you get to demo the coolest bikes. These are spy shots of the new ‘08 FJRs. Warchild is trading in his FJR for this ‘08 in Tuscan Blue while Tobie is sporting the ‘08 FJR FS in Vino Black. The IS stands for “Fixed Sidestand”. It’s permanently down so with special piece of carpet glued to the bottom….so it’s impossible to tip over while parking. (inside joke to the FJR crowd)

When you’re the photographer there aren’t too many pictures of yourself. Tobie grabbed my camera and proved a person with zero experience can shoot a photo as well as I can….sigh.


The locals from PNWRiders.com came up to visit.


Denise is much nicer to look at than Warchild and Tobie.

Owner, Dan Denchel takes a practice run. He’s pretty close to being able to do a back flip with an FJR…….at least just once anyway.

What can I possibly say about this one? It was an 11 hour day at this point and he’d been there the previous two days. It’s wrong on so many levels. However I think the blue Yamaha shirt really brings out his eyes.