Chasing Clear Skies

West Texas

2011-05-01T00:16:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the really long delay in updating, everyone. I moved out of the country at the end of 2010 and where I'm currently living has very limited internet access, so I haven't been online much. But here is the next entry in the 2010 trip, my time in West Texas.

I'd spent a few days in Austin seeing friends and doing some maintenance on the bike; new front tire, oil change, and rear wheel bearings that were far overdue for a replacement. But soon, it was back in the saddle and chasing the sunsets.

Due west of Austin is Hill Country, a section of the mostly-flat state that actually has some fun elevation and twist roads.

A lot of them are proper sportbike twisty, some so good that they have a name. There is a whilea series of roads well known in the motorcycling community as "The Three Sisters".

The GPS on my phone was insisting that I was somewhere else entirely.

Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!

All that idiocy made me hungry, so I stopped in at a little greasy-spoon for some food

It was your basic fast food, but it was also very inexpensive, so I couldn't complain.

Sadly, the fun didn't last, and soon it all flattened out and gave way to the bland terribleness that is West Texas. Where no sane person would ever want to live.

Hours and hours of this:

The only real way one can deal with stuff like this is to kick back in my preferred "Straight boring roads" riding position. One foot on the crash bar, the other on the instrument console, leaned back on the seat bag.

It worked out perfectly, in that the master cylinder would nestle between the buckles on my boot. So by flexing my leg ever so slightly, I could make minor course corrections to compensate for wind and passing trucks.

I rode until the sun set that night, eventually pulling into a little campground somewhere in buttfuck nowhere.

As always with when I pay to stay somewhere, the sole deciding factor in me staying here was the big sign offering free wi-fi. SERIOUSLY. ANY MOTEL OR CAMPGROUND PROPRIETORS READING THIS. You ALWAYS need to have free wi-fi available. This is the 21st century, internet access is as basic of a necessity and amenity as electricity and running water (Unless you live on some tiny island in the middle of the ocean or something)

The next day dawned cool, and damp. The fog got so bad in some places that I slowed down to ~25mph and road on the shoulder, lest I get rear-ended by some truck doing a billion miles per hour.

Eventually I road out from under it, and stopped in some little featureless town for breakfast just before 10am.

The whole area was dull, flat, and terrible in every single way.

Who the fuck actually wants to live someplace like this? Really. The only reason I can think of is utter stupidity or small-mindedness. Because no sane, thinking creature would look at everything this country, this world has to offer, and think "Nah, I don't want to live anyplace nice. I want to live in someplace that is completely flat and hundreds of miles away from anything that doesn't suck."

West Texas, you suck. You suck big, floppy donkey dick.

It seemed that a lot of people agreed with me though. Seems like every little butthole of a town I passed through, most of it looked like this.

Something burning off in the distance.

After a seeming eternity of what amounts to motorcycle torture, FINALLY off in the distance there was a hint of hope. Actual elevation change!

Mountains!!!

Hooray! Back in the best idea that America ever had.

Out-of-order dirt riding post

2010-11-23T12:06:00.000-06:00

(There is video of all this, but youtube is being bitchy right now, so it'll come in a bit)

I've been in Tucson since Saturday after coming down Rt 191 through Apache National Forest (Holy shit, that road!!!) into the low desert. Sunday, Beck was great enough to rustle up a TW200 for me, and and we along with some other friends all went off for a day of trails!

We all met up at a gas station fairly close to the trailhead early in the morning. It was Becktastic on her DRZebra, myself on a TW200, two others on DRZs, and the the red bike was a . . . uh . . . we're not sure. But any of them were better options then V-Stroms! :D

The TW200 was a tiny bike to begin with, and my giant yellow ass crammed onto it was a hilarious proposition indeed. RACE TUCK!!!

And off to the trails with us!

It was my and another guy's first time ever riding dirt, so Beck and the others promised to take it easy on us and not take us down anything too difficult. Even given the easy trails, it wasn't long before the first wipeout of the day, which gave us a five minute break while the crashee re-attached his luggage rack and seat.

The TW200, while tiny and fat-tired compared to everything else, was a far cry better then my V-strom would have been at this, even with knobbies. It took me a while to loosen up and get used to the idea of sliding around, but after a while I got used to the idea of "if anything goes wrong, GAS IT"

I guess compared to what Beck and the others usually ride, these are easy trails, but some of them did give me pause for thought of "Um, really? Cuz last time I tried to do this, I almost died"

Amazingly though, I only fully crashed once! The rear end of the bike stepped out, and I panicked and ran off the trial. I could have stopped and gotten back on in a calm and controlled fashion, but that's just not my style! No, I tried to ride through a couple of small trees, and that didn't quite work out.

Ah well. Bike was fine, as was I!

Damn do I look funny sitting on that thing.

Given that we had a pretty high n00b percentage, we ended up stopping for a lot of breaks.

(Do I look awesome in that yellow suit or what?!)

(Not that I'm vain and like pictures of myself, or anything)

The one and only Becktastic! Who did a very good job of not complaining too much about all the stops us newbies were taking. :)

We stopped for lunch at this gas station that had a steakhouse next to it.

Beck was nice enough to continue taking many pictures of me in my awesome high-viz!

We, being poor adventure riders, were happy to make do with gas station food, but the steakhouse next door was filled with the chrome army. Most of it was the usual Heritage Classic Softglide Freedom Custom American Electratail stuff, but this . . . none of us knew what to make of this.

CHOPPER CHOPPER CHOPPER CHOPPER JESSE CUSTOM JAMES CHOPPER RAKE CHOPPER CHROME CUSTOM DRAG BARS CHROME CUSTOM CHOPPER CHOPPER FORKS THAT GO ALL THE WAY TO STURGIS

How the fuck do you actually ride that thing? And just . . . why?

After lunch we went back to the trails, and at one point the other n00b and I traded bikes. I think 5'7" him appreciated the little TW200 more then he let on, he had dropped his DRZ a bunch of times just due to being inseam challenged. And the DRZ did fit me pretty damn well!

Unfortunately, the TW200 didn't have the grip or cornering ability that he was used to, and on a twisty gravel road something happened and he ended up with the bike on top of him. He was mostly okay, but his ankle was pretty banged up and sore. We didn't want him to get hurt any worse by trying to ride with a bum foot, so we took smooth gravel home.

All in all, I'd like to think I wasn't as bad as Beck was expecting me to be :D It would have been a disaster if I'd tried to take my Wee, even if I had put knobbies on it.

Quick update from Tucson

2010-11-22T08:50:00.000-06:00

Quick update, I'm crashing on a friend's couch in Tucson right now, we spent all of Sunday out riding trails. She rustled up a TW200 for me to ride, and then for a short period later in the day I tried out someone's DRZ400 E.

I properly wiped out once, and got stopped rather suddenly by a tree at another point, but amazingly I never fully ate shit. I got most of my stupidity on GoPro, so there will be some video coming at some point.

And now I'm figuring out what to do next. Beck has tempted me with thoughts of killing time until she has 4 days off for Thanksgiving, and heading down to Mexico for a bit. I knew there was a reason I brought my passport with me . . . hrm, decisions, decisions. That would mean I wouldn't get to spend much if any time in California, and might get back to Chicago a bit later then I thought, but . . . Adventure!

Austin

2010-11-18T00:42:00.001-06:00

Austin was to be a bit of a rest for me. I was going to stay with an old friend Raven and his wife Kat on their ST1300, as well as see some other friends and do some maintenance on the bike. The front tire was due for replacement, the rear wheel bearings were shot, and it was time for an oil change.

I got into Austin mid-day on Saturday and linked up with my friend, where our first order of business was to get the front wheel off so we could get the tire changed. For some reason, motorcycle shops in Austin aren't open Sunday & Monday, so we wanted to get the wheel to the shop before they closed that day. Some kitty litter helped balance the bike on the center stand to raise the front end.

After getting the front wheel and it's new rubber back on, it was time to attack the rear of the bike. The old bearings were beyond fucked, and is probably why the rear tire was worn out so quickly. There was so much play in them it was unreal.

Aside from my friend Raven and his wife, I also needed to use this time to see an old friend of mine Megan, who is the end result of someone cross-breeding a kitten with a cupcake.

So Sunday, we all piled onto the bikes for a day trip into Texas hill country. Raven and his wife on their ST1300, and Megan and I on my V-Strom

Megan was on camera duty, which she used to take pictures of everything she could see. Which was mostly the back of my head.

But then she discovered that she could take pictures of herself in my rear-view mirror

We got out of Austin and headed west, to where there's some elevation change, twisty roads and general prettiness.

One of the roads had a lot of low areas that flood regularly, and this one neat water crossing that looked to always be flooded

Unfortunately . . . this is where things went wrong :(

It turns out that the constant flow of water had polished the concrete to a mirror-smooth finish, and there was a good coating of algae growing on it. I know people often use "slick as ice" as a term to describe anything slippery, but that is not an exaggeration at all in this case. It really was SO slick that it was difficult to walk on, let alone control a motorcycle over.

Raven & Kat went through first at barely 5-10mph, and I was only about 20 feet behind them when all of the sudden the back of the ST slid out to one side, then snapped back to the other side and went down, dumping Raven and Kat off and spinning 180 degrees to face the other way.

Of course, I was right behind them, and through only dumb luck was able to avoid them and keep my Wee upright. And I only BARELY kept it up, the bike was sliding around all over the place under me and I was just a split second from dumping it.

Raven at Kat were a little bruised, but okay. Kat is still recovering from a broken shoulder she suffered a few months ago as a result of a wipeout on her GS650, but fortunetly there didn't seem to be any more damage. They both landed on their elbows and shoulders, and it's likely that the armor in their jackets saved them both from painful injuries. [b]Get good gear, and ALWAYS wear it.[/b]

Raven was able to pick it back up himself (how the hell did he do that with a 700lb bike?), and at least get it out of the road.

Of course, to add insult to injury, just after we moved it, some old guy on a Goldwing rolled right through like it was nothing. Maybe we just suck at motorcycles.

We then set about what any good motorcyclist does after they wipe out; taking pictures of everything around us.

Megan and I discovered that with a little bit of a run, we could go sliding for quite a ways on the super-slick pavement. So we did, because we are both very mature like that.

(Damn do I look cool in that suit or what?! :D)

Anyway, after we got the OMGCRAAAAASH adrenalin out of our systems, we carried on.

It just wouldn't be a motorcycle trip if we didn't stop for ice cream!

And then booze at this little local winery that Raven and Kat both like a lot.

(That's actually a lousy picture of all three of them, but Megan's deer-in-the-headlights facial expression is just too adorable to not post)

By the time we got back to Austin it was dark, but we were all still not ready to stop riding, so we headed out for some BBQ!

Mmmmm, meat.

Raven and I's day wasn't quite over yet. We dropped off the ladies, and then we headed out to an IHOP to meet another gooney friend, Korwen, for a few hours of swapping travel and vehicle stories, and probably annoying the waiter that we spend hours there and ordered nothing but a few cups of hot chocolate. But hey, isn't that what IHOP is for?

Raven and Korwen being suave and cool, and me being . . . me.

I decided that I needed to spend one more day in Austin, mostly just to hang out with Megan some more. She and I had actually met 7 years ago at a Rennisance Fair (Hey, shut up. It's where all the hot nerd girls hang out), and for some reason have managed to stay in very regular e-mail contact for the whole time. This was only the second time in the last 7 years that we'd gotten face-to-face time, and dammit we were going to make the most of it.

We ended up hanging out at this weird little quirky coffee shop that seemed to be a destination for all the hipsters of the city, Spider House I think it was called. Either way, they had tasty natchos!

And I kept trying to take sneeky photos of Megan, but she kept noticing and making funny faces to screw it up.

Anyway, we were there talking for like 8 hours, occasionally pestering our waiter for drinks and munchies. I felt sorry for staying there so long, so I ended up giving her a $15 tip on a $35 bill. Hopefully that made up for it?

Anyway, that was about the extent of my time in Austin. It was great being able to see my friends again, even if I wasn't QUITE able to convince Raven to quit his job, pack his bike up and follow me west.

Although I did see this going out of town.

*giggle* Oh, I'm such a grown-up.

2010-11-16T14:26:00.000-06:00

I'm not going to bother talking extensively about Deals Gap. We all know it, many of us have ridden it, and the rest of us want to ride it. Last time I came through it was on my Virago, and now with a slightly more sporty bike and some track days under my belt, I wanted to give it another shot.

Even though Deals Gap specifically is famous for it's twists, the whole area for miles in any direction is full of sportbike roads, and great views.

I had planned on linking up with a goon at the resort, but I arrived the better part of two hours late due to being delayed by the construction on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We chatted a while, and I took the luggage and hardbags off the Wee to go and have some fun.

And I promptly turned in what is probably one of the sloppiest runs ever seen on the Gap.

I'd honestly forgotten just how scary that road actually is, especially when you don't know it. This combined with the fact that I'd already done 300 miles or so that day made me all over the place. I was tired and sore and just a mess. I was on and off the gas in the middle of corners, I was completely crossed up, I was over the DY a number of times and was generally a squiddy disaster waiting to happen. After the first run, my goon friend (appropriately) chastised me for being a moron, and I at least slowed the fuck down and just tried to enjoy the road. At least as best you can, even with little traffic and no cops, the road still makes me shiver. And with no leaves on the trees, you could really see just how far down the cliff you can fall if you fuck something up.

I very much did not want to end up adding to the collection on the Tree of Shame.

Whenever someone crashes their bike on the road, they are required by tradition to leave a part of their bike in the tree. Many of the bits of plastic and metal have short descriptions of the event written on them, and a disturbing amount say "RIP"

We spent that night at the resort, where I introduced my dad to the series "The Long Way Round". I know he keeps insisting that he's fine with bicycles, but I SWEAR I'm going to get him on a motorcycle someday.

The next day dawned cold, and drizzly. Looking at the radar there was rain in almost all directions, so there wasn't much choice but to gear up and deal with it.

The goal was to make it over to the start of the Natchez Trace Parkway, which starts just south of Nashville and would run almost all the way down to the coast. There wasn't a whole lot in the way of great riding to get there, and even then it was too wet and cold to enjoy it much anyway. We burned miles west on smaller roads, starting mostly dry but hitting more and more patches of rain, until finally it was just a constant heavy rain. Didn't bother taking any pictures of it, because what motorcyclist really wants to look at pictures of cold rain?

We did stop at a little diner place for breakfast at around 11am. This place exuded sophistication and class, as indicated most strongly by the fact that their idea of napkins was a roll of paper towels on every table.

Mmm, calories!

That night we stayed in some motel that looked like it was going to be a gross fleabag, but was surprisingly clean given the low rate. The next day dawned much nicer, cool and sunny, and we headed onto the Natchez Trace Parkway.

This parkway roughly traces the route of one of the common trails used by Native Americans to travel from the gulf coast up into the midwest. It's not particularly mountainous, nor does it have any of the twists of the Blue Ridge Parkway, but it's a wonderful road none the less.

The road is incredibly peaceful, spending most of it's time in the forest, and while it's not twisty at all, rarely is it ever straight and spends most of it's time very slowly winding it's way over gentle hills and through the beautiful fall trees. Occasionally it pops out into clearings of farms or grasslands, before sliding back through clumps of trees.

It was so incredibly peaceful. No billboards, no towns, little traffic, few exits, nothing to break the serenity save for the occasional scenic view or informational/historic pull off.

It was also one of the smoothest roads I have EVER been on, especially the northern bits part. Not a single ripple, crack, NOTHING at all. It was almost unsettling just how completely smooth the bike was, it felt like you were riding along on a cloud, you couldn't feel the road under you. It was amazing. I think this road would be perfect to take a literbike on and blast along at 150mph. Enough changes in direction to be interest, but never any real corners, excellent sight lines at all times, and buttery smooth pavement.

One of the informational pull-offs advertized a section of the origional Natchez Trace. Modern engineering standards meant that it wasn't possible to follow the origional route exactly for many sections, but there were some little gravel road bits that followed the path as closely as possible.

And the nice thing about having a chase vehicle is you have someone to act as camera bitch :)

We stopped in some little town just off the Parkway for lunch at a buffet, that was actually really good considering it only cost $6. Not included is a picture of the enormous family of hambeasts that was sitting at the table next to us. I couldn't get a good enough sneaky shot.

My dad was out of vacation time, so at this point he had to turn back north. We said our goodbys, and as I was backing out of the parking space . . .

Thanks, dad. Thanks for your first reaction being to grab the camera, rather then help me wake the bike up from it's little nap.

I headed down the parkway for another few hours, and once the shadows started getting long I looked for someplace to camp. I spied what looked like a small trail leading off into the forest and followed it with . . . predictably stupid results.

GODDAMIT IF BRUTE FORCE DOESN'T WORK YOU'RE NOT USING ENOUGH.

Eventually I got the bike back there, and set up for the night.

Getting the bike back out in the morning didn't go too well, either.

I road the rest of the Trace that day, ending in the town of Natchez where I got a pretty damn great pizza at a little italian place. It was so filling that I was only able to finish half of a fairly small pizza, so the rest went into the saddlebags for dinner.

I continued west, getting into Texas and heading up to one of the National Forests in search of a place to camp. Unfortunetly, it was deer hunting season and I felt that primitive camping somewhere randomly was a good plan to get shot, so I ended up saying in one of the areas designated for hunters.

There wasn't much to note the next day, save for . . .

Well, shit. 77 in a 70, got off with a warning. Hooray!

Real-time update

2010-11-10T21:44:00.000-06:00

I'm in a tiny town in West Texas called Sanderson, at a campground that has Wi-fi. I'm actually sitting in the laundry shed typing this, because I forgot to charge my laptop while on the bike and opened it to find the battery dead. And the signal in the shed here is so weak that there is literally a 6" area that I need to have the laptop in for it to work, so I'm sitting on one of the washers with the laptop balanced precariously on a window sill.

I've actually failed completely at stealth camping both of the last two nights (hell, for most of this trip), everything in Texas is surrounded by barb wire fences and TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT signs.

I'm toying with checking out Big Bend National Park, and after that I'll be heading up to Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks. Looking forward to getting to NM and AZ, there's a wealth of National Forests up there, and basically none in West Texas.

Lets see, things to note over the last few days:

-Stayed with a friend in Austin, and the ginormous pair of breasts that he's married to
-Met up with goon at an IHOP for coffee and a few hours of me talking about myself (sorry if I came across as self-centered)
-Replaced the rear wheel bearings and front tire on my Wee. Although now that I look at it I might need a rear tire soon too. Crap. Why do I insist on running soft sport rubber on my dual-sport bike?
-Road the Three Sisters in Texas. Holy crap, roller coaster roads! Came over some hills with enough speed that the bike scraped stuff on the ground when it settled back onto the suspension
-Got a fleece liner for my sleeping bag. OMG LUXURY I HAVE NEVER KNOWN YOU BEFORE.
-Discovered that the PO of my Olympia suit had seam-sealed all of the vent zippers shut. SON OF A BITCH. Anyone know of a solvent that will dissolve this shit without fucking up the fabric/plastic?
-Been perfecting the "flat and mostly straight" riding position on my bike:

(throttle lock on, leaning back on the seat bag with my left foot on the crash bar, right foot on the dashboard, and the buckle of my boot wedged against the master cylinder so I can control the direction of the bike by flexing my leg. It's heavenly when the shoulders are starting to get sore)

New River Gorge and Blue Ridge Parkway

2010-11-10T19:20:00.003-06:00

The place we had done the Zip Line adventure was in the New River Gorge, famous for the annual "Bridge Day" event where BASE jumpers and rappellers are permitted to use the bridge's 876 foot height above the river below for their enjoyment. It's a very scenic bridge, in a very pretty area.

(Usually I would use Photoshop magic to fill in the black, but there's just too much information to try and generate, it looked lousy)

My dad, who at this point is so old that he would drop dead if he tried to act his age, took the opportunity to show off that even though he's old, he's still a gymnast.

There was a little one-way road, what I'm assuming was the old way of getting across the gorge before the big bridge was built, that goes down to the base of the gorge and across a small bridge to the other side. In addition to providing some neat pictures of the big bridge, it was also super-narrow and twisty and fun as hell :D

(I had to keep stopping to wait for my dad in his van. Stupid cages)

After doing the zip-line thing, we both headed down to Ashville for the night, by super-slab :( We were trying to make up time, and it was late by that time. Stupid me trying to have a schedule on a motorcycle trip.

After spending the night in a hotel in Ashville, and getting completely lost due to me not being able to see the GPS screen in my tank bag map pouch in direct sunlight, and then after a good chunk of the parkway being closed for construction, giving us a 40-mile detour, we finally found the Parkway and I finally finished this stupid long sentence.

Oh, parkway. How I less-then-three all of you.

Pictures of my bike in front of stuff!

Holy crap, me AND the bike next to stuff!

And, again, my dad being my dad. Yes, we get it, you're in much better shape then someone a third your age.

(Fortunately, I was able to convince him NOT to take an even ruder picture.)

The Blue Ridge Parkway spits you out at into the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, but that wasn't my big interest. It was stuff like this!

Most people reading this already know what's coming next, but for those who don't, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park's southern border is a little section of US 129, a road which has . . . special properties.

Shenandoah National Park

2010-11-08T21:05:00.003-06:00

Most of Saturday, October 30th was spent burning miles along Rt 50 from Ohio into Virgina, trying to find an REI to exchange my leaking sleeping pad at. It was actually a pretty nice way to cross the states, alternating between slowly rolling farmland and some proper twisty bits.

I got to Fairfax well after dark, and after finding the REI to swap my sleeping pad and pick up a couple of basics, I just grabbed a hotel and ordered a pizza for the night. There went $100 up in smoke, but whatever, it was a long day and I was tired and sore. The pizza was big enough that it made for decent leftovers, and on the way out I raided the maid's cart for toiletries.

October 31st: I super-slabbed it out of Fairfax for an hour or so to get to Front Royal, a small town that serves as the start of Skyline Drive, and Shenandoah National Park.

Shenandoah National Park has a slightly more checkered history then the older parks out West. While the large and famous parks in the Rockies were largely uninhabited areas when they were designated as parks, Shenandoah was fully established in 1935 and most of it's land was previously under private ownership. The residents of the area were largely pushed out, sometimes by military force, and the state of Virgina used eminent domain laws to buy the land from them and donate it to the Federal Government.

While this is a morally complicated issue, the fact is that the area is very beautiful and fulfilled the government's goal of having a National Park that was more accessible to the bulk of the population that lived on the east coast. The chief feature of the park is Skyline Drive, a 100+ mile road that runs through the park, giving stunning views at many overlooks along the way.

Handheld shakey video! Available in HD, no less. I got lazy and used Youtube's Audioswap to throw in some generic instrumental music, as all you could hear on the video's soundtrack was deafening wind roar.

(I'm trying to figure out how to get it to start at a specific time, but it doesn't seem to be working. Fast-forward to about 1:40 for some of the more scenic stuff, the first bit is me just playing around with holding the camera low to the ground.)

Even though the parkway is only 100-something miles long, the speed limit for most of it is 35mph and the combination of other traffic and stunning views means you can't go much faster then that anyway.

Skyline Drive comes out of the park and turns into the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is essentially the same idea as Skyline Drive, only longer. It takes a meandering, 477-mile long route through the mountains, avoiding many towns and cities, serving it's single function of being a beautiful drive.

And I'm sure there's some out there who would disagree with me, but really it's the same thing as Skyline, only more. Personally I like the Blue Ridge Parkway a bit better then Skyline, I think the views are more rugged and look down on fewer farms and civilization, and more on the endless rolling ridges.

I took the Blue Ridge Parkway as far south as Roanoke, by which time it was late and the sun was gone. Like on my last trip, my dad used my motorcycle trip as an excuse to ditch work and tag along on my travels in his van. While it slows me down, it does mean that I can pull on the heartstrings and have him pay for everything. The plan had been for him to meet me in Ronanoke and then for us to continue down the BRP together, but then I came up with another way he could spend money on me.

Zip line adventures!

We went on a coarse that consisted of five total ziplines, this one being the longest at 1800 feet. Unfortunately the batteries in my GoPro didn't hold up for the other ziplines.

I know this is a short update, but I think that's it for now. These take a lot more time to write then you'd think, especially when you have my bad habit of taking a zillion pictures that I have to sort through and stitch together into nice panoramas (and then clean up in Photoshop because I'm anal like that)

Back to it

2010-11-03T21:55:00.005-05:00

The week leading up to the trip was full of the usual checks and repairs that most bikes will need before setting off on the road for a long trip. I'd bought the bike ~9 months ago and since then had put 16,000 miles on it, and there were some consumables that needed to be replaced. A new chain was in order, and as long as I was in there I went up a tooth (to 16) on the front sprocket, for a slightly more relaxed cruising RPM.

The valves were also checked, and a screw that was found in my rear tire was fixed. As long as I had the rear tire off, I got about to making something that I should have done a while ago: A tool tube.

This bike has so much more storage then my old Virago that I'm not quite sure what to do with it all. I'm not taking my SLR camera on this trip, which reduces my load by a bit, but even looking at my bike as I set off it looked so un-cluttered. Maybe I should strap a bunch of extra crap to it, just for the hell of it.

Starting mileage:

The first day out was uneventful. I super-slabbed in east from Chicago heading for Detroit, catching some light rain along the way. By the time I got to Detroit it was 9pm, so I had dinner at a seafood place with a girl I'd met and then got a room at a Motel 6 for the night.

The next day was largely more super-slab, due south from Detroit. I realized that in my haste to leave I'd forgotten some camping supplies, so I hit up an Outdoor World for some basics.

Northern Ohio is your usual crap-fest of straight midwest roads, but once you get into the south-eastern bit, there was actually some pretty kick-ass roads around there. Could probably have had a lot of fun in that area if I'd explored more.

I kept pushing south until I made it to Wayne National Forest, and headed off down some ATV trails in search of a place to camp.

Compared to the places I took my Virago, off-roading even on a D/S bike that's as road-oriented as the V-strom was a joy.

Eventually I came to a trail junction that had just enough of a clearing for the tent, and I made camp for the night there.

A couple of ATVs and maybe a dirtbike went by at some point in the night, but overall it was peaceful. And COLD. My sleeping bag was warm enough, but I discovered that my sleeping pad had a leak and the night was almost completely sleepless, tossing and turning trying to get comfortable on what was basically gravel. The night was so cold that I woke up to a layer of ice on the inside of my tent from condensation, and a lot of frost to scrape off the bike's seat.

Besides a few packets of hot chocolate mix, I hadn't brought much in the way of food. I fixed that with a stop at Aldis for the staples of any motorcycle camping trip.

I was sore and from a night of no-sleeping on what was essentially gravel, and made it my top priority to find an REI to exchange my sleeping pad at. But it seems there wasn't a single REI in all of West Virginia; the closest one that was even vaugly along my route was in Fairfax, just outside of D.C. I burned miles all day there along Rt 50, which actually had some pretty good bits. It was cold, maybe 40 degrees during most of the day, but the sun was out and the road was nice. It could have been much worse.

By the time I got to Fairfax, and the REI, it was well past dark and I was famished. I got a hotel ($80/night, yeow), ordered a pizza, updated the internet quickly and went to sleep.

Unfortunetly, I think this is going to be it for this update. I've got a ton of videos and many more pictures I want to upload, but this hotel that I'm in (Just outside of Knoxville) has some super-shitty internet, and I've had enough trouble just getting the few pictures here uploaded. Let alone any chance of video.

I should be in Austin in a few days with some decent internet access, so there should be a big update then.

Oh god, mountains. I missed them so much.

2010-10-30T21:43:00.002-05:00

I'm currently typing this from a hotel in Fairfax, Virginia. The connection here is lame and slow, too slow to realistically upload pictures, so they will have to come later.

Until I get a chance for a real update, here's the tl;dr version:

Thurs the 28th: Left Chicago. Super-slabbed it through light rain to Detroit, where I met a girl. Motel 6'ed it for the night.

Fri the 29th: Left Detroit, headed south through Ohio through some nasty crosswinds. Took the bike for some VERY light off-roading, found someplace to camp down an ATV trail in Wayne National Forest. Found out that my sleeping pad had a leak.

Sat the 30th: Started the day with ice on the inside of my tent, and heavy layer of frost on the bike. Headed east from Athens, Ohio, hoping to find an REI to exchange my sleeping pad at. Found that the closest one was in Virginia, so I burned miles along Rt 50 all day (which has some amazing stretches, BTW) and got to the REI in Fairfax, VA, around 6:30pm. Got a hotel for the night, which is where I am now.

Pics will come in the next few days. The plan now is to make my way down the Blue Ridge Parkway, to the Great Smokey Mountains.

Here we go again . . .

2010-10-28T08:49:00.001-05:00

Last summer, I took a four-month long, 27,000 mile road trip, taking a wildly inappropriate bike into places it was never supposed to go. I posted about it here, and ended up wrapping all my blog posts into a single PDF for people to download for easier reading http://home.comcast.net/~tsaven/Linearblawg.pdf . Since then, I've been killing time in Chicago, working some proper 9-5 type jobs and generally trying to be a productive member of society.

It turns out that I'm not very good at that, so fuck it. I'm going back on the road.

I'm leaving today, and this time on a much more appropriate machine; my black '04 Wee-Strom. I spent the last week doing the usual wrenching on it; valve check, chain and sprockets, tool tube, etc. Compared to my Virago that I did my previous trip on, this bike has so much storage space I don't quite know what to do with it all.

Fall is almost over here in Chicago, so my goal is to get south as soon as I can. I want to get over to the Blue Ridge Parkway before it closes for the season, and then head down the Natchez parkway before heading across the South to the Trinity test site, and then to Death Valley. By this time, my money will probably have run out, but if I can I want to also make it up to the Giant Redwoods forest, because I <3 giant trees. At that point, I'll sell the bike (if I can. 75k+ on it, some trackdays and a couple of at-speed laydowns do not a good resale value make), and fly back to Chicago.

I can't describe how powerful the urge to get back on the road has been, and I'm jittery with excitement to get back to living on my own terms. This will be a short trip, only a month or so. I've got a new job starting on the other side of the world on December 16th, and I'm flying out from Chicago on the 14th, so I am a little bit constrained by time.

Alrighty, guys. I've gotta do some last minute bike adjustments, and then it's back on the road again (THANK GOD!).

The End.

2010-04-20T00:12:00.002-05:00

Alright people, this is it. Last update of the trip itself.

There was one more major National Park that I wanted to get through on my way home, if only to make as much use of my annual pass as I could; Rocky Mountain National Park.

I'd gotten to the outskirts later in the day, and it was cold, and slightly drizzly. It was too late to enter the park and actually get through it, and the weather was too lousy to see much of anything anyway. I made camp for the night in some national forest land just outside the park, in a clearing where it looked others had camped before.

The next morning dawned much nicer then the evening before

After stopping at the visitor center on the way in to the park to recharge my camera batteries, I headed in. Frequently along the roads you'd find a crowd of people stopped and peering into the forest, cameras at the ready, as the locals would make themselves seen.

The Trail Ridge Road is another high-altitude mountain road. It climbs quickly through some rapid switchbacks and steep grades, climbing 4,000 feet in just 15 miles, and gives impressive views along the way.

But the high altitudes also brought rain, and cold. It was perhaps 40 degrees, and I was in my heavily vented mesh summer jacket, with just my rain gear over it. High altitude mountians have very unpredictable and random weather patterns, and while one could often see areas in the distance that were clear and sunny, right here was windy, cold, and rainy. With the occasional snow.

Yes, that would be snow.

The road peaks at about 12,500 feet, and there's a few little pathways to walk to some lookouts.

(This is probably my favorite picture from the park)

I feel like I should have stayed there longer, but I was cold and it was not a pleasent place to be. If I'd been in my yellow suit, with it's waterproofing and insulation, I would have probably been happier, but even then, it makes riding in crappy weather just tolerable. I kept on going down the road, eventually dropping back into the tree line.

The mountians spit me out into another touristy little town, where I found the library, and touched base with the internet. A contact of mine from SomethingAwful/ADVRider had generously offered me his couch in Denver, which I planned on making it to that evening.

Gotta love a library that appreciates motorcycles.

The rest of the day was pretty decent. Even with the fading sun, I took advantage of the last of the mountains that I was going to see for a while, taking Highway 7 down to 72, then to 119 and finally getting into Denver well after dark.

PlasticSun and his girlfriend were incredibly generous, giving me use of their shower, couch, and the luxury of a home-cooked meal for the night. And while being inside again was always nice . . . that was it. The trip was over. All that was left was three days of booking it across the flatland.

This was my view for the next three days. I even said hell with it and spent it all on the super-slab. The country roads here are going to be just as straight, just as boring, but with more frequent and annoying stops. So hell with it. It was interstate.

Well that's an interesting tactic.

Stealth camping in the plains is always a lot harder then anywhere else, because there's so little in the way of concealment. Before I left Denver, I'd scouted out some National Forest land in Nebraska (Forests, in Nebraska? Really?) that I should be able to camp in that night, so it was my target. I arrived WELL after dark, but that trapezoidal sign is always such a welcome sight.

It turned out that I wasn't wrong in making that "Psh, Nebraska doesn't have trees!" crack. This is their version of a National Forest. I am not joking.

They have a very different definition of a forest then I do. And this road was AWFUL. Deep, sloppy sand.

I'd come in this way, but I think if I had come in during the daylight, I would have turned back. How the hell had I made it over this in the dark?

Once I got out (without dropping it, go me), I did find up the road that there were a few trees, and a proper campground. Ah well. They would have wanted money, and I like keeping my money. Not like I really had much left at this point anyway.

For the first half of the day, I did make an attempt to stay on country roads that at least ran by rivers, so I would have something to look at. But there wasn't much, and soon I was back on the interstate. I'd been dreading the end of the trip for so long that by now, I just wanted it to be over. Which sounds really strange, but I guess it's like getting a shot at the doctor's office or something. Just get it over with already.

The next two days consisted of super-slab, with meals of $5 Little Ceaser's pizzas and $5 boxes of fried chicken from grocery stores. That night, I camped in a Koa campground, because I had a feeling that stealthing it wasn't going to work, and they had free internet.

The next day was completely uneventful, with more endlessly horrid interstate. But for my last night on the road, I did stealth camp at least. I found a country road, and in my most brazen attempt at camping on the whole trip, simply road the bike straight off the road and into a grove of trees. It could have ended badly I guess, but my luck continued to hold, and I ended up in a clearing just big enough for the bike and the tent.

And on the last day of my trip, the day I was getting home, in the middle of Illinois;

(Actual mileage is ~1400 more then that, due to the time with the broken speedo cable, but still)

And then, at ~4:15pm on September 19th, 2009, four months and four days after I left, I pulled back into the driveway.

I was done.

And on and on

2010-03-23T04:47:00.002-05:00

After making that sort of emo, whiny video, I finished putting the last few things onto the bike and headed back to the main road, back down the stupid steep and mostly washed out trail.

I've been ignoring the fact that I'm not on a dual-sport for the last 25,000 miles, I wasn't about to give in on the last few days.

My target was Grand Junction, which was still ~100 miles north of me, along what had looked on the map to be a fairly curvy, but not quite twisted road. What the map failed to note was that this road traced a river through a small canyon for the majority of it's length. Not twisted enough to entertain most sports bikes, but it was great to ride through.

So, excuse me for deluging you with more road pictures, but there's not much I can say to caption them.

Somewhere ~30 miles south of Grand Junction, I stopped at a resort area for gas, and to take a bit of a break. For obvious reasons, this place was pretty popular with cruisers only. I didn't see many sport-bikes around.

I love being the one filthy bike in a sea of perfect chrome. None of the other riders so much as make eye contact, let alone wave. :)

Om nom nom!

Anyway, heading on north.

As usual, stuff so big it's hard to put it into perspective.

Just before I got to Grand Junction, I ran into someone who put an end to my spirited riding sessions.

I thought about stopping for fifteen minutes or so to let him get well ahead of me, but I worried that he might just be set up in a speed trap somewhere waiting for some dumbass riding way faster then he should. So I just hung back far enough to keep him in site, and enjoyed the views.

For the past couple weeks, every town of significant size that I'd stopped at, I'd always checked in to the local motorcycle stores to see about getting a new air filter for the bike. I hadn't changed it before I left on my trip, which was 25,000 miles ago, and who knows how long it had been before then that it had been changed. No place I'd checked with previously had one in stock, but FINALLY I connected with this place in Grand Junction that had want I needed.

It was hot, really hot. Air temp was indicated at 95 degrees, but sitting in a parking lot working on a hot engine, it felt hotter. Replacing the air filter only took a few minutes, and wow did it need it. As I put it onto the counter so the parts guy could match it up with a replacement, a tablespoon of dust fell out of it.

As he was writing up the receipt, I struck up a conversation with him. I explained that I was heading in the vague direction of Denver, but I didn't like the interstate and was looking for a more scenic route. Furthermore, I didn't mind if it took me an extra day (or two) out of my way.

"Hrm . . . " the man said as he looked me over, glanced at my bike outside, and raised an eyebrow at me. "You don't mind mud, do you?"

I chuckled. :)

Eventually, he was nice enough to doodle me out a map with what he thought was one of the best ways to get over the continental divide.

Man, I love some motorcycle shops.

Following his directions had me on I-70 for only about ten minutes, before getting off and starting to head way up into the mountains.

I did a lot of climbing very quickly, and one I got up here I saw one of the clearest signs yet that my trip was almost over. The leaves were just starting to change.

How in the hell is that even legal? I guess that's the financial services version of a Romex watch.

Anyway, true to the guy at the shop's word, the pavement did soon run out. And the weather turned lousy, too. It had been 95F and sunny in Grand Junction, but up here it was mid-60s and rainy.

Even so, it was so nice being here.

Tthe road was pretty slick and these tires had next to no grip, in addition to being on the totally the wrong bike for it (Story of the trip). But whatever, it was better then the interstate! :)

It rained on and off (but mostly on) for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, I only rode out from under it just after the sun had set for the night. Best I figured, I had maybe 20 minutes to find someplace to camp before the rain caught up with me, and it was close to 9pm at this point.

I found a forest service campground that was nearly packed to capacity; all of the car sites were filled, and there was just a single R/V site left open. In what I'm sure was probably a bit of an asshole move born out of desperation, I claimed it, hoping that I wouldn't be pestered later on by some pensioner in his gigantic trailer ornery about why some little bike and a tent was taking up the last R/V spot. Hey, finders, keepers.

I rushed about setting up the tent; There was lightening in the distance and the thunder was getting louder, and you could smell the nitrogen in the air of an impending rainstorm. My timing couldn't have been more perfect; I got everything into the tent, and literally 30 seconds after I shut the door for the last time, the rain started.

And holy shit, did it ever rain. We're talking noah's ark levels of rain, complete with thunder, epic lightening, and water coming down in buckets. And through it all, I stay snuggled happy and warm in my sleeping bag.

9-13-09

Of course, mountain weather is famously neurotic; In contrast to the amazing storm that we'd had the night before, the next day dawned warm, and perfectly clear.

Of course, I had still higher to go; I was maybe halfway through the map the guy had drawn out for me. I packed up, and went on my way.

Part of the route took me up past a rainwater damn. Big 'ol pile of rocks.

Not used for electricity generation or anything, serves mostly as a reservoir to help conserve the spring floodwater to last through the hot summers. But once I got up higher in these altitudes, the clouds and ever-persistent hints of rain were back.

Off the pavement again my route took me.

Eventually I got out from under the rain, and it cleared up again.

Only once I got to the pass did I fully turn around and see where I'd come from.

Goddamit, Colorado. Why do you get to look like this when the midwest is stuck being so horrible.

Obligatory "Bike next to pretty stuff" picture:

Aaaaand I made it!

The new air filter for the bike was helping a LOT, but use of fifth gear was mostly a distant memory. It was mostly 3rd gear now, occasionally 4th for the flatter bits. Fortunately, it was all downhill from here! :D

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Oh, happy roads. Happy, happy roads.

Dropping back down to saner altitudes, I stopped in at a little diner place for munchies. Not going to lie, biggest reason I picked this place was the car parked in the lot.

Food was blah. Tasted okay ,but nothing special about it.

I consulted my GPS for a while to figure out where I wanted to go from here. I figured that as long as I was here, I had to go through Rocky Mountain National Park, which looked to still be a day or so of riding away. With that in mind, I got back on the road.

I took a ~20 mile detour back up into the moutains in search of some spirited riding places, and again found the bike amazingly low on power. I was probably dripping raw gasoline out of the tailpipes, I must have been running so rich.

Some guys were filling up some kind of plastic tubes. I didn't know, and didn't care enough to ask.

It was rainy, it was cold, and the only other bikes around were fully dressed Harleys puttering around at 10mph. To be fair, I wasn't going much faster. The roads were too wet/slick looking, and traffic too bad for anything spirited. I took a short walk to some lookouts, but other then that I just turned around and headed back the way I came.

Even after getting back down out of the pass, there was more rain in my future.

At some point, I spotted a beautiful vista off in the distance. The sun was at the right angle, the trees were framing it perfectly, it was beautiful. So I pulled over to the side of the road, and JUST as I pulled out my camera.

ARG FUCKING OLD PEOPLE AND YOUR RETARDED MOBILE HOMES. I HATE YOU ALL SO MUCH. Not only do you clog up our roads by driving everywhere 15mph under the limit because you have no fucking idea how to manuver your 40 foot long plastic shit-♠boxes, but you also insist on stopping EXACTLY spot on to screw up my shot. And damn right they did it intentionally, there's no other explaination. And they weren't even taking pictures of it or anything! They were just sitting there arguing amoungts themselves, by the looks of it!

Erg. R/Vs make a strong argument for euthinasia. I moved up the road a bit to get my shot, but the framing wasn't as good. *grumble grumble bitch*

And on and on I rode.

Seems that bike wash a few days ago hadn't done much good. I'd gotten it all dirtied up again already.

Sure, there was still the occasional rain. But there were always clear skies ahead to keep the spirits up.

Utah

2010-03-16T04:13:00.001-05:00

I had camped the previous night at what looked to be a parking/picnic area for an OHV trail head. There were nice pit toilets, and no one around to tell me not to, so it was my campsite for the night.

The next morning found things just as empty as I thought they were the night before.

It had been such a calm, clear and perfect night that I hadn't bothered with the tent. It's amazing how much faster it makes the morning go when you don't have to pack the tent up.

Heading east farther into Utah

Absolutely brilliant parking job, douchetard. (Taken when I stopped in some town somewhere for gas).

WEEEEEE!

Vroom vroom me bike go fast!

I spent the next few hours gaining altitude. I started the day at just a few thousand feet, but by late morning I was well into thin air.

But what views were offered . . .

At this point, I need to make a formal apology to the state of Utah. Previously, I've always written you off on account of the crazy people with magic underwear that settled you a few hundred years ago. And while they might be pretty fucked in the head, it's not your fault they're there. Loony people or not, you are one epically beautiful state.

As is fairly typical for riding through mountains, at a few points I got rained on. But it wasn't ever that heavy, just the patchy showers that are normal for jagged terrain.

Opps, free-range cattle. Go slowly past them when on a bike; a guy I know through the internet was badly injured after crashing into a donkey who startled when he road by on his motorcycle.

(And yes, I waved to them as I went by)

Ooo, neat.

Unfortunately, what looked to be (and was) a deliciously twisty road on the map was ruined by traffic crawling along at 15mph. Some creative interpretation of what constitutes a legal passing zone got me to the front eventually, where I saw the culprit.

Some douche-bag semi truck that was crawling along (Also, WTF is that trike thing on the trailer behind the camper?).

A quick flick of the throttle and I was past it all again, back to an open road to play with as I wished.

(Yeah, that's an American flag on top of that beautiful bluff. AMERICUH, FUCK YEA!)

Panorama!

Oh, Utah. How beautiful you are. I'm so sad that the multiple wife people have given you such a bad association.

Just as the sun was going down, I came across a forest-service campsite with (luxury of luxuries) running water. The best spots down by the creek were taken, so I set up my tent a ways up the hill.

It was still very high altitude, and this was a cold, cold night. Getting out of my tent the next morning, my thermometer was reading 38 degrees, and I could see my breath. When I went to get breakfast stuffs out of my saddlebags, I found I hadn't closed them full the night before, and some little critter had some noms at my expense.

It was still numbingly cold, so I put on my rain gear again over my mesh jacket to start the riding for the day. As much as I love this Teknic jacket, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone for touring. It's fantastic for what it's intended for, riding in really hot weather, but in anything less then ~80 degrees it's just too cold.

Still, even with the added bulk of rain gear over it, the morning light proved amazing for the scenery.

Oh, Utah. I had no idea what you had to offer.

It was stunning. I started the day in high-altitude coniferous forest and in less then an hour, I was in sandstone deserts.

Plenty of long, sweeping, predictable curves for experimenting with exactly what the maximum lean angle of the bike is.

Sometime just before noon, I got to low enough altitudes and the air temps got high enough that I was able to pull over and remove the rain gear/windbreaker. Oh, it felt nice to feel the air flow through me again.

My route alternated between canyons of insanity, and long straights across scrub land.

Long straights are nice after a few hours of canyon carving. You can hit the throttle lock, kick up on the pegs, and relax for a while. And just as you were starting to get board, things like this would get thrown at you.

(Holy. Shit.)

And after this valley, it finally happened; I ran out of gas.

A whole day spent winding it out on curvy desert roads had poured a lot of gas through the engine, and all the high-altitude hi-jinks didn't help either. I hit the bike's reserve tank when I was at least 70 miles away from the nearest gas station, according to the GPS, and I spent the next hour crawling along at 40mph to try and stretch it out. On long downhill sections, I'd pull in the clutch and thumb the engine kill switch, coasting for as long as I could with it off. It was a valiant effort, but eventually the bike stalled out, even the reserve was empty. And I'd left my last jerry can back in Canada.

BUT. All was not lost!

I still had the ~15oz of gasoline in my camping stove! It wasn't much, but MAYBE it would be enough, just to get me over the next hill. At minimum, if I was going to have to hike it, it would cut down on my walk by at least a few miles.

Of course, as I was putting the fuel bottle back into my saddlebag, the bike decided that it was sleepy and wanted to take a nap.

Stupid off-camber shoulder!

My girlfriend was kind enough to mush them together into a .gif; feel free to shrink it down and use it as an avatar if you want :)

That little extra bit of gas was enough; five miles down the road, I rolled into a gas station, very relieved to be there.

The tip-over earlier had bent up the brake lever. Ah well.

Baw, cute little critters had made a nest in the gas station's roof!

Hey, it's a city about me! . . . aw. Stupid receding hairline :(

Just for the fun of it, I stopped in at a U-Wash-It place just to hose down the engine. I wasn't concerned about getting the rest of the bike clean, but there was a minor oil leak somewhere on the right side of the engine, and I wanted to get as much of the road gunk and grime off it as I could, so that I might be able to figure out where it was coming from.

Eh, didn't really help as much as I hoped it would.

At least some parts are sorta shiny again.

Holy crap that's cool! Did someone actually tunnel into that!? I wanna live in there! And not because it reminds me of a giant boobie.

I headed farther east, crossing into some valleys in Colorado as the sun set at my back.

I turned down what looked to be a barely-if-ever used trail from the road to find some camping for the night. The trail stared off looking rough, but really steep.

But the farther I went, the worse it got.

Piggie seems to be saying "Are you serious? You know you're on a cruiser, right? You remember what happened last time you tried something like this? You bonehead!"

But I'm not one to let common sense or self-preservation stand in the way of a good time, so I managed over it okay, and found a clearing to camp for the night.

The night was uneventful enough, and the next morning, I woke up feeling sort of emo. I was nearing the end of what had been an epic trip, and I wasn't looking forward to returning to Chicago.

I didn't have much farther to go.

Exodus

2010-03-09T10:34:00.001-06:00

Stepping out of my tent in the late morning found me alone in what had only 12 hours before been a busy neighborhood.

The burn was over, and the Exodus begins. In truth, remnants of the city will remain in the desert for the next three months, as a small army of volunteers works to clean up after the event, attempting to keep the playa as pristine as possible and erasing any traces that a city of 50,000 existed here for a week.

I bussled around for a bit, packing up what I could take with me and donating that which I could not. Monday is when the majority of people leave, and most of the day is occupied by a massive traffic jam as people try to get off the playa and back to the roads. Of course, motorcycles aren't limited to such petty situations as that, and I cut through an estimated 3-hour backup in about ten minutes.

After only 15 minutes on the highway though, everything stopped in an epic que.

(And I know that no one looks good after a week in the desert, but jesus fucking christ if that isn't the most hideous troll-monster hambeast I've ever seen)

Again, by taking advantage of the smaller size of my chosen means of transportation, I passed it all by in a few minutes, finding the source of the backup about ten miles of solid que later.

Oops.

Good news is that no one appeared hurt. There was a small cluster of people standing by the flipped trailer who'd been in the SUV, and they all appeared shaken, but unharmed. Farther down the road when I stopped for noms, I heard scuttlebutt confirmation that everyone had been wearing their seat belts, and had walked away with only minor bruises.

Om nom nom nom nom!

I got back to the interstate and headed back to Reno. Stopping at a highway rest stop, it was apparent that they'd delt extensively with Burners before.

I got another hotel for the night, enjoying a shower that turned the run-off water a pale brown. I went out to dinner with some people that I'd linked up with during the Exodus, and spent the night in a real bed that wasn't covered in dust. Which was pretty awesome, I will say :D

I spent most of the next day running errands around Reno. I had clothes to wash, and the bike was long over-due for an oil change. It sounds weird, but changing the oil in the parking lot is one of the more enjoyable parts of living on the road. I'll never tire of the slightly confused look on the auto part store employee's faces after I walk back in ten minutes after buying supplies with the old oil in a plastic baggie.

In my time floating around town that day, numerous people asked me why there were so many vehicles around that were all so filthy and covered in the same sort of dust. It's not hard to spot a burner for at least a couple weeks after the event; even six months later as I write this, I STILL find playa dust in some of my things.

It was late afternoon by the time I headed out of Reno, plodding east along Rt 50. I intended to ride into the night and make camp again at the Hickerson Petroglyphs, but altered my plans when I found the gas station I stopped at offered free camping, as well as free internet. I'm drawn to an open wi-fi signal like a moth to a flame, so I bought my dinner there and settled in for a night of webernetting from inside my tent.

The next day:

It was a nice little place, conveniently located at a junction of Rt 50 and Hwy 361 (it appears on the map as "Middlegate Station")

Given that they weren't charging for camping, or for their precious intertubes, I felt obligated to get my breakfast there as well.

Mmmm, I do love diner-food.

Let this be a lesson to all buisness owners running remote highway rest-stops; the deciding factor in me staying here for the night and buying two meals, rather then riding for another couple hours, was the free wi-fi. If you have a campground, motel, resort, whatever, MAKE SURE you advertise your free wi-fi in big, giant, glowing letters where all passer-bys can see it. To many people, especially people of my generation, internet access is only marginally less important then air and water.

I turned south down Hwy 361, passing through Gabbs and then turning onto Rt 89 to keep going south. It wasn't bad riding, way better then the midwest for sure, at least there's hills to look at. And I had someone to keep me company.

The pig!

One of the motorcycle forums that I'm on has a minor tradition of passing this pig around the country, handing him off from one rider to the next. He started life somewhere in Texas, made his way up through various hands to the Northeast, then ended up in California and traveling up and down the pacific coast. I'd picked him up while at Burning Man, and was carrying him all the way back to Chicago with me, where I'd hand him off to the next rider.

Spuh?

After re-filling in Tonopah, I headed east on Rt 6, spotting this as I was leaving town.

Oh, joy. By my best estimates, I could get perhaps 170 miles on a tank of gas, so this was going to be cutting it really close.

Off into the endless desert.

After a bit less then an hour, I came across the turn-off for Rt 375, complete with another warning sign.

Hooray!

Rt 375 is mostly famous for being as close as you can legally get to the famed Groom Lake Air Force Base, more popularly known as Area 51. Many of the USAF's experimental and cutting-edge aircraft have been tested here over the years, so the semi-regular appearance of very weird aircraft (as well as endless X-Files fueled theories about UFOs) have given this road it's name.

The town of Rachel is all that's here, a dingy little collection of ramshackle houses and buildings that have all seen much better times. They do their best to play up the UFO thing to appeal for tourism, but it doesn't seem to have helped them much.

The famous "Black Mailbox", familier to X-files fans and other generally crazy people. A popular and frequent spot for late-night hanging out and UFO-watching, the mailbox actually belongs to a local rancher and is in no way connected to the Air Force base (Which, by the way, you can see on Google Maps). Most of the time I was there, there was a constant roar of jet engines to be heard, and at one point I was over-flown by a loaded F-16 at very low altitudes.

If you go a little farther down Rt 375, there's a turn-off for a gravel road that is the main over-land route to actually get to Area 51. Go down it a ways and you'll see some very nasty-looking signs and video cameras. Go down it any farther, and you'll meet some very un-friendly and humorless guys in white SUVs. As much as I wanted to take my bike at least as far as the signs and video cameras, I was so low on gas that I was seriously worried about making it to the next service station.

However, some weirdness DID happen to me. As I was stopped there photographing the "Black Mailbox", from WAY off in the distance across the desert, the dust plume of a vehicle appeared. Eventually it became apparent that this vehicle was on the access road to Area 51, and had come directly from it. It was one of the famous "White School buses" that are used to transport local workers to and from the base. (The majority of employees are flown in from Vegas).

It required a LOT of throttle to catch up to the bus, and at some points over the next ~20 miles I was doing 95mph trying to keep up with it, and it was still pulling away.

As far as creepy conspiracy vehicles go, this one isn't bad. Pure white, with US Government plates and blacked-out windows.

Eventually, I just couldn't keep up. I'm impressed with a school bus that can maintain regular 90mph+ speeds, and if I REALLY wanted to I probably could have stayed with it, but going that fast was rapidly eating into whatever confidence I had about being able to make it to the next gas station.

Goodby creepy school bus!

I did make it to the next gas station, although probably only on fumes. I kept going west, getting back into Utah and camping for the night in the picnic site of a OHV area. There was much scrap wood around, and fire pits, so I engaged in something I hadn't done since the first night out.

I had a fire.

Burning Man

2010-03-06T04:58:00.001-06:00

To try and describe in one sentence, or paragraph, or page or book exactly what Burning Man is would be a fruitless endeavor. You can't ever sum up everything that Burning Man is about, everything that it means to someone who has never been there, who has never experienced it. You can't explain to someone WHY you want to spend a bunch of money to camp in the middle of the desert for a week straight. Why you WANT to go somewhere where you have to endure scorching temperatures and hurricane-force winds, where the day-long dust storms kick up sand with the consistence of baby powder, where nighttime temperatures can touch freezing and the only facilities available are porta-potties.

My best attempt as describing Burning Man is as follows:

"Burning Man is the end result of sticking 50,000 dirty, smelly, naked, drugged-up hippies into the middle of the desert for a week"

I can't hope to cover the history, evolution, rules and regulations of Burning Man in just this post, so for those who've never heard of this strange event check out either the official Burning Man Website, or the Wikipedia entry

In contrast to my usual habits of photographing everything, I too hardly any pictures the whole time I was there. I felt it was best to try and get out and experience the place, rather then doing what I usually do and hide behind the camera. The few pictures and videos I did get I took with my little point-and-shoot camera, which is sealed against dust and water. The dust on the playa is super-fine, and will quickly ruin any non-sealed cameras, especially when used in the midst of one of the frequent dust storms. Some of the storms can last all day, and well into the night.

When the wind does die down enough, or for whatever reason the air clears, you can really get a look at the general weirdness and chaos that is so central to the Burning Man experience.

And at night . . . nighttime is when Burning Man really comes alive.

I shot that video while on one of the many Mutant Vehicle party buses that roam the playa during the night, most of them blasting endless techno, dance and party music at volumes that cannot be described. The occasional orange flashes you see illuminating the crowds are various flame-throwers mounting to vehicles that people occasionally fire off. Because, you know. Fire.

Speaking of fire . . .

Burning Man gets it's name for the 80-foot-tall wooden effigy of a man that is constructed at the center of the city every year. During the week, the Man serves as a central meeting point, directional market, destination and hang-out spot for the city. Under the man is a complex framework of wood, built by artisans and craftsman for weeks beforehand. At night, the man is illuminated with neon.

But on Saturday night, everyone, literally everyone, all 50,000 people, they all gather around the man, waiting for the fireworks to start.

Once the fireworks are over, the real pyrotechnics go off . . .

And the man burns.

The BRC Rangers keep the crowd back until the large portions of the structure fall (which took FOREVER this year), but once they do, you can get as close as you want to the piles of still-burning embers. Including running through them, if you so wish.

And, in my case, being a total klutz and face-planing in the middle of the run.

And yes, it was hot. It was REALLY, REALLY hot. I was wearing my full-length canvas trenchcoat, but in the few seconds it took me to get from one side of the fire to the other, my face was starting to single and I was in quite a lot of pain. Tripping up and face planting in the middle of this is the last thing you want to happen, and I'm quite lucky I didn't go down into a pile of embers.

After waiting a couple of minutes for the fires to die down a bit more, I made another, slower pass.

By this time, it was cool enough that there were a couple of spots where one could stand for short periods of time without getting too badly roasted, and as long as you didn't stay in one spot to long, it was safe enough to wander through the rest of the embers. Some parts were still very hot, such as the last part where I had to dart quickly between two large piles.

And of course, if you're going to have a REALLY BIG fire, what are you going to need? A REALLY BIG marshmallow!

Everyone, meet April! About a month before the burn, she and a friend spent the better part of a week melting, and then re-forming store bought marshmallows to create a giant 10-lb marshmallow, which was mounted on the end of a ten-foot pole.

She and I and some of her friends ended up hanging out for the next few hours, alternately roasting the mallow, and offering it up for anyone who wanted to pick some off and enjoy some delicious, gooey sugary goodness.

It took us the better part of three hours to actually hand out that much marshmallow, and when we were almost done and down to a small fist worth, we let it catch on fire and drop into the embers, as small sacrifice/tribute to the Man.

To many people, the burning of the Man on Saturday night signifies the end of the event; Many camps start packing up and heading home the next day. But for me, there's still one more thing that I have to stay around for, one more event that much more perfectly ends the week.

The burning of the Temple.

Constructed in the desert half a mile city north of the man, the Temple is an exquisitely built structure that is intended to be a monument to . . . everything, I suppose. It's a tribute to whatever it needs to be for the people visiting it at the time.

Picture (not mine) - http://www.mccullagh.org/photo/1ds3-3/burning-man-temple-2009

At night, it is illuminated by a large tube of light in the central core, and smaller lights to accentuate the detailed scrollwork in all the panels.

(Photo hot-linked under Creative Commons license, copyright Neil Girling)

The amazing detail and effort that have obviously gone into making the temple only make it's eventual fate more poignant. The Man is definitely an impressive exercise in structural engineering, but when you really examine the temple and see how much labor must have gone in to making it . . . it's makes it even more beautiful know that it will be gone at the end of the week.

While most of Black Rock City has an air of energy, of expectation, of a barely contained party, the atmosphere surrounding the temple is completely different. Rarely do you hear laughter, everyone speaks in hushed voices, and sometimes all you can hear is people weeping. The temple carries with it an air of sadness, of loss, of real pain. Inscribed on every square inch of the temple are notes to loved ones passed, occasionally accompanies with pictures, locks of hair, hand-written notes sealed with wax, and the occasional personal possession. The temple is where many people bring their last thoughts and feelings for those that they have lost; for them, the temple is where the mourning can come to a climax, and the healing can being.

In the time before the Man burned, there was laughter, music, it was a party. All of the theme camps turned out, music was played, there were fireworks. When the Temple burns, there is none of this. All of the theme camps and dance clubs int he city shut down for an hour.

Photo © Tristan Savatier - http://loupiote.com/ - Used by Permission

When the Temple burned, 20,000 people watched on in dead silence. Occasionally a massive scream would spontaneously rise from everyone at the same time, quieted just as quickly as it was raised, and the playa was returned to silence again. While most people stood to watch the Man burn, most sat for the temple. The roar of the fire drowned out most minor noises, but through the crackleing you could occasionally hear someone praying, or chanting.

As I sat watching the flames consume the structure, a girl, roughly my age or a couple years younger, came and sat by my side. I don't know if it was intentional or not; the crowd was tightly packed up front, but there was plenty of open space around me. She never acknowlaged my preseance, never said anything, never as much as stole a sideways glance at me. She simply sat down and watched with me, the flames reflecting off her tear-filled eyes. I desperatly wanted to say something to her as she knelt there and wept. I wanted to hold her, to tell her that it was going to be okay. To tell her that while it was probably never going to stop hurting, it would eventually hurt less often.  I wanted to take her hand and just let her know that I was there, and even if I couldn't know or understand what she was going through, I could at least understand her pain; That we would never stop loving in secret those that we had once loved out loud.

But I didn't. I wish I had, I so wish I had. But I just sat there, staring ahead into the flames as she sobbed at my side.

Eventually she got up and left, and I never saw her again. Maybe that was all she needed, someone else to just be there and not acknowladge her. I hope so. I hope she got the catharsis she needed, and that she's doing okay, wherever she is in the world.

When the structure of the temple collapsed, the heat was of the fire was intensified as it was collected into a smaller space. The massive updrafts caused hundred-foot-tall tornadoes to be birthed in the fire, torn out by the wind to dissipate in the crowds.

Once most of the structure had fallen in on itself, the temple guardians released the crowd to get as close to the fire as we wanted. Someone in a silvery fire-suit took a brazen stroll through the still very active flames, but the heat was too intense for any of the fire runs that followed the Man's collapse.

Many people had brought other things that had to be burned in the Temple's fire. Keepsakes, mementos of people and places, some smaller bits of art. I saw lockets tossed in; someone threw a box of what looked to be letters and photographs. Some had paintings, or articles of clothing. Smaller, weightier things could be tossed the distance required to get them into the flames. But the fire was still intense, too intense for people close enough to throw many of the larger, bulkier items into the flames. Which was where the firefighters came in.

I don't know who they were, or where they were from. But standing watch around the perimeter of the embers were a squad of firefighters in full gear; hats, masks, jackets, oxygen tanks, everything. They weren't there to keep people out of the fire; they were there to lead people in.

One at a time, someone would step out of the crowd, often bearing unmistakable signs of real, intense loss. Clutching something that may have been the most treasured thing in the world to them at one point, but now needed to be burned. Three or four firefighters would stand in a semi-circle in front of this person, arms linked, and slowly back into the flames, escorting the person into the fire. They were using themselves as shields, using their bodies to protect the griever from the heat.

I still remember the exact shape of these firefighters, their forms silhouetted by the still-raging inferno behind them, bringing people who were obviously in tremendous amounts of pain into the fire.   People who's faces were etched with agony, often streaked with tears, being protected by these hulking creatures that were so impervious to the flames. They did this over and over, mourner after mourner stepping out of the crowd, into a protective enclave of firefighters to make the trip into the burning ruins.

I don't know who they were, or where they were from. But what those firefighters gave to those people was one of the most moving things I have ever seen.

A couple of hours later, well after the remaining structure had imploded in on itself, when the large crowd had dispersed and all that was left were a maybe a thousand people gathered around the still smoldering embers, I had a chance encounter with someone I'd seen a couple times earlier in the week. We'd first run into each other, I think, at the Black Rock Diner, which serves grilled cheese sandwiches from 1am-3am every day. And then again at the Man burn, when April and I were wandering around handing out bits off her giant marshmallow. Previously, she'd always been with her boyfriend, but tonight she was alone.

We stood with each other in silence for a short while, before finally settling in together. We talked for a long time, sitting close, occasionally turning so that we'd bake evenly in the heat from the embers. A conversation that took every possible turn that it could have taken, about life, hopes, dreams, where we were going. As the night began to cool off, we moved closer to each other, partly for the warmth, but partly because we had to. It came to a head late in the night, when we were already so close to each other that it was comical, our faces maybe six inches apart when I finally kissed her.

Soon after, I discovered that she wasn't wearing anything under her trenchcoat.

When it was time to leave, we collected our things, and I walked her back to her camp (And, uh, her boyfriend. Shit, I'm "That guy"). Standing there in the silent street, well away from the noise of the Esplanade, we kissed one last time . . . and that was that.

I didn't go back to my tent that night. I walked back to the temple, the embers cool enough to walk on by now, and stood there alone until the sky started to lighten, lost in my own thoughts, trying to put the last week into the context of the world. I don't know if I'll ever be able to.

Preparing for the burn

2010-03-05T18:04:00.001-06:00

Burning Man is such a large event, and takes place in such a remote local, that all the towns for a surrounding 250 miles feel the impact. Towns which are usually just a quiet stop of gas stations and diners are transformed into hives of activity as 50,000 hippies stop in for a last helping of supplies before heading into the Black Rock Desert for a week of . . . oddities.

Reno is the largest city in range, and serves as a base camp for many grounds making the trek. Every supermarket's parking lot is jammed to the gills with people in various vans and trucks stocking up on the essentials; it feels a bit like a Red Cross disaster relief camp.

Inside the stores, stocks of baby wipes, sunscreen, glow sticks and flash lights were all wrecked. The "family planning" area was similarly picked over, with only a few of the less popular brands remaining.

When attending Burning Man, you are expected to be COMPLETELY self-sufficient. You bring in, and bring out, everything you need. The ONLY thing that is provided is porta-potties; you need to bring your own food, water, shelter, everything. There's no garbage service, either; pack it in, pack it out, as they say.

This makes attending on a bike complicated. While obviously shelter wasn't a problem, carrying the required ~10 gallons of water and weeks worth of food is hard to squeeze onto the bike. To accomplish this, I'd linked up with someone attending the event beforehand, and we met up in the parking lot of the super market to touch base. I headed inside and bought the things I was going to need, loaded then into his van, and made plans to link up again on the Playa. He was heading out that night, but I still had some errands to run around town for a couple days.

First thing I had to do was find the Fed-Ex depot, where I'd had a larger tent and some cooler-weather clothing mailed to me. The Black Rock Desert regularly hits 120f during the day, but at night it can plunge to 40 degrees, and sometimes even colder.

If living in India taught me anything, it's that there is no limit to how much stuff you can strap onto a two-wheeled machine.

I couldn't head to the burn quite yet. I was waiting on another package to come into the post office that wasn't going to be delivered until late afternoon the next day. One of the nice things about a kind of skeezy town that's chock-full of casinos (like Reno) is that hotel prices are REALLY cheap. Your standard Motel-6 type places are in the range of $30/night, and there's plenty of non-franchise places that are cheaper. I took advantage of these cheap rates for the night, and the next day, went for a ride around Lake Tahoe.

Ouch, that had to hurt.

Lake Tahoe was . . . well, it was Lake Tahoe. Beautiful . . .

And really crowded. I guess the upside to all the traffic is that it prevented me from engaging in more peg-scraping idiocy.

Neat, I get my own beach!

The ride around the lake took me the better part of the day, and I got back to Reno just in time to pick up my package from the post office. The one last errand that I needed to run was to get a proper hair wash, and braid. The dust on the Playa is as fine as baby powder, and keeping your hair in a tight braid for as long as you can makes life MUCH easier. It prevents (as much) crap from getting into your hair and turning it into a giant matted knot.

I went to the first hair place that I passed, which happened to be one of those hair salons run by Hispanic ladies, for Hispanic ladies. I don't know if it was their version of a joke or just because they didn't know how to do anything else, but this is what I ended up with.

Hey, it worked. And it's not like I'd be the only one looking silly at Burning Man.

By the time I was done with everything, including buying last-minute supplies of glow sticks and blinky lights, it was really late in the evening, and I still had the 150 mile ride into the desert ahead of me.

Long shadows by the time I was able to get on the road.

Three hours and one stop for gas later, I was there.

The endless colum of vehicles left Highway 34, and snaked off into the desert to join what is, for the one week that it exists, the fifth largest city in Nevada

Heading to Reno

2010-03-05T14:58:00.001-06:00

Before I left the Grand Canyon that night, one more thing caught my eye, whipping noiselessly in and out of the shadows around the few lights still on.

Bats.

They move with an astounding nimbleness, changing directions faster then your eyes can keep up and doing it almost silently. Even though we regard birds as very quiet animals, once you hear bats fly, you realize just how noisy birds are. We're just accustomed to the rustling of feathers, so when bats are pulling of these amazing aerobatics to catch the bugs clustered around the lights, it's so strange to watch them doing with barely a whisper. It's like someone pushed the mute button on the world.

These guys are AMAZINGLY hard to photograph. They're too small and move FAR too quickly to have a chance in hell of the camera's auto-focus system working. The only way I found to get any semi-discernible pictures of them (that are still really, really blurry) was to manually set my 20mm lens wide open with a focus distance of ~3 feet, and then chasing the bats with my camera on rapid-fire whenever they got close enough. I took ~1200 pictures to get maybe 5-6 that are at least viewable zoomed all the way out (But none of them look good at native resolution)

If I hadn't seen them in person, I would never have believed that something could change directions, accelerate and stop so instantaneously in mid-air. Their agility when darting around to catch bugs was fast on a scale the human eye can hardly comprehend.

Eventually I got tired/frustrated of chasing these little guys around, and left them to their own devices to continue nomming the delicious bugs. I got back on my bike, and rode it back up all of the pedestrian footpaths and out of the park.

I had camped that night in the small area of national forest that surrounds the Grand Canyon, which was full of previously-used campsites.

It was August 29th, and I had just three days to make up up to Reno for the start of Burning Man. I still had some sights I wanted to see on the way there, but I needed to get some miles done. Ironically, the very thing I was so happy to see was proving to be a major obstacle to my intended direction of travel. The fastest way to go northwest was to head east for a couple hundred miles, detouring over Marble Canyon on Rt 89.

The first bridge was built sometime in the 50s, but by the 70s was no longer well suited to modern road traffic. The new bridge was built next to it, and the old bridge left up as a tourist attraction.

Awwww, the whole world is designed to prevent me from having fun.

A view down the canyon from the middle of the bridge.

Heading west, the whole area was sandstone, and everywhere you looked there were many smaller canyons and cliffs carved out of the earth by eons of rain and rivers.

The previous day (and night) I'd been at the South Rim of the Canyon, and now I had an opportunity to check out the view from the taller north rim. I really debated this; I had a lot of ground to cover in the next few days. I soon came to my senses though, and realized that I might not be back here for a few years, or even longer. I made in to the junction at Jacob's Lake sometime mid-day, and made the 60 mile detour down Rt 67, back into the National Park.

It was a very beautiful drive through the National Forest and back into the park, although forest fires had recently ravaged the area.

Stopping for lunch at one of the many picnic areas.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time at the north rim. I was pretty tired from a lack of sleep last night, and the idea of some of the half-mile hikes to the more impressive viewpoints wasn't appealing at the time. I made it to some of the more accessible places, which were of course crowded with people toting even more high-dollar camera gear then I was.

Eventually, I elbowed my way into them for a couple shots of my own.

(You know, my girlfriend advised me to just leave this photo alone and not mess with the contrast, but I thought it looked neat all cranked. As I look at it in context with the others though, I think she was right. Ah well)

Again, nothing I can say about the place that can do it justice.

I headed back north on Rt 67, then west on Rt 89.

I passed into Utah with 45 minutes of daylight left, and after a couple of mis-adventures trying to camp on some utility turnouts that had a soil consistency of baby powder, I headed down a seemingly abandoned road for a couple miles, trying to get as far from the main road as I could.

Eventually I came across a clearing with a recently-used fire pit, and camped for the night under the sprawling branches of a very large tree.

8-30-09

I continued on through Utah, entering Zion early the next day.

I really should have spent more time in Zion, but I wasn't quite in a scenery mood. I was craving twisty roads, leaning the bike over as much as I could, and generally riding like a jackass, but Zion was WAY too crowded to allow anything like that.

The park itself also isn't that large, and there's only one road that goes through it. Compared to the length of places like Glacier, or Death Valley, I was through it before I blinked. The traffic was so bad that I had no interest in going back for another pass, and I just pushed on west. I still needed to make it up to Reno in just two more days.

The occasional forest fire appeared in the distance, but I stayed out of the smoke all day.

I kept going due east as much as I could avoiding main roads whenever possible, until just before I got to the Nevada border, the pavement ran out.

Now I need to confess something that I'm not very proud of here: When I saw the gravel, I stopped, took that photo . . . and turned around.

I had been through the Northwest Territories, up to Prudhoe Bay, along the Lolo Motorway in Idaho, and I instinctively turned around here because the road changed to GRAVEL!!?!?!? What was wrong with me? I had lost my touch; I'd spent the last few weeks on nice, paved surfaces, and evidently that time had softened me up. Cursing myself for being such a sissy, I made another u-turn and rode on into the gravel.

Now this was more like it. A poorly maintained gravel road, just enough terrain to be interesting, and no one else around for miles in any direction. I felt much better.

Suckers who stay on paved roads . . .

But my off-highway wanderings didn't last too long. After only an hour or two, I found myself back on tarmac.

Ah well. I had a lot of ground to cover, and the gravel was pretty slow going.

I crossed into Nevada and headed north on the arrow-straight Rt 93, with a glorious 30mph wind square at my back.

The ONLY people who will appreciate this picture are those who grew up with me during the 90s in my tiny little corner of the northern Chicago suburbs. Everyone else can ignore this picture:

I made it to Ely (I think) sometime mid-afternoon, and was STARVING. I don't think I'd had much to eat the day before, and I hadn't eaten anything that morning. I was completely starved, and this being a crappy little town that had nothing to offer but crappy little casinos (that often have really cheap buffets), I figured I'd gorge myself silly. I asked in at a gas station for where to go for food, and was directed in the vicinity of this one hotel/casino thing along Rt 50.

It seem like EVERY other motorcycle in the whole town was some big cruiser thing with and extra 100lbs of chrome and ear-splittingly loud pipes. Almost no one was wearing a helmet.

Anyway, the hotel didn't have a buffet, but it did have a sit-down restraunt that was okay. Nothing special, just generic food. And at this point I was so hungry that I didn't really taste it anyway, just shoveled it down as fast as I could.

I started off with a ceaser salad before attacking my main course of fried chicken. Om nom nom!

I ate everything on the plate . . . and was still hungry, so I asked for some cake. The waitress looked at me funny when I asked for the "Mile High Chocolate Cake", with ice cream.

Four layers, damn. Anyway, as I was finishing the cake, and the ice cream, the little old grandmotherly-type waitress brought me my check with a chuckle.

"You know," she stared, "we just added it up in the kitchen, and by our best guesses you just ate almost 4,500 calories in one sitting. That cake ALONE, without the ice cream, is 1,760 calories"

Oh, I do enjoy being young, and male, with a freaky metabolism. I spent more then I wanted to, but by my logic, that should last me for a couple of days at least! (It didn't, I was hungry again by the next morning)

The restraunt had all sorts of pictures of race cars and sports cars all over the walls. I guess Rt 50 is closed every year for an endurance race that's open to the public, there was everything from old Jags and Aston Martians to Ferrari Enzos that looked to have participated in the races.

Rt 50 holds the unofficial designation of "The loneliest road in America", which I suppose only holds true if you don't count Alaska as part of America. There was tons of kitchy touristy crap for sale EVERYWHERE with "I survived Rt 50!" and similar printed on it. Dammit, I survivded the Dalton and I didn't get a shirt, and it was much more difficult then Rt 50.

I kept going west as long as I could, watching the sun get lower and lower. Stealth camping here was NOT going to be easy, this was barren and rocky land that offered little in the way of concealment and cover. I had my eyes searching for the better part of two hours, but didn't have any luck finding anything. Even as the sun dipped below the horizon and everything plunged into darkness, I wasn't seeing anything at all and was considering just camping directly on the side of the road.

But then I had yet another of those perfectly timed chance encounters that seem to only happen when you're on a motorcycle.

Just as the last rays of light were vanishing from the sky and I was REALLY worried about finding someplace for the night, I spotted a gravel road going off the highway, and one of those park-service signs indicating camping. Upon investigation, this turned out to be the best kind of camp site; the free kind.

I can't describe how happy I was to find this place, at the exact right time. There were pit toilets, enough trees to give shade the next day, and there was only one other site occupied in the whole place. I pitched my tent under a sprawling juniper tree and went to sleep.

The next day allowed me a better look at my surroundings.

I was in a little BLM reservation area called Hickison Petroglyphs. Apparently, a short half-mile hike from the camp site are some rock walls that have native American drawings on them that are thousands of years old, but I wasn't in the mood to be touristy. I didn't have much left in the way of food, so I had to forgo breakfast, and just got back on the road.

Going across Rt 50 means a seeming endless procession of alternating valleys and highlands

Occasionally you'll see ruins off the side of the road, usually with some sort of an informational plaque/marker.

I still have no idea what to make of this.

There seemed to be an equal number of shoes scattered on the ground below.

Squinting and looking up, many of the shoes had things written on them.

It wasn't just shoes up there. It was footware of every conceivable kind, up to and including roller blades and ice skates.

It is a mystery . . .

The farther west I got, the drier, and hotter, the area got.

Not sure why all that sand just collected in one spot. Strange wind patterns caused by the surrounding hills, maybe?

Somewhere outside of Reno, I stopped to fill up and enjoy a breakfast of gas-station burritos, onion rings, and gatorade.

I made some phone calls to touch base with my gear-hauler for Burning Man, and headed on into Reno to prepare for what was sure to be a very, very strange week.

Midnight at the Grand Canyon

2010-02-22T02:31:00.002-06:00

I watched the sunset earlier in the evening from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, but I wasn't thrilled with my pictures. There was something they were missing, something I could see, but wasn't able to capture. I set up my tent in the forest west of the canyon, and after taking a nap for a couple hours, I put my riding gear on and headed back into the park at almost 1am. The place was completely deserted, and silent. So empty that rather then leave my bike in the parking lot, I rode it all the way down the footpaths and through the buildings to the locations I'd scouted to shoot from. This was a strange feeling in of itself.

But as I started taking pictures, I wasn't having much luck. There were some tungsten safety lights on the buildings that were messing up the colors, I didn't have a tripod so I had to do my best balancing the camera on rocks, which gave always-crooked horizons, and the the full moon wasn't providing the interesting shadows that I'd hoped for. I dicked around with various exposures and stops for about half an hour, getting more and more annoyed that I wasn't able to really capture the spectacle of this place. I didn't know what I was doing wrong, but nothing was coming out the way I wanted.

I got up to leave, and on a whim mostly born out of my frustration with it, I pointed the camera at the moon and pressed the shutter.

This was the result.

I can count on one hand the number of times that I've taken a single shot that upon review has made me verbally say "Wow . . ."

(I know I've said it before, but if you've never done it, PLEASE view these larger. I've taken a gamble and linked to the full-res, 8mp images, although they are watermarked.)

I pointed the camera at something else that had been pissing me off the whole time, a stone tower just to my left that was illuminated by a bright halogen lamp. This was what came out.

(I'm sorry about the overly-obnoxious watermark)

And the moon again after the clouds had cleared a bit.

It turned out that the things I'd been bitching about the whole time yielded what, to me, are some of the coolest pictures I've ever taken. This gave me the motivation to stick around and try and shoot the canyon itself, as well as some tips on what I was doing wrong. I still think my accident shots were cooler, but at least these turned out decent.

Pointing west caught some horizon glow that I couldn't understand the source of. Vegas, maybe? It was almost 2am, far too late for lingering sunlight.

And to the east.

(Arg I wish I'd had a tripod)

Truth be told, the reason I've hesitated so long to post these is that at ANY resolution besides original, the pictures lose most of their punch. I eventually decided to compromise and watermark them, and I'm sorry about it, but it's the only way I could let myself post these at this size. I watermarked them just so that if someone does steal them or hotlink from somewhere else, at least the viewers will know where it came from.

Please, view these on as large and high-resolution of a screen as you can.

If anyone would like full-resolution, uncompressed .tif (or even RAW) files suitable for printing, sent me a message and I'd be happy to get them to you somehow (keep in mind the .tif files are almost 50mb). I'm not trying to make any money or anything, but if someone DID want these for printing, a minor donation of some sort would be appreciated. Or to be honest, just that you like them enough to want the full file would be compliment enough. So yeah, whatever.

The next time I take a trip to the canyon, I'm bringing a wider lens, or a full-frame camera.

The Grand Canyon

2010-02-10T17:06:00.002-06:00

There isn't anything I can say about the Grand Canyon that hasn't already been said in countless books, and though endless photographs. Language is a woefully inadequate medium to try to convey the meaning of a place like this.

I arrived there with perhaps an hour of daylight left, maybe less. The throng of tourists here at the South Rim was thick, and despite being on the bike it was hard to find parking. Someone did make a comment on my armored jacket as I walked by, saying "Man, whatever you're planning on doing, it does NOT look safe!". I think they assumed I was going BASE jumping or something.

(For scale, those little dots under the spot of lens flare are people)

I wandered around a lot taking pictures from the different vantage points, and the sun dropped rapidly, making shadows even more pronounced.

(Again, those are people next to the lens flare)

Eventually, the sun got low enough that the light changed, and everything turned bright red.

In a flash, the sun was gone, and everything plunged into darkness.

With the sun down, it started to cool off quickly, and I headed east out of the park, into the national forest to camp for the night. I felt I'd gotten some good pictures, but nothing that really struck me as amazing. It was the same views from the same places that everyone else was, and I found myself wishing for a wider lens.

As I set up camp that evening, I set my alarm for 1am, resolving to go back for more photos that night.

It turned out to be one of the single best decisions I've ever made as a photographer.

Through Nevada and into Arizona

2010-02-09T21:29:00.000-06:00

My time in Death Valley had ended with me sleeping next to the bike, off in what seemed to be a clearing for storing piles of road gravel. I'd actually climbed well out of the valley by the time I camped, I think I was at over 3000 feet. High enough that it was cool enough for me to need my sleeping bag for the night, rather then just being hardcore and flopping down in my riding gear.

Man, packing up in the morning is WAY faster when you don't have to deal with a tent.

After going east for a while, and stopping in some little no-name town for Gatorade and gas, I crossed the border into Nevada, and a town with a hilariously onomatopoetic name.

Literally the first thing you see after crossing into Nevada is a massive slew of billboards, all offering services that are only legal in Nevada (and Rhode Island, due to a strange bureaucratic loophole)

A few more hours to the south, and I crested some hills to see . . . Las Vegas! In all it's smoggy glory.

What a lousy city it is. I was thinking about heading downtown to at least ride down the strip, but traffic even mid-day was so awful that I said hell with it, and booked it east.

Yeah . . . you're not fooling anyone.

It's hard to say exactly what makes Las Vegas such a lousy place. It's hot, sure, but so was everywhere else that I'd been. But it's a different feeling. In Death Valley, and elsewhere, it was a pure, clean, natural heat. Vegas felt like a smoggy, dirty, artificial heat, made even worse by the constantly sitting idle in thick traffic.

Everything in Vegas is fake; it's like the whole city is made of plastic. Nothing is real, nothing is substantial, everything has a layer of gaudy makeup and glitz on it and it's only attractive if you're drunk off your ass. Everyone seems to want to go there, yet no one seems to actually want to be there. No one leaves the air-conditioned comfort of their buildings expect for a quick dash to their air-conditioned cars, shops and restaurants spray water from overhead nozzles in a mist over the sidewalk in an attempt to keep all the old people from dieing of heatstroke, and millions of gallons of water are used to irrigate imported plants that have no business living in a desert.

Vegas struck me as another effort by people to beat nature into submission. Rather then accepting the facts of your environment, working with it, insane amounts of energy, are poured into trying to replicate what we have deemed "civilized".

Las Vegas was one of the places that saw the largest inflation during the housing bubble, and subsequently the biggest crash. Prices have dropped in some areas by over 50% of what they were at the peak, and rows of hopelessly generic and bland townhouses sit apparently or unfinished everywhere. It turns out that not many people want to live in a desert. At least, not as many as developers had hoped.

Heading east of Vegas for me to the vicinity of Lake Mead, and the mechanism for supplying Vegas with all of it's electricity and water.

The Hoover Dam

Uh, yeah, it's a big dam. To be honest I was more fascinated by the network of pulleys and cables that look like they're used for transporting heavy loads across the canyon, heavier then the road on top of the dam could support.

Half a mile down the canyon from the dam, a new bridge is being constructed for the new highway that will bypass the road going over the dam. A very impressive site, it was.

Given Las Vegas's propensity to making money off of anything it can, I was hoping that BASE jumping might be allowed off the bridge once it's completed. However, given the proximity to all the power lines from the dam, I find it doubtful.

Going over the dam and to the other side gets you to another observation lot, where you can get a look at the back of the dam and Lake Mead.

Even though that when taken in relation to it's CO2 output Hydroelectric is one of the cleaner forms of electrical generation, I can't help but think how much more beautiful and amazing this place would have been if we hadn't needed to build that damn. Oh well :(

East I went, into the hills of Arizona.

I wussed out of camping for tonight, and ended up in a motel. I BADLY needed a shower after three days spent in really hot environments, I hadn't had one since I stayed in a campground outside of the Giant Sequoia National Park. And hey, it was like $35 a night. I'll pay that for a shower, a bed, and internet access.

Since leaving Death Valley, all the way across Nevada and Arizona so far, the terrain had been hilly, and dry. Very little in the way of vegetation, and what plant life did exist was little and scraggly. Today started out much the same way, as the road followed a railroad track.

Bradleys, I think? Can someone confirm/deny this?

As I got farther into northern Arizona, the terrain got more pleasant. It started to green up a bit, eventually producing real trees.

For a little bit of American Nostalgia, I got on Rt 66 for a while, and found myself chuckling at a slice of time that was from long before me.

I don't think Burma-Shave actually runs these promotions anymore, as most of the signs were vaguely related to road safety or speeding (Slow down Pa | sakes Alive! | Ma missed signs | four and five!)

The towns along the road were doing their best to play up the old west/old-timey America thing, sometimes done poorly, but sometimes done well with a touch of actual history thrown in.

I don't know how or why, but when I was in ~7th grade I had a tee-shirt from this place. All the menu items are somehow roadkill themed or named, but other then that it's your standard greasy-spoon burger place. Although they don't really bother with proper cups.

As I kept on going, the terrain stayed just hilly enough to be interesting, and the clouds painted an amazing patchwork out across the plains.

And now, it's time to head to the Grand Canyon.

Giant Sequoia National Park

2010-02-04T20:32:00.002-06:00

After a very botched attempt at meeting up with my friend Siren, I was left in downtown Monteray with a rapidly setting sun. A glance at the GPS revealed civilization for quite a ways in any direction, and by my best guesses, I had maybe 45 minutes worth of daylight left. Fantastic, trying to stealth camp in the dark again.

Stealth camping when it's dark is 50x harder then camping when it's still light out. In addition to the questions of safety, and just being able to see someplace to set up, there's the always questionable issue of legality, trespassing, and making sure you can't be seen. I was in no mind to pay for someplace to camp, but google maps did show Los Padres National Forest, about 50 miles to the south. Back-country camping is usually permitted in any national forest/BLM land as long as you follow some guidelines, so in that direction I headed. At least being on National land removed me from the biggest issues of legality, but I'd still have to find somewhere to set up.

I headed inland through Carmel Valley, and eventually tracked down some road that looked like it would dead end deep into the forest. It was a VERY twisted dirt road that seemed to wind up some obscenely steep grades, but just how high I was getting was impossible to tell on a dark, cloudy night. Once I saw the always-welcoming National Forest sign, I started looking for someplace to camp.

As luck would have it, I came across what looked to be a self-service campground! Hooray! Toilets and things! The place seemed to be totally empty, and the little info sign didn't even have one of those self-service pay boxes. It appears that this campsite was free, which is the best sort of campsite for a cheapass like me. I set up the tent in the light of the bike's headlight, and went to sleep.

The next morning allowed me to take stock of where I was.

Yup, the whole campsite was completely empty. It was a primitive site, no running water, and only pit toilets, but that was all fine by me. And hey, the desolation and emptiness meant that I didn't have to bother getting dressed when wandering across the campground for my morning pee.

Heading down out of the forest, it was apparent just how high up I'd come

The road looked to have been graded VERY recently, so while it was free of potholes, it was fairly loose and really steep in places. Most of the time was spend in 1st and 2nd gear, engine braking the whole time.

This would have been awesome on a dirt bike or even a supermotard.

My goal for the day was to get across the central valley, into the Sierra Nevada mountains, and later in the week Death Valley. With that in mind, I headed out of the coastal range and into the flatness that is Central California.

Sometime Mid-day I stopped in some little town that looked like it had been built only for the housing bubble. The whole area was brand-new and nearly empty. It was hot, but I parked the bike next to what little shade I could, and checked up on the internet while waiting for my pizza from a Little Ceasers.

Heading farther east, I passed what looked like an abandoned military base. Looked like it would have been an awesome place for some paintball wars.

I rushed through Fresno (Ohmigawd that place really is the butthole of the state) as the sun was setting, getting to the Sierras just as the light was changing.

I made it to the entrance gate at Giant Sequoia National Park about half an hour after sunset, and inquired about camping rates in the park. Most of the campsites were full, the rangers said, that the ones that still had spaces were upwards of $20 for a night. Goddamit, would I be camping if I was made of that kind of money?

Anyway, I turned back through the little town that bordered it, and started looking for someplace to camp. Stealthing it probably wasn't an option anymore; everything was fenced, there were houses everywhere, and it was quite dark. I asked in at some of the motels, but NOTHING was cheaper then $80 a night. I finally made do with a state park campground for $12. I rolled in well after dark and set up in the completely deserted half of the place. The southern portion of the grounds had full hookups and were PACKED with R/Vs, but the no-services north side was totally empty. If I'm going to pay for someplace, there isn't much more I could ask for. Showers, fresh water, and no one else around.

I packed up my things, took a shower, and headed off into the Giant Sequoia National Park.

The road going through the park was wonderfully twisted, although there was too much traffic to really make much use of it. 50 years ago, there was a small town up here, complete with gas stations, hotels, restaurants and everything. But sometime in the 70s, the park service went on an aggressive campaign to remove things like that from inside the parks, and return as much of them to nature as possible. The few buildings that remained were moved and altered to have minimal of an impact on the surrounding ecology. Now all that remains is an information visitor's center.

While the Coastal Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, and the Bristle-cone Pine the oldest, the Giant Sequoia is the largest, in terms of shear bulk. The current world-record holding tree, nicknamed General Sherman, contains 52,584 feet of wood in it's enormous trunk.

Unlike the record-holding Coastal Redwoods, of which the specific location of the tallest tree is kept secret for fear of damage from tourism, the largest Sequoias are well-marked. And with that identification does come comical hoards of tourists, all jostling and taking turns getting their picture taken in front of the tree.

Bleh. This wasn't why I came to the forest. I didn't even bother trying to get my picture taken, and headed off to what on the map appeared to be a more secluded grove of trees, a couple of miles away.

It was a nice walk through the forest, and even though it was a beautiful clear day, 95% of the people in the park seemed to congregate at the record-holding trees. I now understood the reasons for keeping the location of the tallest Coastal Redwood a secret; to really enjoy this place, you need to respect all of the trees, not the few specifically gargantuan ones. Even the smaller trees dwarf everything around them, again giving a real problem getting an idea of scale.

Giant Sequoias need a lot of water to grow, so they'll often be found surrounding low-laying marshy areas where water collects, or near slow-moving rivers and streams. Even viewing them from this distance, across this marsh, they seem like any other tree. But getting up close makes it hard to fit their size into your head.

The only way is to take pictures of other people, next to the trees from a distance. You see that little yellow dot at the base of the tree? View the image full-size, that's a guy and his family. These trees are BIG.

Even though California has a habit of lighting itself on fire pretty frequently, once these trees get of size, fire doesn't affect them much anymore. Their bark is VERY thick, and wet, with very little oils, and serves as a perfect insulator. And their branches are so far above the ground that the flames can't get anywhere near them. In fact, the trees NEED the fires to reach their size; the fires kill off scrub brush and smaller plants that compete with the trees for water, and the ashes form a nutrient-rich addition to the soil.

Any damage that the trees do sustain from fire are quickly healed, with the bark growing over the scars.

Again, scale.

Note the silhouette of the person at the base of the trunk.

These parks really did turn me into a dirty, tree-loving hippy.

But how could I not be, after trees like this?

For those interested in continuity, the next entry would be here: http://vagrantbiker.blogspot.com/2009/08/riding-through-death-valley.html

Portland and South

2010-01-21T15:39:00.001-06:00

Portland was to be a day or so of much-needed rest, and gear exchange. An ex-girlfriend of mine lives there now, and I'd had my hot-weather riding gear shipped to her in advance of my arrival. The plan was to pack up my yellow Olympia suit and ship it back to Chicago, and continue on through the southwest in my heavily vented mesh riding gear.

The Olympia is a great suit, no doubt. Served me pretty well thought some truly stupid weather, and actually I'm still wearing it for daily riding now, in January, in Chicago. But it starts to get sticky much above 75 degrees, and 85 is pushing the levels of comfort even with the vents open. The day spent getting from Idaho into Portland had been through a lot of very hot, dry areas, and as long as I never stopped moving, it was pretty comfortable. But to stay comfortable, I had to have all the vents zipped open, as well as keeping the cuffs all the way open to get some additional airflow up my arms.

These open cuffs proved to be irresistible to a wasp.

My eye caught the motion blur just as it went into my suit, and then a burning sensation on my wrist. This was made worse by the knowledge that the thing was probably still alive somewhere in the suit, which lead to me comically whacking at my right arm with my left, while still trying to maintain control at highway speeds. I pulled over and dumped the crushed remains of it out, but I didn't have anything to treat the sting with. This was it a day later.

Ah well. Waiting for me in Portland was my mesh gear, so cliff bars, and some other assorted care packages from my father.

I didn't do a whole lot else while in Portland, updated my blog and hung out with the ex and her new girlfriend (She was pretty gay before me, it wasn't that I was such a bad boyfriend that I turned her gay. At least, that's what I tell myself). After a day off, it was time to get back on the road.

8-18-09

I used interstates only to get past the suburban sprawl of Portland. Once I was sufficiently out in the country, I got back to where I belong, on side roads.

When I left Portland, it was the better part of 90 degrees, and sunny. And it stayed that way until I got to within about five miles of the coast, at which point the temperature dropped to maybe 65-70 degrees. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, perfect riding weather, but remember that I'd just swapped my insulated riding gear for my mesh stuff. A Teknic Supervent Pro jacket, and Olympia Airglide pants. Both of these flow so much air that you almost feel like you're riding naked, and 65 degrees is freezing cold at highway speeds. I eventually stopped to put on my rain gear to act as a wind breaker.

It may have been cold, but the ocean sure was pretty.

It was so strange that just a few miles had such a large temperature variation, at least a 30 degree drop in just a few miles without significant elevation changes. But once I had the rain gear on, I was pretty comfortable without all the air blowing through me. I headed down the coast on Highway 101.

Now, what I'm about to tell you is very important. One of the more important things I learned on my trip, so pay attention.

If you are heading down a fairly major or well traveled road, in my case Hwy 101, pay attention to the forks in the road. Because if you ever come to a fork a road labled "Old (whatever road you're currently on)" . . .

You take that road. You take that mother fucking road.

It wasn't just the twistiness that was fun. Although that was a good part of it. It was beautiful, just stupidly beautiful.

Info on it:

Someone with the same priorities as I had made some appropriate alterations to the sign. :)

I guess compared to other roads in the area, it probably isn't that steller. It's old and isn't maintained very much anymore, so the pavement was actually pretty rough. But there was hardly any traffic on it; thoese three cars I passed in the video were the only three I passed in the whole three hours I spent just going back and forth over that stretch. It was just me, and the sunlight filtering through the trees, and the bike, and the road. I couldn't have asked for anything better.

Although it looks like some people had a bit too much fun on it.

Given that it was in a national forest, I headed down one of the gravel side roads to find someplace to camp. Off that side-road, I spotted another side road.

I headed down it for about a mile, and it just kept getting denser and denser.

This far in I wasn't worried about being pestered by any vehicles, so I set up my tent just off the side of the track, and turned in for the night.

8-19-09

The next day I headed back to the coast, and kept going down the 101. I'm sure it would have been pretty, but the whole area was covered in solid fog and clouds, and was very busy, lots of traffic. It was cold, occasionally rainy, and even with my rain gear I was dearly missing my big yellow suit. Maybe I shouldn't have swapped the gear out.

I stopped at a candy store to have a shot at raising my spirits

Mmmm, chocolate . . .

hey, cool, a road named after me!

Honestly, nothing much of note went on this day. It was cold, foggy, and occasionally sprinkled rain all day, obscuring what I'm sure were some very pretty coastal views. I camped for the night in what looked to be a turnaround for highway maintenance vehicles, going to sleep to occasional rain and chill.

8-20-9

I was sick of the cold. The last two days had been spent largely shivering under my mesh gear, waiting for the endless fog to clear up so I could actually see some of this pretty Oregon cost I had been told about. But at this point, I was done. I wanted heat, I wanted dry. With my setup at the time, excessive heat was easier to deal with then excessive cold, so I decided to turn farther inland.

I think I left Hwy 101 somewhere around the town of Gold Beach, and headed due east into what looked like on my GPS to be a maze of twisted roads going into the Siskiyou National Forest.

I had no idea what I was in for . . .

Seemingly never-ending ribbons of gnarled, twisted asphalt spiraling off into all directions.

(I guess you don't really HAVE to watch that, there's no crashes or close calls or anything. It's just ten minutes of blissfully perfect motorcycling)

I kept going deeper and deeper into the forest, getting gloriously lost in a maze of forest service roads.

Woah, washout

Eventually the pavement ran out, so I had to lay off the Rossi imitations, but whatever.

Oh, Oregon, how I miss you.

This is what the whole day consisted of. Tearing around on roads like in that video, while starting at scenery like this.

It was balls-hot, nudging 95 degrees according to my thermometer. But I stayed moving enough that it didn't matter, and I was having way too much fun to care.

I was so wonderfully lost that day. I've got no idea the route I took or how I got there, but eventually the forest spit me out somewhere on the east side against I-5, in the "Town" of Wolf Creek. I grabbed a quick bite at a Taco truck before getting on I-5 to go south.

Riding along I-5 was even hotter then in the forests; at least 100 degrees. I stopped at a highway rest area to soak my tee-shirt in water, which cooled me down very nicely with how vented my jacket was. I was only on the super-slab for a few miles, getting off at Hwy 199 south into California . . . where that night I found the greatest campsite ever.

My previous post on it: http://vagrantbiker.blogspot.com/2009/08/greatest-campground-ever.html

And in interest of continuing the liner order of things, this would be the next entry: http://vagrantbiker.blogspot.com/2009/08/redwoods-national-park.html

Getting to Portland

2010-01-07T23:14:00.001-06:00

Leaving whatever diner that was where I ate two pounds of hamburger, I headed west out of Lewiston with about 45 minutes of daylight left. Not far outside of civilization, I headed across a bridge and saw a parking lot down to the right hand side. It looked to be parking for a general recreation area and was lined with large boulders to prevent people from taking their cars under the bridge itself, but . . . bikes don't have that limitation.

The traffic was light and didn't bother me, and although at one point I thought I'd been discovered and the police were going to hassle me, it turned out it was just a bunch of people coming in to have a bonfire off under one of the other bridges out of frame. Far enough away and quiet enough that it didn't bother me, and the night was overall uneventful.

The next morning I kept heading west, into drier and more aired countryside. It was warm, too; at least 85 degrees for most of the day, and I was still in my neon-yellow touring suit. It wasn't too bad, but stopping at all was pretty hot, and I had to have all the vents open as well as the sleeves open to get enough air to stay comfortable.

Upon pulling into some small town just inside of Oregon, I followed some signs to a visitor info center.

Usually these things are positioned conveniently on the highway within easy site and access of visitors, but this one wasn't. I had to follow a bunch of signs way off the beaten path to find it, located on the river in a semi-industrial area. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought it was a strange location.

My main objective there was to ask their opinions on what the most interesting roads going to Portland were going to be, as well as refilling my water bottles. After looking at some of their atlases and getting their opinions on routes, I was on my way down the river.

The easiest way to get to Portland would have been to stick to I-84, it was a direct route. But . . . well, me and interstates don't mix. Luckily there was a slightly better option. I-84 runs along the south side of the river, with frequent enough towns and gas stations and the like. But on the north side of the river is Rt 14, the Lewis & Clark Highway, which passes though much less developed and more rugged areas. Sure, there wasn't gas for 160 miles, but it was a way better option then the super-slab.

And while on it, I could look across the river at all the suckers on the interstate and feel superior.

Suckers!

While their road was dull and boring, mine often looked like this.

And had tunnels! What more excuse does one need for wanton application of throttle?

Even though it's called a lake on all the maps, most of them are formed by a hydro dam a few hours down the road.

At some point, wanting to stretch my legs, I followed some little sign advertising a historical locomotive parked in some tiny po-dunk town down by the river.

This is something else that your brain has issues with the scale of in pictures. Each of those wheels is taller then I am, and I'm six foot flat.

Big 'ol thing.

Heading out of the little town, I saw something else that poked at my wanderlust; an open boxcar.

It's always tempting just to jump in and see where you end up. It's weird, even riding on the best form of transport ever invented, I'm still pulled towards other adventures. Ah well. Next summer.

I pushed on down Rt 14, eventually getting into wine country.

And a mountain. No idea what it is, but it sure is pointy.

Anyway, at one point I had to cross over the river, to get to the scenic drive that the lady at the tourist info center had recommended to me. This was accomplished via a toll bridge, and although I thought I was being clever and funny by stopping at the toll booth, reaching down to pick up the dropped coins and trying to pay the toll lady with them, she didn't appreciate my effort. She gave me some kinda BS about how those coins were already the property of the city (by what, laying on the pavement?), and made me pay the toll with my own actual money. Bitch.

This valley had a constant, un-relenting wind out of the west, and out in the harbor, there were hundreds of people taking advantage of it.

I had to put up with interstate for a few miles, but at least everything was getting green again.

The lady at the info place earlier in the day had recommended that as I got closer to Portland, I should take the Historic Columbia River highway.

WHICH WAS AWESOME!!! :D

Oh, that is a lovely sign to see

THAT'S EVEN BETTER!

There was a lot of traffic, preventing me from riding as . . . enthusiastically as I would have liked, but holy shit was it pretty. Wiggling through the forest before darting out to the cliffs to overlook the river

HAHA FOOLS ON THE INTERSTATE!

Weeeeeee!

The road spits you out into some semi-residential farmland, very pretty area. Saw this for sale, too.

Hello pretty thing!

I think the seller was asking ~$25k for it. It was very shiny.

Retiring to the interstate for the last bit into Portland, I quickly ran into traffic, a huge backup that went as far as I could see. A major annoyance for anyone in a car, but to someone on a motorcycle . . . *split split split*

I happily puttered between the lanes of traffic, grinning at the occasional annoyed honk from some jealous twat in a car, and even passing a few other guys on bikes who were evidently a bit more respectful of traffic laws then I was . . . and promptly splitting right past a squad car.

DAMMIT.

Even though lane splitting is legal in almost every other country in the world, for some perplexing reason it remains illegal in the USA and Canada, with the exception of in California, where it is expressly legal. And while how strict the enforcement is varies by . . . well, by officer, doing something as blatant as splitting right by a cop isn't the smartest of moves.

I swore at myself for not seeing him in advance, flipped up my helmet, and merged into the lane to my right. I glanced over my shoulder to look at the officer, fully expecting him to light me up and tell me to pull over . . . but all I saw was his outstretched arm wagging a finger at me.

Phew! I waved in apology/thanks, and proceeded to not lane split for . . . at least ten minutes. Traffic laws don't apply to me! :D

The Lolo Motorway

2009-12-25T21:59:00.001-06:00

Heading out of Butte (Haha. Butte), I finally felt I'd made up enough ground on the slab to get off the interstate, and back on more interesting roads. My destination was Portland, where an ex of mine was waiting with my hot-weather riding gear. Northern Idaho looked like it was going to be fun, so this was my planned (quick) route across it. I probably could have/should have spent much longer there, it was really beautiful. Ah well, next trip.

View Larger Map

Man, it felt good to get back onto real roads again. Not many other cars, but (always a good sign), quite a number of other bikes. And simply pretty riding.

It was cool, and there were patches of rain through the day, which prevented me from riding as stupidly as I wanted to. And at times, some pretty great fog, as the road wound up into the sky.

Once I got down over the mountians, I headed north on 93, with the intention of hitting up Rt 12 to go across Idaho. Now, going into this I had no idea what Rt 12 was; it just looked squiggly on the map, and went in the direction I wanted to go. Rt 93 going up there was flat, but at least there were hills that promised good riding soon.

Now, Rt 12 was indeed pretty nice. Curvy, long stretches of up and downhills, and yes some rain, but not terrible.

Oh, what an unfortunate name . . . *giggle*

At some point it started to dry out some, so I stopped at a turn-off to take off my rain gloves, and open the vents some.

But as I was packing things back on the bike, I saw something off in the distance.

Waaaaaaaait a minute . . . what road was THAT? And more importantly, why was I on asphalt when I could be on it!?

I had to find out how to get to that road. I backtracked about 5 miles on Rt 12 to where there had been a Visitor Center, and I poked my head in there to ask about it.

"Oh, that's the Lolo Motorway", the forest ranger inside said. "It's a very rugged trail, you need a high-clearance vehicle or dirt bike to be able to travel it at all. You'll never make it on a cruiser."

What I said, was "Oh, thanks for the info." What I thought, was "IS THAT A CHALLENGE?!" She was kind enough to give me a little brochure, showing a map of the route, along with how to get to it. Hrm . . . this looked like it would be fun . . .

View Larger Map

Just to make sure I wasn't ACTUALLY getting myself in over my head, I stopped for gas at a little campground place that seemed to have a lot of other bikers milling about, and went inside to inquire about it. I mentioned the dire warnings the Forest Ranger had given me, and the owner laughed.

"Nah", he chuckled. "You'll be alright, I had my truck up there a couple days ago and they've cleared all the fallen trees on it. Cars won't make it, but on a bike you can pick your way around the boulders and ruts. The Forest Ranger probably just told you that because she thought you were one of them", he finished, gesturing to the line of pirates outside on their Hogs who were, at that very moment, all busily polishing their chrome. "They don't even like our gravel driveway here. But you'll be fine on that road, it's not that bad".

Sweet! I thanked him for his time, and off I went quickly finding the entrance road and heading into the hills.

Always a good sign! The roads started out dry, but as the elevation climbed, everything to progressively more damp.

Seeminly frequent rain and fog made a lot of things very slick.

Rt 12 stays at the bottom of the valley floor, but the Lolo motorway rides the ridge lines.

But once you make it up there, are you ever rewarded.

(VIEW THIS LARGER!!!)

This road is absoultly breathtakingly perfect. I could not have asked for anything better. It was remote, it was rugged, it was challanging, and there was no one else around.

Did I mention that it was cut into the side of some pretty serious hills? Best not to go flying off the road here.

Well, I mean, you could quite literally fly off it, and get some decent air time. But the landing would be harsh.

There's nothing I can say to do this road justice.

Not only was it scenic, but it was really gnarled. This would be a blast on a decent grippy dirt bike.

As the elevation got higher, the road was often between two layers of clouds. Look down, and you couldn't see the valley floors.

Look up, and you could almost touch the clouds.

Soon the road was deep into the mist.

The combination of very dense fog, and stripped trees from semi-recent fires gave such an unearthly feel.

Sometimes I had to shut off the bike and sit there, just to remind myself that this place was real.

While this was a lot of fun, it was AMAZINGLY slow going. I don't have pictures of the really rough sections, because at the time I was too worried about not falling over/getting stuck to remember to pull out the camera. I made it about 40 miles on the road that day before it got dark, and I selected a clearing off the side of the road to pitch my tent in. (I swore I took a picture of my campsite, but I guess not).

That night brought rain, lots of it, almost without ceasing. At some times it would slow to a sprinkle, and occasionally increase to a downpour, but most of the time it was just a solid, steady, cold rain. And I do mean cold; my thermometer was reading about 38 degrees in the tent, and the oppressive humidity made it worse. This was just not a comfortable night, it seemed that no matter how many layers of clothes I put on, I couldn't get or stay warm. I wasn't to the point that I was dangerously cold, but I was quite uncomfortable.

And somehow, I felt farther away from the world then at almost any other point on the trip. I probably had been farther away from civilization at many points; up on the Dalton highway to Prudhoe Bay, through many parts of Canada, etc. So maybe it was just the constant rain, or the effort required to get here, but at very few times had I felt as distant from humanity as I did now.

It was brilliant. Sure, I was cold, and kinda damp, it was VERY dark, and bears probably outnumbered humans by a good ratio in the surrounding 20 miles. And to top it off, it was going to take a lot of riding until I was back to someplace warm and dry . . . but it was brilliant.

The next day still brought rain, so I stayed holed up in my tent for a while. I made breakfast out of my last two packets of oatmeal and hot chocolate, and settled in to wait the rain out. It never fully stopped, but at least there were some moments where it was only slightly sprinkling. I took advantage of one of these brief interludes to continue on.

As I puttered on the rain turned into more of a constant drizzle, or fog. Rolling slowly through these roads, with these tall trees and the fog illuminated by the sunlight that seemed only a few feet above was majestic. It felt like an environment out of Myst.

When I did drop out of the clouds, I could often see the road laid out in front of me. Sort of.

I stayed up in the hills, scraping the bottom of the cloud layer for the next few hours.

What a magnificent place.

While I probably could have gotten most of the way to Oregon on forest service roads, I was still on a schedual. Eventually I retired to the asphalt, although I was soon wondering if I'd have made faster progress sticking to the trails.

As the roads dropped farther out of the moutians, the sky started to brighten up and provided some very pretty photographing opportunities.

I joined back up with Rt 12, taking it all the way to Lewiston, on the Washington border. It was much warmer then it had been in the hills, and blessedly dry. I draped my suit over my bike to let it all dry out, and headed into a diner place for dinner.

Hrm . . . I hadn't eaten a real meal in two days; I hadn't eaten anything the day before and this morning had been a bit of oatmeal and hot chocolate. I was starving. So I ordered the largest hamburger on the menu. A . . . two pound burger?

(Holy shit that thing is the size of my computer)

The waitress looked at me funny when I ordered it. "Uh . . . you know that usually is ment to be split between two or three people, right?" she asked. "Hrm," I said "I guess you better get me some fries too, then. And some chocolate cake." Waitress: 0.o

And every single bit of it all went into my belly. I felt good :D

Billings, Montana

2009-12-25T17:31:00.001-06:00

I left Glacier National Park with a couple hours of daylight left, and started to head a bit more east. While my longer-term destination was to the west, to head down the Pacific coast, my short-term plans took me a little bit farther east. My destination in a few days time was Billings, Montana, where my sort-of-girlfriend-it's-complicated was making the 1600 mile drive out from Milwaukee to see me for a couple days.

I exited Glacier on the west side, and headed down Rt 2 along the southern boundary of the park to look for someplace to spend the night. I didn't know it at the time, but technically this was National Forest land, so I didn't need to put as much effort into camping as I did. There seemed to be a myriad of trails and tracks leading off from the main road, so I picked one at random and headed down it for a while, just to see what was up with it. There were some good clearings to camp in, but I didn't want to get set up only to find out that I was along someone's driveway or something.

Best I could figure, this was a service road for the power lines.

For the most part, it stuck close to Rt 2, cut into the hillside a few hundred feet above the main road, looking over the river.

For the most part, the trail was quite passable. Some large logs that had fallen across it had been (fairly recently, from what I could tell) chainsawed out of the way, which made me a bit more suspicious that this was someone's maintained driveway or something. At some points the stones got very large and rough, but I was usually able to pick a clean path through. And it was always quite scenic.

After a few miles, I'd taken the trail as far as I could; it was washed out in a section, and while I MIGHT have been able to get the bike over it okay, I didn't want to push my luck.

And with this part of the road gone, and nothing else of note besides power lines along what I'd seen of it, I felt pretty confident that I wouldn't be pestered during the night. I headed back down the road a bit to one of the many clearings I'd seen, and set up for the night.

I was woken up that night at around 1am by an EPIC rainstorm. We're talking sheets, huge buckets of water and massive, deafening thunderclaps. And while we get enough of those sort of showers where I grew up in the midwest, they usually last a few minutes and then peter off to a more normal rain. But this one didn't let up for a long while, it continued to drench everything for at least an hour or to. I was happy that I'd camped up on the hill near large trees, and not down by the river. Through the rain the tent held up just fine, and i stayed comfortable and dry through all of it. The next morning there was still evidence of the rain, as most of the ruts in the road had turned into very deep puddles.

I kept going east on Rt 2, which while it stayed in the mountains, was quite pretty.

But it didn't last. After an hour or so, it gave way to plaines.

Looking on a map, I could see that there were some nice roads in the direction I was heading, but it was going to take me a solid day to get to them. Ah well. I put in my earbuds under my helmet, and listened to a few episodes of This American Life on my iPod.

Stopped at a store in some po-dunk town for snack food. Before leaving Canada, I'd spend my last canadian dollars on some beef jerky, a luxury item that makes great road trip food, but is always suprisingly expensive. But having dry food in the tank bag that you can eat on the road is very nice, so I tried to go a healthier route this time.

It turns out that I didn't like dates that much. But the apricots were good, I went through them pretty quickly.

Nothing much interesting to note for the rest of this day. In an effort to keep myself from getting too bored, I tried to take more back roads, which resulted in me getting gloriously lost on farm roads and having no idea where I was. Still straight and boring, but at least I felt like a little bit more of an adventurer on gravel.

Stealth camping in the plains is way harder then in the mountains. There's much less in the way of concealment, and almost all of the land is privately owned. Fences everywhere, and nowhere to hide. I was searching for the better part of an hour and a half, and was getting desperate. Finally, just as the sun was touching the horizon, I found a semi-concealed spot behind a grove of trees off a rail-road access path. I had no idea if it was private land or not, but I was reasonably hidden and figured I could plead stupid if someone bothered me during the night.

But I was fine for the whole night. Occasionally the lights of a passing vehicle would throw shadows on the tent, but either no one noticed or no one cared. Still, I was out of there before the sun was fully above the horizon, just to be safe.

8-10-9

Today promised better riding then the previous day had. Within a couple hours I was back in mountainous country, taking Rt 89 south through Lewis & Clark National Forest.

Roughly halfway through the forest, Rt 89 passes by the Showdown Ski Area. Usually commercial entities have limited functions inside national lands, but I guess Showdown was grandfathered in, and operates on a special lease. I saw a couple of tourist signs advertising a small road that headed up to one of the tallest peaks in the area, where there's a fire station lookout. And I'm not one to ever turn away from a poorly-maintained forest service road!

One of these days, I'll get a proper dual-sport bike that is actually built for this sort of stuff, but for now, going slow with some fancy clutch work got me through it okay.

The watch tower at the top. The little sign said that visitors were welcome to come up as long as the fire marshell up top said it was okay, but I didn't feel like pestering him. I did head for a bit of a wander though. Ski areas are so weird when they're not covered in snow.

Nice views, though.

Getting back down the road was a lot harder then getting up. Going uphill you can always give it throttle to help stabilize the bike, and excess speed is bled off quickly. Going downhill, there's always the worry of locking a wheel, especially on surfaces this loose.

Another shot of the ski slope on the way down.

Once I got out of the National Forest, it wasn't very interesting.

Although one place I stopped for gas had an interesting way of dealing with people who bounce checks. I guess this is an advantage of small towns, public shaming might actually work.

And while I don't remember it being cool, I must have been sort of chilly, as in this picture where I was stopped for construction I was wearing my heavy gloves. Huh.

I made it to Billings, but the girlfriend-thing wasn't due into town until the next day. I hung out at the Library for a bit, updating the blog the best I could, and then headed south from the town to try and find someplace to camp.

Even though it was hilly, everything seemed to have fences around it. It was getting late, very late, and eventually the sun set and it got quite dark with me still not having anywhere to sleep for the night.

I finally made do with a small state park, which had signs all over it saying "DAY USE ONLY! NO OVERNIGHT CAMPING!" Er, sorry 'bout that.

Twice during the night, I head a pickup truck come through, and saw it's lights flash over my tent. But if it was the police, either they didn't notice or didn't care, because no one bothered me. I was gone as early as possible though, and headed back to Billings. The roads weren't aggressive, but now that I could see them in the daylight they were kinda pretty.

The girlfriend got into Billings sometime later in the day, and we spent the next couple days holed up at this stupid cowboy-themed hotel. Whatever, it was the cheapest we could find and it had free internet.

During this break in traveling, I finally got around to going to the optometrist to get a new prescription, and some new sunglasses.

Oh yeah. You're totally jealous of my pimp new shades.

And as much as three days together wasn't enough, she had to get back to Milwaukee, and I was way behind schedule if I wanted to make it to the Grand Canyon before going to Burning Man. So on 8-13, we bid our farewells, and headed off. She went east, and I went west.

And right at this point, I made a really stupid mistake. I mean, I guess it was logical, given that I really needed to get to the west coast quickly, but . . . I was like 50 miles away from Yellowstone! And I didn't even drop into it just for a day?! Stupid stupid stupid . . . even worse, for the first part of the day, I stuck to the slab. Good ol' I-90 :( To make it more fun, there looked to be storms in my path.

As usual, mountains created their own weather systems, trapping clouds and heavy rain at the high passes. The late-afternoon angle of the sun, combined with weird wind patterns, gave the very strange experience of riding in a downpour, and blinding sunlight at the same time.

Once I got over this range, the skies calmed down a lot. As I looked back, I was happy I wasn't still in the hills.

Weeeee! Okay maybe there were still some small hills.

Camping that night was a field that didn't seem to be protected by any fences. It was accessed via a bad road that had many cracks that were EXACTLY the width of my front tire! Perfect.

I did dump the bike once due to getting the front wheel caught in one of these ruts (stupid target fixation), but neglected to take a picture of it

Once I was a bit higher in the hill, the road smoothed out some, and I found some trees that sort-of concealed me from the road.

I kept pushing west on I-90 the next day, stopping in Butte for lunch. Haha, Butte . . . Yes, I am that mature. I was giggling for at least an hour at every single road sign or advert. Because I'm a grown-up.

Alright, I'm going to break up this post here, just to make things easier to manage. More in a bit.

Glacier National Park

2009-12-19T20:49:00.002-06:00

8-6-09

I had gotten into the town of Banff late in the evening the day before, and by the time I finished internetting at a local coffee shop, it was way past sunset. I was still getting used to this whole idea of the sun setting before 10pm. Stupid lower latitudes.

Stealth camping when it's already dark is WAY WAY harder then doing it while it's still light, so for a couple hours, I tried just napping under a freeway overpass. Just pulled the bike behind a concert pillar, laid down with all my gear on, and tried to sleep. It didn't work that well, and after an hour of restless tossing, I got up and resolved to find somewhere that I could actually set up the tent. I ended up here, next to the highway (picture taken the next morning).

While taking down the tent, I noticed a funny smell. Yet another downside of camping when it's already dark is that you don't notice what it is you've pitched your tent right on top of.

Ewwwwwww.

Anyway, I rode through the town of Banff to find some internet at the library. Banff is really a hellish little tourist trap; all of the buildings are made to look like they're old to give a "down-home" feel, but it's all fake. Literally, all of the big timber posts and logs are all plastic, and a lot of the hanging plants were as plastic. You get the feeling that nothing has actually been there that long, it's all clean and shiny and pretty and perfect and horrible. It's also full of all sorts of absurdly expensive little boutiques and shops. What a shithole.

I did find the library, which was being visited by someone who wasn't very interested in books.

I grabbed my laptop, walked in and was told . . . THEY CHARGE FOR INTERNET?! $1.00/30 minutes. What the fuck, wasn't this a library? If I was going to pay money to use internet, I'd go to a coffee shop and at least get a drink for my money. I declined, and rode about ten minutes down the highway to the town of Canmore, which was much less touristy, and who's library's internet was free. As internet should be.

Also, they have people who paint funny things on their walls

After wasting a few hours on the tubes, I had to ride around town trying to find somewhere to get gas. I guess there'd been a big refinery problem in Calgary, and a lot of places were out.

With a full tank, I left town. I headed east in the direction of Calgary, and the scenery was very pretty . . .

For about ten minutes. Then the road dropped out of the mountains, giving way to this;

And then, as I bypassed Calgary and headed to the town of Lethbridge, I had four hours of this.

*bangs head on gas tank in boredom*

Oh, it looks like that's pretty normal around here. Smashing one's head on things.

Uh, wtf?

Whatever. I stopped to get gas at some point, and this caught my eye. I know 99% of people don't care, but I'd never seen an issue of Top Gear magazine sold anywhere in the states. Yet another advantage of Canada, I guess.

Many weeks ago, a goon by the name of Slidebite had offered me a bed if I ever came through his neck of the woods, and now . . . well, I was in his neck of the woods. He and his wife had just bought a new house in Lethbridge, and graciously offered me a bed, a shower, and a couple days rest.

That would be Slidebite on the purple ST in the driveway there. His house is in a subdivision so new that it's not on any maps yet; when I rolled into town he had to come get me, and have me follow him back to his place. I was greeted with home-cooked good, a bed, internet, and a shower! What more could I want?

Slidebite and his wife only live in the house as guests, though. The actual owners are some very sizable cats, who don't have much dignity.

After an awesome sleep, and my first shower in the a week or so, it was time to fully fix my bike.

After replacing the crankcase cover in Whitehorse a couple weeks ago, the bike's starter system had been acting up. About 3/4 of the time I tried to start the bike, the starter gear wouldn't fully engage with the flywheel, resulting in it just wirring away and not doing anything. I found that if I took off the solenoid cover, I could pull it into place manually with a bit of leverage, and then the bike would start fine. Or, I could just bump-start it, which is what I'd been doing more often then not. Still, having to always try and find a hill, or get someone to help push, or spend a couple minutes un-doing bolts every time I needed to start the bike was a pain in the ass. It was time to get this sorted out.

Slidebite had ordered the gasket I would need from a local Yamaha place earlier that week, so after going to pick it up, we pulled into the garage and got to work trying to sort out what was wrong with the starter.

And by "We" I mean, "Tsaven works on the bike, Slidebite sits in his lawn chair drinking beer". And occasionally fetching me another Mt Dew. :D

After getting the side cover off, it didn't take us long to find the problem.

The gasket wasn't notched out properly The rod that the starter gear slides on was getting stuck; the solenoid wasn't strong enough to actually pull it past the thick gasket, preventing the gear from getting over far enough to engage. All things told, this was the best result I could have asked for; I was worried I had bent something out of alignment somehow. All that was required was trimming the new gasket to give enough clearance for the parts to move past it freely, and then putting everything back together. A couple hours worth of work, some new oil, and it was all set to go! Man, it was nice to be able to push a button and have the bike start, rather then having to dick around with bump-starting it!

Another great meal courtesy of Mrs Slidebite, another night in a bed, and it was time to leave. Slidebite and I had planned on linking up with another goon from farther north and the heading south together for a day of riding, but schedules didn't work out. So it was just Slidebite and I the next day, heading south into the USA.

I spotted this as we were leaving Lethbridge, commenting to Slidebite that it was one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen. I guess it used to be a water tower, and now there's a pretty decent restaurant up there.

Even though it's just a couple hours away from the Rockies, the area around Lethbridge is pretty terrible in the standard mid-western way.

(Slidebite on his ST)

It doesn't take long for the scenery to start appearing in the distance and soon we were heading straight for it.

Just after we got into the USA, we made a right hand turn, heading into one of the most amazing places I've ever seen.

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is someplace that has to be seen to be believed.

It was absolutely amazing, even with all of the other traffic and people, and construction causing some backups.

The weather couldn't have been more perfect, and I took out my good camera again for pictures. Slidebite and I were giving it our all playing tourist, stopping for photos seemingly every few hundred meters.

The road that goes through the park goes over the continental divide at it's midpoint, and there's a sizable visitors center there. There's a small army of open-topped red bus things that ferry people around, which is probably a preferable way to go, rather then having to deal with driving AND gawking at the same time.

Inside the visitor center is your usual national parks fare. Exhibits on the climate, geography, flora & fauna, etc. Also, bear paws are big, hold shit.

Awww, how cute!

This was as far as Slidebite was going; being a sane person with a job and responsibilities, he needed to get back to Lethbridge at some reasonable time of day.

I bid him goodby, thanking him again for his hospitality that he'd shown me, and he went back the way we'd came. I continued on down the other side of the divide.

The road was chiseled into the side of the steep hills for most of the way, occasionally succumbing to a sudden switchback to head farther down into the valleys on the other side. The line going across the hills detracted from the scenery a little bit, but without it I doubt I would have ever gotten into this valley. A necessary evil, I suppose.

By the time I got through the park to the other end, it was late. I really wish I could have spent more time there, maybe done some hiking, or even back country camping (Which I don't think is allowed, actually. Or it is but you have to apply for permits months in advance). I'll be going back soon enough, I hope.

End of the Cassiar, and milestone on the bike

2009-12-19T14:28:00.001-06:00

The Cassiar highway gets more civilized the farther south you go. Eventually the road gets a little wider, gets lane striping, and guardrails. Still pretty though.

And even though this isn't totally accurate, as I did about 1400 miles with no speedometer cable;

By the time evening rolled about and it was time to camp, I was pretty well back into civilization. There were a fair number of farms and towns, enough that camping was going to be a bit of a challenge. I headed down one embankment away from the highway, only to find the gravel trail almost completely washed out. There was only about 30 inches of solid ground to go on, and then it was a 20 foot slid into the creek.

There wasn't any really good spots to camp here, so after poking around a bit, I kept on going for a while. I started taking side roads, and ended up taking one road until it dead-ended at a pedestrian bridge across a river, just as the sun was setting.

I was surrounded by farmland, but a couple of kids who were fishing there said this little bit was public land and people would camp there all the time. It was remote enough that I figured I wouldn't be bothered, so up the tent went. Camping that night was uneventful. I cooked some noodles, washed the pots in the river, and went to sleep. It was so weird how early it was getting dark now.

(Taken the next morning)

East I went on Highway 16. This was still BC, so it was fairly hilly, but annoyingly civilized. Roads were okay. Not twisty, but they were okay.

"THE WORLDS LARGEST FLY-FISHING ROD!" As many signs leading into some little po-dunk town proudly advertised.

Obviously, the highway work crews were in a good mood, or at least had a sense of humor. This made me happy. :)

Stopping for lunch at some scenic little road-side turn off

The majority of the way was uneventful. I made it to Prince George, seeked out the public library for some internetting. Weirdly, the whole town was shut down for some kinda public holiday, including the library. I could still access they network sitting on the steps, and another guy who was sitting on the steps with his laptop (doing the same thing I was) was kind enough to give me his library card number so that I could access the internet. I puttered around there for an hour or two, until my butt began to complain too much from sitting on concrete steps, and then I moved on. From here, I headed to Jasper & Banff national parks, which I covered while on the road. You can re-read that here, if you like; http://vagrantbiker.blogspot.com/2009/08/even-though-im-absurdly-behind-on-my.html

The Cassiar Highway

2009-11-23T04:34:00.000-06:00

I left Whitehorse on August 1st, a Saturday morning. I had been in Whitehorse for a week, and while it had been an overall enjoyable week, it had put me a good deal behind schedule. I had my ticket to Burning Man which started on September 1st, and I still wanted to make it to Death Valley and the Grand Canon before then. I had a lot of miles I needed to cover in between now and then: At least 8,000, by my best guess.

With that in mind, I headed south, back down the Alcan. It was clear, warm, with just a breeze and no traffic to speak of to interrupt the ride.

Only about 60 miles south (actually more east, but whatever) of Whitehorse, I started to see signs of why the road had been closed the previous day. Forest fires, off in the distance for now, but in the direction I needed to go.

This is what driving through that smoke looks like:

Very pleasant.

Midway through the day I stopped at a gas station/motel/restaurant type thing for munchies. It was your typical burgers 'n stuff place, but one of the menu options was some sort of bacon double cheeseburger thing. Well, I never wanted to live past the age of 40 anyway, so I took a gamble on it.

Holy dog balls, they weren't kidding when they called it a double.

How the fuck was I supposed to eat this thing!?

Seriously? I think I had to dislocate my jaw to get around it. I wish I could remember where I'd gotten this, but I neglected to take a picture or jot down any notes about the place. I did take advantage of their wi-fi to update my iPod of various podcasts though.

While I was trying to figure out a way to shove this burger into my face, I ended up chatting for a while with this guy, who was on his way up to Prudhoe. He had seen my bike sitting outside, the only muddy cruiser in a sea of dual-sports, and figured that someone in the building must be as crazy as he was, to try and take a cruiser all sorts of places where it shouldn't go.

We talked for a while about the road, what it was like and what he should expect on a cruiser-style bike with fairly smooth street tires. I advised him just to take it easy and slow, and while he might be cold and wet for a lot of it, he'd make it there alright as long as he didn't try and maintain 70mph the whole way. I know that we'd exchanged contact info, but as I look through the notes I took on the trip, I can't seem to find his. I hope he made it there and back alright.

With a belly full of food, I kept on heading south (or east, at this point) down the Alcan, finally making it to the Junction of Highway 37, where I went south into British Columbia.

When you're heading north, once you've left the line-of-toothpaste of civilization that's mushed against the US border in Canada, there's two main ways to get up to the Yukon and Alaska. There's the well-known road, the Alcan, which is pretty dull until you get all the way up to Fort Nelson. But if you're adventurous, or just seeking to spend an extra day or two on the journey, there's a far better way to get from the North to the South

The Cassiar Highway.

View Larger Map

While the Alcan mostly stays to the east of the Canadian Rockies until it's almost in the Yukon before darting west, the Cassiar highway runs right down the middle of them through British Columbia.

And after riding this, I can't fathom any reason why someone would take the Alcan when this road is an option. It's FAR more remote, much less developed, and while the Alcan did have it's pretty bits (especially by Muncho Lake), the Cassiar is 500 miles of this.

Sure, it's not nearly as civilized as the Alcan, and there's much longer stretches in between towns and gas stations. The northern 50 miles or so alternate regularly between pavement and pretty decent dirt/gravel, and when it is paved, there's no lane markings or anything.

To put it mildly, there were mountains.

(Thumbnailed for easier scrolling)

I was getting south in a hurry, and was getting surprised by this whole "sun setting before 11pm" thing. I was running on the reserve on the bike's main tank, but I still had both spare tanks full, so I figured I had plenty of range to find gas the next day. And it was late enough that if I did find a gas station, it would probably be closed. I decided to call it a day, and turned down an almost comically steep gravel road that seemed to head off in the direction of a lake.

Pictures can't convey how steep it really was, or how scary. It was VERY loose and most of the gravel was the size of fists, making traction a precarious affair. Looking back up the hill from the bottom, although it got steeper after it curves into the trees;

I was right, this road did end right at a lake. And what a place to set up camp, I thought as I walk back from the bike to take this photo.

I walked back to the bike to start pitching my tent and

Wait, what the fuck happened to my gas cans?

Aw shit

I guess this had happened quite a ways back and I'd not noticed, the tire had worn clear through one of the tanks. The second tank, thankfully, was undamaged and still full of fuel. Although now I realized I had perhaps 80 miles worth of gas left, when previously I'd assumed at least 150. Crap.

Now while it looks like this was an idyllic camping spot . . . what I didn't bother taking a photo of made it not so. To the left of the frame in the photo of the lake, there was another higher clearing that had a few pickup trucks and cars parked in it, and a bunch of people my age milling about and messing around in the water. While I was setting up, I was assuming they'd be leaving as it got dark and they'd leave me to my peace and quiet.

Boy, I was wrong. The bad techno music started at 11pm and didn't stop until 6am. And at one point, some (very drunk) guys managed to stumble over to my tent and make an offer of beer, and then hollered "NICE BIKE" as they shuffled away back to the party. I was pretty pissy about it at the time, but . . . I mean, they were there first. And if they're going to have a drunken loud all night party, the middle of nowhere is a pretty good bet. If I'd know they were going to be there all night I would have picked somewhere else, though.

*sigh* I'm old. YOU KIDS TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN. AND GET OFF MY LAWN.

Anyway, the next day I was so sure that I was going to loose it on my way back up that hill that I made sure I had the camera rolling. Luckily I didn't fall over, and made it up without problems, although once (you'll see in the short vid) I did have a pucker moment as the rear wheel stepped out on a patch of very loose rocks.

(It's not actually that interesting of a video, just me riding over a rough gravel road)

Even though I wasn't very well rested at all (And I'd have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids!), I kept on going south on the Cassiar. And found horses!

And after the horses, there was more of what British Columbia has in droves; more mountains.

I know that many people reading through this are pretty damn sick of seemingly endless pictures of a road winding through endless mountains. But I'm pretty sure that anyone who's done long-distance bike touring isn't.

I'm quite sure that as they're reading this, anyone who's been on a long ride before, hell ANYONE who's ever ridden a motorcycle before, is picturing themselves, on the bikes of their choice, on these roads.

They know exactly what it feels like, exactly what it SMELLS like.

They know what the barely perceptible drop in air temperature as you go past a lake is like. They've felt the thermal-clines as you go up hills and down into valleys.

And I know that anyone who's been on a bike before is probably staring at these photos and mentally planning their next big trip. Or even their first big trip.

And hopefully, those of you who've never ridden before are looking through these and thinking about what your first bike is going to be. Because we have places on our world that look like this, and seeing them through a windshield with walls of metal around you can't ever do them justice.

Sure, you can stop and get out of cars here and there, but you're forced to on a bike. You can't eat on the movie, so you're forced to pull over at places like this for lunch.

A bike FORCES you to interact with your environment, to be part of it, to really experience it (Unless you're on a Goldwing, but that's cheating). This place had some of the clearest water I've ever seen outside of Antarctica, and I wouldn't have found it if I was able to carry enough water with me that I didn't have to get more from this lake to boil for lunch.

And this has to be one of my favorite photos of this whole part of the trip:

How much more picturesque can you get?

Fixing the bike

2009-11-15T12:23:00.000-06:00

As much as it sucked being stuck in northern Canada with a broken motorcycle and an unclear path home, I couldn't have picked a better place to have it happen.

I really ended up liking Whitehorse as a city. It's a small town that does feel like a small town, but not in the kitschy way that Dawson City or many of the other places I've gone through felt. It's large enough that the businesses exist not primarily to carter to any tourists that pass through, but to serve local residents. While there are some places that are touristed-up a bit, it's not that bad and retains a very real, functional feel. It's big enough that a number of national chains have operations here, and while I know a lot of people might bitch (fairly) about Wal-Mart being everywhere, after a weeks of plodding through tiny towns and trying to find the stuff I needed at absurdly expensive little general stores, that ugly blue sign is a welcome sight. There's also the staples of any small city there, Safeway, NAPA, an REI-type place, and even a Starbucks (Which I avoided in favor of a nicer coffee shop down the street).

The place is a good size; large enough to be convenient with easy access to stuff you need/want, but small enough that traffic isn't worth mentioning and you can walk just about anywhere you need to go. And for getting into the city from the outlying suburbs, there's a surprisingly comprehensive bus system, which was how I got downtown from where I was staying at the Motel/RV Park. The operator had taken pity on me in my situation, and let me pitch my tent in a little wooded clearing area behind a couple of the buildings.

I had damaged the bike on a Friday night, spent most of Saturday taking the side of the engine apart so I could get an idea of the damage, and then Sunday (while the dealer was closed) I mostly rested and searched around online for some ideas of what to do in my situation.

On Monday, when the dealer opened again, I went in to talk to their techs, and showed them the damaged crankcase cover to get their opinion on if it could be repaired, or if I needed a new one.

Unfortunately, they were of the opinion that there wasn't much of a way to repair this, by welding or epoxy, just because of where the cracks were right around a bolt hole. And truth be told, I kind of suspected that the moment I took the cover off.

This left me in need of a left crankcase cover for a 1997 Yamaha Virago 750, which wasn't available through the dealer in any reasonable time frame. They said they could probably get one from Japan, but it would take at least 2-3 weeks and I'd be looking at $350 just for the part. With that in mind, I spend the rest of the day turning to the wide world of the internet for help.

Of the number of motorcycle forums that I'm on, the one that came through for me in this regard was the Virago Owners Group. I posted a thread about my situation and what was broken, and only a few hours later I got an e-mail from a member who happened to have the exact part I needed! Three of them, in fact, laying around his garage. I can't tell you how happy I was to hear from him, and we quickly made arrangements for him to ship one of them ultra-express up to the Yamaha dealer that I had my bike at. I also ordered all of the various seals and gaskets that I was going to need from the Yamaha dealer, which were available on-continent and they said would only take a couple days to get in.

I spent the next few days mostly hanging around the RV Park, taking the bus into town, poking around the internet and generally un-winding. I couldn't have picked a better week to be stuck there: It was warm, almost too warm, getting up to 85 degrees almost every day, and hardly a cloud in the sky. On one of my trips into town, I went to the large sporting-goods store to get a replacement pump for my camp stove, which over the last few weeks had been acting up and not working very well.

Fast-forward to Thursday, and I wandered over to the Yamaha dealer, and look what was waiting for me!

Marty, I owe you one. If you're ever in Chicago, steaks are on me!

Because I was kinda far outside of town (And hadn't thought ahead when I was downtown), I was stuck buying all the stupidly overpriced chemicals that I needed from the dealer's parts counter. Five quarts of oil, brake cleaner, WD-40 clone, liquid gasket and all the various seals and gaskets that I needed totaled up to over a $100 to the Yamaha guys, and just the shipping on the crankcase cover was $100. Ah well, at least I had what I needed. I camped out in the parking lot and got to work.

And I'm not going to lie, at this point I was feeling kinda smug. All day there were people bringing their various bikes into the service department for really minor things, guys coming in for oil changes, brake adjustments, tire swaps, all kinds of little maintenance things that they were dropping the bikes off to have the techs do. And while they were writing checks, I was sitting in the parking lot happily taking apart the left side of my engine.

I felt pretty damn bad-ass :D

But my sense of smug-ness was dampened a bit later in the day, when a guy came in on a big Yamaha dual-sport, in the background here:

As he set about taking off his front wheel to get a new tire mounted, I struck up a conversation and asked him where he'd ridden from.

Now so far on this trip, whenever I asked another rider where they'd come from or how long their trip was, they'd inevitably puff up their chest and say something like "I rode all the way from SEATTLE" or "I've done a whole FOUR THOUSAND MILES!". And I smile and nod politely and probably compliment them on their shiny, clean, farkled up bikes, and then casually mention that I was the better part of 18,000 miles into a 27,000 mile trip. And then I would feel cool because my motorcycle-penis was so much larger then theirs.

So when this guy pulled in on a dirty, well-used bike, I asked him where he'd started his ride from. I wasn't prepared when he pulled off his helmet and said to me, in a thick accent: "Switzerland!"

. . .

Well that put me in my place. He was doing basically the trip I want to do in a few years, only in reverse. Started in Switzerland, went across Austria, Slovakia, the Ukraine, Russia, all around Japan, and now he was heading down to South America. And I thought I was hardcore, I mean goddamn.

Check out his website here (In German, but has a google translator): http://motonaut.ch/

I salute you Markus, for being way more badass then I!

Anyway, as the day wore on and I kept working on getting the crankcase cover re-attached (having to re-do it once when I forgot to put part of the clutch assembly in the correct position), the sun moving was quickly depriving me of my shade. I had to keep moving my workspace so as not to get roasted while working.

That evening, I managed to get everything together, started the bike up, and HUZZAH! It all worked! No leaks, everything was holding, and damn did I feel proud of myself. I even cleaned off the old cover just to take another picture of the hole I'd managed to punch in it.

This was the little plug of metal that the rock had so efficiently dislodged. I meant to hang onto it as a token/memento of my trip, but as I dig through all my pockets and containers now, it seems to have vanished. Ah well. : \

I rode the bike around town a little bit more, just making sure everything was holding, when I noticed another problem. Once the engine was running, it ran fine without problems, and there were no leaks best I could tell. But something was up with the starter, or the solenoid, or the starer gears. About 3/4 of the times that I tried start the bike, the starter would spin, but somehow wasn't engaging with the flywheel, it wasn't turning the engine over. I found that if I took off the little solenoid cover on the side, I could pop the gear into position using an allen wrench as a lever, and then the starter would engage and the bike would start just fine. Weird.

At this point, I had no idea what was wrong, but I was ITCHING to get back to riding. I had the Cassiar highway to take me back south, which I was really looking forward to, and I'd been sitting idle for way too long. And because I could at least get the bike started by bump-starting it, or popping the lever manually, I figured I could at least limp back south to where parts might be easier to find.

I was planning on leaving Friday, but ended up delaying another day because the road was closed to the south because of forest fires. When someone mentioned that to me, it finally clicked in my head that all week I'd been seeing these strange red airplanes taking off and landing like clockwork, and only then did I realize they were tankers, refilling from the river to drop more water bombs on the fires.

So that Saturday, exactly a week after I'd rushed into town in a cloud of blue smoke and oil squirting everywhere, I packed up the bike to head south.

If you're ever in Whitehorse, people, stay at this motel. The operator is a sweetheart, the rooms are nice, and every Saturday in the summer they grill out. I don't know what I would have done if it weren't for these people.

Getting back into Canada, and breaking my bike

2009-11-12T20:44:00.001-06:00

The evening of July 21st (or 22nd, I can't really remember found me at the northern end of the Taylor Highway. I'd done a lot of miles that day, making it from south of Tok, and finally ended up in the "Town" of Chicken, Alaska.

View Larger Map

And when I say "Town" I mean that best I could tell, there was a general store/burger joint, campground/RV Park, and I think up a bit off the other side of the road were a few more buildings of some sort. Chicken exists as a mining destination, the area is fairly rich in gold deposits, and that was what drew the first people here in the 1900s. The town got its name, legend says, from a native bird that made good food, but had a French-derived name that none of the miners could pronounce. Story says that eventually, one of the miners said "Aw hell, let's just call it Chicken".

The large-scale mines have mostly moved away, but a lot of private individuals still have claims up there for recreational mining. I had stopped into the campground place hoping to get a sandwich, but when I saw that for $10 they'd give you a pan and some dirt and show you how to get the gold out, I figured it sounded like fun.

I spent that evening panning for gold, spend the night in the campground, and then most of the next day panning as well. Panning is something that takes years to really master, and everyone has their own technique, but even in my bumbling through it, I managed to get perhaps $10-$15 worth of the shiny stuff. Not enough to do anything with, but hey, I gots me some gold!

After spending most of 7-22 panning as well, I elected not to pay for another night of camping, and packed my stuff to head out. It was getting dark by the time I did leave, but there was still enough light to take pictures.

This place was absolutely spectacular.

Stunning views looking out over long valleys with rivers winding through them. For reasons I can't quite explain, I was reminded very of New Zealand, the terrain just had . . . that sort of feel to it. Something about how steep the hills were without turning into cliffs, just the way the vegetation grew and the way the rivers were running, it looked like someplace right out of Lord of the Rings.

I only did about 60 miles that day, and I couldn't have gone much farther if I'd wanted. The border crossing back into the Yukon closes at 8pm, so there wasn't much sense in pushing all the way there. I followed a little side-trail off the road and camped for the night near what looked like a long-disused piece of mining equipment.

I awoke the next day to the sound of rain on my tent. I waited it out for a couple of hours, for it to slow down to a lazy drizzle before packing up. I could still see the rain clouds off in the distance.

For almost all of the day, there was a constant rain cloud somewhere on the horizon, but with some very short exceptions I managed to stay out of it the whole time.

The paved road had run out before I got to Chicken, and the gravel ran out sometime after that. The road was a hard-packed clay, but all the rain overnight had turned it to mud.

Once you get to the USA/Canada border crossing (Which reminded me a lot of my home in Antarctica), the name of the road changes to "The Top o' the World Highway". The name comes from the fact that the road skirts the top of the hills and mountains through the area, giving perpetual views for hundreds and sometimes thousands of feet down to the valley floors. The more cynical people say that they just named it that to try and get more tourism to the area, but in my opinion, the name is well deserved.

It was like this for 150 miles without a break.

I mean, goddamn.

This silver post marks the actual border proper between the two countries. The crossing was uneventful; Asked my named, checked the passport, told me to have a nice day.

Looking back at the border crossing from the Canadian side. Those little specs of blue buildings there are the crossing, on the right.

All the literature about the area claims that the road is paved on the Canadian side, but I found that to be a half-truth. I don't know if it was construction or what, but I'd guess at least half the road was gravel or dirt, in patches. There'd be a couple miles of pavement, then a couple miles of gravel, then pavement again, and dirt, on and on.

Even up this far north in this remote of an area, there were still little side roads that spurred off the highway and wandered up into the hills. I followed one for a couple of miles before remembering that I was quite low on gas, and didn't have the range to go exploring.

Much to my disappointment, I will say. I still find myself drawn to these tiny unmarked roads in the middle of nowhere. It means that despite appearances, there is SOMETHING out there. Roads don't exist without a reason, they always have to go someplace. I wish I could find out what that place was. I think on my next trip I'm going to make sure to bring a bike with a bigger gas tank.

With the fuel light on, I refilled the main tank from my spare cans.

Don't let the lack of everything being wet fool you, it was still damn cold. Even with my nice new gloves that I'd gotten in anchorage, my fingers were still going slightly numb from cold, so much so that I had to use my leatherman to un-tie the rope holding my gas tanks on. On northern sloping hills, there were still large patches of snow and ice, even in the middle of "summer".

I did take the opportunity to try out the auto-panorama mode on my little point-and-shoot camera. I haven't re-sized the source image, so click it below to see full size. The result isn't as good as what I'd get out of a program like Photostitch, but it should give you an idea of the road.

You can see the road heading off to the right, before going left and heading down the hills into the valley. It was breathtaking.

A hundred-something miles later, I got to the outskirts of Dawson City. It was a big gold rush town in the beginning of the last century, and now I guess thrives mostly on tourism, selling the kitschy tourist-version of the wild northwest.

Looking down through gaps in the hills afforded views of the Yukon River, where the city itself was located.

A slew of tourist-info turnoffs provided information about the area, mostly about the large caribou heard that used to live here. The "Forty-Mile Herd" was almost wiped out in the early 70s, with numbers dwindling down to as little as 6,000 head. Today, with reconstruction efforts, population is edging back up, up near 35,000, which is a big improvement.

But still not near the 600,000 that the herd numbered as recently as the 1950s. *sigh*

Dawson City sits on the other side of the Yukon River, which is serviced by a free ferry in the summer. In the winter, the river freezes solid enough for heavy vehicle traffic to navigate it without problems.

Other then tourism, I'm not sure Dawson City has much going for it. It's the only city of any size in the northern Yukon though, so I guess that counts for something. They've definitely played up the frontier tow aspect of it though, so much so that I found it kind of kitschy and annoying.

It had been a long, cold and wet day, and I was starving. I hadn't bothered to cook breakfast that morning, wanting to take advantage of the temporary dryness to get packed, and I was in no mood to make dinner again in a pot. I decided long before I got to town that I was paying for food.

I'd had a conversation with another biker on the ferry, a guy who's name I can't remember who was riding a big BMW 1200GS. He'd been to the area before, and said that at this time of night (it was almost 9pm) there wasn't going to be much open, but I should try this place. Wasn't like I had a whole lot of other options, so in I went.

Oooooo food. Food food food, how I love you. Love you so big when you're going into my belly.

The food was great! The service, not so much. It wasn't even close to busy, but I actually had to go and find a waiter when I needed a refill on my water, and the food took seemingly forever to come. Or maybe it just felt like forever, as I was literally getting stomach cramps from not eating.

All told, the meal cost me almost $35, and they even had wi-fi. I poked around on the internet some on my iPod, downloading some new podcasts and things to listen to, and went on my merry way. By the time I did leave it was almost 11pm, which left me with a big problem.

I had been so hungry when I got into town that I'd not bothered to get gas before I did, and now all the gas stations were closed. The shell station closed about five minutes before I got there, and despite my desperate tapping on the windows and waving my arms at the bike and pump, the lady inside locking up wouldn't even authorize them for a CC transaction. Bitch.

I had about ~30 miles worth of gas left, so I figured I'd probably have to head out of town to find somewhere to camp, and then come back in the next morning to fuel up. But as luck would have it, on the way out I found, buried in some industrial area, one of those un-manned automated fuel depots for semi trucks, complete with a credit card reader. I happily gassed up, (At about $5.50 a gallon) and was on my way.

Outside of town, I turned around for a moment to get a picture of the midnight sky.

I rode for an hour or so, finally pulling off in a clearing from the road in some gravel clearing to pitch the tent.

WHAT THE FUCK. At 4am I awoke with a start with every hair on the back of my neck standing up. Something was wrong, my spidy-sense was going nuts, but I couldn't place it why I'd startled. I listened hard for a minute, trying to figure out why I'd snapped awake so suddenly. There was something weird in the air and I had no idea what it was. While I was straining my ears trying to figure out if I could hear something, it gradually dawned on me what was wrong.

It was quiet. Eerily quite. the whole night was still and nothing was moving . . . at all. In any way.

Whenever you're outside almost anywhere in the world, there is always SOME sort of noise. Some tiny, tiny breeze, ever so slight, just enough to create an almost imperceptible rustling of tree branches, there's a bird somewhere fluttering, or here, there's the ever-present whine of mosquitoes. But there wasn't ANY of that.

It was so quiet that it had startled me awake. I got out of the tent for a quick look around. It was mind-blowing how still it was. The air temperature couldn't have been any higher then 45 degrees, but it was SO still that you weren't cold. Even the bugs seemed to have vanished. There were no cars on the road, no wind at all, just . . . . nothing. I've been in professional recording studios back when I was doing voice work, places with thick sound absorption padding and deadening materials that had more ambient noise then this place did.

It was really, really weird. Almost too quite to even fall asleep.

I remember reading an article years ago about psychological studies done on volunteers about the effects of sensory deprivation. The operators of the study removed people's ability to use one of their senses for a period of time, either sight or sound or touch, and found that the human brain is SO desperate for stimulation that when deprived of it, it will create it's own. It was so quiet that I had to put in my earbuds and listen to some This American Life just so I could get back to sleep.

It was a weird, weird night.

The next day dawned partly cloudy and warmer, much warmer then the previous day had been along the Top o' the World Highway.

While the map had indicated that this road back down to Whitehorse was paved the whole way, reality had a much different opinion, with seemingly ever-present construction and gravel roads. Now it's not gravel I mind that much; it's the enormous dust clouds kicked up by passing RVs and pickup trucks towing RVs. Seriously people, just get a fucking tent and stop trying to bring everything you goddamn own with you.

(Actually I guess that's odd of me to say, considering I was carrying nearly everything I owned)

Motorcycles were again encouraged to move to the front of the construction ques while we waited for the pilot vehicles to take us through.

Once I got out of the construction areas, and got away from the small packs of traffic that were the result, the road was simply a pleasure to behold

I did the better part of 300 miles that day. It's pretty easy not to get distracted by side-routes when there simply aren't any, so I made it into Whitehorse by the early evening. And continuing with my tradition of wasting money, I paid for food again.

Om nom nom nom nom!

Figuring that I didn't have any reason to hang around Whitehorse longer then I had to, I mailed off some postcards, and headed out of town to find somewhere to camp for the night.

Now . . . those who followed my blog in real time know what's coming next.

(Because dammit, Yakity Sax makes EVERYTHING better)

In searched of someplace to camp, I headed up what looked like an ATV trail along the side of the road that ran into a clearing for power lines. While I manged to negotiate the steep hill with no problem. I ended up cracking the bottom of the bike on a big pointy rock that I hadn't made note of when I walked the path before I road on it.

At first, I didn't think there was a problem. I'd smacked the bike on all sorts of stuff in this trip, and just assumed that the it was the crash bar that took the impact. I set up my tent for the night and had a sleep.

It wasn't until the next morning when I started the bike, and saw the oil like on that I noticed there was a problem. A further inspection of the area found the grass under where I'd parked the bike was completely soaked in oil. FUCK. The bike was empty, all of the oil had leaked out overnight. I had no idea how bad the leak was; from the outside, the damage didn't look too bad. Just some scrapes.

As luck would have it, I wasn't far outside of town at all. I scribbled a note to leave on the bike, grabbed my tank bag and my water bottles, and started walking.

Two hours later, I came across a gas station, where I bought six liters of oil (AT FUCKING $6 A LITER). This was your standard no-name gas station oil that no one ever buys unless they are totally fucked, as I was. I'm not joking when I say that all the bottles had a good coating of dust on them. After paying for the oil and getting a bottle of Gatorade, I began the walk back to my bike. I had gone perhaps half a mile when a guy on an ATV drove by and offered me a lift back to my bike, which I gratefully accepted. Thanks, dude, wherever you are! I had meant to snap a picture, but by the time I got off and pulled out the camera, he was gone. Ah well.

I packed everything onto the bike, put on all my gear, and as the absolute last thing I did, put in the oil I'd just bought.

FUCK. The leak was way worse then I thought. Oil was drizzling out of the engine at a constant steady rate. I just hoped it would last long enough to get me back to town. I started the bike, got back to the road and headed back to town, where I knew I'd seen a sign advertising a Yamaha dealer somewhere. I had my eyes locked on the oil light the whole time, my thumb on the kill switch, ready to pull in the clutch and shut the engine down the second the light came on.

As luck would have it, I made it the whole way. I rolled into the Yamaha dealer's parking lot in a cloud of blue smoke with the now-hot and pressurized oil literally pissing out of the engine.

I walked into the Yamaha dealer in a bit of a daze, and explained my situation. The parts counter guy said that all their techs were out for the weekend and wouldn't be back in until Monday (it was currently a Saturday), but he could at least look at it and tell me what he thought the problem might be. "How bad is the oil leak?" he asked. "Uh . . . " I replied. "Maybe you should take a look at it"

To the guys credit, he was able to mostly contain his laughter. From what we could see, I'd punched a hole in the crankcase cover, but the internal damage might be worse. Of course, a new cover wasn't available in the states, if I wanted to order it from then it would have to be brought in from Japan, at a cost of $350 and a wait time of 2-3 weeks. Well, shit.

First order of business, I decided, was to take the bike apart and try and find out exactly how bad the damage was. The crankcase cover was cast aluminum, so maybe there was a chance I could epoxy it, or get it welded. The dealership said that it was okay if I left my bike in the parking lot over the weekend, so around 1pm, as they were closing up, I set to work taking the left side of the bike apart.

Once I got it open, I did an inspection of the damage. It looked like one of the Allen bolts had taken the brunt of the impact.

And that impact had been transmitted into the crankcase . . .

As well as the crankcase cover.

By the time I got everything apart, and then straightened up my mess and wheeled the bike behind the shop, it was getting late, and I had to think about where to stay for the night. There were some pretty dense woods across the street, and down past the dealer looked to be a large lake that would offer pretty camping. But my stomach was a more pressing concern. Next door to the dealer was a nice-looking Motel/RV Park, and given that there was no place else around, I figured I would inquire there.

I found the manager, told her my story, and asked if they allowed tent camping at their facility.

"No, I'm sorry we don't" was her reply.

"Well, do you know if there's a restaurant around here anywhere?"

"Well, no, but . . . " She paused and surveyed me up and down. "Follow me!"

I followed her out to where a bunch of people were grilling burgers at a picnic area. She pulled out a chair, took two burgers off the grill, put them on a plate for me, and commanded "Young man, you sit down at this table, and eat these hamburgers!"

Now, who was I to object to an order like that?

I introduced myself to everyone, told them my story, and listened to theirs. Some of the guys here were part of the road crews working on a bridge a few miles outside of town, some were here vacationing, and others were just locals who came to hang out at this place. After much conversation and eating of hamburgers, potato salad, chips and dip, the manager called me back into her office.

"Now, we don't usually offer tent camping here", she began. "But, you're in a pretty tough spot, and we've got a lot of tasks around here that we could use an energetic young man to take care of. So, I think we can work something out, yes?"

In the end, we agreed that I could pitch my tent in a little clearing behind one of the buildings for as long as I needed to get my bike fixed and make use of all their facilities, for $20/week and $5 per shower. In addition to that, she had a list of chores around the place that needed to be done, things like cleaning the hot tub out, clearing some brush, other yardwork and things like that. I couldn't have been happier. I walked back over to the Yamaha dealer, got my stuff off my bike, set up my tent, and had a great shower. This woman was a saint!

The next day was a Sunday, and the dealership wasn't open. I spend most of the day resting and catching up on things. I updated the internet on my status and situation, did my laundry, and took the bus into town to go grocery shopping. I figured as long as I was stuck in once place for a while, I should do some real cooking.

Om nom nom nom nom!

I spend the rest of the evening checking the internet, talking to people online and trying to sort out how I was going to get out of this place.

Heading out of Anchorage

2009-11-08T00:12:00.000-06:00

Oh, man, where the hell was I when I last updated?

Oh, right. Anchorage.

My last day in Anchorage was a Sunday, a day which I spent changing my rear tire, running minor errands and doing . . . other things.

Hogman, Norm, and ShortguyonaBMW had left earlier in the day, with plans to make it to Tok, 320 miles away to spend the night before heading up to the Top 'O the World Highway. My plan had been to get my rear tire changed and the leave mid-day, hopefully to catch up with them in Tok and then continue through the rest of Alaska and into Canada together. They were a great set of guys to hang out with, and I'm really glad that I spent the extra few days in Anchorage getting to know them.

Unfortunately (or, very fortunately), fate had other plans in store for me, and I didn't get out of Anchorage until almost 11pm, as the sun was starting to set. I thought that maybe, maybe if I pushed the miles and rode through the night, I could make it to Tok and catch up to the guys.

I rode out of Anchorage that night, heading back up Highway 1 and going East, towards Glennallen and eventually Tok.

The first hour of riding was okay, but as I got up into the mountains, it did start to get cold, so cold that I had to put on a bunch more layers under my suit and suit liner. The twilight lingered for a while, giving enough light through the thickening clouds to show that this was some really, really spectacular scenery I was riding through.

Of all the roads I was on in Alaska, I have to say for pure distance and quantity of amazing scenery from a road, this was the best so far. I was disappointed in myself that I was riding through at night under very dim light; there was no way I could take any sort of pictures that would have done it justice. Many times the road was carved into the side of a mountian going up from a valley, giving vertigo-inducing views a thousand feet down onto the vally floor, and off in the distance you could see the shapes of mountains that seemed to march on forever. Someday, I'll get back up there and do that road in the light. Highway 1 going from Anchorage to Tok is not a road to be wasted by night time.

After the first two hours, things started to take a lousy turn. It started raining, gradually at first but then more persistently. It was getting even colder still, so cold that I was starting to wonder if I needed to worry about ice.

At one point, I pulled into a gas station that was closed, just to get out of the rain for a couple minutes. I was running on the reserve by now, only had perhaps another 30 miles left, and both of the gas stations in the "Town" I was in were closed for the night, and didn't have automatic Credit-Card readers. The whole area was deserted, nothing in the way of any locals around that I could ask if there was another station anywhere close.

Truth be told, I was getting so tired by now that I almost considered just flopping down on the pavement in front of the gas pumps and going to sleep right there. At least it was out of the rain, and I figured whomever came to open up in the morning would give me a kick or something to figure out what the fuck this idiot biker was doing napping in a gas station parking lot. But I was still hoping to be able to make it to Tok, so against my better judgment, I got back on the bike, and got back into the rain. As luck would have it, ten miles down the road I did find a 24-hour truck stop and gas station, where I took the opportunity to fill up the bike's tank, and my water bottles. I made it to the junction at Glennallen, and went North to Tok (South would have taken me to Valdez).

By this time, it was 1-2am, and I started to lose it.

I'd been up at 7am the day before, and spend most of it running around doing errands, working on the bike, and other . . . exhausting activities. I was tired, and very quickly loosing my desire to try and make it to Tok by morning. It was cold, it was raining, it was very remote, and it was very dark. And lingering twilight gained by being this far north was made useless by the heavy clouds, and if there was scenery at all, I couldn't enjoy it.

Soon, I was so tired that it was getting dangerous. I'd blink, but my eyes would then refuse to open again, giving me a second of panic when I consciously had to force my eyelids to snap back up. I'd find myself nodding off for what felt like only half a second . . . but could have been much longer, I don't know. And riding a motorcycle is all about what happens in split seconds, nothing happens slowly on a bike. Half a second is an eternity to not be conscious, and sometimes I'd snap back to it in a different part of the lane, and once I was jolted back away by the rumble strip center line. I was in no condition to stay riding. I needed some sort of a break, anything, and there wasn't a town even remotely close where I might find someplace to get out of the rain. That night, I slept at the Iron Butt Motel.

"Staying at the Iron Butt Motel" is a term coined by hardcore long-distance riders, guys who pride themselves on doing as many miles as possible in the shortest amount of time. Recently, someone set a record for riding from Prudhoe Bay, on the Arctic Ocean, to Key West in Florida, in three and a half days. That's over 5,500 miles. Do the math. When you do riding like that, you sleep as little as possible, wherever you can. Picnic tables at rest stations, gas parking lots, anywhere you happen to flop down, you grab just enough sleep to keep you going.

In my case, I parked the bike, put down the kickstand, and flopped my body forward onto the tank bag.. Sitting on my bike in the side of the road, feeling cold, wet, exhausted, and generally miserable, I went to sleep.

Or at least, what passed for sleep. I have no idea how long I was there, at least twenty minutes and no more then an hour. It was enough to keep me from completely loosing it though, and I did another 60 miles that night. Finally, when I started to see the first peaks of sun just after 4am, the rain started to let up some, and I decided that was all I could do. I pulled into a clearing at the side of the road, pitched the tent, and called it a night. I'd given up on making it to Tok that day, and although I was disappointed I wouldn't get to see Hogman, Norm and ShortguyonaBMW again, I needed some sleep.

The next day dawned warmer, clear with patchy sun.

It was still another 100 miles to get to Tok, and with a head full of rest and some warm air to dry out my soaked suit, I could really enjoy the ride again.

Tok was the same as I remembered it when I passed through on my way up to Anchorage. A little oasis of flatness and straight boring roads in the middle of mountains. I turned right, heading Southeast down the Alcan to where the highway going up to Dawson City eventually turned off.

There was some construction on the way, a lot of mud on the road, which would turn into dust. They tried to keep the dust down by watering down the road, but it wasn't enough to actually wash the crap off. So while it kept the dust down, it also made it slick as hell. I locked the back tire a couple times under what I thought was pretty normal braking.

I got to the Taylor highway a couple hours later, and turned around to go north.

If you look on google maps, at first glance it appears that there's only one main road going into Mainland Alaska from Canada; the Alcan Highway. But zoom in a lot, and go a couple hundred miles north, and you'll see that there's another route into Canada, a much longer way on far less developed roads. On the Alaska side, it's called the Taylor Highway. In Canada, it's named "The Top o' the World Highway". I'd taken the Alcan up, and given how I hate backtracking, this was the way I was going back.

What does this 400-something mile detour get me? Pretty scenery, for the most part.

I can't remember exactly what the weather was like. At some point, I stopped to either take off my suit liner, or put it back on, I can't remember. Either way, no matter where you looked, the hills made you feel small.

Again, more evidence of recent fires.

And what a beautiful drive it was, winding casually through the hills.

Some places I passed through, entire hills were brilliantly purple, sometimes as far as you could see. Alternating patches of magenta and green marching off to the horizon.

The road was paved for most of the way, but the farther north I went, the more frequent the construction or patches of gravel were. Eventually the pavement ran out completely, giving way to mostly decent clay, although there were a lot of sections where it was fresh and loose gravel that were a bitch sketchy.

And the road just marched on and on, over an endless line of hills.

That's it for this post, hopefully my next one will be soon.