Adventures on 2 wheels

(This post is not directly motorcycle-related, although I did ride mine to work this day…)

There’s a really good movie called “The Santa Clause” with Tim Allen - watch it if you’ve not.  There’s a scene in it where Bernard (the Elf overseer guy) is telling Scott Calvin (newly become Santa) about “the list”.  They’re in the workshop at the North Pole and there are hundreds of elves carrying on with their busy work.  Calvin has no idea what Bernard is talking about: “List?  What list?”  Bernard responds:
“You know…   (softly) ‘He’s making a list, checking it twice…’”
And the place erupts with every elf stopping what they’re doing and, in unison and without missing a beat, singing (loudly):
“GONNA FIND OUT WHO’S NAUGHTY AND WHO’S NICE!”  And they immediately turned back to continue what they had been doing.
It’s funny.

Here at Seattle Shakespeare Company, the Education department offers camps for kids in the summer: Camp Bill.  I often help out here and there with various things at the advanced session.  Yesterday, as 4 actors were in the theater working with the director on a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there were another about 8 kids in the lobby outside the theater going over their own lines - they were sitting or walking around mumbling their lines to themselves and as I walked though I could hear:
“…you must say ‘paragon’…  this lanthorn doth the horned moon present…  the king doth keep his revels here tonight…   I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again….”
Well, me not being one to let productive kids be productive, I turned around and started mumbling my own line.  I chose a line from Romeo and Juliet to be funny.  I was not particularly loud - just loud enough for all 8 of them to hear:
“But soft, what light through yon window breaks?”
And the lobby erupts with every kid stopping what they’re doing and, in unison and without missing a beat, responding (loudly):
“It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”  
And they immediately turned back to continue what they had been doing.

I neither planned nor expected that.  I stopped frozen in my tracks - I got a bit of a chill up my spine because it was so cool. THAT’S an example of the reason I enjoy working the kid programs. 

This trip (not counting my time with family):

18 days
3600+ miles
45 fuel stops - $380
11 different cities - $1,700 in lodging bills
Repairs and maint bills - $950
Cost of shipping my bike east - $1,050
Cost of shipping other equipment east - $450
Cost of shipping myself east - $550

Living the dream - priceless

It was surreal coming “home”.  I’m living in an apartment into which I’d only moved about 6 weeks before this trip.  When getting from I-5 to the actual apartment building, I can’t say I got “lost” exactly, but I can certainly say that I took a circuitous route to get here. 

 It wasn’t until after I was home for several hours that I could feel the tiredness setting in.  It’s only been a handful of hours, but already it seems like the trip was so long ago.  Those damn cornfields, the awesome cakes at Jim Bailey’s Harley-Davidson (at the dealer party there, they had about a dozen flat cakes about 18″ by about 36″ that were each decorated differently - some with maps of the US (including our route traced in icing), some with pictures of riders on motorcycles, etc), the expanses, the tunnels, the people, the riders, the noise, the mechanical problems that loomed a few times, unpacking my laptop a dozen times, repacking my bags a dozen mornings, those long days in the beginning wondering if this trek would ever end, those “short” days at the end that went by too quickly, all the food (the good, the bad, and the ugly), the wildlife, the rivers, the mountains, the little kids in cars staring as I passed, the really little kids at all the dealer parties getting their groove on, the gas stations with wonky equipment, the rain, the hail, the wind, the skin-burning sun, the cool nights after HOT days, the stories from so many states, the smell of burning rubber, the smell of burning brake liners, the smells of cherry orchards, the momentary smell of wildflowers in the middle of nowhere, the signs advertising the businesses that are the life’s work of this person or that, the directions that tell you to get on I-82 SOUTH when I-82 actually runs EAST-WEST, the sense of despair looking at 400+ miles of riding in oppressive heat, the sense of satisfaction when that day of riding is done, the buzzing in my head after it’s been rattled by the 70 mile-per-hour wind for 7 hours, the calm in my head in a cool morning riding through beautiful countryside, the clip on my bandana (shielding my neck from sun) failing after about 10 minutes of me putting it on about 50% of the time requiring me to get off at the next exit and re-do it, the towns, the  states with no helmet laws, the music, and the miles and miles and miles and miles.

The ride is offically done.  This morning, we had the last event associated with the “Posse Ride - Great American Adventure” (they uniquely name each ride, so “Great American Adventure” refers to this 2007 cross-country ride), a group breakfast.

I was talking with a fellow from New York who, right after breakfast was gonna get in the saddle and start the trip back to the east coast.  Actually, MOST of the riders are not from this area and so have the choice of riding home, or shipping their bikes.  From talking to people, it seems that most are riding home.  There are a bunch from Florida, Texas, and the Mid-Atlantic states that have a minimum of about another 4 days riding in front of them (assuming they go for a straight heads-down run).  And then there are the riders that go home via Sturgis, SD for their bike week and they’ll stay there another week or ten days.  I have a short 3-hour ride north on I-5 to get home.

 The main organizer-guy from HOG was talking at the podium and mentioned that there were only a couple of crashes (that they knew about) during these last 2 weeks, 3200+ miles, with 550+ people.  That he knew of, there was only one older couple that could not finish the trip (one of them was sick and they flew home at their doctor’s recommendation).  There was a guy who had surgery for kidneystones and caught back up with, and finished, the trip.

I was glad to hear that I’m not the only one who has “issues” with cornfields.  During the speech, the HOG organizer-guy was reviewing some of his memories/experiences of the trip and pointed out how good that Iowa corn was and how satisfying it was to finally getting to eat some after spending “DAYS riding through EVERY cornfield in the country”! 

Well, I reckon I’ll get on with getting home.

The time on the road today was spent chasing the Columbia River to the ocean.  It was a nice ride.  Here are a few different views of what she looks like as she meanders westerly:

(If you look carefully at this last picture, you can see someone windsurfing with an orange sail.)

The route today took us along US-14 West for most of the day which follows the Columbia River on the Washington (North) side.  It was a magnificent ride (as you can see from the sample pics above).  I had checked the weather forecasts for both Kennewick, WA (from where we were leaving) and Portland, OR (to where we were riding) so I was not surprised for what happened sometime around the middle of the day.  The Cascade Mountains run from BC, Canada down to California.  Of course, since we were riding by the river, we didn’t have to go over them so it may not have been obvious to those that don’t live around here that we were moving into a completely different weather system.  The weather forecast was calling for a high in Kennewick to be around 95, and a high in Portland to be 79.  I’m actually happy that those folks on this trip not from here got to really experience “normal” Pacific Northwest riding weather: overcast and cool.  You can get a bit of an idea how it was by contrasting the pics above with this one:

Later in the afternoon, it also drizzled for a short while. 

Along the way, I pulled into an art museum (how much business can they possibly do there?) to ask where a gas station might be ’cause I had been running on reserve for a while and really didn’t want to run out of gas 50 miles from anywhere.  Riding down the driveway to the museum, I saw this fella:

I asked and it turns out this is exactly what it looks like - a white peacock; they’re specially bred.

The dealer party was different.  The name of this dealership is “Paradise Harley-Davidson”.  Now, how the locals came up with the name of “Paradise” for a Harley dealership in Portland I can’t imagine, because they use images of Pacific islands on their advertising and shirts and etc.  Anyway, for the “dealership party” today, this dealership had a luau.  Food was macaroni salad, kaula pig, katsu chicken, rice, and lo-mein.  (No shave ice, though.  :-(   )

Today we rode from Missoula, Montana to Kennewick, Washington.  (Washington is the first state in a while (since Wisconsin) through which we’ve ridden that has a helmet law.)  We took US-12 West almost the whole way.  About 20 miles out of Missoula on US-12 West is a sign that reads:
               “Twisting road - next 77 miles”
You could hear the whoops for miles - there’s nothing a biker enjoys more than curvies!  (Well, apparently except for cheerleaders on mechanical bulls…)  I’m envious of those that live in that area.  Geez, to be able to go do that every week or so must be just awesome.  Again, since there were very few places to pull off the road, and where there were, they were usually boring places, I have little to show that compares with what I saw:

One of the coolest and weirdest things I was soon after the “Twisting road - next 77 miles” sign.  The road was winding through mountains (the above pictures are NOT winding though mountains, btw) still hundreds of feet below the tops, but also hundreds of feet above the ravine below.  (It was hard to tell how far up from the bottom the road is because:  a) I was busy trying to keep a motorcycle from flying off one of the twists in the road above said ravine,  and  b) the whole area, top, bottom, and sides of the mountains were completely covered with evergreens.  I came around a bend and was looking at trees left, right, and center (across the ravine) and ALL of these trees were unusually thin and tall.  If you’ve ever seen a movie where the scene is a wide shot, but it’s scrunched skinny to a TV screen, you’ll know what I mean.  It was a little disorienting and my eyes trying to figure out what they were seeing made my head a little swimmy - it was really weird.  (It didn’t ever feel unsafe, like I was gonna lose balance, though…)  Again, nowhere to pull over and take a pic, so you’ll just have to go see it for yourself sometime.

Something I don’t recall seeing anywhere in the east are signs that say “Game Crossing”, or “Game Crossing - next 5 miles”.  Sure there are signs that might say “Deer X-ing”, but those are here as well, so it would seem “Game” is different.  Dunno - I just get an image of a Parchisi board hopping across the road everytime I see “Game Crossing”.

Most of the land in Eastern Washington through which we rode was dried-out grass:

(Look past the bike and grass at the rest stop to see what I’m actually talking about.)

Well, I’m gonna go head out to the dealer party now.  For dinner they’re having a Bar-b-que:  your choice of chicken or ribs.  Who said eating vegetarian would be difficult on this trip?

Rather than being out riding, I spent most of Friday, July 27, 2007 sitting in my hotel room watching TV, doing laundry, and sorting though my gear to clean/toss/etc as necessary.  I finally got my bike back at about 4pm local time.  I went out to dinner here.  (That’s the view I had, but I was out on the deck, rather than inside.)  Helluva view - I generally don’t take my camera to dinner so I have nothing of my own to show for it.  I had a helluva piece of Ahi there while watching the water and the occasional golden eagle above and a tuber/canoer/kayaker once in a while.

Forks of what?  There are many “fork towns” around here:  Bigfork, Clarkfork, Threefork, Saladfork… 

The ride this day started and ended in Missoula, Montana - it was a 240-mile ride to Kalispell, MT and back passing a number of scenic lakes and threading a number of national forests.  The one time-point was that there was a group picture to be taken at the airport across from Seeley Lake at 9:30am.  Here’s the scene right after the picture was taken and we were all “dismissed”:

The guy up in the crane bucket was taking the pic.

The organizer folks requested that people get to the pic place by 9am so that they would be able to get the picture staged and taken by 9:31.  This place is about 50 miles north of Missoula.  In order to get there on time (and not knowing the speed limits on the roads to get there), I left at about a quarter of eight.  Since this was going to be a leisurely loop ride, and knowing it was going to be hot this day, I decided to wear a tee-shirt with a long-sleeved shirt over it with my leather vest.  And, I would take both my fingerless gloves (for when it got warm) as well as the fullfinger gloves for the beginning of the day.  I was on the highway before I realized that I had only my fingerless gloves and only a tee-shirt on.  Well, I was running late, and it wasn’t that cold, so I decided not to go back and get that other stuff.  In coming to this decision, I had failed to appreciate two facts:  1) when it’s just bearably cold riding down the highway for 10 minutes, it’s going to be unbearably cold after about half an hour;  and  2) the temperature on the highway close to a town is not necessarily the same as the temperature will be up in the mountains 20, 30, or 50 miles north of town.  I gained a more profound understanding of these two nuggets of wisdom after about 20 minutes of riding.  I knew I would probably not get frostbite, but it was still freakin’ cold.  And, of course, there were no swearshirt stores on the backroads up to the lakes (not that they would have been open at that hour anyway…).  About 20 miles away from the pic place, I found a gas station/mini-mart place and stopped in just to try to get less cold for a few minutes.  Not wanting to look like a freezing idiot that was out riding at that hour with just a tee-shirt, I “browsed” for some snacks; you’d be surprised just how long it’s possible to take deciding between peanuts and almonds. 

By the time the picture-taking was done, the sun had been up for a while and the air was warming up to a reasonable temperature.  (When I say “a reasonable temperature”, I mean “a temperature that won’t freeze the morons that were out riding in the mountains in the early morning in only a tee-shirt”.)  I think this was Flathead Lake:

I have no idea why the guardrail is blurry, but I’m certain it’s not because I took it while riding - because I didn’t.  Really.  (Well, just don’t tell my mom.)

One of the types of pictures I like to take is a beautiful scenic backdrop with something ordinary in front.  EG:

It’s not really the juxtaposition, it’s the idea of such a majestic background on a road that people drive on to and from work every day and a scene they see while pumping gas or whatever.  This is a scene that many people will never get to see (or, at least, not get to see more than once or twice).  It always makes me wonder whether the people that do see this day in and day out for almost every day of their lives take it for granted - whether they can even “see” it anymore.  (Of course, the picture does not do justice to the grandiosity and beauty of the actual view.)

When I got back to town, it was early afternoon, so I decided to drop by the Harley-Davidson dealership to see if they could get me an oil change and new spark plugs.  They said it could be done, but might take a couple of hours (there were, afterall, 400 bikes coming though town and most would be needing the same).  They planned on having a self-serve oil changing station set up the next day during their “dealer party”, but that wasn’t ready yet.  So, I planned on waiting.  The area next to Flathead lake is apparently a popular cherry-growing region because every hundred yards, there was a stand, hut, or storefront selling fresh-picked cherries.  I had picked up a couple of pounds, so I sat in the shade eating them while waiting for my bike.  Here’s the view I looked at for about 2 hours:

That house just looked so lonely at the top of that dried-out-grass hill.

I eventually got the news that there was a knocking sound from the lower-end that might have sounded like a lifter dying (or something else I can’t remember).  After the tech opened up the casing to get a look at the cams, he found a bit of a mess: the cam shoes had completely worn out (and cracked into a bunch of pieces) and the oil pump had significant scoring on the side, and two or three other things.  One of these “things” was that an area of the crankshaft that’s supposed to be flat had been rounded a bit by a gear mounted on it that had been wiggling back and forth and basically grinding that edge.  Most of the fixes were easy.  The crankshaft needed to be replaced - that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 hours of labor.  Because they were already shorthanded, the lead tech said the best they could do would be to have it done by Sunday.  Alternatively, they could just put a new gear on and hope that the flywheels weren’t causing the original wiggling and that it would hold until I got back to Seattle.  As I said, the coin came up tails.

I woke up in Billings to see this out my window:�

It’s actually a wood carving.  On that side of the hotel, from the outside, you can see there are two of these woodcut bears peeking into windows - I had one of them.  I recalled my wildlife training and didn’t attempt to feed him.

The ride from Billings, Montana to Missoula, Montana can be divided into two parts: pre-mountains and in-mountains.  The former has little to recommend it (other than it’s COMPLETELY barren of cornfields) but the latter is very nice and, at times, spectacular.  One cool thing I saw on the road was a bumpersticker that read:
         “No more Republicans!
          No more Democrats!”
I liked it. 

Here’s a shot of the transition area from pre-mountains to in-mountains:

One of the limitations of riding a motorcycle is that it’s difficult (though not impossible) to take pictures while driving, and through the mountain-y part of Montana, there were very few safe areas where one could pull over to snap a few.  A darned shame, too.

350 miles rode this day - started 8am local time, no idea when I got off the road.

(My wireless connection in Missoula was horrible (and they don’t do hardwire), so I didn’t even try to post anything - I’ll catch up now.)

Leaving Dickinson, North Dakota was a nice ride for a while.  The highway is the same one that goes past/through the Painted Canyon and Teddy Roosevelt National Park (ie: the Northern Badlands) so the first part of the day was quite scenic.  It was a hot day riding:  by 8am it was already 85 degrees F, and by 8:30 I was starting to feel the heat (not a good sign when you have 4-5 hours in front of you).  I should take a moment to point out that for the bulk of the riding on most days, I’m wearing a full-face helmet, and a full jacket (no chaps or protection of any kind on legs besides jeans).  I do this for two reasons:  1) Protection in the case of crash - I see guys out here flying down the road with no helmet at all (in states that have no helmet law) and a tee-shirt at 80 miles-per-hour; that’s just a little nuts (there’s a rumor that I did exactly that while riding the highway between Duluth, MN and Superior, WI but personally I don’t believe it);  and  2) Protection from the sun - I’m probably already on the fast-track for getting me some of that great skin cancer I keep hearing about and I figure whatever I can do to reduce sun exposure must be good.  The day riding from Wilmington, DE to Greensburg, PA I did have my half-helmet and tee-shirt and leather vest (since most of the trip was on Route 30 which spends much of it’s time with a 30 MPH limit).  I did liberally apply SPF 36 sunblock a couple of times during the day and still got some color.  That was enough for me - the only time I’ve been exposed since was riding through Teddy Roosevelt National Park (that was less than half a day riding) and doing the loop north of Missoula (that story to follow).  So, back to my point: with a full-face helmet and full-jacket and riding boots, a day that’s hot gets even hotter when wearing a plastic bucket on your head and several layers of insulation over the upper half of your body as you’re sitting on a seat that’s mounted about four inches away from a 1550CC engine that’s running at high RPMs for hours at a time (the engine’s oil is generally in the neighborhood of 240 degrees) and this engine is sitting just over the asphalt which radiates it’s own heat upwards.  For me the main aversion I have to crashing is that if I do crash, I might have that engine ON my leg, and I’d certainly be ON the hot ground and, once I stopped tumbling, I’d have no breeze (hot or otherwise) to provide any relief.

I knew this day was going to be hot and, having experienced the North Dakota heat the day before, I knew I didn’t want more, so this day was more of a heads-down dash to the next town.  I got my earliest start so far at just after 7am local time.  Seems others were of the same opinion: most days, any gas station you pass would have a half-dozen or so riders standing around talking; I saw no such thing this day. 

It seems like sometimes these people ran out of names to call towns out here.  I passed a town this day called “Home On The Range”.  I’m assuming this town came AFTER the song.  I want to look that up…

Since it was a hot day and I was heads-down, dashing all day, I took no pics at all this day.  So, here’s one from the previous day:

I liked this picture because of the good-quality reflection in the shades.  (I took it while riding - don’t tell my mom.)  You can tell from my expression just how ecstatic I am at the beautiful scenery.  As my brother would say: this shot gives a good perspective on just how dusty this road/area is by looking at all that white stuff in my beard and hair.