Crazy Errand Day

Today was crazy errand day. Pam left her house for us (thank you thank you) to re-organize what was going where. Deb and I talked last night and decided to come back out in mid-August. Pam offered a spot in her garage to store my bike and the plan is to come back out, sight-see with Deb and then ride the old beemer back to Vermont. I had been thinking of doing this for several days and have a lot of vacation time to burn up from the last couple years of happy heavy slaving away at work. Hot dog!!! 
Jeff is hanging out with Pam until his flight Sunday night and the thought was to get Daves bike to theshipping place and crated today, have Jeffs bike picked up at a bike shop down the street on Monday so he could have it Sat and Sun and get another ride in, and my bike stays in Portland. I called Peoria IL and talked to the woman there and she helped us work it all out. Jeff, Deb and I headed to the shipping place with a stop at the bike shop on the way. The bike shop guys said 80% chance of rain this weekend so jeff decided just to ship his bike today. So back to Pams and then to the shipping place. Dave's bike was just getting tied down on it's pallet and Jeff drove his right onto another one. The guy was not crazy about the bicycle on Dave's bike, but after signing off they would not be responsible for any damage to the motorcycle, Dave strapped it on. Dave was headed up to Mt Ranier and Deb and I had errands. Jeff, Deb and I met Pam for lunch on the 30th floor of her office building with a panoramic view of Portland. It is indeed a port town with cranes and dock to unload and load ships. The bridges all raise and lower for the ships to pass and you can see all the Cascade mountains for miles. Jeff decided to do a walking tour of the town and Deb and I had to pick up my tuxedo for the wedding, find the hotel to dump our stuff an then find Beverly and Brett's house for the rehearsal and party. My niece from Paris came in with her husband and their two beautiful kids which was a joy after many years. My sister was already there and I got to meet the hordes of wonderful family and friends.
It was a strange day after 2 weeks of riding. Wedding tomorrow and then train on Sunday, first some sleep.

Last push to the Pacific

Today we split up. Jeff and I headed to the coast and Dave headed into Portland. We headed west through McKenzie Pass which is a fantastic, narrow, traffic-less road over a pass to the other side of the Cascades. No idea how those folks in covered wagons did this. There were lava fields here and there and snow. This road is sort of like the Tail Of The Dragon road in the Blue Ridge Mountains with curve after curve after curve but with Lava beds. After coming down out of the Cascades we hit a long flat stretch with more farms (hay and cows) which is different than the ground crops we saw on the other side of the Cascades (wheat). I was expecting it to be flat all the way to the ocean but there was another little range of small mountains after this flat patch (Coastal Range). This is lumber country and all the trucks have logs or are on the way to get more logs. Looks like this is their livlihood here.
We hit the Pacific in Newport and turned north on Rt 101. If you stay on 101, it is pretty busy and a little tacky. Deb had been over here the previous week and said you have to get off 101 to really see the ocean. We stopped at a couple spots for pics, but kept pushing north to get to Cannon Beach (which is a must see that we did not see). Rain started up after a couple hours on the coast and we stopped and put on rain gear. We decided to head back inland on Rt 6 and get to Portland. Our friend Pam was expecting us for dinner at 6 so we decided to call it quits on the coast road. Rt 6 was a really nice road and by the time we pulled into Portland, the rain had stopped. Jeffs GPS does not have any west coast stuff into it and my GPS is on my iPhone so we stopped for gas and I wrote the last few turns on a piece of paper and stuck in my gas cap (my Dad would be pround). Good old 1950's GPS (Good-ol Paper System). We pulled into Pams a little early and she was just getting home from work. She and her son Scott (who used to be this cute little 2 year old back in Vermont was now a tall nice college student). Deb pulled up an hour later with her snazzy Mustang that she and Aunt Ginny had been cruising the coast in the previous week. We had a wonderful evening catching up on what everyone had been doing these last 20 years. I called my neice and my family is getting together tomorrow (Friday) afternoon. Lots of errands tomorrow.

Redmond OR to Redmond OR - Crater Lake Loop

Nice motel again (Dave is getting soft) We have managed the entire trip to get a single room with either a cot (whose turn tonight) to a suite with a foldout counch. Works pretty well and not too expensive divided 3 ways. Today we go to Crater Lake. It is a straight shot down on Rt 97 on THE MOST BORING ROAD IN THE STATE. They must have fired up a big Cat bulldozer, filled it with diesel, pulled the levers back with bungee cords and called down state to catch it when it came in. The east side of the Cascade mountain range is considered high plateau and is very different from the coast. Dry and sunny for the most part. We turned west and headed up the hill to Crater Lake. This is a volacano that filled in with water. The water all comes from rain and it is azure blue and beautiful. The snow banks are still 8 to 10 ft high and that makes it pretty cold. We yacked with 3 guys from Northern California on beemers. There is some discontent with BMW bikes bubbling with the newer BMW models. Especially electronics. My brothers new 1200GS had the fuel guage crap out twice, Dave lost the horn and cruise control on his 2010 R1200RT, Jeff lost his cruise control on his 2002 K1200, and one of these guys had a rear pinion bearing go bad after 16K miles, and BMW does not cover any of this stuff after the first year. They better straighten this out or their reputation is toast. I am guessing the old guard engineers retired and the new "kids" came in with all this fancy electronics, etc.
So we looped around Crater Lake and then headed back to Bend on the same BORING ROAD to meet some folks that Dave knew through a recuiting task last year. Bend is a nice town with a happening population. We met Anne and Abby in the park where a farmers market was going on. They told us a great short ride to the local ski aea (Mt Bachelor) and we agreed to meet back in town for pm dinner at a local micro-brew. The ride to Bachelor was wonderful. The ski area was open on weekends still and they had lots of snow. We almost got locked in the road to the ski area after sort of sneaking in, but the chain did not get locked so we got out. We met Annes husband Ken and his co-worker Mike. We had long philisophical conversations about the similiarities between Oregon and Vermont. Twin sons from different mothers. We talked for a couple hours and then Abby escorted us back to the main road and we returned the 20 miles to Redmond. Long happy day.

Wind Turbines and Lots of Wind

It was raining when we got up and we didn't have that far to go today so we slept in, had breakfast and waited for the rain to stop. Around 10:30 we had had enough waiting so we donned our rain gear and took off. The storm was stalled just north of Walla Walla so we headed south west to get out from under it. It soon cleared and we took the rain togs off. I might point out there are hundreds of wind turbines here, and there was also a lot of wind. As we headed down the Columbia River Gorge, the wind started pounding us. We had planned to ride down Rt 14 on the Washington side, but after an hour of brutal wind, mostly head wind, we decided to get out of there.
At one point I looked in my mirror and noticed that he folding bike was gone. I pulled over and sure enough the bike was nowhere to be found. No foam pad, or bungee cords or bike. I texted Dave that I lost the bike and headed back east looking for a bike in the road. I got back to where we had just stopped for fuel awithout spotting the bike. I asked inside and nobody had seen anything (some kook on a motorcycle whose bicycle fell off!) So I headed back west slowly looking over the banks beside the road and finally found it over a bank, on a stretch where the wind was especially bad. It was scraped up and one of the pedals was broken. Other than that it seemed ok. So I doubled the bungees and we headed back west. We got a little lost and ended up taking Rt 207 south. This is an amazing road (the best roads are always found when you get lost) and we spent most of the day on it. Almost no cars and the pavement was perfect. We stopped at a little expresso shack (these 8 ft x 20 ft shacks are all over out here). We ended up chatting with a local guy who was a civil engineer and a rancher (engineering job supports his ranching habit by the sounds). Got a great snapshot of whats going on in Oregon. The temperature dropped and we had to add some layers. The last bit of road before we got to Redmond was amazing. Twisties with perfect pavement and absolutely no traffic. With a stellar view of the snow covered mountains to the west, we pulled into Redmond around 7pm, checked in, rode the bike (to make sure it still worked) and walked across the street to a restaurant (nothing special). Tomorrows weather looks perfect and we are going to Crater Lake down south. Should be a perfect day.

Walla Walla Washington Wheat

Jeff got up early, had breakfast and then waited for Dave and I (we slept an extra hour). We have everything down pat now. Loading and unloading is easy, ride the bicycle before breakfast every morning, continental breakfast, then on the bikes and go. There were 4 pretty new BMWs from Washington at the hotel last night. They looked clean so I assume they were just starting their trip and their beemers were more crotch rocket type bikes so I assume the trip will be short. One of them was the amazing new beemer that can go 200+ MPH (no thanks).
We climbed and went over Lolo Pass and then down through the Clearwater National Forest. This was a deja vu moment for me because I had ridden a motorcycle down this same pass 38 years ago with my old friend Pete Brewer. I had a crappy old Suzuki 550 "two smoke" and he had a Honda 750 4 cylinder. We did 10,000 miles in 7 weeks on that trip (or so Pete told me) and only stayed in a motel one night due to a tornado warning (the cop told us to) in Gillette Wy. It is just as nice now as then. Long sweepers with a big mountain stream running beside us. I am enjoying the dry air as well. We descended forever to the valley floor in Idaho and then decided that Walla Walla Washington would be the end stop today. We rode beside another larger river after Orofino with rolling hills dropping to our road and the river, sort of a fjord feeling place. At the end of this we climbed the smooth treeless hills and popped up on top of a high plateau where we saw rolling wheat fields as far as the eye can see. Tractors the size of dinosaurs and all kinds of farm machinery this Vermont farm boy could not figure out. We saw a helicopter all tricked out for spraying the fields. There is a long history of grain production here and the towns display founding dates in the mid to late 1800s. Businesses all center around grain. We saw abandoned railroad beds that went beside large grain elevators. I assume trucks replaced the trains, maybe they will be back when diesel prices climb. At least the beds are in place, just add some rails.
We pulled into Walla Walla around 4pm. We are way ahead of schedule and Jeff and Dave are hatching plans for where we go next. I am happy to just be on the bike moving. We will see what they figure out for tomorrow..

Going to the Sun Road frem Great Falls MT to Missoula MT

We were going to go out for breakfast but Dave loves waffles and they had a waffle machine in the motel so we did the continental breakfast. This is how sad it has become out here on the trail. Real cowboys would be eating eggs, bacon, and Texas toast cooked over and open fire and washing it down with gritty cowboy coffee in tin cups, but we are eating off Styrofoam plates in the lobby of a cheap hotel using and electric waffle iron. Sad but true...
So head 'um up and move 'um out. We head north and it starts out grey and overcast and as we go north toward Browning MT, it gets colder and the wind picks up until it is misty with the wind pounding away at us. There was road construction again and we had a nice 20 minute chat with the flag guy who told us tall tails of shooting bears on picnic tables. The big news around Browning this morning was a Grizzly had killed 70 sheep the previous day which we did not think added up (can a bear eat 70 sheep in one sitting or does he put them in the freezer for summer, and if he did, how would he open the freezer with those big claws? (see where this is going?)). The flag guy explained that what usually happens is the bear kills a few and the sheep are so stupid that they suffocate while piling over each other to get away from the bear. I'll take his word for it. I had a race with a deer this morning, and we did not collide. If you see a deer, then just jam on the brakes and let it do whatever it's going to do. Best nt to try to think too much in these situations. Note to self...
We stopped in Browning, at a gas station / convenience store with tables in the back which is on an Indian reservation to warm up with coffee for John (the real cowboy) and cocoa for the faux cowboys (what self respecting cowboy drinks cocoa?). We decided the weather was not going to get any better so we continued with rain gear through the mist to the Glacier Park entrance. The ranger warned us about zero visibility on top of the "Going To The Sun" highway as did a guy on a VStrom (popular Suzuki motorcycle) earlier who had just come over. It is a 12 mile climb to the top and it went from grey overcast to solid fog at the top. The snow banks are still huge and impressive. It was also pretty cold up there. The flag guy told us it had only opened 10 days ago which is a month earlier than it usually opens. It closes in September so it that is a pretty short season. They did not get much snow this year, but it sure looked like a lot of snow at the top.

We descended just a few miles and the fog disappeared and it was sunny and pleasant. We went past Flathead Lake which is huge and beautiful, and continued on to Missoula. Four other beemers pulled in after us and Jeff is already scheming to swap his custom footpeg for one of theirs late tonight (not really).
We had supper at the Hooters across the road which of course had particularly attractive waitress'. Dave made me take my picture with the waitress of course just to get me in trouble with Deb. I look sort of grandfatherly here...
So all in all another great day in the Big Sky Country. Tomorrow we head toward Portland maybe via Washington state since we still have a little time. Who knows...

Jackson Wy to Great Falls MT (Bears, Elk, Badgers, Prairie Dogs and Wind)

We decided last night to go north to Montana and then west thru Glacier Park. Got a cool (43F) start (I got crap for not wearing enough clothes??) and stopped for a picture with the sun pointing the right way. A couple from California with 2 youngh (sleepy) kids snapped our pics and we reciprocated, then it was north and into the park. First Teton where we saw our first buffalo grazing next to a group of fenced in beef cattle ("good morning ladies") with the spectacular Tetons (got the spelling right this time) to our left. After Tetons we entered Yellowstone. Traffic was actually not bad, maybe because it was early. We stopped at Old Faithful just as it went off and then into the Great Lodge to admire the massive old insides. What a beautiful place. I chatted up 2 harley guys (they are easy to find) from Kentucky who were going to Louisiana after this. Nice guys. We headed north and the traffic came to a halt as everyone stopped to take pictures of 2 beautiful elk in a marshy field beside the road. The park ends at the Roosevelt Arch in Gardner MT where we stopped for lunch at the Two Bit Saloon. Then it was 89 north all the way to Great Falls. Montana treated us to brutal winds front, then side, then tail wind all the way into Great Falls. The 50 miles just before Great Falls was very lush with some kind of crop so they must have water somewhere. It looked like a screen saver with big sky, puffy white clouds and lush green rolling hills. We found the hotel and went across the street to a salad place to try and purge some of the crap we have been eating out of our systems. My job tonight was to fix my Pakistani taxi driver seat (bead seat) since it was falling apart and I love it so much. First attempt with dental floss was a failure so I ran up to WalMart (right next to the oil refinery) and got some weed-wacker string, which worked beautifully. And it has a nice yellow tint to it. Very festive. My dad would be proud!!

Friday Night In The Tetons (not Titons) after 349 miles

Deb pointed out that I had spelled the mountain range name wrong in the title (but not the rest of the piece). I can explain. I looked up Tetons and discovered that they were originally called "les trois Tetons" which is French for "the three breasts" since there are 3 peaks. So it was a very short mental hop to mis-spell it. That's my story and I am sticking to it.
Started the day riding the bicycles (of course). We have been religious with bike riding as we are part of the EndoMondo Bike Challenge, which is why we are carrying this @#$% folding bike. It is a clever contest in that if you ride your bike even 1 mile you get 20 points for the team. Every mile you ride is a point so 1 mile = 21 points, 10 miles = 30 points, etc. We have 3 young hot riders (their riding is hot that is) (James, Keith and Seth) who are religiously riding a lot of miles every day combined with us old duffers riding 1,2,3, etc miles per day. So far we are #1 in the state. Really fun!!
So anyway, the day started with riding the bikes, then continental breakfast with a real mixed bag of people. The leathered, tattooed Harley guys are ironically the sweetest guys around kids, as I saw this morning. We loaded up and headed toward Jackson Wy. We climbed up the Bighorn Mountains and the temperature cooled off nicely. This was a nice break from all the hot flat grasslands (pretty dead grass at that) we had been riding through. People here say it has been hotter and drier than normal. I was thinking this was the end of hot flat dry country, but we had another long stretch before we finally saw the Tetons off in the distance. They are huge and inspiring. We stopped in Riverton for lunch at a local place that was packed with, you guessed it, locals. Waitress was pleasant and busy!! They have smoking and non-smoking areas which is a throwback for us Vermonters. I think Wyoming has a way to go here. I did see a great billboard showing the classic Marlboro cowboys in relief against the sunsetting sky and the subscript "I miss my lung, Bob". So they are working on it.
Somewhere in the flat hot part we went through Thermopolis. What a great name for a town. Sounds science fictiony to me. They have what appear to be public hot springs and big sculptures in the park which are mineral deposits of some kind, kind of bizarre.
There seems to be a lot of new road construction in this area in the mountain passes. The cool thing is they wave us motorcycles to the front of the line (red carpet treatment). I assume it is so we do not have to contend with the dust from the previous cars. So lots of hanging out with the flag people. They certainly have a nice place to be a flag person. We also saw some huge trucks and front-end loaders working these jobs.
The Tetons are huge, especially after seeing nothing but flat for the last few days. Jeff had a close encounter with a mule deer today. He was rubbernecking and didn't see it standing in the middle the road, but the deer and Jeff figured it out at the last minute.
We ran into a threesome, recently retired, from California and had a nice long chat. Random people are really nice to chat with and we sort of stick out being from Vermont.
When we found a good picture spot, we pulled off to get the above shot of the bikes and the Tetons (and Dave and Jeff). I chatted up a couple from North Carolina and they insisted they get a picture of us for their brother in law who has a bike. Really nice folks.
We met another couple on Harleys who were locals from Riverton. They had been out for a loop to a local lake and gave us some tips on restaurants in Jackson.
Jackson, as we knew it would be, is a tourist trap. Lots of really trendy looking people, cars and shops. We checked into the hotel and walked around town until we found some dinner. I had 2 pints of beer, since we were walking, and that will explain anything unusual in this post tonight.
So it looks like we are going to Great Falls Montana tomorrow via Yellowstone, which we kind of decided at the last minute. We are feeling like we have lots of time so can go a bit far afield. Everybody says nice weather for the foreseeable future so we will see.

Hot Springs Sd to Buffalo WY

I am really beat so this is quick and dirty tonight. I'll fix it tomorrow...
The cabin was great and everybody slept well. We woke up at 5 and were on the road early. We rode to Custer and stopped for breakfast at place with floor to ceiling, front to back knotty pine with a billion layers of polyurethane, so it looked just great. Th waitress called us boys, which made our day (and her tip) and we re-mounted and continued north. We took the scenic route (there is nothing but scenic routes) to Sturgis where Jeff got a new footpeg (his old one broke). They did not have one in stock so they "made" something which Jeff says works fine. From Sturgis we headed back southwest and then north to Spearfish for lunch. At lunch we decided to split up and the turbo brothers (Jeff and Dave) would go north to see Devils Tower and pokey John went south through the park, out the west entrance which dumps you on the flats, then northwest through the grasslands back to the interstate. Dave and Jeff did just that. They hit Devils Tower (and got ice cream I later found out), then did the interstate (90) all the way to Buffalo. Reports are that Dave went 110mph just to try it out!! Even Jeff thought that was excessive. I got a text at 5:30 that they had arrived in Buffalo. Meanwhile, I went south to NewCastle WY which is coal and oil energy central. I saw 3 trainloads of coal in no more than 30 minutes go by. There were also tractor trailer loads of pipe, I assume for drilling. Small (and old) oil dereks were all over and I also saw a new horizontal drilling rig setup. The road back northwest was pretty empty and the towns were tiny and run down for the most part. When I got back to the interstate (groan), I saw 3 guys chatting next to their Harleys and decided to ask for alternate routes to Buffalo (other than I90). Two of them were just leaving but the third was a nice guy from Sturgis who gave me his life story (which I always actually enjoy (Vietnam Vet, Uncle got him hooked on motorcycles in the 50s, etc)), so I asked him if there were any interesting ways to get to Buffalo other than the interstate. First he said no and then he smiled and said there was a great way to get there, but it might be a little out of the way (I like this guy). So I had an amazingly great ride through the back roads of Wyoming where town populations ranged from 24 to 1000. It was basically a semi circular loop from Gillette to Buffalo that went way up north of the interstate. It started with coal plants and pit mines (yuck), then turned to a few oil derricks and really dry, sparce ranches. There were antelope and mule deer everywhere. Also beef cattle on small ranches and the odd horse ranches here and there. Got back to Buffalo around 7pm. We went out for dinner and back to the room. Dave and Jeff did 470 miles and I did about 550miles. Long day with beautiful weather. The boys got their fast ride and I got my slow ride. Everybody happy and tired.

Kadoka SD To Hot Springs SD

We are 2 time zones west so waking up is easy. I rode the bicycle up the abandoned county road next to the hotel and passed a couple women walking and gabbing, and then passed another younger woman jogging and was impressed with what a fit town this must be (It was 5:30am), showered then went to the hotel lobby (such as it was) and it was closed. It was only 6am and the sign says open at 6:15. What they meant to say was the restaurant next door opened at 6:15. So back to the room where Dave had a conference call (and another after that). Jeff and I tried the restaurant and it was indeed open. Us being strangers in town, they made the correct assumption that we were staying in the motel next door and said the continental breakfast was in the back, but we could eat at the restaurant for a 15% discount. After seeing the continental beakfast selection (more like a state or something you might find on buffet night at a prison camp), we decided to spring for the real breakfast. Two young women ran the place, one certainly still in high school and the other might have been her older sister. It was actually a great little place with knotty pine (I love knotty pine, my grammas kitchen, etc) and 50s stuff hanging on the wall (old gas station stuff, Elvis posters, 57 Chevies, you get it), but also what looked to be regulars. A retired guy and his wife that I saw leave the restaurant last night on their GoldWing, came rolling in for breakfast. This place had the regular locals in it. Very relaxing. The town of Kadoka SD is pretty small but they have their own high school. I asked the younger woman about the school (she was wearing the Kadoka Track & Field t-shirt) and she said the kids funnel in from all the farms around there. So this is a very extended community.
Dave finished his calls and we hit the road. We took the county road west until we hit the road south to the Badlands. We bought passes and drove through Badlands. These places take your breath away for the first 20 minutes and then they grow familiar on you. The road was being repaired so we had some waits, which was just fine given the surroundings. After Badlands we went to Wall but did not stop (been there, done that) and then to Rapid City on the interstate. Pulling into Rapid City some big ugly clouds dumped on us (just after I put my rain stuff on thank goodness) and we stopped for lunch to wait for the rain to pass. The sky was blue but these rogue clouds were moving around, dumping on people. During lunch it came down in buckets and threw some hail in to boot. The waitress' son was doing jumping jacks and pushups outside our window in the pouring rain. He was 12 and having a blast. When the hail came I went outside and got him a handful of ice. Wonder comes easy to 12 year olds..
The rain let up and we suited up and went to find cheap sleeping bags. Dave reserved a cabin for tonight, but there is no bedding so we have to bring something to sleep in. So now we have sleeping bags (to carry the rest of the trip...)
We left Rapid City and headed to Rushmore. It always looks smaller that you image so we took some pics and headed south through Custer park. Beautiful day by the way with more wind knocking us around, although not as bad as yesterday. We found the cabin and it is the cutest thing with 3 beds, communal bathroom, etc, next to tenters and campers on a beautiful reservoir. Nice spot. Back into town (Hot Springs SD) for dinner, then back to the cabin. Pretty tired so sleep should come quick tonight (in my brand new Chinese sleeping bag).

500 Smoking Miles From Rochester MN to Badlands

It peaked at 97 degrees today and everything looks dry. Another day on the interstate (yuk). No rain so that was going for us. What can I say, interstate, gas stops every 170 miles (Jeffs bike has a smaller tank), hydrating the riders, and occasional stops at rest areas. My routine the last day or 2 (or 3) has been hang way back and hold the needle at 80 (actually 75mph according to the GPS') and keep Jeff and Dave just visible. Then crank needle to 85 until I get within a tenth of a mile or so away from them. Repeat and rinse. That way I don't have to speed up and slow down when the traffic gets tight. Dave and Jeff's cruise controls crapped out today for some reason so they were both on manual mode. I also leave tons of space between me and cars ahead and behind so I can look around more and not have to worry about someone slowing down too fast without me noticing.
Minnesota farmland started stretching out to bigger and bigger fields until the corn went from horizon to horizon. We also saw a boatload of wind turbines in Minnesota.
South Dakota starts out green like MN with corn and then gets dryer and what looks like wheat is grown instead of corn. Also cattle grazing on the open plains (fenced in plains that is). South Dakotas biggest crop of course is billboards.
I been getting crap all day for going too slow and wearing my jacket instead of t-shirts like the road-rash poster boys, so the last hour I told the Andretti brother to not wait up for me and go as fast as they want the rest of the way. For the last blissful hour I went 65 on the interstate and then hit a beautiful side road where farmers were cutting hay, birds would fly up from the sides of the road and the views were soft green and brown rolling hills of pasture and wheat. The secondary road only got 50 mph from me (have not seen that seen for 4 days!!) and there was nobody on them. I went back east a bit and rode through a bee swarm which took me by surprise. I stopped up the road and shook any extra bees out (no bites so they must be friendly bees). I headed back west and landed in our town, which is tiny, and couldn't miss our hotel. I found the hotel and the boys had just unpacked. A little laundry and then we are going out for a little dinner followed by a sunset ride.
Beautiful night and no interstates tomorrow (yea!!) 

560 miles from Sault Ste Marie MI to Rochester MN

The critics have spoken and would like a little less creativity in the blog so I'll keep it more factual.
We got up early, quick breakfast then load the bikes. It was already hot and humid and threatening so we started with rain suits and around 8am it started raining. Not too bad but drippy until mid-day. Fast interstates all day with really heavy fast traffic in Green Bay. West on Rt 28 then south on rt35 to Green Bay. Southwest to Appleton, Oshkosh, Ripon and then Rt82 to the interstate (90) in Mauston. Then pretty much all day on the interstate until we got to Rochester MN. John is definitely the pokey one so with coaching has picked up the pace. The old girl can do it, but may need some oil infusions to keep it up. The "peg stretches" every 15 minutes are still working so the old hip is doing great. We got a comfy Comfort Inn suite and found a hopping restaurant just down the street. No pictures today. Another long fast one today but should end up in Badlands tonight.

Fast Damp 500 Mile Dash Through Canada

We got up, did the continental breakfast thing, took turns riding the bicycle (don't tell Andrew) then on the road. Fairly warm and humid this morning, but pretty nice. We did Rt 417 until we hit Rt 17 and spent the whole day on 17 to Sault Ste. Marie where we crossed back into the US. This part of Canada is pretty flat with not much going on. The Canadians were all very pleasant and you can sense the national pride when you see flags here and there painted on rocks, on peoples porches and huge ones in towns and car dealerships. From the few people we talked to during pit stops, I sense that they do not see a lots of Americans up here. A young guy asked if we were going to stay the night in his small town, cause tonight was the "crash-em-up" which is I presume  the equivalent of our demolition derby. We stopped at the diner in the picture for lunch which needed a doctor standing by given the menu choices. The bikes ran flawlessly and we hummed along all day at normal traffic speed (65 or 70). I discovered an amazing trick today that seems to have solved my hip issue (I promised not to discuss it again) and also solved the "monkey butt" issue (Google it) and to some extent the "giant knotted muscle between the shoulder blades" issue. Every 15 minutes I simply stand on the pegs and stretch. This was amazing and I arrived here in Michigan ready for more miles (if we had more light). Huge difference from past long days (except when I was 18 years old of course..).
  As we got near Sudbury, the landscape got a little more rolling and for a brief period, the trees were replaced by bald rocks that looked like glaciers had scraped them off. West of Sudbury, we saw lots of woods and lakes. Oh yea, it rained (lightly) from 1pm to about 5pm, but then cleared off and cooled off as we got closer to Sault Ste Marie, Ont. We pulled into customs to brilliant sun and white puffy clouds. No line at customs and we breezed through. Nice hotel and off to search for "pasties". The place in town famous for them was closed Sunday (as were a lot of places) but we found a great place down by the locks. After pasties and local fresh fish (and cold beer), back to the hotel to sleep. The sun was just going down around 9:30 since we are on the edge of the time zone. Good day..
Tomorrow may be rainy so....

Oh Canada!!

A very eclectic day is all I can say, but here we are just west of Ottawa Ontario. Lazy morning at home (rolled over for another hour or two of sleep), then pack and tried to get to Daves house by 10 but it turned into 10:45. Jeff came in a little before noon and Dave still had stuff to do so we left about 1:00, not bad. Dave's rear tire got a nail in it a year or 2 ago and he has been babysitting it with various eleixirs, chants plugs and magic cans of flat-be-gone. But today all the magic came to a screeching halt. He plugged it early this morning, then again before we left. Once on the interstate by Costco, where he finally said uncle and called Franks, who happened to be doing nothing. We called Jeff who was on standby up the interstate at the rest area and we all met at Franks. Which the 2 mechanic guys wheeled Daves bike in to exorcise the gallon of fix-a-flat, we went next door for lunch. 45 minutes later (should have been less except the environmental impact statement pertaining to the gallon of green goo that poured out of the tire when they removed it) we were on the road. Up the interstate to Swanton, across the bridge to New York state.   On to Malone, past the windmills (using NRG IceFree anemometers I might proudly add) in Ellensburg, then to Ogdensburg where we crossed the bridge into Canada. The customs girl was very pleasant and noted the "cute bike" on the back of my motorcycle. I chalked it up to the usual shameless flirting (happens all the time to me) and once clear of customs Commander Keeney blasted us north to Ottawa at 70-80 parsecs (Real live American parsecs, not those watered down Canadian namby-pamby ones). We snagged a hotel with an extra cot (no charge) and walked to dinner next door at an Italian place with a very attractive waitress from Sudbury (Jeff and Dave noticed, I did not of course), then back to the room to crash.
So all in all a lazy then scattered then focused day on the road. 250 miles and one new tire.

One Last Whine and Then I Shut Up

So today I had my next to last chiropractor visit to try and do something for this hip pain. The short story is last year my doc said I have arthritis in my hip, buck up and deal with it (not his exact words), then this spring it got worst and he said try physical therapy (which didn't seem to do much but snatch $20 co-pays out of my wallet and allow me to humiliate myself by walking around a well attended room with rubber straps strategically attached to my anatomy while imitating a mating crustacean of some sort), so being an open minded guy, I decided to try the chiropractor. I will say, the chiropractor is the first person to sit down and explain in detail human anatomy as pertains to hips, muscles and nerves, complete with nifty 3-D plastic models. So I told the new doc that we only had 2+ weeks to get me up to sitting on the beemer for 3000 miles. So we are in crash course mode. Stay tuned..
  I talked to Dave last night as he waited for the red eye back from Denver and the folding bike is in. I stopped by his house this morning to "pick it up". I found a box at his house that should have said Maytag on it for how big it was. It does fit on the bike but it is pretty large. We will unbox it and pray that they packed it with mattresses and hence the large size. Who signed us up for this bike challenge anyway...
One more day of work and then we are off!!

2012 Coast to Coast Trip

I decided to continue the motorcycle trip theme using the same blogger account I used previous years to keep things simple enough for my pea brain. This years trip is a 2 week ride from home (Vermont) to Portland OR. My niece is getting married and asked that I attend her wedding so thanks Beverly for the perfect excuse to ride cross country.
My brother begged out this trip (too busy fishing) so this year it's Dave, Jeff and I. Not having my brother will be tough. I'll miss his motel radar (see previous posts). We have sorta the same game plan, no organization, no real plan other than to get to Portland in time for the rehearsal dinner on June 29th and we leave this Saturday June 16th at high noon. I have my trusty old R1100RT, Dave has a brandy new R1200RT and Jeff has a K-bike (don't know K-bikes but I will fill this in later), so all BMWs. The rough plan is to go over the top of the Great Lakes (Canada) and end up in the Dakotas. After that it's meandering to Oregon. We hope to get a few long days in to build up the posteriors and then back it off when we hit the Dakotas.
Dave and I are part of a bicycle challenge at work (here) and we decided to get a small folding bike so we can continue participating while on the road. The challenge is to get people to get up and ride their bike and the neat thing is you get quite a few points for just riding each day regardless of distance. We are the #1 team in the state thanks to some young, slightly crazy bucks pounding miles in, and us less young bucks just wheezing out a couple miles every day. So as is typical, we solved the problem of 2 team members being gone for 2-1/2 weeks by just bringing a bike along. Might be nice to stretch the legs every night as well. Should be interesting and will certainly be a conversation starter on the road.
So in going over my RT I found those @#$% mice had chewed up my air filter again. So I snagged a new one and changed the oil and filter while I was at it. I just had a service last year so it should be good to go. I ran it into town and back tonight and it feels good.
My other dilemma this year (commence geezer whining) is my hip has been acting up and the doc says I will just have to deal with the pain until I get a new one. Ironically, it hurts the worst when I sit on the beemer. So I started 6 or 8 weeks ago doing physical therapy which didn't seem to do much. So I have been trying a  chiropractor for the last couple weeks to see if that helps. So far nothing magical is happening so we will see. I did a test run a couple weekends ago and it was ok. Hoping for the best (end of geezer whining).
It is about 3000 miles and we have about 12 days so we need to average 250 miles per day. That is about what my brother and I did the previous 2 years so sounds doable.
When we get to Portland, Jeff will fly back (his daughter is getting married back east and he guesses he ought to go), and Dave and I go back on the train up the coast to Seattle, and then another train from Seattle to Minneapolis. The fly home from there.
Should be a great trip!!