Clarence and Cornell are sound asleep as I write this first post. They will be up and at ’em at 5am, meeting at a QuikTrip along I20 near Douglasville GA.
The Plan.
Ride from Atlanta to Purdhoe Bay, Alaska and back.
Yes, I should be there at the QuikTrip.. However, owing to me getting an older copy of the itinerary, I planned on a July 9 departure, and only found out last week it would be July 8. It’s amazing what a difference one day can make. I will be following them out, and we will eventually meet up in Salt Lake City at the national BMW MOA Rally.
I nearly made it for the departure, but today was unique. I had a lot of errands and one more trip to the mechanic before I was ready to leave. I had to finish my Will, Medical Directive, POA’s, set up some banking things, and also had actual real W-O-R-K to attend to before packing the bike one last time for the final load out.
Well.. today.. all those errands and mechanic work? Right. Turns out right down the street, smack in the middle of where all my errands would take place.. a Wells Fargo Hostage situation had the roads shut down and the entire Windy Hill interstate interchange closed. The expressway on I75 has ~12-15 lanes at that interchange. This was a big deal. The incident ended tragically. Not to make light of it, but it made a reasonable list of last day errand nearly insurmountable. As if that were not enough, I set about packing, and wouldn’t you know it, we had Biblical rain. Yeah, I had a garage, but I still needed to move all that stuff outside so I could work in the cramped garage. We must have gotten 2″ in a couple of hours. I saw a huge 15′ wide waterfall gushing over an interstate retaining wall alongside the highway on I-75. #gusher
Should I have been more prepared sooner? Sure. Maybe. Bear in mind, I only joined this caper about 3 weeks ago. In this time I ruled out taking my BMW S1000XR on the journey. I test drove new 800GS, R1200GS, and R1200GS Adventure at BMW Ducati Husqvarna Motorcycles of Atlanta .
And, as if God himself handed me the tool for the job, I spotted on CycleTrader a 2010 R1200GS Adventure, loaded with Touratech gear, tanks bags etc.. and most importantly, it’s an #AirHead (air-cooled). So with 13,500 miles on it, new tires, two backseats, side and top Touratech cases, and a recent complete service job from Hourglass Cycles with new battery, brake pads etc etc. and an extra rear Continental TKC80 tire.. can you say SOLD?
I have not been camping in a very long while, much less cramming camping gear onto a bike… so I began watching every adventure bike tour load out video I could find on YouTube with a yellow tablet of paper.
Cyclegear, Microcenter, Amazon, WalMart, PepBoys, Boxerworks, the BMW shop, Micheal’s, and REI became my new haunts. I now have a rig that anyone would envy. The guys at the shop all felt very confident this would be The Steed for The Deed. I must admit, while I have a love affair for my 1000XR, this bike feels great, in a totally different way.
Next I had to learn how to service the bike, and buy all the tools for that work.. meaning perform the work on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. So, I have oil filters, tire plugs, tire pumps, 600amp jump starter, and a list of other gear along those lines.
Lee at Boxerworks in Watkinsville GA, gave me what amounted to a 4 hour tutorial on several basic maintenance and repair items. He had tons of great advice on what all to leave behind, and helped me strip the load out down to the bare essentials. I even got to make a video of things like how to remove the tire. That was a blast, listening to Hendrix, Satriani, Clapton, and BB King.. surrounded by vintage BMW’s. They had two R69’s on the bench. Beauty’s. That class was Thursday. Every other day I tried to go, something related to work prevented me from getting over there sooner.
Last, and not least, I had to pick up a literjon containing water from the Atlantic Ocean taken from Jekyl Island GA by my friend Gordon Robinson. I am to take that water to the Arctic, refill the literjon from the Arctic, and return said literjon of arctic water to Atlanta for him to relay to Jekyl Island. I suspect I will be invited to Jekyl… 😉
So, here I sit.. making the most of a failed, I mean, “thoughtfully rescheduled “departure date, and taking one for the team… setting up this WordPress site at 2am ..now 4am in the morning.
I hope this site will serve all of us with an enjoyable log of our journeys, and I look forward to your comments! If you have any suggestions for sight Seeing or other Things To Do aSong the route, let us know!
The guys are going to blast from Atlanta to Dallas tomorrow #ouch. Then to Pikes Peak Sunday, and then all the way to SLC by Monday.
So, the plan for the first few days, for me..
Sun July 9 – Ride from Atlanta to Little Rock via Memphis (527 miles). Visit Buddha in Little Rock, and visit my cousins in Memphis. Tanis and Bunny here I come!
Mon July 10 Little Rock – Tulsa- Osage Reservation-Wichita – Dodge City (610 Miles)
Tues July 11 Dodge City to Denver 364 miles; maybe add-in Pikes Peak (438 miles). Erin, Ron, and Emma.. watch out.. here I come.
Weds July 12, I have not decided, but would probably like to do Mt Evans, but that would mostly force me onto a westerly route along the northern edge of Colorado. I want to make for Montrose from Denver, right thru the heart of the rockies, then pass thru Naturita Co & Paradox CO (where they land the really BIG Alien Motherships.. no joke.. this place looks like a dry dock for large Galaxy Class Spaceships.. barrel shaped straight long valleys, perfect to cradle a long Galaxy class hull of a cigar shaped mothership.) ..*ahem* .. then into the side door of Utah below Moab. Pit stop at Hole in the Rock. swing thru Arches.. maybe use that Backcountry Utah Adventure Motorcycling map I bought.. and head to Moab via La Sal Pass from ~Paradox. #Fun.
#ATL2Arctic
I admit.. at this rate.. I may never see the Arctic.
Honestly, I am not sure I care. It’s about the ride.
Here are some photos thus far. I will try to integrate thrm into the blog whrn I figure out how to integrate wordpress and google photos more efficiently. Right now its a redundant and tedious time consuming process that forces me to download all the photos from google and upload them once more into wordpress. https://goo.gl/photos/ah2TkJHiLwDRtMrt7
Yes. That was the route, most it along Route 66, at least from Oklahoma City to Amarillo!
Mission Accomplished. I made it about 50 miles North of the Amarillo to Dumas, getting off the road at 11pm, and into the room unpacked at Midnight.
The forecast was the same as the day before, extreme Heat. The forecast would remain in the Lake of Fire category until Friday when it’s predicted to tamp down the temp just a bit.
The restaurant let me commandeer a table to myself for a couple of hours, weathering the heat. They filled up my Camelbackpack with ice cubes, and let me spread out my maps on the table. People loved to jump in with advice about the trip. That’s pretty much how I decided to zero in on Dumas. Rumors and advice form total, but very entertaining, strangers, like this one like Dallas.