Yes. That was the route, most it along Route 66, at least from Oklahoma City to Amarillo!
Just completed a 638 Mile drive, total drive since Sunday, 1125 miles.
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.
Ready to Roll out the DrivewayLeaving Buddha’s house, I planned to rise early and beat the Heat. That did not work out. My smartphone alarm.. well… it did not make any noise in silent mode. Whoops. I use a real alarm clock at home, and try to refrain from using this buggy, radiation emitting, distracting, poorly designed gadget wherever possible.
After saying goodbyes to Buddha, Diana, Jetta, and Biscuit.. I hit the road around 9 or 9:30
Final PrepReady to Roll out the Driveway
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.
Deadly heat imperiled the route thru Kansas I had planned.
I can only hope.
The brunt of the heat was targeting the exact place I would be had I gone to Denver via Ft. Smith-Tulsa-Wichita-Salina through Kansas on I-70 to Denver. 104 degree heat. I chose to skip Kansas and make for as far as I could ride near or beyond Amarillo.
Little Rock, and Arkansas along I-40 from there to the Oklahoma border was very scenic. Gorgeous weather, great roads, light traffic. A Bluebird day!
Around noon, near Lake Euphala OK, the temperature began spiking. Finally I found a great place to stop and eat, about 10 miles East of Shawnee. Robinson’s is renowned for Ham Sandwiches. They also make good beef jerky too. I stocked up for the trip.
I met a really cool man, Dallas Morris
Dallas and Me
Dallas used to take coast to coast long distance motorcycle rides with his wife on a 1977 BMW Slash 7 . He only stopped when his hips would have no more of that tomfoolery. Riding a bike at his age! Really!
He was on his wa to a guitar festival not far away. I wanted to come along but it would cost me in terms of major backtracking. I had to pass it up.
This is the problem with covering large distances. You sacrifice all these serendipitous opportunities. Those same opportunities that enrich the fabric of a journey, are also the same which prevent actually finishing the journey. If I don’t make it all the way to the top and back, it will likely be because of this, wanting to jump in with the things and people I find along the way. To just say, “To heck with the goal, let’s go do this awesome fun thing right here in front us”.
This is a sweet looking Slash7, to give you idea of the style.
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.
Later a man walker up to me at a Love’s Truck Stop to say hello and chat. He had ridden from Tucson AZ to Chicago to be with his brother dying of Pancreatic Cancer. He was returning back to Tucson. Really nice man, Richard Smith was his name. Shout Out TO Ya!
I will quickly dash this post off just as a quick update.
[Update: I got carried away and wrote the entire post.]
The ride was good, but it was a VERY hot day. I did not put on sunscreen. I had removed my left glove to be able to maniplate things more easily, like zippers, the camelbak tube, touch a button the gps or touchscreen phone.. etc. My right wrist was also exposed. Both got SCORCHED. Fun. New rule. Sunscreen whether or no I think I need it. So there.
I tried to visit Wortmann in Highland Park Birmingham, but I missed the one and only exit off I-20 in downtown Birmingham, and a 4 minute drive off the expressway would now take 15-20 minutes to get turned around and back again. I wonder how much economic activity is stifled by this road design? Something to ponder.
So, relying on my overpriced Garmin Navigator 5, I was trying to get on the relatively new I-22 to Memphis from Birmingham. That did not play well. The Garmin took me around 20 miles out of the way, and then mapped me thru a “tricky” neighborhood, putting me on Tin Mill Road to get all the way up to I-22. Miles of secondary road, thru some questionable areas.
So, I made a point of using BOTH the phone GPS (Android LG4 on Verizon) and the Garmin. Guess what? The Garmin continually fouled up routing procedures. Along I-22, it kept routing off into the middle of nowhere, backtracking northeastward into rural areas.. doubling the drive time from 2.5 hours to ~4-5 hours. I really did not need a GPS riding on I-22. I was simply product testing.
Brilliant Garmin. Great stuff. #fail
[I will write another article about Garmin/DeLorme Inreach. Horrendous product, requires activation before the device can be used at all, it was DOA, no tech support after M-F business hours for a Search & Rescue device (Wow, right?) and then they have a NO Refund policy even if the device was never able to activate. I smell a federal level ICC fraud cause of action. That’s just theft, pure and simple. From the articles I have read, Spot3 is NOT much better, so..it must be endemic to the culture of the GPS industry. ]
I digress. Moving on.
I-22 is a beautiful stretch of road, with no traffic, good services, and nice views. You can really lay down miles. I ended up driving through Oxford. A good friend’s family is from nearby there. I had him on the phone as I drove thru, and he gave me the low down on all the stuff around there. The phone is the only thing I can do on the bike in terms of communication. I can voice command the calls, and the call quality is pretty good. Folks really can’t tell I am on a bike doing “55mph”. 😉
Pitstopping for fuel and food at the Love’s Truck Stop in Jasper Alabama. There, I met some nice people. #ShoutOut to Charles Wilson and also to Oscar! Oscar was on his way to Florida to take delivery on an RV. They are taking that RV with his kids and grandkids up to Alaska for FOUR MONTHS. Small world, right? Oscar, drop me a line after I get back, would love to share the experiences for your trip planning.
The Garmin made a further solid effort to foul up my approach into Memphis. I-22 inexplicably ends before it connects to another expressway. So, it’s lights, and surface traffic for 5 miles before you are back on the Interstate highway. Luckily, the Google Maps GPS worked just fine.
I visited my cousin who lives near Germantown. She and I are in the same industry. I had a taste of my own medicine when I pulled up. She was tangling with a HVAC engineer for an office building she deals with. She had a crew of landscapers working late. And she had a relative dropping in out of the blue on motorcycle. I so laughed. I have the same thing happen in my life.. at 8pm at night.. and I wonder why I am stressed out!
My cousin!
Anyway, she is super cool, and we do not get to see each other much at all. We have a lot in common. We have similar dogs, similar colorings at least. We both like Ms. Pac Man, she even has a full sized vintage cocktail model. We are both perennially single. We are 4 days apart in age. We do a lot of the same things, and both work in commercial real estate in similar functions and capacities. She has started a burgeoning business making woodcraft products. Once she sends me a link to her Etsy.com store, I will share it here. She makes some neat stuff! Totally forgot to take pictures of her samples. (I am an #AirHead! lol)
Tanis’ woodshopAunt Bunny!
We had a quick hello and good bye, then I dashed across town visit her mom Bunny, my dad’s cousin, and her partner Cee. It was great to see them.
I had been told Little Rock was only 1.5 hours from Memphis. Au Contraire. More like 2.5 hours, and there were about 2 dozen 55-60mph construction zones, and endless large semi’s generating dangerous turbulence, especially with the aerodynamics of my bike’s load. Given the highway is more narrow than most, this rendered a memorable white knuckle ride thru the darkness of rural Arkansas.
I arrived at Midnight shaving 20 minutes off the GPS ETA, even with a gas and body break at an exit that would give the Heeby Jeebies even to David Lynch. Nice folks, chatty even, but.. just a bit “differint”.
You know you are in Little Rock when..
My destination was Buddha’s place, way on the other side of Little Rock. Cheron Valley Road was a nice treat, beautiful curved parkway. Great way to end a stressful day. Even better, Buddha had lined up a garage space for the bike, pizza, cold beer, a cushy spare bedroom, and two friendly large dogs that took a shine to me. He has this amazing “museum” of his rugby memorabilia. Buddha has served all of the Old Boys for a long while, orchestrating those ORBS Freeport Bahamas trips of fame and renown.
Here are some of their past exploits. An era of Atlanta Renegades heading to Freeport for Memorial Day seems to have petered out, the younger crew not joining in the tours every year. Hopefully, there will be renewed interest. It was a solid run, 15-20 years of Freeport Frenzied Fun.. I only went three times, but.. those weekends really were Memorable.
The 2008 Market Collapse really hobbled my travel abilities. It’s a funny thing, life. Then, I could no longer afford to book a flight and share a hotel room to go and make some amazing memories and play my favorite sport. Now, 10 years later, I am lighting out on a 30-40 day adventure with a big old bike and tons of gear. Life does have it’s changes and seasons. I am looking forward to this season!
Major Dan, Stone, and Doong getting into to it. #RuckOnOld Renegades Bavarian Side #RuckOn
ORBS Elvis Tour. Buddha is in red.
Old Renegades Barbarians Side
#RuckOn
Lizard doing a split, front and center.
ORBS Rugby 2007 Freeport Tour #DugganWatchORBS Rugby 2007 Freeport Tour Post Match Social hosted by Freeport Pendragons
Old Renegades Barbarians Side #RuckOn
I woke up early, but lost my wall charger for all the gadgets. I had to mine thru all the gear, and repack. Actually, it was where I packed it, I just overlooked seeing, and kept on unpacking until I found it.
So many people have been jotting down the blog’s website, I also really need to get this blog filled in with some preliminary content.
Now, it is fast approaching 2pm. I may just camp here one more day, and enjoy Buddha and D’s company. Still, the longer I linger here, means the less time I have to enjoy the Rockie’s on the way to Salt Lake
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!
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
Well, most of you have been just wondering WTH? When are you going!? Where is your team? Why did they leave without you? Fair enough. Here’s the answer.. It’s a pithy, long and very likely boring story .. but here it is.
I thought I would leave Saturday with the other two members of team, Clarence and Cornell. However.. *cough*
Friday was a Freakshow. If you any of you recall, that Friday we had a hostage situation at the Wells Fargo at Windy Hill Road at I-75 in Smyrna, the one next to the Chik-Fil-A. All the roads were closed, including the entire I-75 Windy Hill Interchange.
The day before my “planned departure” on Saturday morning, I was heading up to bolt on a Garmin Nav5 cradle to the bike at BMW Ducati Husqvarna Motorcycles of Atlanta. I was also doing last minute errands, returns, last minute purchases, all along Hwy 41, north and south of the Windy Hill intersection.
By the gridlocked traffic, you would think there was a nuclear threat. So I was stuck there for a while, hours, and had to push running those errands into the evening after I met my bank and attorney to finish up some personal documents I would needed to have complete before my departure. That meeting took 2-3 hours, and was down in Midtown-Ansley. Thanks McCord and Silverio! (I use last names so they know the shout out, but the entire world will not easily recognize whom it is I am talking about, since this is a blog with a public audience.)
So, by the time I made it home to do the final load out, it was around 7:30pm. That’s when epic rainstorms deluged my neighborhood; specifically Collier Hills next to us had the warning alert. Still we received 2 inches of rain from 7:30pm to 11:00pm. I was going to lay things out in my driveway since my garage is cramped. So much for that!
Besides, the guys wanted to leave Douglasville at 5am, and my dad could not pick up the dogs the day before, and could not get to my house until 8am. One dog, Chip, has “skills”. If I am not there for the hand off, Chip will go out the back door, jump the fence, and send my dad on a tour of the neighborhood. So, yep.. I had to be there.
Besides, when I originally got the invitation to join this crew, the itinerary said July 9 (Sunday) departure. I only found out last week, they had moved it up to Saturday July 8. One day, not a big deal right? Yes it is, if it’s a holiday week, and lots of real work that needs attending to, not to mention last minute work on the bike that needed to be done. I also needed to be instructed on how to maintain and repair the bike on the side of the road.
Bike shops are usually closed on Sunday and Monday. The holiday was on Tuesday. They close early on Saturday. I was not able to drive over to Watkinsville GA (Boxerworks) the week before thanks to work. You get the idea. Perfect storm.
And then there is this. I have never done a trip like this, not even close. I usually go ride 200-400 miles in a period of 2-3 days, and I am not camping. This is 30-40 days, camping, in remote, and likely extreme, conditions. This takes serious planning, since critical issues could and likely will arise. I need to pack a kit sufficient to break down and repair most of the bike, including the replacement parts. Oil change, tire plugs, pumps, o-rings, light bulbs,
Here’s an idea of the gear that is on my bike:
Parts & Tools for the trip #Atl2Arctic
So packing then became an issue. By the time I actually had the bike packed, it was stacked so high, I was just NOT going to attempt to ride it down the street, much less the long way across the continent! So I spent all day Saturday sorting and packing. Sunday went the same. Finally, I had it mostly together by Sunday night. The other team ates have taken long trips on bikes. This is my first time, so I really had to learn all this rapidly. The living room, dining room, garage and breakfast areas looked like a REI delivery truck crashed into a Parts Unlimited truck on it’s way to Cyclegear. Here is what one room looked like in the house:
Packing #Atl2Arctic
So Sunday evening, I grabbed some large plastic bins.. two each for “Going”, “Maybe”, and “No Way Jose”. I opened up the cases and bags, and began tossing gear into the appropriate bins.
I distilled the mess down from a 7 foot high unstable and dangerous mess to a relatively sleek rig that is secure, stable, balanced, and packed so that I don’t have to dig for things each and every time I need something.
After an initial test ride, I noticed that the Port side box was getting VERY hot inside, troublingly so. I noticed there was scorching. The tail pipe does not extend far enough to the rear so that the exhaust will go straight out and away from the bike. the aerodynamic with the box installed creates an eddy effect, recirculating the exhaust air a bit longer than it should be there, and create a heat problem. While I could not engineer a tail pipe extension, nor research to see if one exists, I did solve it. I used emergency blanket material with gorilla glue. This creates a radiant barrier. I also wrapped the BMW repair manual in the material and duct taped it loosely to the inside wall of the box, creating further radiant protection. Problem is mostly solved. It’s still warm, but… things are no longer in danger of actually melting.
I gotta say.. if were not for the help of certain friends, Mount, Hornbuckle, Hollidayx2, Malone, Gassman, Brun, Grant.. (last names to protect the innocent..) I think I would have just given up on pulling all this together! It was exhausting to work on all of this, while doing real day job work, and then setting up my office so I could at least be responsive and available for real day job work as needed while traveling. It was on the level of rocket science to deal with all of those logistics and possibilities.
Never mind that the week before departure, I had an HVAC go out in a property, a roof leak in another, a 1st draft of a contract to review that is very likely the largest opportunity in my life for the foreseeable future, another property to put on the market, and a lease to get closed for a warehouse tenant client. All of that came up from a week before the departure date. I was stress monkey.
Anyhow, my roommie, was a champ putting up with me all that time, never mind the mess, but I was a #HotMess. Stressed, ornery, gruff tone of voice, forgetful, airheaded, and tired. So cuddly, right?
So, since I managed to get the bike prepped by Sunday for the most part, I decided to wake up and clean up the debris from the packing job, and leave the house in good shape for her. That took all morning on Monday. All Morning. It was a wreck, plus I still found things that could fit on the bike.. such as I was able to fit my fly rod and kit on the bike, as well as bring along an extra jacket instead of shipping it North! YES!
Everything was sorted into bins, so I could call and ask someone to ship me things, all the common areas were clear and decluttered, kitchen clean, laundry done, yes, even the garage was organized. Mount came over at 7am to help me unload the trailed of the 1000XR and move the other bikes around in the garage so they were out of the way, and locked up 6 ways from Sunday.
So, I did not get on the road until ~1:30pm.
Serendipitously, Malone stopped by. She has been looking after me since 1998 or so, sort of a defacto Aunt. I have not seen her in person in several weeks. Right as I was mounting the bike to leave, she pulls up! So, we snapped some photos:
All set! This is the actual final load out #Atl2Arctic
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.
ORBS Elvis Tour. Buddha is in red.
