Another long day...

I woke up this morning an hour before my alarm went off. I just couldn't wait to get back in the saddle. Even as sore as I was, I just didn't care.

I got on the road at about 7am. I planned to get in a few hours and then post up somewhere and work for a few hours.

Highway 60 West thru Missouri is a great road. And so is, as I mistaken found out, Highway 67. The two Highways pair up for about 3 miles. Or in my case, 40 miles. I apparently missed the 60 breakaway and went 40 extra miles North. The only good way back was to straight up backtrack the 40 miles. Fortunately the road was so kick ass that I really didn't care.

The only problem was I was not as far as I wanted to be by 10 so I wasn't posting up in a Starbucks somewhere, I had to make my own little Starbucks experience at a BP Minimart on the side of 67. Where I heard, by the way, two gas station owners discussing how they are going to be raising gas prices every day from now through the holiday. So fill up now, people!

My Verizon Wireless had one itty bitty bar but that was enough to check over some work and touch base with the team and keep things rolling. I spent about an hour there getting things checked over.

I'm product dropping like crazy so maybe one of these companies will sponsor me. ha ha I'm not even sure what that would mean. I am gonna be talking about the gear a lot though, because I am a gear freak and totally believe in the right gear can make a huge difference. So I'll be critiquing everything. I think there are a few riders in the group who are reading this so they may appreciate the reviews.

I should probably point out that my reviews and critiques are not exactly expert in nature. While I am extremely at home on all things of the two wheeled nature, this is my first motorcycle that is really mine and not my brothers, my neighbors, my friends, etc. This is also my first major road trip on a bike. In fact, other than being younger and riding the dirtbikes for hours, this is really the longest time my ass has been in a saddle ever...with an engine underneath it.

Here's the interesting thing about the whole "sore ass" thing. I ride constantly. so my ass is no stranger to being on a seat. I rode the 50 miler, I ride all the time. I figured that my ass was used to being on a seat and in fact pedaling might make that even more able ot withstand the saddle to do the strenuous nature of sitting while moving the legs. oh was I wrong. I almost wish I had a thinner seat. the thicker seat, while very comfy, totally rubs on a different part of my thighs and ass than the other saddles, so its a whole new "getting used to" experience. How fun. So I slide back and forth to change the position every couple minutes. Except when the road is really fun, I actually only notice on the long straight-aways. If I'm curvin', I don't notice anything. If I could just stay on a curvy track the whole way, I'd probably never stop.

Ok so where was I? oh yeah, backtracking. So I make it back ot 60 and just have a ball through most of Missouri. The Mark Twain Forrest or something like that was just a great ride. I never expected Missouri to offer such a good road. I think that might be the only redeeming quality of Missouri, actually. Oh, and the Arch, that's pretty bad ass, too. Missouri doesn't really deserve the Arch though. I think they should move it to some place more "werthy"of such a kick ass piece of architecture.

I was hoping to make it to Springfield to post up for work again, but I just had to rest around Mountain Grove, MO which is about 30-40 miles away from Springfield. I was hoping to find a motorcycle shop that was open so I could get the funky hand spatula thing that's supposed to make riding more comfy on the hand and some sort of cruise control devise. I was searching the gazillion cycle shops on google maps and with Dawn's help in calling them while I was riding, it turns out that a lot of shops, almost all of them, are closed on Mondays. Isn't that wonderful?

I think my hand cramping is the single worst part of it all. the ass and neck thing I can totally tolerate. But there comes a point when I simply can't grip any longer and need to rest. And no I won't throw a masturbation joke in here, that would be too easy. Oh wait, I think I just did anyway. Sneaky.

I was feeling fatigued more today than I was yesterday, and the only real difference is that I started the day with coffee, and kept an ongoing run of caffeine going almost all day long. I started feeling like maybe I was fatiguing so badly because I was dehydrated and thus caffeine would only make that worse. so I started interjecting Gatorade and water into the mix which seemed to help a lot I think tomorrow I'll try to not have any caffeine and see if that helps.

Oklahoma is OK... at best. its a perfect slogan. unless of course they are referring to the roads, which are not only boring as hell, but also pretty crappy. I had to hang on more in the last two hours than the entire rest of the journey thus far.

Tulsa, however, did have a CycleGear (6701 E 41st, exit 230 on Hwy 44...2 minutes from the Highway, in case you are ever in need of some equipment or parts) - I am bothered that more cycle shops are not advertising on billboards outside of towns that are clearly heavy biker towns. Springfield, for example had like 30 cycle shops in that small city, and not one advertisement to the riders who are strolling through on Highway 60 and 44. One small advertisement that said where to go to get your broken whatever, I would think would bring in a lot of business.

So I got the crampbuster (crampbuster.com) and I dropped that puppy on in a second. I also got a universal cruise control clamp mechanism from Sound Off Recreational, Inc. and I'll try that tomorrow. That takes some installation and assembly and I was just too tired to mess with that tonight. So you'll have to wait for the review on that one until tomorrow night.

A few more side notes on the gear. The AplineStar 3/4 boots are awesome. Totally comfy. Even walking around off the bike are not annoying. I didn't have room for any more shoes in the backpack so I figured I'd just deal with them. When I was walking around the Riverwalk in Tulsa tonight, which, according to the front desk chic at my LaQuinta, was the ONLY thing werth seeing here, I was totally comfy. And the Riverwalk, is pretty cool, if you ever find yourself stranded in Tulsa, I do recommend the taco platter at Los Cabos, or something like that. You'll see, its the closest restaurant to the motorcycle parking, and they have a dude playing guitar and singing strange versions of songs like SOS by Sting and then some Skid Row song - not "18 and life", the other one.

























Oh yeah, and a very disappointing gear failure tonight. My $117.00 Tank bag which is a Tourmaster by Coretech, totally broke a zipper tag tonight. That's way too expensive of a tank bag to fail on a zipper tag that's supposed to get years of wear and tear. Other than the obvious malfunction, though, the bag itself works great. I'll let y'all know how customer service over at Coretech is when I call to have them replace that bag for me.

So Im 950 miles into it and absolutely loving it. In fact, after I settled in tonight, I could have walked next door to eat, but I chose to ride the bike to the "hotspot" in stead. If I wasn't tired, I'd still be riding now.

Here's most of the gear all in one shot. jacket, pants, boots, tank bag, helmet, gloves.... bike.

Gettin' Started

"You're nuts! You're doing that on a crotch rocket?

Seems to be the majority consensus on a response to this next adventure. I find it interesting paying attention to who thinks its cool, and who thinks I'm crazy.

I really could n0t wait for this adventure. I've been really looking forward to it and just knew that it would be a good story. So we'll see. Already its been eventful.

I'm technically in my second leg of the journey. I left Friday from Fort Wayne, Indiana to head down to Evansville, Indiana. A trip that should have taken between 5 and 7 hours, ended up taking about 11 to 12 hours.

I started heading out around 11am. First place was the gas station to fill up and reset the mileage gauge so I could keep tabs on when to stop. After filling up and messing with getting the helmet on and keeping the earbuds in place, which can be a daunting task at times, the bike would not start. Totally acted like the battery just died.

I made severeal attempts at push starting it but could not get enough speed up to get it to flip. Thankfully, the support van was there. Dawn was driving down to Evansville at the same time to go to the airshow with me. So I hopped in the van adn went back to the hosue for tools.

Lesson 1 for a motorcycle journey: Have at least a basic set of tools with you for soem basic emergencies. like jump starting, replacing teh battery, etc.

It was 90 degrees out and it took forever to get the seat off. fortunately the #10 Metric wrench fit. After ab out an hour of messing with it, I got the bike started by jumping it off the van. I put the bike back together adn we went in search of a new battery to replace the one that was in there ust in case that one was shot.

Finally get rolling around 1pm. The first leg was to Indy, to meet up with Ryan at the hangar to grab soem of Billy's Grayout stuff for him since he flew the plane and had no storage space. The plane has basically the same storage space as a motorcycle. Just outside of Indy I hit my first encounter with rain. I was getting a littel nervous after seeing another biker pull over to get his raingear on. I got off the highway and Dawn told me that we had actually just missed the storm and it was only a little spinkle that was lingering. So we pressed on and I only got a little wet. Enough to clean the bugs off the visor.

After stopping for the stuff at the hangar, we stopped at a Subway to grab a sub before making the next 3 hour leg. after debating on which way to go to avoid the storms, we decided that straight south to Louisville, Kentucky and then straight West on 64 to Evansville would be the best way to avoid the storms that were headed our way on a North Easternly path.

That all went smoothly. I was REALLY starting to feel the right hand at this point. I was begging for a cruise control clamp. I had to constantly adjust my hand position because my hand was cramping up consistently. the inside nad back of my thighs was also feeling rather tender as well. Turns out, no matter how much bicycle riding I can do, the seats are totally different and thus, my ass feels totally different. After the 5th hour I I was pretty much constantly switching positions on the seat and with my hand.

After stopping for gas about an hour outside of Evansville, Dawn tells me that we gotta haul ass in order to beat a really nasty storm that's racing us to Evansville from the West. So we got up on the highway again and just hauled ass. I had no idea teh minivan could move like that. Im rather impressed actually. It's a Chrysler Town and Country and that puppy can move. As we got to about 15 miles out of the Evansville exit, the sky got pretty gnarly lookin. Very black, with this ridge of clouds swirling as the leading edge of storm rolled our way.

After passing the second to last exit it became clear to me that we weren't going to make it. I started thinking it might be best to find a spot to flip a uturn in the median and out run it the other way and just wait it out and whatever was at the last exit. Just then, the wind went nuts, the rain started and I got whooshed over almost into the other lane. At that moment, I was done. I needed to pull over that instant, and it may already be too late to save the pants. I stopped the bike, pulled as close to the van as I could and got in.

We sat there and watched an amazing thunderstorm. Kept in touch with Billy back at teh hotel, who said teh power was out at teh hotel, there were tornado sirens going off like crazy. Great way to end the first leg of the journy.

After about an hour I decided to try to give it a whirl and see if I could make it to the next exist after all. This is where having great gear came in REALLY handy. My Powertrip Diablo Jacket with inside rain liner was awesome, I stayed bone dry and comfy even though I was soaked on the outside. I also didn't get sweaty and sticky either, which I expected. The FieldSheer pants were also a treat. Again, not a drop on me.

We made it to the next exit and met up with Billy for a few minutes before heading towards the hotel...well, actually, we missed an exit and ended up down in Kentucky again, but eventually, we did make it to the hotel. Checked in under candle light since the power was still out. Decided to change and head out to find food.

Went to O'Brians in Evansville, which was a great little bar with live music and moderately healthy food still serv ing at 11:45pm. The corner chair at the bar, we are convinced, was some kind of portal to or from another dimension because very strange people kept sitting there.

Back at the hotel, after a few minutes the power came back on and we could then, turn the lights back off to sleep. Or attempt to anyway, on that rock hard bed and with my allergies completely raging at this point.

I think I got an hour or two that night.

In the morning, checked out and immedaite went to check out the Marriott, which had much nicer beds. Got a room there instead.

So today, after being at the airshow long enough to video tape Billy's performance, we went back to the hangar to pack up, change my battery and take a ride in the PITTS before heading out.

We got to do some crazy upsidedown flying and then broke for our rides.

My ride thru the north west part of Kentucky was awesome. Curvy turning country roads for hours. I loved every second of it. Still feelin the grip cramping though. Totally gotta find something for that on the journey. I was going to make it to Springfield today but after the late start and the bugs that felt like rain in the Kentucky night sky were too much to push to SPringfield tonight.

The bugs sounded like a whoel line of little tap dancers on the visor. It was pretty gross. I posted up camp at a Drury Hotel on the corner of Interstate 55 in Sikeston.

Looking forward to getting up early tomorrow and getting a few miles in before the work day starts.