Goose & Whit's Wild Ride

Okay, let it never be said that I claimed to be a brilliant video editor, but I put together a short movie of trip photos and video. It's in QuickTime format, which you can download here if you don't already have it installed.

Click here for the large version (20 MB, about five minutes over a broadband connection).

Click here for the small version (3.5 MB, about ten minutes over a modem).

Not particularly inspired or coherent, but better than nothing, I hope. Thanks to Mike Eldred for the background music inspiration. I was thinking of several options, but that Van Morrison track was just too perfect.

That's all she wrote, folks. Thanks for tuning in, participating, hosting and making my journey a memorable one. I hope to see you all soon.

Posted by Whit at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. Corbin may make the best motorcycle seats in the world, but they won't save you from a sore ass if you drive six hours a day for several days in a row. Sore ass happens, get used to it.

2. Texas is hot. And by hot, I mean boiling-over, clothes fully saturated with sweat hot. I mean you'd-better-carry-water-because-you'll-drop-to-the-ground-from-heat-stroke-if-you-don't-stay-hydrated hot. Georgia is twice as hot as Texas.

3. Seat issues aside, sport bikes work just fine for touring, so long as the riding position isn't too racy. I had some issues with pressure on my right wrist (throttle, brake) and a little soreness in a couple of my fingers, but for the most part I was pleasantly surprised that my body didn't break in one way or another somewhere in the middle of the trip.

4. Carburated motorcycles do not like to sit still. I sort of knew this already, but it became a much more painful reality once we got to the lower states, where we would inevitably have to sit in slow-moving traffic. The hot sun is bad enough when you're wearing a black jacket, but an air-starved, heat-generating engine sitting between your legs is twice the torment. This is one of the main reasons that...

5. States that don't allow lane-splitting (which, unfortunately, is everwhere but California and Hawaii) suuuuuuuck. This is one of the most aggravatingly stupid laws that Cal bikers have to live with. If I come up to a traffic light in the aforementioned swealtering sun, then there is no reason, safety or otherwise, that I shouldn't be allowed to drive to the front of the line in between the cars that are waiting. Those cars have air conditioning and can afford to wait for the slugs in front of them to get moving. I don't, and shouldn't have to.

6. Slow-passing drivers suck more than non-lane-splitting states. For the love of all that is smoothly flowing, people, please push that gas pedal down when you make the decision to pass a vehicle. 1 MPH faster than the passee is not acceptable. A similar note to the truckers: That motorcycle 100 feet back? It is not going the same speed as you, I guarantee it. Don't merge until it's gone past.

7. The bugs come out at night. Not having made a trip like this, and only having driven my motorcycle at night inside San Fran, I thought bug build-up on my helmet visor was pretty bad during the day (splat... pause... splat...), but the first time I did some driving at night I realized how wrong I was (SPLATSPLATPLTSPTPSPSPPSLPSLTPSLTPS). And the first time I tried to wipe some of them off while driving I discovered that a dense group of bug carcasses is a lot better than a blurry layer of bug goop.

8. Listening to music on the motorcycle is a giant pain in the ass. Figuring out a strong combination of sound clarity and outside noise blocking is very difficult, and you often don't know you don't have a good seal until you're already up to highway speeds. And it's hard to get the helmet on without knocking them out of place. And you're always accidentally yanking the cord, hurting your ears. And all the trouble and frustration is completely worth it because driving with your favorite music is ten times better than driving in silence.

9. Not all wi-fi hot spots are created equal. Some of them aren't even lukewarm.

10. Whit Gurley is capable of driving 8700 miles in six weeks without getting a speeding ticket. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it.

Posted by Whit at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

final mileage: 8700

Good to see you again, Frisco.

Five minutes before this was taken, these bags looked brand-new.

For the most part, my day's journey was pleasant and uneventful, save for one incident. I had been driving for about two and a half hours, just leaving Reno, when all three of my rear bags fell off the bike. The first amazing thing here is that I drove that distance, most of which was at fairly high speeds through the straights of Nevada, without losing them. The second amazing thing is that my laptop seems to be perfectly fine. Lucky for me I was going around a curve, so the bags landed in the shoulder, or the second amazing thing wouldn't be true.

The mileage above is exact - 8700 on the dot - and my trip has also ended exactly six weeks after it started. Would you like to see the whole route? Sure you would, here it is:

Click the image to see a much larger version. I plan to get this map laminated and use it for the same purpose on future road trips.

Looks like dirt, doesn't it? But what you're seeing is the gap between my glove and my jacket sleeve. I was wishing for awhile that I had time to get my whole body looking that dark, but that actually looks pretty nasty.

Right now I feel two competing senses of surreal-ness. It's surreal to be back in familiar territory all of the sudden - my mind is having trouble with no longer being on the bike or sitting in a motel room. And when I look at that map, it's surreal to realize that I actually drove that whole route on my motorcycle. It's all very weird, but at the same time wonderful. I don't think I've ever been more glad to be back home, but at the same time (to answer a question that I've gotten a few times), I don't feel sick of traveling or being on the motorcycle at all. I still love being on that motorcycle, and although I'm going to take a few days to give my ass and wrists some time off, I'll definitely be right back on it very soon. On the other hand, I doubt I'll ever take a road trip this long again. I'd say three weeks max for the trip that I'm already planning for next summer, through the Pacific Northwest and into the upper midwest.

The visor has to be cleaned a couple of times a day, but I stopped caring about the rest of the helmet weeks ago.

In case anyone is interested, the lowest gas price I saw was $2.53, somewhere between Texas and Tennessee. Gas prices are currently at about $3.16 here in San Francisco. Based on rough calculations I think I spent a grand total of about $700 on gas. I required two oil changes (as any diligent vehicle owner would guess) and spent about $550 on maintenance (this is much more than it should have been), not counting the idiotic $90 gas-fetching charge from yesterday. I'm not sure what my total motel bill is, but the average rate was probably about $45 per night.

WASH ME

It was a good trip, no doubt about it. Sure, there were snags and frustrations here and there, but the majority of the time I was really enjoying myself, even when I didn't have Goose to keep me company (and thanks for joining me by the way, Goose - I really enjoyed traveling with you).

Note that I will be posting one more blog entry (besides the one above) in a day or two that will feature a nice end-of-trip nugget.

Posted by Whit at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

mile 8290

Man, I thought Monday was tough until I met Tuesday. Nature seems to want me to really pay for entry back into my normal life. The ride from Vernal through Salt Lake City to Winemucca, NV wasn't really packed with lovely scenery or anything else particularly interesting, but it did come with a handful of peril. It all started with the Salt Lake, which had the most ridiculously strong winds of the trip (I passed an overturned semi at one point). I was fighting with them pretty much the whole time, with moderate rain in spots, right up until... this (330k QuickTime movie).

I just wasn't aware of the distance between service areas in this region. Lucky for me I have a Motorcycle Touring Service membership (sort of like AAA). It took about an hour for the guy they called to arrive and give me 1.5 gallons of gas for $90. No, seriously. Supposedly they're going to reimburse me for that, but it's still beyond ridiculous. While waiting, I caught up on my yo-yo-ing, handstand practice, sand kicking and desperately-bored photo taking, as you'll see below.

It gets worse. I got on the road again, and although the winds became a little less troublesome, the temperature dropped quickly and more rain clouds appeared on the horizon. Before the evening was over with I was bundled up with just about every piece of moto gear I own, driving through fairly heavy rain in the dark. Visibility was so poor that at one point I was relying solely on the traffic cones to tell me where the actual road was. What fun!

But eventually it all let up and gave me a very clear, smooth (but f-f-f-freezing) ride the rest of the way into Winemucca, a couple of hours east of Reno. Unless something bizarre happens, I'll be rolling into San Fran this evening.

Posted by Whit at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

mile 7736

The headline refers to yesterday, I got into my hotel room too late to mess with posting an entry. Picking up at the end of the last entry, I finally made it out of Lyons (a day later than I had planned) by finding a mechanic who both had a chain to fit my bike and had time to put it on. Once that was finished I proceeded to Highway 40, which runs through the heart of the Colorado Rockies. This is the route that Ben convinced me to take in favor of the faster but much more desolate I-80, and I'm glad he did so - I passed through some stunning scenery.

After the stunning scenery faded away I had a really smooth, fast, vehicle-free ride through a lot of what was left of Colorado and into Utah, but that came to an abrupt halt when the sun went down, because that is apparently when the rabbits come out to play "dodge the motorcycle". I missed around a hundred of them, but unfortunately hit two. I don't think they would have been a real danger to my safety as long as I was going in a straight line, but I also had the threat of deer to deal with. There were signs posted periodically and I passed three that I saw. Might have been nice if it wasn't so unnerving. After all that, I had to contend with the fact that in each of the podunk towns I passed through, almost none of the motels had rooms to spare. I finally got into a room at 11 PM in Vernal, UT, from which I will be leaving for Salt Lake City in a few minutes.

Photos below include choppers from the first shop I took my bike to, random shots of Lyons and Silar the dog, and the amazing Colorado countryside.

Posted by Whit at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)