A very long ride

For some reason unbeknownst to me I decided to test my limit as it relates to how far I can ride in 3 days.  I think I may have reached it.  I rode just at 2,100 miles from Sarasota to Crested Butte, Colorado.  When I got to the hotel last night I could not ride another 2 miles to go to dinner.  Ted and I took a shuttle into town.  

Tigger thought it was fun but he was a passenger so he got to look a scenery and relax.  I didn't stop a lot to take pictures but the one posted here is from a rest stop some place in Kansas.  

The beginning of the trip was a little auspicious. I left home in heavy fog, ran into a closed I-75 for about 40 miles, and learned that the new GPS I purchased was not functioning properly. Before the day was out, I lost the only pair of prescription glasses that I own.  

My friend Ted was at the hotel waiting for me when I arrived. Since a long day on the motorcycle for him is 250 miles he had a few choice comments about my sanity. 

 

My friend Tigger

Here is a fella that always has a smile on his face. If you look closely you will notice the smile is just a bit bigger than usual. That is because he is looking forward to his first long trip in five years. What a guy!

Jane's addition

It's not a motorcycle but here is Jane's ride.

Upcoming trip

Tigger and I are in the process of preparing for another of our long journeys. This one will be quite a bit shorter time wise and distance wise than our 2008 trip. We should cover about 6,000 miles in 12 to 13 days. Tigger is excited since things have been pretty boring for him lately. This trip portends to be the last long trip on the motorcycle pictured here. The bike is absolutely, for me, the best bike I have ever owned. However, on any bike, there are always a few additional things any rider would like. Well BMW redesigned this bike and put almost everything I wanted on the new model. So, I will be purchasing a new, 2013 BMW GS some time this Summer. In the interim, we will be leaving Florida on May 16th, heading to Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and places in between. We will be meeting my friend Ted for the western portion of the trip and hopefully I will post photos of our adventure along the way.

Goodbye to an old friend.

I have decided to change motorcycles so I can do some off road riding but I feel like I am saying goodbye to an old friend. My R1200RT took me on what was most certainly the trip of a lifetime and it performed like a champ. The problem was that there were many times that I saw gravel or dirt roads that looked so inviting and the RT just wasn't made for that kind of riding.

I have purchased a BMW R1200GSA. Some say its ugly. I say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is one of BMW's dual sport motorcycles and it is made to be ridden off the pavement. It is kind of the Range Rover of motorcycles. It works well on the road as well as off. My first trip will be mainly on road as I ride to Nova Scotia later this Summer. Hopefully I will get some riding time with my brother as well. Lastly, Tigger has been in hibernation way too long.

Epilog

My staff decided that the photo I published of my office was not representative of their efforts, so I have published a revised photo. I am going to try to post all of my photos at

http://picasaweb.google.com/BMWRider1946

Here are some statistics about the trip. In 49 days we rode 15,562 miles, visited 41states, the District of Columbia and 2 Canadian provinces. We visited 59 national parks, national historic sites, national monuments etc in the US and six national parks in Canada. Our longest day was 718 miles. I made five different shipments of stuff home that I didn’t need. We visited the four corners of the United States including Everglades National park in Florida, Acadia National Park in Maine, Sequoia National Park in California and Olympic National Park in Washington State. We had significant rain a total of four days. The lowest temperature encountered was 42 degrees in Jackson, Wyoming and the highest was 113 degrees in the desert of southern California. The largest temperature fluctuation experienced in one day was from 42 degrees to 103 degrees.

Being an accountant and typically relating everything to numbers I would rate the trip 9.5 out of 10. Mostly because of time constraints, there were several parks that we were not able to visit which I have never visited before and I plan to get to these parks on future trips. My biggest disappointment, outside of not being able to visit all of the parks, was the conditions encountered in California. My biggest surprise was the constant beauty enjoyed in the Canadian Rockies. Several people have asked me about my favorite parts of the trip and I would have to say the Canadian Rockies, Montana and Acadia National Park in Maine. Tigger liked it all. I was also disappointed that my friend Ted could not join me for any part of the trip. While I was ready to come home to see Jane, Wrangler, my co workers, friends and family, I was not tired of motorcycling. I could get on the bike tomorrow and do it all again.

I find it interesting that at any age a person can continue to learn about themselves. I have the reputation of getting bored easily and almost anyone who knows me well would have bet that I would not have completed this trip. I would probably have bet against myself. So it was with no small measure of surprise that I found myself enjoying almost every minute of the adventure. We had a couple of bad days, mostly dictated by riding conditions, but even those days had their upside. Interestingly, a number of people asked about being threatened or any fears or concerns I had. Never once did I feel any threat from another person. The most intimidating moment of the entire trip was our encounter with the bison in Yellowstone.

For those of you with whom I attended high school, I thought of Ms. Hamilton every time I wrote a post. I know my spelling is no better than in high school (thank goodness for spell check) and my punctuation and grammar still suffer as well. I could visualize her from up above grading each post and likely still getting very frustrated.

I want to thank Jane for being so patient and understanding. After putting up with my antics since we were sixteen years old and being married to me for 39 years she has become tolerant of most of my idiosyncrasies and my sense of wanderlust. Also to my friend Mike Retherford who posted a comment about the honey do list I would encounter when I got home; surely you remember Jane grew up on a farm and is very self sufficient. After all, Doug ran his dad’s car through a barbed wire fence and into a corn field on our way home from that farm one night. I also want to thank my partners for allowing me the time away from work and my team for covering for me while I was off gallivanting around the country. Also, thanks to those of you who posted comments on this blog. Hopefully you enjoyed my periodic ramblings and I didn’t offend anyone. Lastly I want to thank my ever present companion Tigger who made sharing the experience much more enjoyable. Even a 61 year old accountant can still have a bit of imagination and enjoy some frivolity in his life. For those of you who think maybe I have gone a little off of my rocker, you just never realized that I have always been just slightly askew. I hide it well.

PS - I have decided to keep this site active and post from time to time when I take future trips or just feel like posting. I find I enjoy it and it can be quite cathartic.

Days 47 and 48

I'm back home safe and sound. It was wonderful to see Jane and Wrangler again. Wrangler was just a little unsure at first as to whom this stranger was, but within two minutes had a toy in his mouth waiting for me to play with him.

The past two days were mostly riding on the “super slab” just to get home. Of course the last day I encountered 11 different rain cells as I made my way through southern Georgia and Florida. I stopped so many times to put on and take off my rain suit I finally took off my riding pants and just kept on the rain pants. It was too hot and humid to wear both at the same time. I have learned it is not the heat but the humidity that makes things uncomfortable. Riding in temperatures of 105degrees with low humidity is much more comfortable than riding in 92 degrees with very high humidity.

I returned to the office with a celebration of my friend and companion, Tigger. As you can see by the picture, my co workers felt it was appropriate to congratulate him for putting up with me for the past seven weeks.

I will attempt to compile some statistical information and post an epilog of my trip over the weekend.