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.

Days 44, 45 and 46

On Saturday evening Tigger and I looked at the map, looked at the calendar and decided it was time to head home. We could get the necessary national parks passport cancellation stamps and still basically head straight home. I had promised Jane I would try to be home by the end of July and if we headed home Sunday morning we could make it. The ride Sunday was great. I felt like I could have ridden for ever and Tigger pretty much slept the whole day. After 680 miles we stopped in the middle of Nebraska for the night.

Monday was a different story. First, we lost a head light. Then, we ran into wind so bad we had to stop. This is the first time I have ever stopped for weather but the wind was gusting up to sixty mph and we were riding lateral to it so we were being blown all over the road. A constant wind, even a strong one, is tolerable because you can compensate for it. But strong gusts are like being hit in the side by an unpredictable force and can be quite scary.

Today we stopped at a BMW dealership in Kansas City and had the light repaired and the oil changed for the last time on the trip. We should be good for the duration. The temperatures were quite warm and the humidity is much higher here than out west.

Since I have been focusing on getting home I have taken few interesting pictures. I will try to post a couple tomorrow as I can barely keep my eyes open tonight.

Days 42 and 43

I am posting days 42 and 43 together because I anticipated covering Yellowstone and Teton National Parks in one day. Yellowstone is a park that has several diverse areas and we wanted to visit several of them. Mammoth Hot Springs, The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Old Faithful were our primary objectives. It took us about two hours to reach the entrance the morning of day 42 and once we were in the park we ran into construction delays, heavy traffic and hoards of people. When I started checking on lodging for the night I struck out completely so we made the decision to ride over to Red Lodge, Montana and stay at the Pollard Hotel. It was a fairly long ride, but it was over the Beartooth Pass, a road Charles Kuralt referred to as the most beautiful in America. Unfortunately we ran into construction delays here also. Saturday morning we decided to ride down through Cody Wyoming and enter the park from the east side. In Cody we rode past the store that made the now indispensable motorcycle bags designed by Ted. This ride was quite pleasant, but again, after we entered the park the traffic was very heavy. We did visit the locations we wanted and we saw bears, wolves, bison, antelope, elk, deer, and fox while in the park. This is a park in recovery from fires that wreaked havoc four or five years ago. Amazingly, the burnt areas are recovering quite nicely. I had visited the park the summer after the fires and I was surprised at the rate of recovery.

As we were riding we came upon a curve and I caught a glimpse of a slow moving row of cars coming in our direction. To our great surprise the fourth “vehicle” in that procession was a bison. He was trapped because he could not exit on either side of the road and this was one of the few times during our entire visit to Yellowstone that we were not behind another vehicle. So there we were heading directly toward one another and I didn’t know if I should stop, keep going or ditch the bike and run. A bison is quite a large animal and very intimidating when coming your way and it appears he has his eyes focused directly on you. Before I had time to make a decision, he was right next to us and apparently had decided we were not part of his dilemma so he trotted on past and we “got the hell out of Dodge”. Tigger was too amazed to be frightened, but my pulse rate was up 40 or 50 beats.

I don’t think I will visit Yellowstone again in July or August. The scenery is quite pleasant and the chance to see the animals in their natural habitat is wonderful, but for me the negatives can best be dealt with by visiting the park during a different time of the

Day 41

The word Montana evokes a certain image of mountains, wide open spaces, blue skies and a laid back way of life. (Or 20,000 screaming pre teens) The ride today was a confirmation of that image. The high peaks were on the horizon but the ride was still a motorcyclists dream. The horses seemed to almost be running free, the cattle were well fed and content and the streams were full of fly fisherman enjoying what could only be described as a perfect Montana day.

We did not make it to Yellowstone but we are close. There was “no room at the inn” as the West Yellowstone hotels were full for the evening. We did find a room in Big Sky at the ski resort. Ski areas are always somewhat deserted in the summer so it is possible to get a decent room for a good price.

Ted, my good friend and fellow motorcycle rider, is one of those individuals who does not lack in self confidence. He is always looking at a situation or product and saying “What were they thinking? I could have done that so much better.” About six years ago we were riding through Cody, Wyoming when we stopped at a western store. On the wall were some unique duffle bags so Ted asked the lady where she got them. She told him she made them and could make just about any thing any one wanted. So I told Ted this was his chance to put up or shut up. In five minutes he designed a bag for motorcycling. The bag was expensive and when he asked me if I was going to order one I told him I really didn’t need that expensive of a bag. After giving me an extremely hard time about being a cheap accountant he ordered one for himself and one for me. As it turns out, that bag is the best motorcycle bag I have ever seen. When preparing for this trip I ordered a new bag designed by a big company for motorcycle touring. Turns out I shipped that bag home yesterday along with a whole box of other stuff I have not used and kept the bag Ted gave me. The bag I kept is much more functional and well designed. Ted, I thank you and apologize for ever doubting you.

Day 40

Today I was able to get on the bike but not for long. It seems my little “problem” has not moved all the way through my system yet and I found myself looking at the map to see how close the next town and the next bathroom were. After my third stop with less than 45 minutes between any of them I decided to quit for the day and hope my problem would work itself out (pardon the pun) by tomorrow.

On one of my stops at a roadside rest area I was greeted by a swarm of the biggest mosquitoes I had ever seen. Because of the wet winter, apparently they are quite bad this year and I thought I was going to have to fight them off with a baseball bat. Since the rest area had an open pit toilet that was basically four walls with a roof and a lot of ventilation they had invaded the entire space. I didn’t even take off my motorcycle helmet because it offered some protection. So, there I was, motorcycle helmet on, pants down to my ankles and my digestive system in overdrive trying to keep these monsters from biting any of the more vulnerable locations on my body. I am happy to report that my struggle was successful so I am not walking around scratching my … well you get the picture.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a calmer day as I hope to reach Yellowstone National Park.