|
Made it halfway across the country without a flat, only to get stranded outside the Best Western in Alamosa, Colorado, after saddling up and going to leave. After limping it to a gas station to pump it up we took it to the awesome guys at Peak Motorsport, who took the tube out, found a split and replaced it in less than half an hour, so we were still on our way before noon. After a nice ride we arrived at the New Mexico border, where sadly it was time to ditch the remaining legal stash I’d picked up in Ridgway, leaving me guilty of no crime greater than littering.  I wouldn’t have cared in Australia, but as a foreigner you hear horror stories about the American law enforcement and legal system. Sidenote: I will never stop being amused by America’s litigation culture. The endless billboards for ambulance chasers, and those pharmaceutical ads (that’s another thing – I can’t ever recall anything but painkillers being advertised on TV back home) for various medications which are apparently by law required to list all the side effects and dangers, the voice-over seamlessly slipping from marketing slogans to a hilarious minute-long list of potential complications which just goes on and on and on. Northern New Mexico is lovely and green. Nothing spectacular or amazing like Colorado or Utah – just a lot of really nice, pleasant, gentle curving roads through lush hills. The kind of place you’d love to live for weekend rides. Tried to get a photo of some gophers at the edge of the highway but they were too quick for me.  We arrived in Taos midafternoon and then my bike’s battery died as we were driving around looking for somewhere to stay. I told Dad to go find a motel so we at least had somewhere to limp it to first, and when he came back we kickstarted it and went to the one he’d chosen. It was the seediest place we’ve yet stayed, with several low-income families living out the back, screaming arguments next door, pit bulls with chewed-off ears wandering around etc. Well done Dad. Taos itself is nice, but we once again had too much to drink that evening and were both feeling under the weather as we limped out the next morning. Dennis Hopper Day (really) was actually on that day, and if I hadn’t been feeling gross we might have stayed and checked it out, but, y’know, hangovers. What can you do. Except show some self-restraint the previous night. Southern New Mexico: not as nice as northern New Mexico.  We arrived at Carlsbad Caverns just in time for dusk, when thousands of bats are supposed to swarm out, but it was one of the rare evenings they stood everybody up. We still went down to the caverns next morning.  They’re pretty neat. I’ve done a few back in Australia though, and after a while they tend to blur together no matter how big they are.  Nice effort with the sign there, Texas. That photo I posted above of southern New Mexico is pretty much what most of West Texas looks like. Unfortunately, we had to burn across it fairly quickly because we’ve got a schedule to keep. I think we did something like 480 miles that day, which is a record for me, and by the end of it my rear end was in agony and I had blisters on my palms. It wasn’t so much the distance, although that was bad, but the incessant howling crosswind. I’m sure Texas has many redeeming features as a state and a tourism destination, but for a motorcycle roadtrip... not so much. At least it was warm! Here is a photo of us taking shelter in the only shade you will find in West Texas: a highway overpass.  We ended up for the night in Austin, which is a shame, because I’ve heard it’s a great city to visit, but we showed up at 9.00pm and stayed at a Best Western in the southern suburbs, so I sort of feel like we wasted it. Oh well. I’m coming back to America one day. We burned across some more of Texas the next day, and as we stopped to refuel in Houston Dad noticed our front tyres were nearly down to canvas. It took us an hour of ringing around to find a place open on Monday, but after navigating Houston’s nightmarish rush hour traffic we made it to Discount Motorcycle Tires an hour before they closed and managed to get new road tyres fitted. A recurring theme has been how friendly and helpful mechanics, dealers etc. are in the US. If I showed up at an Australian store and asked to get new tyres fitted immediately I'd be met with a contemptuous snort and booked in for an appointment three days hence. We made it out of Houston's rush hour alive and headed down to the coast to camp. This was one of the few times freecampsites.net hasn’t led me astray – you can indeed camp anywhere on the beach on the Bolivar Peninsula for free.   In retrospect, however, after complaining about the wind all the way across Texas it maybe wasn’t the best idea to camp on an exposed beach. Both of us stayed awake nearly all night listening to the wind howl and flap our tents’ canvas around. I must have got a snatch of sleep, because I had a dream in which something heavy fell over and woke bolt upright, wide-eyed with terror at the thought that my KLR had been blown over and nearly crushed me, since I was sleeping right next to it for the windbreak.  “I’ve got all sand in my tent and my helmet and everything,” Dad said next morning, deadpan. “Dunno how sand got in there.” “Let’s go to New Orleans so we can go to bed,” I said. We took the interstate up there, detouring in Lafayette on the southern loop, because it’s meant to be nicer, but it’s not really – just lots of farmland. I think we have to accept that the West was the scenic part, and the East is mostly about visiting cities and stuff. Although the Appalachians are good. We’re staying in New Orleans in the French Quarter, which is great – reminds me a lot of Hoi An in Vietnam. The French know how to build a city. Tomorrow we’re heading to Dad’s girlfriend’s brother’s place in Alabama, then we head up the Appalachians.
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 16:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 00:23 |
|
|
HenryJLittlefinger posted:So did your Australian drivers license work at the dispensary? Sure did. apparently the trick is finding somewhere to legally smoke, since you can't do it on public land and most bars and motels and hotels won't let you. The guy at the distillery was cool though and let me sit on the porch. mad.radhu posted:These photographs are absolutely beautiful. It makes me feel guilty i've lived in the west my whole life and have never done this, while someone else is crossing oceans to get it done. I really should plan a trip like this. Do it! People have a tendency not to do things in their own backyard because they assume they'll get around to it eventually. I lived in perth for 20 years, a few hours' drive away from Ningaloo Reef, which is one of the only places in the world you can go snorkelling with whale sharks. Never got around to it. Also lived in Melbourne three years and never bothered to hop across the ditch to see New Zealand.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 16:05
|
|
|
I just moved to Knoxville from Lafayette, lived there for two years. Boy that place SUCKS. New Orleans is cool though, hit up Port of Call for a really good burger, and get sloshed on their Neptune's Monsoon liquor drink.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 18:15
|
|
|
New Orleans = food. Get some red beans & rice, a Central Grocery muffuletta, crawfish and some jambalaya. God, I miss those muffulettas.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 22:34
|
|
|
Wish I still lived in New Orleans so I could visit with you guys. If you're looking for some late night food I really enjoyed the St Charles Tavern. Its nothing special really, it won't be on any must-see tourist lists. But its a solid place and never too crowded, a good place to watch the traffic on St Charles roll by. I'm a little homesick can you tell?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 23:07
|
|
|
Retarded Pimp posted:New Orleans = food. Get some red beans & rice, a Central Grocery muffuletta, crawfish and some jambalaya. God, I miss those muffulettas. Seconding this. Stuff your face with beignets and coffee, and then grab dinner at Mother's Restaurant. Red beans and rice is the most delicious thing you never expected.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 01:36
|
|
|
Even McDonalds has Jambalaya down there!
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:12
|
|
|
I need to remember to post an update here when I get to somewhere EARLY, and THEN check back to see what all the locals recommend... we rolled out of NOLA yesterday and are now in Alabama. But hey, if anyone has anything good to recommend between here and Knoxville, then between Knoxville and DC, then between DC and NYC, now's the time. All I really have lined up is the Dragon's Tail and Blue Ridge Parkway. Anywhere to ride, eat, drink, camp - shoot.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 23:28
|
|
|
If you are coming up this way it's definitely worth riding through Shenandoah and camping there. Us DC goons always head out that way to get away from the city traffic. Are you just passing through or coming into DC proper?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 23:52
|
|
|
Going over the hump on US441 in the Smokey Mountain National Park won't be fast, but there are a lot of curves and great views, the ride to Cades Cove is pretty nice too, as long as you hit it during the week. There's a lot of camping available in the area. http://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/cadescove.htm
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2014 02:29
|
|
|
I know KLRs are popular for long trips but I thought it was mostly in Countries where roads aren't great. I can't imagine logging highway miles in the US on a KLR. Are KLRs good highway cruisers?
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2014 04:27
|
|
|
Stugazi posted:I know KLRs are popular for long trips but I thought it was mostly in Countries where roads aren't great. I can't imagine logging highway miles in the US on a KLR. Are KLRs good highway cruisers? Not so much on the Interstate, but they do well on state routes.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2014 13:29
|
|
|
One thing I'll mention is this is a holiday weekend which means Tail of the Dragon, Cades Cove, Foothills Parkway and every other well known scenic or nice road is going to be a parking lot. I wouldn't plan on hitting any of those spots until Monday afternoon or Tuesday unless you enjoy sitting on a hot bike in traffic. I'll come up with some food and drink recommendations and let you know when you get here. Stugazi posted:I know KLRs are popular for long trips but I thought it was mostly in Countries where roads aren't great. I can't imagine logging highway miles in the US on a KLR. Are KLRs good highway cruisers? NitroSpazzz fucked around with this message at 18:21 on May 24, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 24, 2014 13:37
|
|
|
Stugazi posted:I know KLRs are popular for long trips but I thought it was mostly in Countries where roads aren't great. I can't imagine logging highway miles in the US on a KLR. Are KLRs good highway cruisers? They'd be better if there was a sixth gear, but it's plenty capable at highway speeds. I know there are plenty of better dedicated touring bikes, but I quite like the seating position because it's so versatile. I can lean back and stretch my legs, or tuck in when passing semis, or I can just stand up on the pegs when my bum gets too sore. I just rode down to Cinci a few weeks ago, which was about two hours of 90 mph on the highway, and I'm doing a similar ride with a friend tonight for some moto camping. I've since switched tires, but honestly the worst part of long rides was the numbness caused by knobby tire vibrations.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2014 18:15
|
|
|
Freebooter, I'm back in Knoxville and we're free now if you still want a place to stay! God bless you guys. I just put 150 miles on my 09 klr during the memorial day weekend trip and it was not comfy, to say the least. Don't know how you guys are doing it long term. Seconding Cades Cove, that'd be cool on a bike. Dragon is also really popular, as well.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2014 01:33
|
|
|
Dead Pressed posted:God bless you guys. I just put 150 miles on my 09 klr during the memorial day weekend trip and it was not comfy, to say the least. Don't know how you guys are doing it long term. Stock seat? There's a  post in the KLR thread about seat options.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2014 03:18
|
|
|
Quick note to say we made it to NYC after a few adventures including mechanical issues and a CRASH but I'll post all that up in a couple of days. Thanks again for all your suggestions and advice even if we didn't follow much of it (once again I failed to check in time.)Dead Pressed posted:Freebooter, I'm back in Knoxville and we're free now if you still want a place to stay! We were in Knoxville Sunday night, but NitroSpazz put us in touch with a mechanic who worked on the bikes and put us up and was just one of the nicest people we have met on this trip. Sorry we missed you though! As to how we did this long term, the answer is - with great difficulty. The bikes have custom seats but they're only OK and at the end of the day 300 miles on any dual sport is uncomfortable. On these, the amount of time it took into each ride before I started to be in pain grew less and less with each passing day.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2014 00:52
|
|
|
New Orleans was great – I could happily live there if it wasn’t so hot and muggy, but that’s kind of the point I guess. I could also happily spend a week in the French Quarter alone. Alas, we have a schedule, so after a day we cruised along the coast to Alabama. I was trying to get a photo of the bikes with every “Welcome to X” sign, but missed Louisiana because it was at the edge of an on-ramp on the interstate, and became less determined after that. We were on our way to the tiny town of Seminole, Alabama, to visit Ian and his wife Tammy. Ian is a Scottish migrant who is the brother of my Dad’s girlfriend, herself a Scottish immigrant to Australia. You look at Alabama on the map and its coastal portion seems tiny, but it does have one large river and city in it, which caused us issues. We got into Mobile around rush hour. Seminole is to the east of it, and you have to cross the Tensaw River (which is more of a gigantic, marshy delta). The traffic was awful and my bike was having overheating problems, worsened by the fact that it was about 100 degrees. Google Maps said there was a traffic incident of some kind up ahead. “gently caress this,” I said. “We can either sit in traffic for an hour or detour north for an hour, and at least if we detour we get some air flow and cool down.” So we went north, trying to get over the river on I-65. Only there was some kind of incident up there as well – lots of police cars, detours, traffic, some kind of FEMA emergency truck rushing up past us in the stopping lane. I was starting to feel like I was in the beginning of a zombie apocalypse movie. We pulled over for a while to ring Ian and let my bike cool down and found out that apparently there had been a tanker explosion on the I-65. “Well, that’s OK,” I said, flicking through Google Maps. “We’ll just take the next… bridge… north… oh.” There is no other bridge across the Tensaw River for another 100 miles north. So we went back down into Alabama hoping the traffic had cleared up, and promptly got lost.  We eventually ended up crawling over the city’s main bridge, which had had a minor crash of its own and was also full of overflow traffic from the tanker blast further north. Then my bike’s engine overheated and we had to pull over in the emergency lane.  This was about a hundred metres above the ground – Dad, as I have mentioned, has a phobia of heights. A few helpful strangers stopped to ask if we were OK, including a state trooper, which ended up being the only traffic interaction we had with police the whole trip. That IDP was a waste of money!  It was well after sunset when the traffic finally cleared a bit and we managed to cross the bridge. We’d arrived in Mobile at about 4 and didn’t get to Seminole, a mere 40 miles away, until 10:30. Ian and his wife Tammy were lovely people, and hopefully we’ll see them again in the UK next year when they come over and Dad comes up for a family wedding. Hopefully I will have survived in London rather than gone crawling back to Melbourne.  Our next stop was Knoxville, where CA poster NitroSpazz had put us in touch with a mechanic named Eric who could get cheap parts and also offered to put us up. The ride up through Alabama was the first time since New Mexico that riding was actually pleasant. It was nothing amazing, just wooded land with farms and the occasional hill, but the Great Plains were a sensory deprivation tank and I very much enjoyed this ride by comparison. We stopped for the night in Rome, Georgia, and the next day we began our ascent into the Appalachians. We stopped at a place called Moto Mountain, run by a fellow named Motorcycle Bob, and had an early lunch there before checking out his local off-road track, which was covered in families with off-road bikes and ATVs and dune buggies. A nice view confirmed that we were definitely entering the mountains.   We encountered a thunderstorm not long after this, with lightning flashing down through the peaks ahead of us, and soon had to shelter at a gas station while it passed.  I picked up a piece of fuzzy logic somewhere that says you're safer on a motorcycle during a thunderstorm than off it, because you’re just as tall off it and the tyres are rubber. No idea whether that’s true or not, and I wasn’t keen to test it. It passed after an hour and we were up into the mountains proper.  I had this idea in my head – maybe a lot of Americans do too – that the West is the land of untamed wilderness and beautiful landscapes, while the East is covered in farms and factories and cities and highways (much like China, actually). And while there is a lot of that, there’s also plenty of beautiful mountains and good riding, too. The Appalachians were great even before we got to the Tail of the Dragon.  The Tail of the Dragon is part of Deals Gap, a long and twisty road coming over a pass in the Appalachians down into Tennessee. There’s a “resort” (restaurant, motel and souveneir store) right before you cross the state line.  Here’s the Tree of Shame, festooned with broken parts and gear from people who’ve taken a spill on the road. The very first piece I was looking at, a fairing, had a date scrawled on it from two days prior.  We’d been warned that being a long weekend it would be packed, but apart from the resort, the roads actually weren’t too bad. Maybe the rain kept people away. I certainly would have preferred to ride it on a dry day on my Bonneville, but it was still a fantastic road. It also has professional photographers who sit there and snap photos of you as you go past, which you can then buy for a modest sum on the internet. This is an excellent idea and could use an introduction back home in Australia – you could probably make quite a bit of money sitting on the Black Spur on a weekend.    We came into Knoxville around evening time, and had dinner at a brewery while waiting for Eric, the mechanic I’d spoken to, to come back from a family thing. Knoxville turned out to be a surprisingly complicated place to navigate for a small city (see also: Pensacola, Florida) so it was getting towards nine or ten by the time we rolled up to Eric’s place. Eric was one of the nicest people we met all trip. He's a young mechanic starting his own business out of his garage in suburban/rural Knoxville. He has a small bedroom above the garage he was happy for us to sleep in. We spent a few hours chatting, and Dad and I were bushed so we went to sleep about midnight. I hadn’t actually realised it was a long weekend until long after I’d told Eric we would probably show up this weekend, and had earlier said we could reschedule if he didn’t want to work on a long weekend, but he was fine with it. Not only that, he actually went to work right after Dad and I went to sleep, just because he felt like it. Service – fitting tyres at 1:00am on Memorial Day.  This is Eric and his adorable baby daughter, who stays in the workshop with him while he works, since Eric’s wife works at a school during the day.   Overall it was a pretty great set-up. He’s talking about expanding and building another workshop, and I’m sure they’ll have more kids, so that place should be thriving in 10 years. His shop is appointment only and he has no website, but his email is cycledagain "at" gmail, if you're ever looking for a good mechanic in Knoxville. With Dad’s chain fixed, new tyres, and a general service, we left around 3:00pm to get as far up the Blue Ridge Parkway as we could before sunset.  The BRP is beautiful. I knew in the back of my head that the Appalachians weren’t going to compare to the Rockies, but I forgot that they’re the same height as the Australian Alps back home, and I love riding in the Australian Alps. I grew up on the west coast of Australia, one of the flattest places on the planet, and these are all great mountains as far as I’m concerned. We made it as far as Little Switzerland – which is not very far at all – and whiled away the evening at the bar talking to a traveller on a Versys, a guy named David from upstate New York who quit his job as a railway engineer and is riding out west to seek his fortune. He’s on ADV rider, although I didn’t get his username.  David was one of the few people we met and talked to on this trip who was my age, rather than Dad’s. (I guess Eric was too, but he’s in the family stage rather than the carefree adventure stage, so he feels older to me than he actually is.) Are older people inherently friendlier than young people? Anyway, we left Little Switzerland early next morning with the aim of doing as much of the BRP as we could, though I knew we couldn’t do all of it because we’d arranged to be in Washington that evening and it’s just too slow and windy. And this is where I had my crash. I took a bunch of photos in the aftermath which I’ll post out of order to give you a better idea of what happened. We’d been riding for about two or three hours, stopping now and then to take photos etc. We were on a mountainside road with a slow black car in front of us. I was leading, as usual, with Dad behind. The black car pulled into a side road to let us pass, and I glanced down it out of idle curiosity to see where it led. That was all it took – two seconds of not paying attention to the road – for me to stray off the asphalt into the grass at the edge of the road. This is the approach:  I can’t take any credit for any decisions my brain made in the next adrenaline-soaked two seconds, whether good or bad, but what I think might have happened was this: I was on the grass. My momentum was such that I couldn’t get left, back up onto the road. And there was a sign looming up ahead of me – the only loving sign for two miles. I didn’t want to hit that at 30 or 40 or 50mph, whatever I was going, so I think I tried to edge around it to the right. But of course the embankment was right there, and too steep, and I went down it. I analyse it like that now. At the time I basically just glanced back at the road and found myself careening off it, a single thought foremost in my brain with horrifying clarity: This is happening. This is really, actually happening.  (That’s Dad’s bike leaning against the sign, after he picked it up; at the time he just dropped it. The dirt scuff is where I went down.) I came off the bike, went flying forward and to the right – this is the moment I thought I was going to die, or at least be paralysed – hit the slope on my shoulder, rolled, saw the sky, rolled, saw the bike sliding down the slope and one of the panniers tumbling away, rolled again, came to a halt halfway down in the scrub, and couldn’t breathe. I’d winded myself. That was all. I sat there in the crouching position I’d landed in, astonished that I was alive. Dad came scrambling down after me a few moments later, yelling my name, and because I was winded and couldn’t breathe I couldn’t tell him I was OK. After a minute I managed to choke in some air and said, “I’m OK. I’m alive.” More to myself, still in disbelief, I added, “I’m still alive.” Dad waded further downslope through the scrub – thorn bushes and broken tree branches – to hit the bike’s kill switch. The guy in the black car that had pulled over, meanwhile, came running up the road yelling that he didn’t have a cell signal. We called up to reassure him that I was OK and didn’t need an ambulance.  “Sorry to give you guys a scare,” I said, after I limped up the slope. As far as I could tell I just had a few cuts and scrapes, and bruised ribs.  So I was alive, and very grateful. But I assumed I'd utterly hosed the bike, and that we’d be waiting here for hours for a truck to tow it out, and that the trip was over, at least for me. I scrambled down the slope again to take off my luggage and panniers, since that would have to be done no matter what. Dad and the car driver came down to carry the stuff up, but I was joined by a guy in an orange shirt, who’d pulled over to help, and asked me if I’d tried starting it. “Uh... no,” I said, looking at him as if he was loopy.  I forget this guy’s name, but he was the kind of person who immediately takes charge of a situation. (I found out later he was RCMP on vacation.) We got it into neutral, and to my amazement it actually started fine. “I don’t think your forks are bent,” he said. “Any cracks in the engine casing?” There weren’t. It was a miracle enough that I was OK; two miracles in one day was more than I deserved. The RCMP guy also confidently predicted we could put it in neutral, push it through the scrub and roll it along the slope to a grassier, flatter area. I thought he was dreaming, but we decided to give it a shot - me, him, Dad, the car driver, and two guys on Harleys who'd stopped to help. We all took up positions to grip and push it, with Dad standing to the bike's right, downslope. "Dad," I said. "Please don't stand there. If it falls it could kill you." Three miracles in one day is too much to ask for. The RCMP was right again. Together, the six of us managed to get it through the worst of the scrub and up into the grass.  I was honestly amazed. And I was touched by all these people who stopped to help us. It feels like you’re setting the bar pretty low to be grateful for people who stop to help after a major motorcycle accident, but I kept thinking of when me and my friend Chris went to Tasmania, and on the first day he has a bad spill near Moles Creek, and at least five or six cars drove right past while both he and his bike were still on the ground and I was crouching by him making sure he was OK.  These guys were on their way to Rolling Thunder in Washington; or had just come from it, I forget. I learned the names of all the people who stopped to help us, but my brain was understandably frazzled and I’ve forgotten them all. They took lots of photos, too – I should have got their email addreses, but I wasn’t thinking of it at the time. “Lucky boy,” Dad said after they’d all left. “Very lucky boy.”  We tinkered with the bike for a bit. The windshield was smashed. The handlebars had been shifted, so I had to push them back in. And the mirrors were bent, but I easily pushed them back into shape. The pannier frames were cracked, but still held - the next day I paid a guy at a muffler shop $10 to weld them back. And that was it. I drove the loving thing off a cliff and it still ran fine. Japanese engineering. Not to mention my body. That crash easily could have killed me, let alone any other spot on the BRP – as anyone who’s driven it can attest, there are a lot of sheer drops. Even thirty feet further up the road from the crash was much, much steeper. I didn’t deserve to survive that crash. I certainly didn’t deserve to keep on riding, to finish the trip with my bike and body unscathed. I wish I could say it made me focus more and pay attention more, but it didn’t. I’ve been riding a bike almost every day for the past three years, and this was the first crash I’ve had since one in Vietnam in 2010, but sometimes I feel like I’m too much of a daydreamer to safely ride a motorcycle. My mind wanders – I look at the view, and other roads, and other vehicles. I don’t focus on the road enough. We’d obviously lost about an hour to the crash, and neither of us felt much more like riding any more mountain roads. (Dad probably had as bad a scare as me; it was the actual realisation of his fear of heights.) Anyway, I felt like I’d got the full Blue Ridge Parkway experience. So we left on the next road and hit the interstate.  Dad had been having a fuel issue with his carburettor – his bike had no power under load – and we stopped at a few bike shops that were too busy to help us. I kept spontaneously bursting into laughter throughout the day, as much as it hurt my ribs, because I was so goddamn happy to be alive. Also it was amsuing that I tossed my bike down a mountain and it ran fine, whereas Dad was having engine issues. We ended up in a Super 8 that night in Roanoke, Virginia. I rang the guy in DC we were staying with to let him know we wouldn’t be there, rang Eric to ask about the carby, rang Cole to tell him about the crash, rang my girlfriend in Australia because I was feeling shaky. I think I slept better that night than any other in America – I was utterly exhausted in both mind and body. The next morning we went to Roanoke’s local Kawaskai dealer, Star City Power Sports, where the local mechanics squeezed us into their schedule and ended up spending about four hours working on the bike. Once again, I was thoroughly impressed by the courtesy and friendliness of American mechanics and dealer staff, which Australian mechanics and dealers could take notice of. A guy’s Honda Goldwing caught fire while we were there, which broke up the wait somewhat. Some kind of electrical issue.  Dad also wanted a photo with this customer because he had an open carry. Sometimes I have to remind Dad that people are people, not tourist attractions.  We ended up leaving Roanoke about 3:00, and didn’t roll into Washington’s suburbs until maybe 8:00. We stayed with Lane, a guy who’s been reading my stuff online for years now, and it was nice to finally meet him – a shame we couldn’t spend longer before hitting the hay and getting up early to take in the sights of DC.    Rolling Thunder again.  War memorials are always a moment for reflection, but the ones in DC are particularly so because of the massive number of elderly vets present on Honour Flights. (I’d heard of this before, but had to look it up to find out the name.) There’s something very humbling about witnessing frail old men, many of them in wheelchairs with oxygen bottles, making a pilgrimage to visit the memorials to the most important time in their lives, to remember their lost friends and reflect on what happened. It’s one of those things that makes you simultaneously sad and happy, and gives me extremely warm feelings towards the Honour Flight people. I had some more stuff written up here about how I feel about the position of the military in America, but this probably isn't the place for it, so never mind. Suffice to say that as a foreigner it’s one of those mildly unnerving culture shock things, like when you see someone carrying a gun or find out your waiter earns $3 an hour. Anyway, we left DC about 3:00 in the afternoon, for the final leg to New York. Google Maps said it would take about four or five hours with traffic, so I was expecting to get in around 8:00. The heart of rush hour, but I honestly doubted we could enter at any time and not hit bad traffic. It had been drizzling all day. It began to rain as we left DC, and it rained, and rained, and rained, all the way through Maryland and Delaware. Visibility was terrible, my helmet was fogging up, and my legs were cramped. Dad – not as tolerant of hardship as I am – came up behind me flashing his lights to insist that we pull over.  Not a happy chappy.  The rain eased up north of Delaware, but we were still freezing cold all the way up the New Jersey Turnpike. It looks like such a small state on the map, in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still 120 miles up the turnpike. Also, by the time we crossed the Verazzano Bridge, I’d paid approximately $7,500 in tolls. That bridge was my first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline, a moment which I’d imagined many times in this ride. When it actually happened, though, it was like what I’m told the view from Mt Everest is like – you’re half dead and can’t appreciate it. We got stuck in traffic somewhere in a bridge in Brooklyn. Google Maps said there’d been a traffic incident. It was almost 10:00pm; I’d told the girl we were picking up the keys from for our airbnb place that I’d be there by 8:00. My engine overheated, and we once again found ourselves pulled over on the side of a bridge.  “Maybe we should get in the far left lane,” Dad said, standing as close to traffic as he could. “Seems to be moving a bit more.” “Because we need to turn right in about a hundred metres,” I said. “Stop being a wuss, you’re not going to fall off the edge.” Eventually my engine cooled down a bit and we left the freeway in favour of driving our way across the backstreets of Brooklyn to reach Queens, where we were staying. The condition of the roads in New York’s outer boroughs is atrocious, and frankly embarrassing for a first world country. I have literally seen roads in Vietnam and Cambodia in better condition. Some of the potholes almost threw me off the bike. We got lost and unlost and curved around and pulled over about twenty times so I could check Maps. (Again, I deeply regret not buying a GPS.) Eventually I found the apartment of the girl with the keys, and was overjoyed that the address of our airbnb place was only five minutes away... except it was the wrong address, and I had to check my emails again in some back alley of a warehouse lot with workers on smoke break eyeing us off. Finally, miraculously, we rolled into Astoria at about 11:00pm. The actual drop-off point for the motorbikes was in southern New Jersey with a friend of Cole’s named Gary. I’d known that for a long time, but ignored Gary’s suggestion that we simply ride the bikes to his place and take the train to New York. I wanted to say I’d ridden from LA to New York, not to New Jersey. I’d already been regretting that decision somewhere in Staten Island. Driving in New York traffic, as I said later, made me want to vomit blood. “I’m strongly considering getting up at 4:30 so we can go straight down there and miss the rush,” I said.  Never was a beer more well deserved. We did, indeed, get up at 4:30am. I’d previously given a lot of thought to where we should photograph the bikes in New York, to match the beach-and-palm-tree shot in California. Coney Island? Times Square? Battery Park? But when it came down to it I just said, “Take a stupid loving photo out the front so we can go.”  It was a shame to end such a great trip like that. This is probably obvious, but if you ever drive across the US you should do it East to West, not the other way around. Not that places like New York and Washington don’t have many wonderful features, but you never, ever want to drive here, let alone cap off your amazing roadtrip by driving here. Unfortunately as an Australian bound for the UK, my geographic choices were made for me. So that was our final proper ride – at dawn, with the sun rising behind us, heading down the New Jersey Turnpike, once again paying the GDP of Honduras in tolls, stopping for breakfast at Denny’s in Bordentown and rolling into Gary’s house in southern New Jersey about 9:30.  Gary, pictured here with his son, was a really nice guy. We talked to him for ages before he drove us all the way up to Trenton to take the train back into the city. He also took a final shot of us with the bikes.  When we got back into New York I had to quickly head out to JFK to pick up my girlfriend, with whom I’m spending two weeks here before we go to London. Dad flew out the next day, back to Australia and back to his job. And that was the end. Overall, we rode from James Tucker’s house in Claremont, California to Gary Warren’s house in Bridgetown, New Jersey, clocking up a total of almost 7,000 miles. We visited 19 states, and passed through cities as diverse as San Francisco, Las Vegas, Houston, New Orleans, Knoxville and Washington. We saw Alcatraz and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and the White House. We rode across mountains and deserts and forests and farmland. We shivered in the snow in California and sweated in the sun in Louisiana. We drank with cowboys in Colorado, Mexicans in Taos and Australians in New Orleans. We had problems with carburettors and tyres and chains and my own stupid inattention. It was a fantastic, diverse trip through an amazing country and I’m really sad it’s over. Many, many thanks to James and Colleen in LA, Barry in Colorado, the Morrisons in Alabama, Eric in Knoxville, the Conaways in DC, Gary in New Jersey, and the hundreds of friendly and anonymous Americans all over the country who helped us out in little ways and big ways. This was a very good month. freebooter fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Jun 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2014 18:28
|
|
|
 That's one hell of a drop--glad both you and the bike made it through unscathed! Thanks for the trip report and fantastic photos! It's so easy to forget the great stuff in your own backyard. You've awakened a burning desire for me to do a coast to coast trip sooner rather than later. Edit: Seconding New York being kind of meh. I just got back from a trip up there, and I was amazed at how poor the roads were--West Virginia has better markings and nicer roads than all the rural ones I drove through. There's a lot of really great things about the place, but overall New York is overpriced, overcrowded, and overrated. Catatron Prime fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jun 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2014 19:31
|
|
|
Great thread man. Thank you for posting the pictures and such detailed comments.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2014 19:54
|
|
|
I am just as sad as you are that the trip is over because i enjoyed the posts. Good for you for making that trip happen for yourself and your dad. You will never forget it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2014 14:10
|
|
|
Thanks for your awesome trip report, dude, I really enjoyed reading it. Glad you didn't get mangled in the crash.freebooter posted:
Favourite thing of the month, right here. Sign makes it extra funny.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2014 15:28
|
|
|
Thanks guys  OSU_Matthew posted:Edit: Seconding New York being kind of meh. I just got back from a trip up there, and I was amazed at how poor the roads were--West Virginia has better markings and nicer roads than all the rural ones I drove through. There's a lot of really great things about the place, but overall New York is overpriced, overcrowded, and overrated. Oh, I'm absolutely loving New York, I just don't understand why the gently caress anyone would ever drive here. I actually maybe regret coming here right before moving to London, because it's probably the only city in the Western world that's bigger and better than London and now I want to live here instead. M42 posted:Favourite thing of the month, right here. Sign makes it extra funny. It was actually a shame my crash happened on the BRP rather than the Dragon, or I could've added my shattered windshield to the collection.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2014 16:14
|
|
|
I just marathoned through this thread over my lunch hour. This was great. Thanks for posting the pictures and your thoughts about the trip.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2014 18:57
|
|
|
This thread is pretty awesome, glad you had a chance to do it. This is almost the opposite of how I'd want to see Australia some day, buying a cheap dual sport on the west and riding east. How would you compare the two? I figured that would be a great non touristy way to see the country.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2014 18:12
|
|
|
giundy posted:This thread is pretty awesome, glad you had a chance to do it. This is almost the opposite of how I'd want to see Australia some day, buying a cheap dual sport on the west and riding east. How would you compare the two? I figured that would be a great non touristy way to see the country. The western half of the continent is 99% flat. If you like sitting on straight roads for eight hours at a time in the blistering heat, you'll love it. There's some spectacular scenery here and a couple of decent roads in the eastern states / Tasmania, but if you're coming from the US for the riding experience you'll be severely disappointed.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2014 23:12
|
|
|
Yeah, I had a few Americans say they'd love to travel to Australia and ride around it, but I agree with prukinski - it's a wonderful country in many ways, but not a great country to motorcycle in. You could have a pretty decent trip cutting between the mountains and the ocean on the east coast - maybe starting in Melbourne, taking the ferry down to Tasmania for a loop of the island, then coming back up and riding north through Sydney up into Queensland. But there is absolutely nothing that will compare to the Western United States, which is probably the best place in the world for riding a motorbike.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2014 23:33
|
|
|
freebooter posted:Yeah, I had a few Americans say they'd love to travel to Australia and ride around it, but I agree with prukinski - it's a wonderful country in many ways, but not a great country to motorcycle in. Don't let us put you completely off a world tour of Australia. The Western states are stunning in their own way. If you like to be alone, the desert and coastal regions of WA and SA are as good as it gets short of travelling to Mongolia. But do yourself a favour and buy/hire a car to see it. You're gaining nothing on a bike except discomfort, boredom and the potential for disaster. There are parts of the country bordered by large signs saying if you get lost, no-one is coming for you so provision accordingly. Can't carry nearly enough water on a bike to make it an adventure.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 03:19
|
|
|
I've been interested in renting a 4x4 and driving across the deserty areas of Australia (in the austral winter, of course) for some time now. What kind of truck rental places are there?
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 05:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 00:23 |
|
|
Safety Dance posted:I've been interested in renting a 4x4 and driving across the deserty areas of Australia (in the austral winter, of course) for some time now. What kind of truck rental places are there? I did that for my 30th. There's tons of rental places in the state capital of your choice that'll hook you up with a 4x4 with unlimited kilometers. You'll have to drive for a few hundred kms to get to the 'outback' proper from there, but it's way cheaper than flying into a regional centre like Alice Springs and renting locally - you'll pay a higher per day cost and they typically charge for distance travelled as well, which add up fast given that the whole point of outback travel is to go a long-rear end way into nowhere. Fly into Adelaide or Darwin and go from there. One way rentals, in my experience, are crazy expensive in Australia but that can work to your advantage if you're willing to be flexible. Campervan companies looking to return one-way rentals often offer their trucks at neglible rates (sometimes including fuel) if you're willing to take them to x destination within a specified time. Easily searchable. Also, you can rent emergency beacons cheap in most places if you're heading into the desert - despite what I said a post or two up, the army/emergency services/local hermits will rescue you eventually if you set one of those off. Worth the peace of mind in my opinion.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 05:39
|
|