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Hello! I've always wanted to ride across the United States between LA and New York, and since I recently decided to quit my job in Melbourne and emigrate to the UK, it's sort of on the way. Sort of. So why not? I quit my job in December and went back to my hometown of Perth for a glorious summer sleeping rent-free in Dad's spare bedroom and going to the beach every day. The plan was to go back to Melbourne for a bit to visit friends in mid-April, then fly to LA to buy a bike, ride it across the USA, sell it in New York (where my girlfriend would fly up and meet me) then fly to the UK together to start living in London.  Packing! I asked around on ADV rider and was pointed towards a guy named James who lives in LA and helps foreigners out with buying motorbikes. It was going to be a solo trip, but while I was in Perth, working out all the nuts and bolts, Dad had an epiphanic conversation with a taxi driver (as you do) and decided he wanted to come with me. OK. We were planning to buy a pair of KLRS off a guy called Cole, who lives in Colorado but was storing them in LA, and after talking to him for a bit it turned out it would be to our mutual advantage if we could transport them to the east coast for him. So we paid him a bit of cash, and after arriving in LA last week I went and picked them up with James and his wife Colleen. They've got a few miles under their belts already and come with useful stuff like seat covers and panniers, plus one of them is already lowered, which is good for Dad. So anyway. I got here a week beforehand to sort stuff out, Dad flew in on Saturday and 24 hours later James and Colleen took us for a ride up into the San Gabriel Mountains. I'd already been acclimatizing but for Dad it was a bit of a baptism of fire to ride along LA freeways on the way to the mountains. Everyone - literally everyone - goes 10 to 15 mph above the speed limit. What the gently caress is up with that?  In a word, amazing. Easily the best ride I've ever been on, despite the rough road surface. Snow in April! At times across the pass we we reaching elevations higher than Australia's highest mountain. And this is just behind LA - imagine the Sierra Nevadas!  I was actually legit jealous of Americans for having this kind of thing in their backyards. We went up to a place called Newcombs Ranch which was awesome. Whole spread of motorbikes out the front, from sports bikes to hipster cafe racers to Harley Davidsons. I was grinning as we walked in and filled with a panging sense of longing to live here and have access to the these kinds of places.  Route 66. Everybody above a certain age back home excitedly asks if you're going to ride Route 66 and it's easier to just sort of nod than explain that it's only famous because of a song and is actually a pretty featureless highway.  This is my Dad. He looks like a biker.  This is me. I look like a doofus.  We're sort of like the original odd couple. In fact in San Francisco Dad (moderately conservative) noted the amount of gay couples around and wondered aloud if everyone assumed we were a gay couple. I assured him that they certainly did.    Yesterday we cruised up the Big Sur coast. It reminded me a lot of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, and I wanted to say the GOR was better, but the truth is Big Sur is probably a bit better than that. Not twice as better but maybe 1.5 times as better. That was it - that was all Australia had and you had to take that away from us too. Thanks America. Not even America, just California. We're in San Francisco tomorrow but will be heading to Tahoe/Yosemite tomorrow. 30 days to go!
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May 1, 2014 06:55
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We spent a day in San Francisco doing the touristy stuff – Alcatraz, the cable cars. (Dad thought the cable cars were neat but being a Melburnian I sniffed my nose at their inadequacy.) I’d booked the cheapest hotel I could find at the last minute and found out later that it was in the Tenderloin, apparently a crime area, and after dark it certainly felt like it. We walked through Civic Square at sunset and I felt pretty uncomfortable. Not unsafe, exactly, but close enough – and this is meant to be one of America’s wealthiest cities. It sort of made me realise that Australia doesn’t have a substantial underclass like America. On the amusing side, some Salvation Army guys setting up a mobile soup kitchen asked if we wanted a meal. Hadn’t even been camping yet and already looked like bums. Anyway, the next day we hit the road for the Sierra Nevadas. After 150 miles through the urban sprawl of Sacramento we were once again in wonderful, windy mountain roads.  After Lake Tahoe we took a wrong turn and ended up at the state line, the sign being my first tip-off that we were going the wrong way. I’d previously said I wanted to get a photo of the bikes beneath every “Welcome to X” sign, because Australia only has six enormous states and I find crossing into a new one to be a novelty. Dad asked if I wanted to take a photo now. “No, because I was very careful to pull up short and not enter Nevada,” I said. You have to do things right, y'know?  Views amazing as always. California is God’s country.  We ended up in Mono Lake. This was the first night we camped. It’s kind of confusing; I’m told you can camp anywhere you want in any state forest or park managed by the BLM, but it’s hard to tell what exactly is managed by the BLM. Also sometimes they want permits which is difficult when you show up at 7pm and the ranger station is shut.  We ended up going up a creek and finding what looked like a semi-popular camping spot, with stone fire rings, and camped there. Went into Lee Vining to buy food to cook and the teenage cashier was vaguely reassuring about bears, telling us they were pretty much just after food and easily scared away. On the plus side, the rushing creek water drowned out Dad’s snoring. (After the first night we spent in a twin motel room, I asked him at breakfast the next day: “Did Mum divorce you because you snore? Because I would have.”) On the negative side, Mono Lake is at something like 5000 feet and it was so cold that we were on the verge of freezing to death. OK, maybe not that cold, but it was definitely cold enough that neither of us could sleep. I had on thermals, jeans, a few t-shirts, a hoody, my sleeping bag and ThermaRest, and still couldn’t sleep because my exposed face was so cold. I ended up putting my jacket lining over it, but then was drowning in my own exhaled CO2. We’d been told the Tioga Pass – the road over the mountains back west in Yosemite – was due to open the next day, but when we woke up, broke camp and rode past it, it was still closed. We had breakfast at a diner and asked, and they said it was due to open around noon. We figured we’d kill a few hours down at the lake, but when we rode past the pass entrance at 9.30am it had opened. So we got to be some of the first people to cross the pass this year...   ...which must surely be one of America’s best roads. Or maybe I’m biased because of the snow and stuff. I wish I’d taken more photos, but it’s one of those roads where you just don’t want to stop riding. It’s beautiful. Yosemite – not so great. Amazing, yeah, there’s a reason it’s a national park, but it’s one of those places (like Angkor Wat in Cambodia or Lijiang in China) which is seriously compromised by the amount of tourists there. We walked up to Yosemite Falls, paid $20 for a pair of sandwiches, and decided to keep moving. We'd considered camping there but it was booked solid, and in any case, gently caress paying to "camp" in a lot surrounded by 200 RVs. Kings Canyon was much more manageable – although we were about the same altitude as Mono, so we tried to book rooms in the lodge. No dice, but the clerk told us the general store was open for another 7 minutes so we scrambled over there to buy fleece sleeping bag liners. Dad jokingly asked about bears as we were leaving, and when the cashier told him that this was indeed bear country, Dad looked at him with an expression as though he’d made a really inappropriate remark and said, “gently caress off. You’re joking?” “It’s California,” I said, halfway out the door. “There are bears everywhere. Everywhere is bear country. Get over it.” Apparently a lot of them did indeed shuffle around camp at night, though I slept like a log inside my new fleece bag and didn’t hear any of them.  The next day we were further south, trying to cross the Sherman Pass. We came to a point where the road was closed with an iron barrier, but there was a side road next to it, and my brain (eager to find the most convenient explanation) suggested the side road must be the way over the Sherman Pass. That was how we ended up lost and riding around the southern Sierra Nevada for an hour and a half while the sun was setting. We ended up camping in a little waterfall gully, planning to turn back the next day.    The next day we looped south via Kernville and ended up in the desert. Still really amazed by California – that you can go from palm trees and beaches to snow-covered mountains to arid desert in the space of a few hours.  Death Valley was pretty neat. Then we were in Nevada properly this time.  Straight from the amazing splendour of California, into one of the worst rides of my life. It’s all very desolate and beautiful and that, but my God it was windy. Not since I was blown across three lanes of the Bolte Bridge and nearly went over the edge have I put up with such a windy ride – and this one lasted for hours, leaning 30 degrees to the right all the way to Vegas. So we were pretty exhausted after that and got lost going up and down the Strip because the Flamingo is doing construction on its normal entrance, and by the time we finally found the parking lot were were fed up. Fortunately my good buddy Mike happens to be in town on business, and came by to visit us just in time to help lug all our poo poo up to the room.  He even ironed my shirt while I had my first shower in three days. What a fellow.  We went and had dinner at the Harley Davidson cafe, which Dad found quite entertaining.  James said that on your first night in Vegas you will stay up until at least 3am no matter how tired you are. Mike went back to his hotel at 10 because he’s sharing a room with his boss and didn’t want to stumble in late and drunk; Dad went to bed about 2am; I stayed up until 6 or 7 playing blackjack with a bunch of Korean businessmen and a guy from Ulladulla, and won $300. Gambling is not normally one of my vices but it’s surprisingly easy to let the clock go round while you’re getting free drinks and doing inexplicably well. I was fairly drunk and disoriented when I stumbled out onto the Strip and it was daylight; then I wandered up and down for a bit before remembering I'd been gambling in my own hotel. Las Vegas is pretty amazing. I'm not sure what to think about it. I mean there's orphans in Africa and all that and yet we have a gigantic, unsustainable city of flashing neon leisure in the middle of the desert. It makes me either really ashamed or really proud of the human race. Probably both. We were only planning to stay 2 nights here but booked a third because three nights of camping left Dad half-dead and he wanted a bed again. Tomorrow we’ll probably head east past the Hoover Dam and up towards the Grand Canyon, then I think just sort of across the southern Utah and Colorado/northern Arizona and New Mexico area, which seems to be where all the national parks and stuff are. If you know any good rides or anything we absolutely shouldn't miss around there, let me know!
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May 7, 2014 01:29
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Snowdens Secret posted:I'm confused by the fact that you seem to have packed sneakers to change into when you get off the bike and take off your Chuck Taylors They're trail shoes, for if we do a bit of hiking in national parks. I know I should really be wearing boots but... eh. The Royal Nonesuch posted:Keep us updated, and good luck! If I was to give one tip, do your best to not eat at chain restaurants as you travel. Seek out the little small-town places.* I am absolutely loving the American diner experience. Especially the free coffee refill. I spent a lot of time travelling in Asia a few years ago, puzzling over weird picture labels in supermarkets and ending up eating dried roots or whatever. It's soooo nice to travel in an easy, familiar country, where I can get up in the morning, ride to a diner for a gigantic breakfast of bacon and eggs, and know that there'll be a clean Western toilet there. OSU_Matthew posted:Wow, that should be a fantastic trip! Do you guys have any must-see spots or a general route planned out yet? Or are you just going to try to hit as many highlights/national parks as you can along the way? Only a vagueish route. I highlighted some of it above. We'll probably swing south through New Mexico, and go east across Texas. I want to see New Orleans and Dad's girlfriend's brother lives in Alabama, so we'll visit him. Then up the Appalachians and the east coast to New York.
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May 7, 2014 01:36
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mguirk the jerk posted:I've never been out west, but I'm living vicariously through your posts. Please keep it up. And please enjoy every minute being with your dad -- unfortunately they have a tendency to croak before their due time. I think people have a tendency to not visit things that are in their own country. A lot of Americans I've talked to are surprised that I've never gone to Uluru or up north to Kakadu or anything, but in the same way, a lot of people in California have never been to Yosemite. When it's right there you assume you'll go "some day." But you should do it. Take a week off work, burn a day there and back on the interstate, just ride around the mountains a bit. LingcodKilla posted:What are the next couple states you are going through? Arizona tomorrow, then probably looping around Utah/Colorado/New Mexico. Then Texas and going east across the South.
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May 7, 2014 07:02
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Three nights is more than enough in Vegas. I ended up $250 ahead, but also bought a new iPhone for $700, largely because I’m well overdue for one and also because the headphone sockets on both my current iPhone and iPod are hosed, and it quickly became apparent in Nevada that America’s thousand of miles of empty desert highways will require music. We went east over the Hoover Dam, which gave me Half-Life flashbacks.  Here’s the Arizona state line, minus bikes because we couldn’t fit them in the crowded car park:  We detoured from the interstate to take Route 66 from Kingman to Seligman. For me it was a case of any excuse to get off a major highway, but for Dad it’s some kind of cultural touchstone. We stopped at Hackberry, a kitschy (but still interesting) old pit-stop full of souvenirs and memorabilia, and Dad bought a bunch of Route 66 stubby holders for his mates back home. I still don’t understand the older generation’s fascination with this road. For me it was always just a minor franchise of drive-through liquor stores in Western Australia with a particularly catchy jingle. (“Route 66! We bring liquor to your car! Route 66! You know we’re never far! Route 66... LIQUOR!”)  Beyond Seligman it started to get pretty brutal. Rainy, overcast skies, and winds which both unbalanced the bikes and cut to the bone. Fortunately we didn't get any more than drizzled upon; as any long-distance biker knows, wet weather gear is not so much attire to keep you dry as it is a magical talisman that wards off rain, while taking up space in your panniers.  I was surprised to find we were actually at something like 6,000 feet at we approached the Grand Canyon. But I guess it makes sense; it has to be deep and can’t really be below sea level because the river flows through it. We’d planned to camp somewhere in Kainab National Forest, but by the time we arrived in Williams we were both half frozen to death. We fuelled up and I rang the South Rim to see if there were any motel rooms available, and was thankfully successful. After unpacking all our stuff we wandered up to the restaurants along the rim for dinner. My first glimpse of the canyon was in those very last murky moments of dusk before everything goes properly dark. I could barely see anything but it was still amazing – a sense of a huge gap of nothingness ahead of you. I’m honestly glad that was my first impression of it, because in the daylight it’s still impressive but not quite as spooky as that sense of nothingness in front of you. It must have been absolutely amazing when the first explorers stumbled across it. It’s also one of those places impossible to capture in a photograph. You just have to visit.  Following a short hike along the rim we followed the roads east – would have skipped that hike, in fact, had I known there were so many great photo ops along the East Rim Drive – and looped north into Navajo territory and then up into Utah. Obligatory state line crossing:  We were aiming to make Zion by nightfall, and did so, but too late to see anything of the park. All the park campgrounds were full so we doubled back and stayed in the private one just outside the boundary.  Had a fairly crummy pine campfire, and Dad went to bed while I stayed up a bit later poking the fire. The teenage/early 20s people in the next campsite over were having a fairly vocal argument about faith and God. “Why say it here, if you don’t have the balls to say it in front of my aunt and my Mom?” raged one particular camper who’d clearly had too much too drink. Dad whispered over to me from his tent shortly into that argument. “Are you alright?” he asked. “You want me... you want me to come stand by the fire with you?” “Dad,” I said, “they’re college students. Not rednecks.” Dad’s three great fears on this trip are heights, bears and rednecks. We didn’t get shot overnight, but we did nearly freeze to death. Easily the coldest we’ve been since Mono Lake. You’d think that staying awake all night and barely getting a wink of sleep would be a good incentive to get up and get moving in the morning, but actually, the rising sun warms things up a bit, so by the time 8am rolls around you’re groggy and half-asleep and not in the mood to leave. I think we rolled out at about 10. Buffalo outside the park:  We hiked up to the Sentinel or Watchman or whatever it’s called in Zion National Park. Which is to say, Dad turned back halfway because of his overwhelming fear of heights, and I went all the way. It’s actually not all that great because it just overlooks the visitor centre and car park. The place is still beautiful though. One day I definitely want to come back to Zion and hike the Narrows.  That’s actually a recurring feeling on this trip, similar to one I had riding around Tasmania – it’s a great bike trip, but I feel like I should be parking a car and hiking for a few days. I’m not even much of a hiker, but there are some places in the world you should experience slowly, on foot. There were a whole bunch of bikers all throughout this part of Utah, participating in the Indian vs Harley race. Everyone was always happy to chat.  After stopping for lunch at a diner, Dad accidentally rode off with his $350 sunglasses sitting on the back of his bike. We went back and spent half an hour asking around if anyone had found them and rode up the highway slowly looking for them, and eventually found their mangled wreckage at the side of the road, run over by many cars. I felt sorry for him but still laughed. Bryce Canyon was beautiful. Here’s the obligatory photo that looks like the same photo everyone takes:  Utah definitely wins the prize for most surprising state. Somewhere I’d picked up the notion that it’s all flat and empty and rubbish, but it’s really amazing. There’s like five or six national parks stacked on top of each other and they’re all beautiful. Am I using that word a lot? Broken record? Blame Utah. Past Bryce Canyon, we went to Escalante and stopped off for fuel, groceries and food. We were planning to camp in the Dixie Forest north of Boulder. Whenever we get reception or wifi I’ve been using freecampsites.net to suss out good spots to camp. I am a firm believer that the only true camping is in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around, and that if you’re going to shell out $20 to pitch a tent in the middle of a bunch of other tents and RVs, you may as well pay a little extra and get a motel room. The thing is, that website is largely aimed at RV drivers, and they don’t have to worry about certain things that tent campers do. So a campsite which appears to be good may not be so good. Example: In Escalante we chatted to a biker named the Desert Doctor (who seems like a nice guy, by the way, and if you’re ever in the area you might want to make a note of his number in case anything happens.) He suggested we camp just north of Escalante and warned us that it got pretty mountainous north of Boulder. But I was stubborn and we still had an hour of daylight so I wanted to push on. The road between Escalanate and Boulder is surely one of the prettiest in America. We were in a hurry so we didn’t stop to take photos – here’s a Youtube video that doesn’t remotely do it justice. We were going through it at sunset, when the sky reflected the reds and purples and oranges of the rocky desert itself. Amazing. If you ever do it, definitely try to do it at sunset. Anyway, by the time we burned through Boulder and started heading the nine miles north to the camping spot I’d picked out, the last light of day was fading and the deer were starting to come out. But I was feeling good – we’d had an amazing sunset ride, stocked up on liquor, and were going to camp by a creek with a campfire. Here’s what RV drivers don’t have to worry about : cold. By the time we reached the spot I wanted to be, it was almost completely dark and we were at 9000 feet. The temperature was just above freezing and it was only 9.30pm.  “I’m never loving listening to you again,” Dad said. “I didn’t realise it would be this high,” I said. I’m Australian. When I look at a map, I just subconsciously assume it’s flat ground. I should have listened to the Desert Doctor. Probably a good rule of thumb to always listen to the locals. So we went back into town, turtling along at 30 miles an hour because the roads were swarming with deer. And all the motels we’d ridden past the first time suddenly had NO VACANCY signs. The helpful young stuff at the Burr Trail Grill rang around a bit for me, and eventually found us a room at some bed and breakfast. “Yeah, just go out of town like one mile, the road is called Salt Gulch or Hell’s Backbone or something, it’s another few miles down there...” We followed their directions and turned off the highway at what we thought was the right spot. With crappy motorbike headlights I caught a glimpse of a sign reading “GUEST RANCH” or something like that, and either "33 miles" or "3.3 miles." And then it was just us, and the darkness, and the cone of the headlights, and a slippery gravel road winding its way through scrubland. I was about ready to give up and camp at the edge of the road when we caught a glimpse of light in the darkness, and followed it to found ourselves at one of the best value rooms I’ve had while travelling – secluded log ranch, private suite on the top floor, blazing fast wifi, fireplace, free breakfast, all for $115. It irritated me that we’d shown up at 10.30pm and couldn’t get our money’s worth out of it, but whatever.  Next morning in daylight:  Seems like a very nice place for an extended stay (or even one night) if you’re ever in southern Utah. Just study their map carefully first. Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch. Next morning we went back through Boulder, back up the pass, back past the point where I’d intended to camp. Not far past there was a lot of snow on the ground. Going back to Boulder was definitely the right idea. (Well, listening to the Desert Doctor would have been the original right idea.) Grand Staircase was just a park we were planning to drive through to get to Monument Valley, but like all of Utah, it’s amazingly beautiful. I didn’t stop to take many photos because if you stop to take a photo of everything beautiful in Utah you’ll never get anywhere. We went down through Glen Canyon, also amazing:  Then we went down the Moki Dugway. This is basically a long set of gravel switchbacks descending a sheer cliff face that drops several miles down to the valley floor. I’m not afraid of heights, but I’m not ashamed to admit I did the entire thing in first gear and was ready to kiss the tarmac at the bottom. (I assume they keep it unpaved to deter people from going too fast.) Dad is afraid of heights, which is why I didn’t stop to take a photo – I was worried that if he stopped he wouldn’t be able to start again. Even I couldn’t stomach the view. The second last photo on this page probably captures it best: http://www.midwestroads.com/otherstates/mokidugway/. It still doesn’t come close, though. The word is "vertiginous." Down on the valley floor we went to Mexican Hat, and had one of the finest meals I’ve yet had in the US, at the grill place attached to the Mexican Hat Lodge. Give them your custom if you’re ever there. We went down into Monument Valley and drove around a bit taking photos. Didn’t do the whole 18-mile road or whatever it was, because after the Dugway we’d had enough of gravel and there was a storm blowing in.  Also it was what I refer to as Ha Long Bay Syndrome, from my motorbike trip up Vietnam. I saw all these limestone karst formations on the way north, and by the time I got to Ha Long Bay – which is by any objective standard amazing – it did nothing for me. Monument Valley is an amazing place as well, but after traversing southern Utah, my threshold for being amazed is quite high. We headed north a bit from there, and tonight we’re staying in a town called Bluff, still in Utah. Tomorrow we’re going to head into Colorado and hopefully get to the Telluride/Ouray/Silverton area. I have no idea if the passes are closed due to snow or whatever but we’ll drive in and have a look around anyway. Also, many thanks to the advice we've been given and even the offers of accommodation we've received - our plans are always up in the air so I don't know if we'll be heading through any of your areas, but it's always good to know you've got support in the world.
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May 11, 2014 06:07
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OSU_Matthew posted:While you're in Colorado you absolutely need to visit Silverton and nearby Animus Forks. Silverton is the quintessential surviving mining town, with mine tours, train rides, and your KLRs would be perfect to hit the nearby ghost town of Animus Forks/Eureka. The ride out to Animus is a one lane dirt/gravel trail along the mountainside, with a precipitous drop into the river below. It's the perfect ride for a dual sport, and the scenery is utterly spectacular. Hell, pretty much the entirety of Colorado is spectacular. I have heard of this and definitely want to do it. Dad will probably poo poo himself because of the height but that's OK. I'm just hoping it's not closed because of snow or anything - a lot of the passes in CA were and they are lower than some of the Colorado roads I'm pretty sure. quote:Appalachia is another highlight--like everywhere else, there's just so much to see and do, but you should especially try for the Blue Ridge Parkway and Smoky Mountain National Forest. The BR Parkway is definitely also on the list - one of the few things I have on the list for the east, actually, compared to the west. A guy in California also recommended something in Tennessee called the Dragon's Tail, or something like that? I forget, I have to google it. clutchpuck posted:I went through UT, CO, AZ, and NM with my wife and a friend last summer. Some advice for out there: keep hydrated. It's actually been seriously cold. Coming down into the relative warmth of Monument Valley today was the first time I took my jumper off since Death Valley, and I still had all the lining in my jacket. I honestly didn't expect America to still be this cold in late spring but I guess it's because it's at such high altitude in the west; we should be able to camp more once we get further south, but it looks like Colorado at least will be entirely motels. Which sucks both because it blows a hole in the budget and also because camping is just better. quote:Durango, CO is a cool little town with services and hotels and stuff. There's some pretty good beer at the Steamworks place. I didn't see much else in Colorado though, sadly; we came in from Montecello, UT and exited south of Pagosa Springs. Will bear all this in mind!
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May 11, 2014 06:16
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We've got thermarests, sleeping bags rated to about 5 celcius, and fleece liners we picked up at Kings Canyon... but still freezing. I think it's just because we're Australian, we're not remotely used to this kind of cold. Also we may head up to Moab today after all because it looks like it's raining and snowing in Colorado and won't clear until Wednesday.
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May 11, 2014 15:51
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Well, Colorado's snowed out, so yesterday we came up to Moab instead. Got rained on the whole way but it was only an hour and a half, and then we sank the rest of the day at the Moab Brewery. I still really want to do the million dollar highway and the whole Ouray/Silverton/Animus forks thing, so we'll try to wait it out. Thinking of heading to Ridgway tomorrow, and then on Wednesday Silverton and Ouray are meant to be warmer. Dead Pressed posted:Freebooter, it sounds as though you will be coming through the Smokies---if so, Knoxville TN shouldn't be too far out of your way (likely, I-40 and I-75th both cut through Knoxville!). As such, my wife and I would love to offer you and your pop a place to stay for a night or two. (https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1578255?s=YqGJ for reference, we offer it up to you for free moon dollars as a sign of southern hospitality to a goon and his father for one wicked trip!) We might have have another renter in the time frame you'd be looking at cutting through here, but we have a blowup and some spare space we'd offer up at that point in the very least. If you'd be interested, hit me up at bauden11p@gmail.com without the numbers. We'd love to be a part of a great international KLR love story! Plus, we have an air compressor to pump-----you up! Cheers! Not sure if we'll be going that way exactly, since this snowstorm has thrown a spanner in the time budget, but I'll let you know. I got a PM from someone also offering a place to stay near Knoxville and a buddy mechanic of his, and since we need to get the tyres replaced and bikes serviced before dropping them off in NJ, it looks like Knoxville might be worth the detour.
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May 12, 2014 22:20
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Dang. We're heading to Ridgway tomorrow and it looks like we'll join the 141 south of what looks like the interesting part. It's meant to be clearing up a bit tomorrow and sunny on Wednesday. I'm hoping on Wednesday we can ride south through the mountains. We may have to delay a day for it to clear, but this is one of the last things I'm really looking forward to before we hit the flatlands, so I don't mind waiting a day or two and having to cut out some of the South.
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May 13, 2014 05:33
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OK, massive snowstorms hit Colorado, so we decided to wait them out a day or two and head up to Moab after all. Unfortunately the same storm front was causing rain all over Utah. It was only about 90 minutes up to Moab – longest 90 minutes of my life. By the time we got to Moab we were both soaked through, couldn’t feel our hands or feet, and it was actually physically painful for me to get off my bike in the parking lot of the motel I’d reserved, because my legs had locked up in position. “If they aren’t ready for us to check in, I’m going to cry,” I said, although both of us were laughing, I think because we were so relieved we didn’t have to ride in the freezing rain anymore. After getting changed we drank the rest of the day away at the Moab Brewery – literally, from about 2pm to the point where they were putting the chairs on the tables. This isn’t as bad as it sounds because Utah has extremely strict liquor laws and all draft beer can only be 3.2% strength. We sat there and sank five pints each and wondered why we didn’t feel drunk. Also the waitress made me walk back to the hotel in the rain to get my passport because my Australian driver’s license isn’t valid proof of age in Utah, even though it’s apparently valid for me to drive on. Priorities.  Dad paid this bartender to take a photo with him because he was fascinated by his hair. The phrase “only in America” may have been used. Dad comes from a small, conservative city in Australia and is easily impressed. The next morning he was fairly hungover, so I went up to Arches National Park. I was tempted to go to Canyonlands and check out the White Rim but apparently that is not a one-day thing and also I was a bit hungover myself. Here is the famous arch. Honestly it’s probably not worth the two-hour round trip uphill hike.  Arches was far and away the busiest national park I’ve yet been to. I mean, Yosemite was crowded, but the roads didn’t seem to be. I guess it’s a driving oriented park. The next day we headed east into the bikes’ home state, Colorado! Do not be fooled by the sunshine, I had trouble feeling my hands, even with the heated grips on.  Still snow from the recent storms.  I’d booked a place to stay in Ridgway – we easily could have made it further, but according to the weather forecast it was still below freezing up in Ouray and Silverton. In the middle of the day. So Ridgway it was. After getting lunch we wandered up to the local brewery. I do love that tiny American towns all have their own breweries.  Here’s me and Baz, one of the locals we met at the brewery. He later took us down to one of Colorado’s unique, cutting-edge-of-history tourist attractions...  ...and then the distillery near our hotel, run by local chap Joe, who showed us around the machinery and gave us a few drops of raw vodka.  So that ended up being a big night as well. Dad was utterly wrecked the next morning. I really don’t think he had much more to drink than me. Obviously he just can’t handle his liquor as well as I can. I left him to his misery and took a ride up to Ouray, which is only fifteen minutes away and has some nice scenery.   Here’s Box Canyon Falls, which has old mining equipment sitting around in it.  The next morning we went and had breakfast at Barry’s workplace, the Chipeta Lodge, which looked amazing. For some reason when I’d looked it up the Ridgway Lodge seemed to be the only place to stay in town, but there’s heaps of them. I have to do this trip again on day know that I know all these good places and people. This is the view from the Chipeta’s rooftop bar - yes, they have a rooftop bar:  We went up to Ouray and hung around for a bit because there were roadworks on the Million Dollar Highway south to Silverton; apparently there was a massive landslide in winter and they’ve spent months scaling the mountain surface above the road to make it safe. It’s open for one hour in the middle of the day, and you still have to sit behind a bunch of traffic and wait your turn.  Didn’t stop to take any photos once on the highway itself, because there are signs everywhere warning that you shouldn’t because of avalanches, but it’s definitely one of the best roads in the country. Silverton itself is a neat little Wild West town, and Dad appreciated this:  I wanted to check out what I think is called the Alpine Loop, the offroad trail that goes through ghost towns like Animas Fork, but Dad’s crippling phobia of heights + the recent snowstorms + the fact that I’m told it’s only open in “summer” + the entrance to it being behind all the construction equipment for the DOT guys, added up to us not attempting it. I’ll come back one day and do it in August. That’s actually one of my regrets about this trip – we are doing it way too early in the year. We’ve been camping four nights out of more than two weeks, because it’s simply too loving cold in most of the West. Tonight, for example, we headed for the Sand Dunes National Park and were intending to camp but there was snow on the ground and it was going to get down to freezing point overnight. I mean, it’s not like we’ll actually die, but we won’t get any sleep or remotely enjoy the experience. I would rather shell out the money for a cheap motel. Hopefully once we hit the lowlands it will be warmer and we can try to recoup some of our lost budget. Which is to say my lost budget. I'm down to three grand and I still have to spend two weeks in New York and then go start a new life in London. Dad is aware of this and keeps trying to pay for everything, but I've made it clear that I want to pay my fair share, largely because he will be my creditor of first resort if I'm broke by the time I get to London. Here’s the obligatory photo I snapped at the beautiful-but-freezing sand dunes before we drove back across fifty miles of desolate prairie into Alamosa for the night.  Tomorrow we’re going to head south into New Mexico. I’m hoping it will be warmer but I know for a fact the northern half won’t be.
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May 16, 2014 06:35
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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.
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May 22, 2014 16:01
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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.
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May 22, 2014 16:05
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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.
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May 23, 2014 23:28
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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.
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May 31, 2014 00:52
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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 |
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Jun 3, 2014 18:28
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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.
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Jun 4, 2014 16:14
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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.
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Jun 5, 2014 23:33
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