Week four, the final week for this trip, began with what has become typical on this trip for some days - lots of gravel roads.  I wanted to get over to the Lake Michigan side of the lower pennisula so I cold ride up the coast, so I simply looked at the map and picked roads that went as directly west or northwest as possible.  This led to many gravel farm roads, which is no big deal - they ride a little slower than paved roads, of course, but there's not a lot of other traffic around other than the occasional pickup truck or combine lumbering down the road.

I decided at one point to take a left when I probably should have continued straight ahead.  The left I took led on to yet another gravel road, which turned in to a narrower, sandier version.  About 4 miles in to this new road, the sand started getting very fine and a lot deeper.  There were several instances where the bike bogged down pretty good with all the weight on the back.  Then, finally, my poor ol' GS just needed to take a short rest - so it did...


GS takes a nap.

I got the bike back up on its wheels again and we continued down the road.  The road continued like this for four more miles until we turned on to a new road ... which continued on like this for another 3 miles.  Then, finally, we turned on to a new road that was better ... the sand wasn't as deep and was packed down a bit more in the ruts.  But, for 1.5 more miles, I was basically straddle walking the bike under power and the cylider heads were scraping sand off the ground on either side of the packed rut I was riding in.  The big, wide, gravel road we finally turned on to felt like a freeway after this and I ran in to pavement again in about 5 more miles.

I continued along until I reached Mantisee and my first look at Lake Michigan.


The beach at Mantisee, Michigan

The little park there by the beach was packed with an July 4th weekend carnival, that, mercifully, hadn't opened up for the day yet, so it was relatively quiet and there wasn't a lot of traffic.

Unfortunately, my ride at this stage wasn't all that comfortable.  Back near Big Rapids when I let the GS take take brief nap on that sandy road, the handlebars had whipped around when the front wheel dig in, and the right grip had snapped my thumb back pretty hard.  The bike landed on my left leg, but since the sand was so soft, all I got was a small bruise from the hard bag on the back of my calf.  My thumb, however, was hurting bad and wasn't working right.  I was having a devil of a time pulling my left glove on or cancelling the turn signal, and even squeezing the front brake brought a very sharp stab of pain right in the web of my hand between the thumb and first finger.

I figured I had badly sprained my thumb.  However, since I'm something like 2000 miles from home and I've got many days of riding yet to go this week, I decided to to the old "discretion being the better part of valor" thing and when I saw a blue "H" sign on the side of the road, I followed it to the West Shore Medical Center's ER on the northern end of Mantisee.

Where I spent the rest of my morning...

The way I figured it was like this - if my thumb was just sprained, an X-Ray and the doc would confirm that and I could be on my way with some ice and some Advil and be good to go.  If the thumb was broken, the X-Ray and the doc would confirm that too and I could decide what I wanted to do next.  I mean, I didn't want to cut short my vacation for something as "minor" as a broken thumb, but it there was no point in being overly macho about this and then discovering later on that I'd screwed up and made a minor injury worse by not treating it.

The bottom line is that the X-Rays confirmed no break and the doc could feel (and so could I when he squeezed my hand right there...) that the ligamant was stretched and knotted pretty good, wihch amounts to a really bad sprain.  The prescription is ice, Advil and a thumb splint to wear at night when I'm done riding for the day.  Tonight, even half an hour of icing has helped greatly and my hand feels much, much better.

I decided at this point that I'd save playing in the dirt for trails a lot closer to home.  I violated a bunch of basic safety rules for off-road riding this morning - the primary one being out there by myself.  If that minor little front wheel dive and tip over HAD been more serious today, I would have been out in the woods 20-25 miles away from the nearest anything and 2000 miles from home to boot.  No more serious dirt playtime on this trip - especially with the bike loaded up the way it is with all my stuff.

I continued up route 31 and the beautiful west coast of the lower pennisula.  Up near Bay View, I took a break at a local beach park


Taking in the nice breeze coming off Lake Michigan

I took a few minutes to soak my hand in some nice, cold well water available by hand pump at the rest area, and take in the view, the smell of the lake and the onshore breeze, which was picking up.

A little south of the main part of Bay View, I spotted the center of what is apparently a new development of beach front properties that were "... just, oh, so ..."


Fancy places along the beach

The whole place smacked of too much money and too much gentility and ... too much.  I didn't see a person who didn't belong on the cover of a magazine and I don't think I saw a car that left any showroom for less than $60,000.  I sure as hell didn't belong there in my sweaty gear and filthy dirty motorcycle (even if is a Beemer...)

I finished the day by crossing the Mackinac Bridge in to the Upper Pennisula (U.P.) of Michigan.  I took a break in Mackinaw City to take some pictures of the bridge and stuff


The Mackinac Bridge


The Mackinac Lighthouse Museum (it had closed for the day about an hour earlier)


Mackinaw City beach  - the gulls weer all facing in to the gathering freshening breeze

As I crossed the bridge, the wind kept picking up and the first big drops of rain started to come down just as "SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING" came up on my GPS.  I paid my toll and pulled in to the registry portico of a motel here in St. Ignace just about one minute before the full gale and storm hit.  I literally walked in the front door just as the wind tried to rip the door out of my hand and raindrops pelted the carpeting inside the doorway.  The golf-ball sized hail that apparently hit some other places nearby this evening missed us here.

That's all for tonight.  Now that it's dry again outside, I'm headed out to find supper and then to put my hand on ice again for a while.

Anyway, the day dawned beautifully following the thunderstorms from last night.  The storms had continued well after dark and I still heard distant thunder as late as 2:00 AM.  But today, it was bright, clear and cool - just a beautiful morning.


Sunrise in St. Ignace from my motel room

I headed out at 7:00, discovering that in my haste to get in ahead of the storm last night, I had managed to pick about the most expensive motel in town...  oops.  The route today would be US 2 out through the U.P. to Wisconsin, then diagonally across Wisconsin to Iowa.

As I rode along the north shore of Lake Michigan, I finally got a feel for the real, sheer enormity of these lakes.


This is not a shot from a Pacific beach in Callifornia.  It's looking south over Lake Michigan.

I had gotten a change to see a little bit of Lake Superior back in 2001 when I did a Jeep trip across Canada and stayed one night in Thunder Bay, Ontario, but I never got a chance to see the horizon with no land in the distance on that trip  - it was always too hazy or the road never got that close to the water.  So today was the first time in my life that I've really gotten a chance to really see what these "lakes" are all about.  To me, the small town boy from Maine, a "lake" is something that you can see the other side of.  It's something you can drive around in a few minutes to maybe an hour at most.  It's something that you can completely cross in a small boat.  These Great Lakes are really inland fresh water SEAS, for Pete's sake.  I mean, yeah, they look bog on a map and everything, but standing on the shore and actually being able to see the curvature of the earth on the horizon of a "lake" is a whole other kind of experience that looking a five blue splotches on a map.

There's a lot of space up there in the U.P.  A lot of distance between towns.  There are also some local things that I must admit I don't understand:


I know in my heart that this shop isn't selling an item whose definition I'M familiar with....

Yeah, I discovered later that it's pronounced "pass-tees" but I'm still not completely sure what one is and why they seem to be so popular that almost every little donut shop offers them.  An apparently unfortunate gulf in my cultural knowledge has clearly been exposed here.

(it didn't help that the very first pastie shop I spotted was two doors down from an adult entertainment shop....)

Breakfast was in Manistique at a quiet little local diner called Anne Marie's.  I tried a Taco Omlet with wheat toast, hash browns and coffee.  It was really good der, ya know.  Oh yah.

Down the street, I stopped on the way out of town to have a look at the Schoolcraft County historic museum and water tower.  It was closed, but it's a neat water tower.


The Schoolcraft County Water Tower and Historical Museum

Then it was out and on the road for a long while until I came across this scene on a local farm near Escanaba


I'm not totally sure how farmer Brown there was built, but the cow had a distinctly "steely" feel and appeared to be quite barrel-chested as well.  I may be mistaken, but I believe that her udder may very well be a tractor wheel hub.

In Escanaba itself, I got curious when I saw a sign that said "Dam #1 Public Access" and pointed to the right.


An operating low-head hyrdoelectric dam on the Escanaba River

The "public access" part of the thing is all about recreation.  There was a large sign explaning everything - work has been done at all of these dams (there's 3 on this river) to make them fully accessible and barrier free for viewing, boating, fishing, canoeing, etc.  Intersting concept.  Apparently the Upper Pennisula Power Company isn't all that concerned with security of dams or whatever - you can basically walk right up to this one and get within a few yards of the powerhouse, penstock gates, etc.

I once again found myself on several back roads at various times of the day.  One was very convenient for a necessary "bush break" - it was a long way between gas stations and rest rooms today.


Taking a break in the quiet sunshine

I got fuel and took a break just over the Wisconsin state line in Marinette


At the Wisconsin Welcome Center in Marinette, Wisconsin

Ahhh, finally, the change to Central Time - and I gain another hour!  That's another reason why my day got a little long today.  I have this bad habit of adding an hour to the length of my day when I go westward in to a new time zone.

At any rate, since I was going right past the state capital in Madison on the way to Iowa, I couldn't pass it by without a short break to have a look.


The Wisconsin State Capital building in Madison

It's a gorgeous building.  I was most impressed.

About hald way between Madison and Dubuque, I ran across a place called "M. Schettl Sales" which has the tag line "Where do they find all that stuff?" on the signs near the property.

So, next time I need a giant moose or some other somewhat unique items, I'll know where to go - you never know.


Big Moose (no giant squirrel spotted in the vicinity, however)


Um....... yeah.


The only issue I see here is that the reindeer aren't wearing the appropriate ANSI fall arrest harnesses to be working in an aerial lift like this....

I pulled in to a Super 8 motel in Dubuque which advertised high speed internet and got a nice room with a very good connection for $49.00.  Much better than the very expensive room I had last night with the crappiest 'net connection I've ever had to deal with - in fact, it was locked down so tightly that they weren't passing FTP packets - so I couldn't upload this page last night.  So, tonight you get a two-fer.

Where will I be tomorrow night?  Tune in and find out.  You'll know shortly after I do.

Good night.

Click here for a Google Map showing my progress to date

Today was largely a transit day to get across Iowa to Kansas.  I slept in a bit in Dubuque and spent a bunch of time looking at the weather down my whole route for the day.  Severe thunderstorms were being forecast in various locations with the extra added warnings of "... large hail and strong, damaging straightline winds..."  A large thunderstorm had come through Dubuque and woken me up around 4:00 am.  When I got up around 7:15 or so, it was still a bit gray outside, but it was drying up.  By the time I left the hotel at 8:00, the sun was out and the only weather showing on radar was way out in western Nebraska and Kansas.  It looked like I'd be able to stay dry for most of the day, and I did.  Although, it did get quite hot toward the end of the day.

The route today was mostly interstates or limited access state or federal highways.  I took few back roads because, frankly, the backroads here all added time and distance to the route rather than shortening it.  As for sightseeing, I wasn't in much of a mood for it today, and for the amount that I was, the view from near the freeway was great.  Iowa is a beautiful place no matter where you drive it.  So, I left Dubuque on US 151 and stayed on that road pretty much all the way to Cedar Rapids where I joined up with I-380 down to I-80 in to Des Moines.  I paused for a bit in Des Moines to visit a couple of friends in the broadcasting office at the corporate headquarters of my company, got some gas, got some lunch and continued on down I-35 to K.C.

Somewhere near Bernard, Iowa, I stopped to take a short stretch break and gather some pictures of the countryside.  These next two pictures are for my friend Patti who said to me one day, "... where are the corn fields?  I want to see the corn fields..."

So, I give you .... Eastern Iowa:


Farm roads and fields


More fields

It's hard to tell from these particular shots, but the crops go pretty much to the horizon.  I'll gather more in Kansas.

Down the road a bit, I passed through Anamosa, Iowa.  I had forgotten that Anamosa is home to J&P Cycles until I saw the sign on the side of the road.  I figured it was as good a place to stop as any and even though they cater largely to the "cruiser" folks, I've bought some little things from thier catalog in the past.  I picked up a new stick-on thermometer  to replace the one I managed to screw up when I moved it to the other side of the bike before leaving (it was constantly reading about 20 degrees too high) and I got a new J&P Cycles sticker for my saddlebag.

J&P Cycles, Anamosa, Iowa

After the stop in Des Moines, I chugged down I-35 at a good clip in the sunshine and warm weather until I got just over the Missouri border and saw a darkening sky up ahead


Gathering gloom north of St. Joseph, Missouri

It looked ugly, but the radar was showing it to be not so bad


Not as bad as it looked (I'm headed south, but had stopped off the higway and was pointing north when I took this picture, thus the vehicle indicator seeming to be going away from the weather...)

You can see the cold front on the GPS that pushed through later in the day and got K.C. wet and thundery after supper.  On the road to K.C., I only got slightly damp - not bad at all.

That's about it.  No great travel tales today.  I checked in to a MicroTel here in K.C., had a quick supper and I'm settling in for an early bedtime.  Tomorrow morning, I head for the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson.

Good night.

Click here for a Google Map showing my progress to date

Before I begin the daily report this evening, I have to relate a moment from this afternoon on the road.  Let me set the scene - I'm heading down US 54 in southwestern Kansas about halfway between Bucklin and Minneola.  Ahead of me were very dark and angry looking clouds.  Behind me was a bright blue sky.  On both sides of me, for as far as the eye could see, there were fields of golden grain undulating in the breeze.  A light rain had been falling for a while ahead of me and the road was wet.  Heading east on the Union Pacific tracks that run parallel and just to the north of the road, was a long train that was blowing its horn at every crossing - even the little farm road crossings that only go in to the fields.  I had just recieved my only performance award for this trip about 30 minutes earlier and I was pissed off about that.  This morning, I had to call BMW roadside assistance for a jumpstart because last night I had stupidly left my key on and the headlight had run the battery down before someone alerted me to the problem.  I was hot and grumpy and was wondering why I was still headed south rather than making a beeline for Oregon.

Then, the moment.  In that wonderful countryside, with the angry clouds and the mournful sound of that train horn coming up the tracks, with me and the train being the only movng things around for maybe 10 miles, the rain picked up and I took a deep breath.  The SMELL!!  I drew in a long, satisfyingly clean breath of damp grain fields and tilled earth.  It took me a while to put my finger on what it reminded me of.  Oatmeal?  No.  Bread?  No.  Then it struck me - if you've even smelled the first step in beermaking you'll know what I mean.  When a brewer makes up that very first mash of grain and water and yeast - before the hops go in - you get this wonderfully deep, rich, earthy-grainy aroma.  The smell on the prairie this afternoon was just like that, but not as strong.

It's an amazingly cleansing smell.  I kept drinking in the air as I rode down that road in the rain.  It was the freshest air I'd ever smelled.  And all at once, something hit me right between the eyes - something came over me that I can only describe as a sort of peace.  Starting at that moment, I no longer cared about my sore butt.  I no longer cared about the speeding ticket.  I no longer was annoyed at the late start this morning due to me being a dummy.  I was suddenly and completely in the moment of the road right then.  I felt completely connected to everything.  I couldn't get the grin off my face and a light tear came to my eyes.

It's moments like that that I live for on the road.  I can be having a crappy day and some seemingly small and insignificant thing will smack me upside the head and remind me that this is supposed to be FUN.  I find that at times, it's too easy to get in to the mechanics of travelling - the loading and unloading; the fuelling; the route planning; the map reading; stopping for water; not missing turns, and on and on...  The little magic moments on the road are the ones that remind me why I do this and why I'll keep doing this.  There is simply nothing - nothing - like seeing the world from a motorcycle one mile at a time.

So, the day began kind of early in Kansas City.  Last night, I had been a little cranky and hot and when I got back from the grocery store with my supper, I had shut the motor off with the engine cutoff switch (like I always do) but for whatever reason, I forgot to turn off the key and take it with me.  I went up to my room, wathced some TV, ate my supper, played on the computer some and was almost ready to hit the sack when the front desk called and asked if I had ridden a bike in.  I said I did and they said "your lights are on".....  I went and got my key and went to bed.  This morning, I called BMW Roadside Assistance at 5:00 AM.  Their computer called me back at about 5:30 and told me that it would be about 45 minutes before someone would be there.  At 0555, the front desk called and told me that the tow company had arrived!  The driver had a set of very small jumper cable clamps for the small terminals on my battery and the two minutes later, the bike was running.  After getting fuel, I was on the road only about 45 minutes behind the schedule that I wanted to be on.

I took the Kansas Turnpike west to Topeka and then kept on I-70 to Salina where I picked up I-135 and then on to SR 61 in to Hutchinson to visit the Kansas Cosmosphere, then continuing on to the southwest on US 53.

I made a brief detour in Topeka to shoot Kansas's state capital


The Kansas Capital in Topeka

The main goal for the day was the Cosmosphere.  If you've never been there, I highly recommend the place.  I was amazed to find this wonderful space exhibit center smack in the middle of the prairie surrounded by wheat fields.


The Kansas Cosmosphere

The place is world class and boasts a collection second only to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.  I'm going to post tons of pictures of the place, because I kinda geeked out on the exhibits and managed to fill most of a memory card with museum images.

The Cosmosphere contains a museum level, OmniMax dome, planitarium and "Dr. Goddard's Lab" where they do rocket motor demonstrations.  I toured the musuem level and took in "Mars Rover" in the OmniMax dome.

The museum is set up chronologically starting with Hitler's development of the Vengence or "V" weapons in WWII.  Of course, the V-2 became the basis for Von Braun's Redstone rocket and the rest of his creations that got us to the moon in the 60's.

The artifacts that this place has are impressive simply for what they are and that they're here in Kansas.


The actual Apollo 13 Command Module that brought Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Sweigart home


A Voskhod airlock trainer used by the Svoiets and Alexy Leonov to train for the first human spacewalk


Frank Borman's actual launch and reentry suit used on Apollo 8


An actual Apollo white room ....


... autographed inside by none other than famous NASA Pad Leader, Gunter Wendt


This is a giant stained glass panel that hangs over the main staircase to the museum level.  It was commissioned by the Cosmosphere in 2003 after the Columbia disaster and was designed and assembled by local central Kansas artists and schoolchildren.

There's so much more, but I won't take up all of this space with space today.

I headed off toward Oklahoma around 2:00 after finishing up at the museum.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you .....

..... Kansas:

Somewhere near Bucklin, Kansas


They pump oil out of the ground here as well as grow stuff on top of it.


A used combine lot??  (Actually, the local Co-Op is just across the road - I think this is a storage area.)

The performance award came, as performance awards always do, when you least expect it.  I'll leave my whole "speeding enforcement is about revenue collection, not safety" rant for another time.  All I'll say is that once again, if I pay the ticket, without contesting it, in a specified time period, Kansas will never report the ticket to Oregon....  the word "extortion" comes to mind.  But never mind.

At any rate, I rolled in to Liberal, Kansas at around 5:30, contemplated contuning on to Guymon, Oklahoma and then decided that it was time to stop fo the day.  I'll get an early start on it tomorrow.  For now, that's all about the ride today.

Finally tonight, I have to mention that I just this evening found out about a tragedy that befell a member of TEAM Oregon last weekend.  Mr. Russ Mosier, one of our mentor instructors, was killed in a motorcycle accident on Saturday.  My thoughts go out to his family during this sad time.  The remainder of my time on the road is dedicted to Russ's memory and his enthusiastic years spent training Oregon's riders.  Ride on Russ.  We know you'll always be looking after us.

Good night.

Click here for a Google Map showing my progress to date

A pretty relaxing ride today, all in all.  No big push, no really long stretches without a break.  No significant weather.  About the only issue I have right now is that my rear brake pads have worn to the point of almost being metal-to-metal, so I'll be babying the rear brake for a bit until I can procure a new set of pads in the next day or two.  Otherwise, the bike is doing well.  I think the tires will get me back to Portland - after that, they need to be replaced, however.  I've had to make two repairs to my earphone audio cable (one this afternoon) because I installed it hastily and put too much pressure on with the zip-ties.

The day began with an exit from Liberal (where there are actually a lot of conservatives, contrary to what one might think ... it IS Kansas, after all) after too little sleep last night.  Liberal, Kansas does a pretty good 4th of July fireworks display and it wasn't all that far from my motel, so I stayed up too late.

It was a cool and foggy morning in southern Kansas today


Foggy day in Kansas

It wasn't long before the fog lifted and revealed what would turn out to be a very nice, comfortable day


Cloudy day in Kansas

I stopped just down the road in Guymon, Oklahoma for a proper breakfast at "The Pancake House" right on route 54.  I took a table just a little ways over from a group of "regulars" that gathered throughout the time I was there.  Each time one of the gents would join the table, a discussion of rain would start up.  Each fellow asking if anyone had looked at a gauge yet this morning and the one same gent each time explaning that he had dumped 9/10th's out of his - but that was from last night and the night before too, so he wasn't sure about last night.  Another fellow would then pipe up about his 3/10th's and another would make a comment about how he didn't think he had more than 3/100th's at his place.  Then a new fellow would join the group and the same, exact discussion would take place all over again.  One guy mentioned that it was "wet" out - and another would comment that "... it MUST be rainin' if a farmer says 'it's wet'"

Yup, good old fashioned Oklahoma farmer/rancher talk from a group of gents that look like they've been working the land around these parts for a whole lot of years.

Just before crossing out of the Oklahoma panhandle in to the Texas one, I stopped for a quick break near the railroad


The Union Pacific wasn't coming at the time, by the way...

And then, a bit farther down the road, just before leaving Texas for New Mexico, I took another stretch break


A texas corn field and irrigation pivot (the thing that gives you round crop fields)

The clouds never really did break up until almost Socorro, actually.  There was scattered shower activity all over the place, but luckily no thunderstorms today.  I don't mind riding in the rain - it's riding in the lightning that makes me more than a little nervous - especially out on the plains.

Not far from Albuquerque, I saw a nice little storm in the distance that was just short of becoming a thunderstorm.


45 miles east of Albuquerque on route 54

I got a little wet, but the more interesting effect from this was the SERIOUS outflow (wind) from the falling rain and downdrafts hitting the ground under the main part of the storm.  The road just happened to skirt around to the north of the main cell, but the outflow must have been gusting somewhere near 35-40 MPH and it was knocking me around pretty good.

Then, finally, about 50 miles from Socorro, the terrain began to change markedly, noting my initial transition in to the mountains


The plains end, the mountains begin...

Shortly after this picture, the road actually began to twist again.  It's always something that startles me after riding hundreds of miles and several days in a row on the long, straight stretches in the middle of the country - all of a sudden, there are curves again and you suddenly have to remember how to ride a motorcycle once more...

That's about all for tonight.  I passed by a place called "Laguna del Perro" this afternoon and took some pictures - none of which are worthy to post.  Later, on doing a web search, I found out that Laguna del Perro is in the geographical center of New Mexico and is formed by a series of intermittent salt lakes.  The ones I could see from the road were, indeed, in the "no water" stage of their intermittentcy.

Tomorrow morning, I'm heading out to the NRAO VLA (National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Large Array) about an hour west of here.  Call it bookending the trip with radio telescopes ... you'll recall that Day 6 of this trip included a trip to the NRAO Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.  What can I say, I'm a space geek....

After the VLA, the plan is to head in the general direction of Bryce Canyon, Utah and on back to Oregon.  I'm hoping to arrive home Saturday night or mid-day Sunday.  We'll see how it goes.  I have this feeling that once I start getting closer to Oregon, I'm going to want to do a "push" and just get home.  I'm resiting that urge a little bit already, because I don't want to feel like I'm wasting vacation days when there's so much to see out here.  I keep thinking that perhaps I may have spent a little too much time in Maine, but then I do LIKE my family and friends and it was a very relaxing nice time.  I think that for this particular trip, I may have had ambitions that cold not have reasonably been lived up to regardless - unless I was going to to an Iron Butt style ride and be Clarke Griswold at every attraction.

More tomorrow.

Click here for a Google Map showing my progress to date

What a beautiful morning it was in the southwest today.  The day dawned dry, cool, comfortable and gorgeous


New Mexico Morning

I made a last minute change to my plans due to the condition of my rear brakes.  Last night, I had looked at them and noted that I would have to replace the pads very soon because they were darned near down to the backing plates.  Today, as I was pulling in to the parking lot of the VLA, I felt a sharp "klick-klunk" in the rear brake pedal.  When I looked at the brake, I found what was left of the pad friction material sitting on the ground in pieces next to the rear wheel....  Now I really DID have metal-to-metal contact.  So, after visitng the VLA, I would be heading back to Albuquerque to buy a new set of pads and put 'em on.  Once in Albuquerque, there was no point in backtracking to the west again to hit Bryce Canyon.  So, at this point, I'm officially on the homeward leg of the trip.  I'll see what I see along the way.  I'm a little irritated by this turn of events only because I usually keep a set of spare brake pads on hand.  I have a set for the Ducati, but I never got around to getting a set for the GS.  I'd be headed west through Arizona tonight if I'd had a set with me on this trip.

Oh well.  The fun and funny part was me, sitting in the parking lot of this Über Fancy BMW dealership (Sandia BMW sells cars and motorcycles in the same place and the whole joint is "tres posh") all crusty and smelly and sitting on one of my saddlebags with tools spread all over, disassembling my rear brake caliper.  I honestly thought the Beemer Police were goig to throw me off the lot any minute, but I had asked permission of the parts folks to be there, and I was only there for about 25 minutes anyway, so....

Anyway, back to the start of the day - I got to the VLA a little while before the visitor center opened for the day and took some time to get some early day shots with the sun still low and the clouds thick overhead.


The center of the array


The east arm


New bike farkle - hopefully it'll help with the satellite reception.  But adjusting the preload is a real chore...

The NRAO educational foundation has done a very nice job setting up the Visitor's Center.  It's small and simple, but very informative and well laid out.  They've got a great walking tour that takes you out around the grounds, right up to the base of one of the antennas and over to the control building for a balcony look at two-thirds of the whole array.


The "visitor dish" located along the walking tour path - it's a working part of the array, just accessible up close and personal.

As you leave, you can also drive over to the Antenna Assembly Building where they built all the antennas originally and where they service them today.


The Antenna Assembly Building - the orange tractor is the antenna transporter that they use to move the antennas to new positions in the array as needed.

It was a good tour.  The NRAO has made the place accessible and trusts its visitors not to go past the "no trespassing" signs and stay on the walking tour.  There are no handlers or tour guides herding folks around and that's a very nice departure from so many of these kinds of places.  I like being able to do a "self discovey" kind of thing.

Also interesting - at Gree Bank, they prohibited any elecrtonic devices ner the antennas.  We were told to shut off cell phones, PDA's, digital cameras, games, etc. due to the interference they would cause to the telescope.  At the VLA, the only prohibitions are on cell phones and other radio transmitters.  Digital cameras aren't banned, and neither do they have to drive diesel vehicles everywhere.  I'll have to find out why its one way at one site and difrerent at another - both sites are part of the NRAO.

On the way back to Socorro and Albuquerque, I stopped off at a local cantina outside of Magdelena...


OK, so it USED to be a local cantina outside Magdelena...

There's a lot of this kind of thing in this part of the country - property that's simply been abandoned in place and left to dissolve back in to the earth. 

So tonight, I'm lounging in Gallup, New Mexico, roughly 1200 miles from home and headed that way first thing tomorrow morning.  I feel at once melencholy to be ending the trip and very happy to be headed home.  It's been a good trip so far and I've had a lot of fun.  I've got a couple more days to go and a lot of country to see yet.  But the weekend will see me sleeping in my own bed for the first time in a month and that's a fairly strong incentive to get moving.

More later.

Click here for a Google Map showing my progress to date

Well, this will officially be my last night on the road.  Tomorrow evening, I get to sleep in my own bed again, assuming there are no last-day issues with the bike or something tomorrow.

Today, I headed out of Gallup and up through the four-corners area and the canyonlands of southern Utah.  The riding was largely unremarkable, the scenery was spectacular...


Early in the morning near Gallup, NM


The roads pretty much looked like this until I got more up in to Northern Utah

Overall, the riding day was nice.  The weather was dry and clear, although there were some places where there were some very neat clouds.


Neat clouds over a distant butte

This was a marked contrast to yesterday afternoon.  The last few miles in to Gallup yesterday afternoon were accompanied by some fairly significant lightning - at one point, I was watching 5-6 big cloud to ground strikes at a time on both sides of the freeway ... and all the time looking for the next exit!


Near Canyonlands park

I didn't make the detour to Canyonlands National Park.  I've decided that next spring, I'm going to build a vacation around my annual Las Vegas ride and do a southwest tour.  There's so much to see here that I want to have some time to see it all in a relaxed fashion.


Near Canyonlands park


Near Canyonlands Park


A few miles outside Moab, Utah

Near the last shot, there's a place where you can hike a short distance down a trail and through a drainage opening under the highway.  On the other side of that drainage opening is this bit of water-carved red rock.  You don't get a good idea of scale from this picture, but the pools of water are a good 10-12 feet across.


Near one edge of the Ute Nation lands

I must say that as far as traffic is concerned - I HATE SALT LAKE CITY!!  Why I keep routing myself through SLC, I'll never know.  From now on, I have to remember to avoid that freakin' city at all costs.  I'm not sure why it's so bad, but I've had an easier time with traffic in Boston, LA, Seattle, New York and other places.  Traffic in SLC just plain sucks - and it doesn't seem to matter what time of day, either.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this trip over the last couple of days.  Where has a month gone already?  I wonder about writing these trip reports as I go - they seem to be a bit dilluted or something.  I'm not happy with much of my writing on this trip.  But, then, on the other hand, part of the point of doing these in an extemporaneous fashion like this is to get the reality of the road down a little better.  On the average trip, you  have boring days, crappy days, days where not much happens and so forth.  Like life itself, the spectacular days are outnumbered by the routine ones.  One might argue that there's nothing routine about criss-crossing the country on a motorcycle, but there are times whe it's just a ride - just a task of makin' miles.  It's road food and road beds and road coffee and road gasoline.

I'll do it again and again, I know, but on every trip I learn a little something that I hadn't known before.  For instance, I now know that I'll need to add a small ball peen hammer and a couple of drift pin punches to my tool bag when I add a complete set of brake pads.  Driving the retaining pin out of the rear caliper yesterday became a bit of a chore because I had to improvise tools to drive the pin out.

I'm at the point on this trip where I just want to be home.  This is long enough to be gone.  What I learned from this trip will improve the next one.  I've had a lot of fun on this trip and it's been a good time.  Heck, even my thumb feels better now.

I'll do one last day's report tomorrow with the full wrap-up.  Meanwhile, it's time for bed.

Click here for a Google Map showing my progress to date

As many of my "final day" rides of a road trip go, this one wasn't particularly picutre filled.  Mostly, I rode the slab and fought off sleep for the first half od the day until I took a proper break with a proper lunch and plenty of water.  After that, it was a cakewalk - a long cakewalk, but uneventful nonetheless.

The day began in Ogden a little before 5:00 am as I got up and packed.  I was on the road by 5:30.  The sun was just peaking up behind the mountains half an hour later.


Utah Sunrise

I forgot how bloody COLD it can get in the high desert in the morning hours.  About an hour out of Ogden, I had the grip heaters on full, my jacket liner in and the winter gloves on and I was still freezing.  I stopped in Burley, Idaho for breakfast and to give the weather a little time to warm up some.

After breakfast, the day was turning out very nice and indeed, it had warmed up enough to be able to put the cold weather stuff away and continue in to the high desert heat that I'd encounter the rest of the day.


Idaho Morning

Starting around Boise and Caldwell, the weather went straight from "pleasantly seasonable" to "F-in HOT!" in a matter of about 30 minutes.  By  Pendleton, Oregon the temperature was hovering around 98 degrees and there was not the slightest breath of wind at all.  Even Hood River was without a breeze - leaving a lot of disappointed wind surfers and kite boarders sitting on the beach tanning.  At least in Hood River, the temps started dropping some and by the time I got home, they were only in the 80's - normal for us for this time of year.

I fought off the "dozies" for the better part of the morning - for some reason, I just couldn't stay alert and I kept zoning out ... NOT a good thing to happen on a motorcycle.  I stopped in LaGrande at a Flying J and had a proper lunch and plenty of water.  Being dozy and zoning out is a good sign of mild dehydration.  After lunch, I was fine the rest of the day with no zone outs at all.

It was an exceptionally clear day today in the northwest.  I was still 140 miles out of Portland out near Morrow when I saw Mount Hood in the distance.  That lifted my spirits, let me tell you!  The Gorge was in particularly fine form this afternoon, as well.  There's something about coming home from one of these trips - I get more and more excited about finishing as I see the mile posts count down.  When it's more than 300 miles, it's just a slog.  Then I see that first sign that says "Portland 298 miles" and I get a little charge.  Then the sign that says "Portland 200 miles" is another one.  Then when it gets down to 50 miles, I'm just about squirming out of me seat to be done.  In fact, today, I had to fight that whole thing a little.  I was getting so intent on concentrating on the "miles to go" that I started losing focus on my riding.  They say that most accidents happen within a few miles of home, right?  Well, I didn't want a 10,000 mile trip to end with some really stupid dumbshit thing happening 10 miles from my driveway, so I had to really fight myself to curb that "are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet?" thing that kept popping up in the last hour or so today.

I rolled in to the garage at about 5:30 pm Pacific time, making it just about exactly 13 hours today.  Long days on the slab are never all that pleasant, but I woke up YESTERDAY morning in a "get there" mood and it hadn't changed much this morning.  So, with frequent stops for water and leg stretches and food, I got here.  I unloaded the bike and headed down the street to get some cold drinks and something for supper, read today's mail and then settled in for the evening.

The trip has been a blast.  Did I plan it out perfectly?  No.  Did I see everything I wanted to?  No.  Did I have a good time?  Hell yeah!!  This is the longest single road trip I've ever done and even though it wasn't all technically purely road trip (remember, I spent over a week lounging about in Maine) it was still an great four weeks.

This trip taught me something, however, about how I travel and how I'd like to change that in the future.  If you've read this report all the way through, you'll note that I don't spend any real time anyplace at all.  All of the places I visit are just "passing through" kinds of visits.  I et too ambitious with what I'd like to do on these trips.  At one point before leaving Maine, I had a map laid out that took me as far north as Duluth, Minnesota and as far south as Houston, Texas IN ADDITION to seeing the places I did see on the return trip ... all in something like 6 days or so.  I'm not trying for an Iron Butt rally win here.  So, I've decided to try some changes in the future - mainly, I'm planning to limit my tour distances somewhat so I can actually TOUR some of the places I'd like to see.

For instances, last night I briefly mentioned that I'll be planning a vacation around my annual Las Vegas trip next spring to tour the southwest.  I was thinking about that today.  Two solid weeks available just to tour around the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Nevada will be EPIC!  With all the National Parks and other sights to see, I can easily see parking in one location for two or three days at a time and using that as a base of operations to go sightseeing all over the place.  These coast-to-coast-to-coast trips are great and all, but even when I give myself plenty of time for them, I still try to cram too much in.

Anyway.

So, this edition is done.  Me and the bike made it back in one piece.  The GS needs something done with the front brakes and it'll need a new pair of tires very soon.  It's now due for its 12,000 mile service anyway though, so it'll be a good time to do all that work at once.  The bike has been a terrific platform for this trip - except for that damned Tuetonic Torture Device laughingly known as a "saddle".  The AirHawk helped some, but the very most important thing I need to get on that bike before I travel any more long distances is a custom saddle.

I've got a series of notes related to my on-bike toolkit that need to be looked at too.  I was missing one critical Torx bit that I had to procure at a local AutoZone store in Michigan after the GS took a dirt nap last weekend (I had to reposition the left turn signal indicator).  And, as mentioned previously, I need to carry spare brake pads (like I do on the Ducati...) and I need to add a couple of simple tools to the kit to make changing them a bit easier.

I also still have the "overpacking" syndrome to deal with.  But, I'm not sure how to get around that one.  This time around, I took very little in the way of "extra" clothes and I did laundry a few times.  Knowing that in June in various parts of the country (especially NH and Maine, typically) it's not uncommon to run in to cold temps in the evenings.  So, I packed a regular two-season jacket, a sweatshirt and some other warm clothes.  Of course, since I did that, I never really encountered any cold temps where I wasn't wearing my M/C gear.  If I hadn't packed the stuff, however, I know that I would have been asked to go out with friends one evening in Portland, Maine and it would have been 40 out, so ....... what's a boy to do?  As it is, I was much better this time around, wearing the same riding clothes under my gear nearly every day of the trip and only changing to the next shirt or pair of jeans when the first ones became so intolerable that I couldn't stand the smell anymore.  And, as is typical, I also packed stuff that I never once used.  So, I refine for next time.

Mostly, however, I think maybe I've finally learned to take it easier on these trips.  I get pretty obsessed with "making miles" sometimes - that ain't touring ... that's commuting.  I think that for the next couple of trips I'm going to purposefully limit myself to a grand total of no more than 350 miles a day MAX and force myself to take in the sights, enjoy the great roads and enjoy the days a bit more.  They only come along once, after all........

Hey, thanks for reading my little tome this time around.  I always have a good time writing them, even if the writing isn't spectacular.

Later, over and out.

Ed


Epilogue - July 10, 2006 - Day 1 of "Reality" after a long vacation

It's funny, coming back to earth after a long time away from your real life can be a little weird.  As I mentioned earlier in this report, this is the first time that I've taken 4 solids weeks off without being unemployed.  Four solids weeks of leisure.  Four solid weeks with no real responsibilites other than putting gas in the bike, food in me and staying safe while riding.  Four weeks to go sightseeing and just bum around.  I'm not used to that.  I've been steadily employed since 1985 and the most continuous time I've ever taken off was three weeks, three years ago.  I'm the guy who has a tendency to CANCEL my vacation time when things get too busy.

So this time, I used up almost all of my annual vacation time to have a month off, and it was very nice.  But like all things in life, eventually, this had to come to an end.  I got back Saturday, so I had Sunday to sort of get ready to go back to work and back to real life.  But Sunday kind of turned in to an extension of the vacation - I was so tired and worn out that I just kind of vegged around the house, washed the bike, got groceries in, did the big bag of very smelly laundry that had come off the back of the bike and wathced a lot of TV.  This morning I got up early so I could get in to the office and get a jump on phone messages, e-mails and so on.  Because it was so early, the AM commute didn't feel much different than many days on the trip.  I got my gear on, grabbed my helmet, boarded the GS, started it up and headed out.

My first day back at work was normal.  My team had kept things running well wehil I had been gone and it took me no real effort to get caught back up with what was going on.  A group of us went out to lunch and the guys brought me up to date on specific projects.

No, it wasn't until this afternoon that things began to feel oddly surreal.  The weather was nice, the traffic wasn't a nightmare and my commute home was about as normal as any of them ever are.  But it still felt strange - this normal day and this normal commute.  I'm not sure if it was the short period of time on the bike, or the fact that I got in to my standard "commute autopilot" mode, but before I knew it I was rolling up my driveway, still thinking about the shores of Lake Michigan and the red rocks of Utah.

Wth time, the experience of this trip will fade in to memory along with the rest of them.  Until then, I'll be in a strange world of being back to my regular life, but with some part of my head still on the road.

A few links