The Long Way Around

The leg shield is also a horror show of mutilated bugs. The butterfly is still in the stupid radiator cents and I have no idea how I will get ten thing out of there.

Windscreen is a mess. Can barely see through it. That's ten days and 3400 miles for you.

As I mentioned, America is frickin' huge. And going through it on scooter gives you an opportunity to dodge a lot of road kill. So! That in mind, here's a list of things I saw I could remember. I might not have actually identified the animal correctly btw.

Raccoons
Squirrels
Chipmunks
Skunks
Rabbits
Pigeons
A hawk
A raven
A badger
Possums
Snakes
Lizards
A large family dog
A small yippy dog
A jackalope
A baby cow
Cats
A sheep
A wood pecker
Deer
A chupacabra
A teddy bear

I am seemingly armed with but a few words to describe my current situation and I think I just used all four of them.

As Patrick just opined, "this I a vacation?"

Yes, it is. Mentally. Not physically. I've still been avoiding the work in my mind, to varying levels of success given that my trip is wandering to a close. I've also had endless musicless hours to mull over my existence, where I am in my life and why, etc.

I've also had a fair amount of time to ask myself if I'd ever put on my helmet again. My already busted neck is unbelievably sore. Today I will be trucking my backpack and only running my hydration pack in hopes of alleviating my back pain. It won't help my tail bone problem (that is to say, my tail bone hurts) but it should help the middle of my back.

I also borrowed some pain killers from Patrick.

I jumped back to fifth again even after a terrible run yesterday where I got highly lost in Cincinatti. The grouping for third is stupid close so I'm going to still gun for solid placement but understand that what seperates four of so of us is mere minutes. I believe the spread is less than 30 minutes for the whole run. I mean really. How much better than each other could we claim to be.

Some news on Jim T - he finally got to a hospital in Tulsa. 7 broken ribs. Broken clavical. Collapsed lung. That I one tough SOB. With all that he still rode the entirety of the dirt trail so many of us dubbed the 'Cannonfall' and a total of 121 more miles. The dude is a legend in my book. The story goes that I'd hey had air lifted him at the Bullfrog clinic like they wanted he would have died from the pressure change, so good thing he was stubborn enough to ride.

Today we ride to Maryland, but not our final destination. More later.

Did this guy get in here????

It makes no sense to me.

Not sure. Signs would have led me to believe otherwise. Survived the short day.

42 is my new favorite highway ever. Seriously. It's amazing. Fast and fun. Now if only I was not caught behind a funeral percession for 5 miles at 10 mph.

A possum played dead in front of me (well it might have just been a rat) and then 'woke up', and jumped right in front of my front wheel. Not cool. It survived.

So, basically I killed them all. Every butterfly I saw and didn't want to kill.

Oh well.

C'est la vie. My bike is disgusting.

As a side note, apparently Fort Scott will be throwing us a party.

Today, the sky was full of butterflies. It was beautiful, until they attacked.

There were tons of them all over the place and I started to worry about hitting them. I was startimg to feel guilty.

I saw a few that basically winged by my helmet. I was happy that of seemed to survive. But my happiness was short lived.

Now, in Fort Scott, I see this:

Would not be surprised if this post comes in first, but ultimately, this is what I try to look through every day. This has been cleaned several times, including this morning.

My bike is nasty as hell. Covered in bugs.

The grossest part of this is that right now, here in Kansas, flies are eating the other dead bugs (which undoubtably includes other flies). Gross. Fly cannibalism.

On that note, for Colorado and Kansas, I literally had so many dead bugs on my face shield I can barely see through it. Morbid.

Armed with a new plug cap and 6 hours of sleep, we're getting ready to start off on yet another day's riding.

Today we reach out peak height of 11800 feet, and more or less after today the rest of the route involves going down hill or at least just staying flat.

The less desert mountain climbs, the better. Dunno how much longer my bike can take that. This GT is going to need the mother of all services when it's done.

Last night, getting ready for bed, I discovered that I forgot to pit sunscreen on my neck. So my neck, especially the back and sides, is beet red. Sharp contrast to the rest of my body it's funny, kinda.

The run will be short - only a few hundred miles (332 or something).

When I go through a town at 25-30 mph, it's weird. I feel like I'm standing still.

Here's to hoping the most absurdly difficult is behind us. Nothing, no amount of riding on streets, prepares you for 40 miles of washboarded dirt road on 12" slick street performance tires.

So day 3 has been the hardest so far. It was a short day with the exception of the ridiculous 40 miles of dirt.

Maroy so kindly referred to the day as 'Cannonfall' as more people hit the ground than didn't. The dirt claimed a lot of victims.

Both the Ruckus riders (e.g, Jim T, who I believe will be trucking it to the next most convenient spot then flying home). Both Jess and Rich went down. Rocket went down. Basically, if you went on the dirt road, you crashed.

I didn't crash. But I did lay the bike down. I had a scare where I lost my rear on some washboards, and almost bit it in a ditch.

When I came to a complete stop, I put my foot down and basically didn't have good footing on the Dirt and I tipped over towards the ditch. Thankfully, he says with a hint of sarcasm, I caught the bike with my knee, an kept it from going down hard. Instead I just let it down gently. So no crash, just bad and stupid footing.

Sigh.

Anyway, more plug drama. It popped off again, same problem with stripping the threads on the aluminum head on the plug. Cap popped right off in front of the marina at the Bullfrog ferry.

Thankfully a kind security guard came by and asked me why the problem was. I mentioned the problem and be off-handedly mentioned that he restores VW's. He mentions that, on a VW, the plug cap doesn't fit over the aluminum head on the plug, but actually clips on to the threads on the plug itself. He had one in his on-site motor home, so he drove me to his place and hooked me up with the newcap, gratis. We fixed it on, and it bit and the bike started right up. Rode the rest of the ride with the new cap, no incident.

Hopefully this will keep working and I can continue to ride this route as expected.

We've rolled past the thousand mile mark at this point. Only 2.3k more to go.

My carpal tunnel is killing me, and my eating has not gotten better.

Should I have turned around when I saw this sign? Maybe. But then I would have missed the most amazing scenery ever.

Seriously. Ever.

Only, the wash boarded dirt road probably munched my steering bearings. Oh well.

On the trail... I got stuck for a minute at this creek.

This was a rough day. Mark and Jim going down... Ugh.

Anyone who made this day on the dirt road with a fuel cell over your back wheel without dropping has my unending respect.

Holy crap. Jim T went down on the Burr Trail. Cripes.

He blacked out with the bike on him for some 30 minutes, I've heard. Then he rode another 15-20 miles by my calculations and got himself to the next waypoint. Be ended up going to the clinic in the park here. Damn.

That's rider #2 here. Ugh.

Basically just missed a turn, and we caught up to him 30 seconds after he pulled himself out I a ditch.

He's fine but his GT has seen better days.

Somewhere on the way to the border of California and Nevada, Joel's headset or steering bearings or something came loose. He was going pretty fast, 70s or 80s or so, an then blammo.

He kept it up for a while but ended up laying it down in the end. His bike is munged. Pretty bad. You can see the evidence yourself below.

One bike down, but the rider isn't out. He's riding Bobo's bike, as Bobo dropped out at the start of the say for personal reasons.

Both of the above are among many reasons why today has sucked.

More later.

So the obvious question of course, is, "why".

It's also "what", actually.  That's actually easier to explain than the "why".  For those unawares of the situation, the "what" of "Cannonball", or the "Cannonball Run" nee "Scooter Cannonball Run", is essentially a cross-country rally-style race, starting from Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA and ending at Ocean City, Maryland.  Yes, that's a good long way.  In the order of 3000 miles (mayhap a bit more).  

And yes, it's to be done on scooters.

The trip mirrors Highway 50, somewhat, which means it's a central route, that covers some of the highest mountains in the US (we reach a top elevation of ~14.5k feet), and vast open stretches of desert and winding roads.  It spans 10 days, each day providing a "leg", with people attempting to complete the day for timed ranking.  There are checkpoints that must be visited to consider a day "complete".

There are several classes, most of which surround the displacement of the bike in question, and whether the bike is manual or automatic.  My bike, the Vespa Granturismo 200L, is a 198cc automatic bike, putting me in what's considered the "up to 250cc" auto class.  The class contains many of my good friends and fellow riders (including my clubmate, Jess).

That, in a nutshell, is the "what".  The "why", on the other hand, is much more challenging.

Things that complicate the matter:

• the relatively recent birth of my daughter, who has just turned 4 months
• the hectic break-neck pace of my workplace
• my general familial obligations
• the fact that I am not particularly rich

Ultimately, there are a million reasons to not, and there's no need to enumerate them.  Rather, I'd rather highlight the reasons I am doing this particular challenge:

• there's no time like the present to do things that might otherwise be untenable several years down the road
• I've managed to not do anything profoundly idiotic in quite some time
• I've been fascinated since its inception about whether or not, I as a rider of two-wheeled vehicles, have the fortitude to complete a journey - the test of my limits is important to me
• it's an experience that will not only bring me closer to the friends of mine who are on the journey with me, but will be something I can speak to for years on end

At the end of the day, I'd rather be able to say 20 years down the line that I did something remarkable like crossing the country on a vehicle not particularly well designed for such a task, than to say that I heard about some people who did it and considered it an interesting feat.  It's not the type of thing one gains notoriety for, but it's the type of thing that helps define someone's experience, and it's a commitment I made to myself several years down the line that I intend to keep.

Saddle up, I suppose.  I'll be updating from the road as best as I can, starting September 11th.

Next up:  what I did to a bike called Grace, and why I think that for whatever reason it'll stop me from dying a horrible death.

So, the boys from Vespa Club of Los Gatos are organizing a 3 peak challenge.  The details are as follows:

"VCLG is scheduling our annual 3 Peaks ride on Sat. April 7, 2007. We'll get to the top of Mt Hamilton, Mt Diablo & Mt Tam in 1 day starting from Bite of Wyoming @ 9:00 in San Jose and ending at Mt Tam. "

Sounds like a good frickin' time!  'cept, if you look at the weather, it's gonna rain.  Or so they say.  We're a bit far out right now for these weather reports to truly be accurate (or, as accurate as any weather "prediction" could ever truly be).  The ride is approximately 270 mi, 180 of which are on twisty mountain roads.  To make things tougher, there's a bridge crossing.



Here's where I relate a little story from about a year back that apparently I didn't actually blog about but I could have sworn I had.  The scene is Christmas day of 2005.  I think.  Sounds about right.  Anyway, I had purchased the Atlantic 500 recently, and per request of my family, I decided to go ahead and spend time with them on the holiday (ignoring the fact that I do not practice any religion, and I would most certainly get into it about something with someone when spending time with the family).  My family lives fairly close, in Marin County.

Living in San Francisco, I had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, a bridge I've crossed approximately 28.7 billion times and have little qualms of doing so, provided the weather is decent.  This ride is the reason why I have such a caveat.  The weather, as I departed from my apartment, was overcast with mist that hung in the air, suspended as if frozen in time until I ran through it and it obscured the view from my face shield.  By the time I reached Lake and Park Presidio, the weather had worsened though - it was already actively starting to rain.  Immediately I began to lament not bringing my rain gear - only my partially water resistant jacket and my water resistant armored pants.  What I would come to regret more, though, was the actual bridge itself.

The bridge, as per the norm, was covered in a sheet of fog, and the wind was blowing the rain against my helmet in sharp percussive jolts.  I crossed through the toll gates and continued in the center lane Northbound at an even 45mph.  As I neared the second tower, though - the wind began to pick up.  In my side view, I could see a car approaching from behind at about 65mph.  The car began to pass me as we both passed under the tower.  Coming out of the tower, I rode over one of the metal bridge joints at approximately the same exact second that a ~20mph or so gust of wind hit the broad side of the Atlantic.

The Atlantic, for your reference, was 425lbs dry and had a fair sized 14" front wheel and I believe either a 13" or 14" rear.  A far cry larger of a bike than my Vespa GT200L.  With the wind, immediately I noted what felt like a slip from the underneath of the vehicle over the incredibly wet and slick metal grate.  Imagine:  hold your cell phone, face down, antenna pointing at you.  Now rotate it clockwise, and that's basically what it felt like the Atlantic was doing at 45mph in the center lane of the Golden Gate Bridge while raining.

I was tossed within a half a second into the left lane, where the car ahead of me had been but 3 seconds prior.  He was probably a good 20 ft ahead of me, but applied his brakes as he too surely felt the gust that had a much harder time pushing aside his 3500lb cage.  Had he been by my side, I would have been introduced to his rather solid-looking passenger side door, and potentially to the underneath of his rear right tire.  Nevermind that another car was no more than 10 feet behind me, just waiting to make me a bridgeway pancake if I were to have dropped the Atlantic.  It's not like people actually watch out for a person who spills directly in front of them.

That was probably the most terrifying moment I've had on a bike without actually dumping, and even the time that I dumped wasn't exactly an "Extreme Pucker" moment.  By the time I got to the 101 freeway up the Waldo Grade, my adrenaline was pumped into high gear and my body was shaking.  I still had 20 miles left to go on 101 to get to the actual Christmas dinner.



Since then, I've pretty much exclusively ridden bridges only when it's been dry.  The ride mentioned above sounds exactly like something I'd love to do, with the exception of the horrible gloomy death that could occur when crossing the Richmond or Bay Bridges, as the ride may necessitate.  So if it rains, I'm out.  Gone.  See ya.  Call me a pussy, call me a wuss, call me a ponce.  Call me whatever.  But I'm not crossing on the Westbound span of either of those bridges in the rain.

Oh yeah, and trying to negotiate 180 miles of twisties while having to clean off my face shield every minute or two doesn't exactly sound like a rip-roaring time to me, either.