The Long Way Around

So funny seeing a motorcycle surrounded by scooters. It's an invasion.

Fun times.

The further we go the less I'm sure if we're stupid, nuts, or on to something.

It's a blur. Who knows at this point. What I do know is my neck huts, my back hurts, my wrists are killing me, and I'm in third.

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.

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.

He looks chipper considering.

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.

The road is stopped. Construction. Caught up with Maroy and Bagel.

Got stung by a fricking bee bear Livermore. That'll learn me to open the arms to my jacket to cool off.

So far top speed has been 80.6 and that was somewhere near Livermore as well.

Man. No time to stop. Grrrr.