My “Hardest/Fastest/Longest” Ride

I’ve been reading Andy Goldfine’s Aerostich blog since the first entry. This week’s piece was “The Older I Get, the Faster I Wuz” which he ended by asking “Famously, whatever doesn’t kill you hopefully makes you stronger.  What were some of your hardest/fastest/longest rides?”

I’ve had a few hard, long, and moderately fast rides, but my first real street bike trip was probably the longest and hardest of my life. I fully expected to do a search on this blog and find that story to link to my comment’s on Andy’s blog. Somehow, it only sort of got a mention in my review of the Honda CX500 I rode on that trip and another mention (with a trip map) in “Losing the Travel Thing” from 2017. If you thought I was running out of motorcycle stories, you don’t know me very well. I’ve barely touched on my early off-road experiences and mostly grazed over the motorcycle trips and “adventures” that occurred after I moved from California to Denver. Before that period, the only motorcycle writing I did was a couple of short stories and a commuting article for a southern California motorcycle magazine. So, I might start backtracking thanks to Andy’s question.

Like I said in the CX500 review, “I bought my 1980 CX500 Deluxe for $800, cash, from a guy who was suffering the after-effects of divorce and needed the cash in the middle of winter, in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1982.” The bike had less than 500 miles on the odometer, but it had been “decorated” with crash rails and “road pegs,” the foot pegs had been replaced with police-style paddles, and assorted other bits of useless and dangerous chrome. The parts guy at the electronics supply house I frequented bought all of the chrome crap for enough money to finance putting the bike back into stock shape before I left Omaha in late March, 1983 for my new job in California.

Between wrapping up my old job, getting our household stuff ready to ship to California later that spring when the kids were out of school and I had found a place for us, and putting my affairs in some sort of order so I could leave everything behind and get myself organized for my new job, I had no real travel plan sorted out for the 2,000+ miles between Omaha and Costa Mesa, California. After an emotional and stressful goodbye to my family and friends, I fired up the CX and headed south out of Nebraska, hoping to escape before the unpredictably warm spring Nebraska weather turned on me.

My first day out, I pounded about 450 miles between Omaha and Dodge City, Kansas, where I stopped to see my father and step-mother for the evening. The ride between Omaha and Dodge was tough, mostly because I hadn’t been on a bike for a couple of years and I had never been on a fully loaded road bike riding through a 40mph sidewind. My back, neck, and arms were beat to crap by the time I rolled into their driveway. The next day, the weather was so nice I let my father talk me into playing caddy for him while he played a round of golf and I stayed another night. That night that damn wind brought a blizzard, which was just starting to come down and stick when I hit the road early the next day. I’d planned on heading southwest into southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, but by the time I’d put on about 100 miles in that direction, it was obvious that south was the logical escape route.

My next stop was Hereford, Texas, about 300 miles southwest of Dodge. My kids were, sadly, born in Hereford in the early 70’s, something their birth certificates will curse them with for their whole lives, and I had some friends there. First, though, I had to survive the trip. By Guymon, Oklahoma, the snow had turned to ice and the roads were slick and dangerous. I was not even a little prepared for this kind of weather. My rain gear was a bright yellow, rubberized fireman’s suit, which was reasonably waterproof but thermally worthless. In Guymon, I stopped to steal a bunch of grocery store plastic bags that I wrapped my hands and feet in for water-resistance and a little thermal insulation. I stuffed that fireman’s gear with a couple layers of pants and shirts and wore a down vest on top of that. I had to have looked like a yellow Pillsbury Doughboy flying down the highway as fast as I could manage. Semi’s were littering the ditches, after jack-knifing on the iced highway and banging their way through any obstacles between them and the ditch. All of the motels were blacked out due to power failures and full-up even without heat and electricity.

I rolled into a Hereford filling station; frozen, well-into hypothermia, almost delirious from the cold and fatigue. Barely able to move my legs, I half-opened my side-stand, started to lift my right leg over the bike, and they whole mess—bike, gear, and a few pounds of ice stuck to every exposed spot on me and the bike—landed on the ground in a heap. I’d pretty much resigned myself to freezing to death on the spot when a guy in a cowboy had stepped out of his pickup, pulled the bike off of me and onto its side stand, and lifted me off of the ground saying, “Those things get pretty heavy sometimes.” I mumbled something. He asked, “Are you alright?” I mumbled something else and he shook his head and led me into the station where I found a telephone booth (Remember those things?) and found a motel for the night.

After unloading my gear into the motel room, standing in the shower until the hot water was used up, and finding a restaurant where I could get a huge steak dinner, I called a friend who joined me for an after-dinner beer and spent the night recovering from nearly freezing to death. I got up late, loaded up and hit US385 south toward Odessa and, hopefully, out of the ice and cold. I made it about 5 miles when my front wheel started screaming at me. It was pretty obvious that a wheel bearing had failed and I turned back to Hereford where I’d passed a Honda dealership on the way out of town. It turned out that the service department was pretty idle that day, since no rational Texan would be out on a motorcycle in 40F weather, and they got me back on the road in an hour or two. It also turned out that the dealership had been started by two of the guys I worked with when I lived in Hereford a decade earlier. Neither of them were motorcycle guys and they’d spent a small fortune building a new facility, overstaffing it with sales people and understaffing it with service people and had gone bankrupt in a couple years. The guy who owned the place took a great deal of enjoyment telling me about all of that, especially the bits about buying the business for a few cents on the dollar. With new front wheel bearings and some sunlight left, I headed south as fast as I could.

After those first miserable couple of days on the road, sunshine and 50F weather was intoxicating. I mindlessly pounded out the 400 miles between Hereford and El Paso, Texas before realizing that I really wanted to be on the freeway heading straight west, which meant going north (scary thought) to Las Cruces before I could really pound out some miles. Somewhere along the 400 miles between Las Cruces and Tucson, Arizona, I wandered off of the freeway, found a park I remember as “Apache Mounds” and put up my tent for the night.

The next day, I covered the 700 desert miles between my campsite and San Diego, California, hooked up to the 405 and made it another 90 miles to Costa Mesa, California just before dark. The two memories I have of that section of the ride were: 1) discovering that I could lock the CX’s steering and throttle and kick back and relax almost like I was a passenger for a lot of desert miles and 2) pissing off a rough, tough Harley pirate when his big noisy Harley died early on the way up the east side of the Pine Mountain on I8 and my “rice burner” just kept on going while he was stuck at one of the many water barrels at the freeway edge.

I had the idiot idea that my new employer was expecting me when I arrived and discovered that not only was that not true but the place was closed on Saturday and finding an affordable place to stay in Orange County on a weekend was a pipedream. I spent a good bit of time pounding away at motel phone numbers in a phone booth before discovering that I was on my own. I headed south toward some open land that used to be state park territory between Costa Mesa and Laguna Beach and camped for the night on the beach like one of today’s millions of homeless folks do. That night, I also discovered that I’d left my damn billfold in that Costa Mesa phone booth.

The next day, I rolled into QSC Audio Products’ office in Costa Mesa, broke, frustrated and angry, and screwed. At the suggestion of the receptionist, I called the Costa Mesa police and discovered some amazing, decent, sympathetic California had turned my billfold into the police lost-and-found. My money and credit cards were still in the billfold and my life was still on some sort of track. I also still had more than a week of downtime before I was supposed to show up for work for QSC.

First, I hit the 80’s version of Craig’s List, a newspaper called “The Recycler,” found a room-for-rent in a single-family home in Huntington Beach, stowed the stuff I’d been lugging across the country that I didn’t need for a motorcycle trip in my rented room, found a bank for my new life’s financial needs, and hit the PCH for some pressure-free exploration before starting a new life in California. My first stop was Yosemite National Park, 400 miles north, where I explored the hiking trails, fumbled a bit at pretending to be a rock climber, and relaxed for a day in a spectacular campsite, White Wolf. From there, I rode 200 miles to San Francisco and wallowed in a real hippy community that was still sort-of-cool in 1983 and stumbled onto a motel near Golden Gate Park that I’d take advantage of for the next 8 years, every time I was in San Francisco. After a day and a night in San Francisco, I was back on PCH and rode another 200 miles north to Mendocino, California and camped along the Big River just south of town; another location that I’d reused dozens of times while I lived in California.

A couple of days later, I rode 600 miles as close to non-stop as possible back to Huntington Beach and my rented room, unloaded the bike, and settled into my new life as a Californian. A month later, I found a two-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach for my family, and the solo part of the California adventure was over.

Motorcycle Bingo

Here's the card, in case you want to play.

Some of these statements are really interesting; to me. The "Have more than 200,000 lifetime miles" question, for example. Several times in the last 20 years I've tried to add up my lifetime miles and mostly I come away baffled that someone would keep track of that. Fifty years ago, I worked with a salesman who quit his job and bought a Chevy dealership. He was probably 45-50 at the time (really old) and said he'd just past 200,000 lifetime driving miles and since the average American in the 70's drove ab out 100,000 miles between fatal accidents (according to him) he figured his days were numbered. So, he bought a car dealership and quit pounding the miles. About 5 years later, I passed 600.000 miles just from that job. 

Six years of 100,000 miles per year and I still wasn't dead. Pure luck, I know. 

Around that same time, I guestimated that I had somewhere around 10,000-25,000 off-road miles and I had tested my luck severely and it hadn't been all that great: a dozen  busted ribs, five broken toes, both clavicles broke, both shoulders separated, broken thumb and index finger, and enough other stuff to entertain every x-ray tech who has ever scanned my body. About then, I bought my first street bike and the rest has been mostly uneventful, but I really haven't kept track of the miles I've ridden, ever. Mostly, my count comes from recollections of the miles the bikes had on the odometer when I bought and sold them. With some bikes, that wasn't particularly accurate because the odometers either failed and were replaced or never existed.  

Here's my score, keeping in mind that some of these points came from a while ago, some a long while ago. The IBA stuff and the intercom system boxed me out of a couple lines. The IBA has always just seemed like conspicuous consumption to me and everything about an intercom system would ruin motorcycling for me.

 I have at least half of a million miles in the saddle, maybe closer to 2/3. I racked up 130,000 miles on my poor Honda CX500 before selling it to a friend. My 1st TDM also had 100k on the odometer when I sold it. I put 30k in a year on 3 bikes between '83 and '95: the CX500 in 1983, a Yamaha 550 Vision in 1988 and '89, and my '92 Vision in 1993. I will be sorry for as long as I live that I didn't put that many miles on my V-Strom, my all time favorite road bike. Every bike I've owned since my first Yamaha Vision has had a custom seat, including my WR250X. 

It's cheating, I suspect, to have ridden 12 months a year in California, but I did for 10 years. I also rode 12 months a year in Denver for 5 years, and 3 or 4 times when I lived in the Twin Cities. I could almost claim "Don't own a car," because the car I did own was my wife's for 5 of the 10 years I lived in southern California. I all but forgot how to drive until I bought a 1973 Toyota Hilux for hauling my kayak. The other spaces are just boring "doesn't everybody do that?" stuff.

I'd hoped to tag all 50 states before I quit riding, but that may turn out to be a pipedream. There are just a few southeastern states in which I have not burned fuel: 6 plus Hawaii.

Buy Low, Sell High?

Last winter, when some friends helped me wedge my WR through the garage door into the basement shop, I had high hopes for this spring. In January, I wrote “For the first time since I left California in 1991, I have a warm, well-lit indoor space to work on my bike for the rest of the winter. This will be the most fun spring motorcycle prep in decades.”

Within a month, I began to experience double-vision problems that turned anything that requires vision into headache-inducing misery. The bike is still on the jackstand, exactly where I put it in January; untouched, except for being rolled around to get the shop-vac to all of the basement flooding we “enjoyed” this spring. The double-vision is an early symptom of myasthenia gravis,as Wikipedia puts it, “a long-term neuromuscular disease that leads to varying degrees of skeletal muscle weakness. The most commonly affected muscles are those of the eyes, face, and swallowing.” My father suffered from this disease in the last two decades of his life and it isn’t pretty. This isn’t just the end of my motorcycling life, but driving a cage, bicycling, walking, eating, drinking, and breathing are all up for grabs.

My eyes have never been anything special, as anyone who saw me on a motocross track could attest. I have been legally blind in my left eye since childhood and my right eye has been going far-sighted for more than a decade and both eyes are clouded by cataracts. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, though. Two mediocre eyes are better than one. Stereoscopic vision and binocular depth perception is greatly undervalued until you don’t have it. I can’t even reliably reach for a glass of water and expect a predictable result. I wear an eye patch most of the time, which mostly reinforces my low opinion of my crappy right eye.

A long-time rule of mine has been “when in doubt, throw it out.” I applied that rule, last spring, to my trusty 2004 V-Strom and sold it to someone who would use it as much and as seriously as I did. Off and on that summer, I missed the 650 and, occasionally, wished I still had it, but mostly I wished I wasn’t 70, worn-out, and lame. By June, 2018 I decided I had taught my last MSF class and “retired” from the Minnesota program. I had pipe-dreams of doing adventures on the WR, though: going places I would no longer have the gumption to take a bike as large and heavy as the V-Strom. Clearly, that isn’t in the cards.

What prompted this was my motorcycle insurance premium notice and 2019 ID cards just arrived in the mail. For the first time in 50-some years, I am not going to be putting out a few hundred dollars to insure my motorcycle(s). For the time being, I will put that envelope aside, on the desk, hoping that something changes and I get another year of riding; by some miracle. I am waffling, but I need to take the bike out of the garage, do some of the basic maintenance tasks to get the bike ready to sell, and write up an ad. But, for now, I’m going for a bicycle ride while I still can.

Running from the Sun

The day before the total solar eclipse, I did what I like to do the most: I took a trip in the opposite direction of everyone else.

About a year ago, our plan was to drive to Broken Bow, Nebraska and camp there the night before the eclipse. Nebraska is expecting 500,000 visitors on Monday. People from all over the continent and world have been staking out campsites since last week. The total population of that state is 1,896,190 and 1.3 million of those folks are in the greater Omaha area and another 285,000 live in the greater Lincoln area. Lincoln is sort of in the path, at least at the 90-something-percent area, but the rest of the towns and villages along that route through the state are barely able to cope with their own shrinking and struggling populations. It ain’t gonna be fun getting into or out of that state on Monday. Nebraska’s roads, away from the Interstate, are poorly maintained and marginally safe at their best: due to unskilled and distracted local and truck traffic. I love US20 across the top of that state, especially as a route to the mountains. Kearney is a town that holds a fair number of fond memories for my family. But on the best, uncrowded weekday afternoon, you can not predict when a trucker will decide to cross the centerline and test your reflexes. Kearney, on it’s best day, could probably put up 500 visitors. Grand Island is long past it’s best days.

So, we (my wife, Elvy, and I) decided to do something different. She’s hot to see the sun go dark, so she is going to try to be where ever she has to be to have clear skies at 11:30AM on 8/21/2017. Not going for the perfect 100% eclipse, but just a good look at what she can get. If it’s clear that afternoon in Red Wing, she’s going to stay home. I’ve been trying to get a few days to myself in Canada for a breath of sanity all summer. I’m back in Guitar Repair and Construction school in another week, so this is my one and only chance at the trip north. So, that’s where I went: to Thunder Bay for a week.

My long-time rule about crowds is, “See where they are going and go somewhere else.”

Losing the Travel Thing

All my life, “getting away” has been a theme. I grew up in western Kansas and anyone with any sense at all wants to escape that hell hole as fast as possible. I got started with a lifetime of “camping” there when I snuck out Saturday nights with a canteen and a blanket or a Cub Scout’s sleeping bag to hide in the basement ruins of a Catholic college that had been wiped out by a tornado. If I made it out unseen, I could get out of 2-4 hours of Methodist sermons and Midwestern religious hymn-howling. My motivation for making my great escape was pretty great and getting away has been a theme of my life since.

For most of my adult life, my “career” was a collection of low-to-moderate income, high-pressure repair or engineering jobs with a fair amount of middle and upper management thrown in to extract any fun my job might have provided. Managing most people is about as entertaining as herding chickens and managing management is even more painful and unrewarding. Add to that a house full of girls and women, two daughters and a wife, and I regularly needed to “get away.” For a couple of decades my getaways were off-road motorcycle racing and backpacking into remote areas.

For the move to California in 1983, running from the Reagan recession that pretty much wiped out non-military/industrial jobs in the Midwest, I bought my first street bike since I “borrowed” my brother’s Harley Sprint in 1963 and stripped it down for flattracking. The trip to California in late March of that spring was my first adventure tour, since I rode through 400 miles of sleet, snow, and ice storms to get to southwestern Texas where the winter weather finally let up. It was an adventure, for sure. I probably shouldn’t have survived that trip, since I knew practically nothing about safely riding a motorcycle on pavement. My CX500 was poorly setup, marginally ridden, and completely inappropriate for the places I forced it to go. That ride and that motorcycle started a whole chain of events in my motorcycle life, though. I didn’t really think of myself as a “motorcyclist” before that first 2,000+ mile long late-winter/early-spring slog.

At least 250,000 miles later, I’m beginning to lose that identity. This past summer, I rode my V-Strom to Colorado and back. For the first time in all of the years I’ve been touring, I did absolutely no prep work on the bike before I left. I didn’t even do a needed oil change. I have no excuse. I was looking forward to the trip, I think. I knew how long the trip would be. I’d done a fair amount of work on the bike the previous year and, then, barely rode it at all. So, I had some false sense of security that somewhere, sometime I’d already done the prep, but I knew better. I just didn’t come up with the motivation to crawl around the bike doing the things that needed doing. The end result was a fairly high-tension trip with the only real fun moments coming off of the bike when I was hanging out with a friend at various Colorado hot springs.

There was no “escape” in that trip. I had lots of work to do at home, none of which I dreaded or needed escape from. I’ve been everywhere I went on that ride and there was almost no adventure to the trip, except for the tire failure in Nebraska and that wasn’t particularly entertaining. I even avoided a short dirt road section in Colorado, opting for pavement to preserve my too-many-miles chain and sprockets, while my friend took the high and unpaved road. I skipped Pike’s Peak on the way back, something I never imagined I’d do. Other than doing long miles on the interstates, my ride to and from Colorado was totally atypical for me. It didn’t really qualify as an adventure and I didn’t at any time feel obligated to turn it into one. Honestly, most of the time I just looked forward to it being over and being back home working on my projects.

I suppose Trump should be inspiring some motivation to get away, but even he and his band of merry Brownshirts are not doing it for me. For the last three years, I have been talking to a company that specializes in South American motorcycle tours.I sort of had Peru on my bucket list, but even that just seems like more hassle than fun these days. I think might have lost the travel thing.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Long Way Round

 

Elixir Films, Image Wizard Television Ltd. 2004

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

Hollywood sucks. George Lucas has, apparently, suffered a stroke based on the last dregs of Star Bores. Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson have overdosed on their meds and egos and only South Park manages to accurately describe their insanity. Reality television has turned most of the tube's output into painful parody and I can't figure out why anyone cares who the next Superstar will be when that marginally talented geek is singing geezer rock in front of a lethargic studio band for a geriatric audience.

But home entertainment is better than ever if you know where to look.

After a few years of resisting opportunity, I finally hooked up to Netflix to watch all the BBC, Bravo, PBS, History Channel, Comedy Central, National Geographic, A&E, IFC, VH1, and HBO documentaries that I've missed by being too cheap to pay for television and too stubborn to pay for cable commercials. I haven't made it half way through my list of "must see" stuff and I've been watching at least two videos a week since the summer of 2006. One my early picks is one of the best documentaries, ever: Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman's Long Way Round. Even better, it's a motorcycle documentary.

The theme of the several episode program is two movie actors -- McGregor is more movie actor than Boorman (a bit-part actor who's sole published credit, as far as I can determine, is The Bunker, a god-awful horror film, and a blip-part in McGregor's The Serpent's Kiss) -- decide to take a trip around the world on motorcycles. McGregor is a road biker, Boorman is a little more of an off-road guy, but neither seem to have much experience away from civilization. So, this is a major adventure and a huge commitment.

The first of the seven-episode, two-disk Bravo series (in the US, 10 episodes, three disks in the rest-of-the-world including Canada in NTSC format from Amazon.ca) is about the concept and planning of the trip. McGregor and Boorman have a minor disagreement as to what kind of bike will be needed for the trip; Boorman votes KTM DP bikes, McGregor votes BMW GS big-bikes. KTM settles the argument by bailing from the project because they feel their bikes aren't up to the job. They were probably right, although, from a marketing standpoint, trying and failing is preferable to gutlessly running away. BMW, on the other hand, dove headfirst into the project, providing training on smaller GS bikes and logistical assistance for the trip. When the big BMWs do break under the extreme loads and abuse this trip presents, any biker worth his helmet allows more credit than blame for the failures. My own admiration for BMW's GS bikes has been high since Gaston Rahier's Dakar days and has gone through the roof after watching this show.

At the core, the show is about the two main characters. Most film fans know a lot about McGregor's screen presence, from Trainspotting to Big Fish to Blackhawk Down to Moulin Rouge and, finally, dipping to career lows in the last three Star Bores (or first three, if you care about Lucas' demented "episode" counting system). McGregor, for me, is an actor who vanishes into his parts, so I rarely know I have been watching him until the credits roll and I discover who he played. That's not who we see in Long Way Around. We see a good guy taking on a nearly impossible task, 20,000+ miles in four months by (mostly) motorcycle, with the skills of a motorcycle enthusiast. We don't know squat about Boorman, except that he's McGregor's best friend. Boorman is clearly more than just a groupie and as the trip progresses he's often the heart and guts of the trip. They are both tough guys, though, and the trip tests everything aspect of their personalities: patience, stamina, resourcefulness, language skills, courage, and their friendship. An important, and at least equally tough, character in the film is their cameraman, Claudio von Planta, who is with them every meter of the trip and whose job was probably the hardest of all, since he lugged equipment, survival gear, tools, and camera gear on the same kind of motorcycle the main characters rode, except for a section of Russia he traversed by Russian rat bike, after he managed to tear up his BMW on a RBFR (Really Big F... Rock).

    McGregor, "Claudio, there is no problem between Charley and me, Charley tell him."

    Boorman, "There's a terrible problem with us - we hate each other."

Speaking of speech, the video is not rated, but if it were it would probably be somewhere between PG to R for language (typical Brit working class speech) and nudity (these guys are not shy about skinny dipping for the camera or showing off the mosquito bites on their asses). Some will be sad to learn that the editors blurred out the wankers' wankers, at least on the US DVD release. Try to find the PAL edition, if you are really curious.

The route runs McGregor, Boorman, von Planta, and the rest of their support crew through France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and northern United States. They travel manicured western European freeways, mildly decayed (like Minnesota) eastern European highways, dirt roads, roads that would be an insult to goat trails, and crash on or get stuck in all kinds of terrain. For a small portion of Russia, the roads are so impassible, they take to the rails with their motorcycles in a freight car or hitch a ride with an all-terrain monster trucker. Any time it's possible, they are traveling by two wheels, even when any rational person would have opted to cop out.

The team flies the bikes across the Bering Strait to Anchorage, Alaska. The bikes take a rest break in an Anchorage BMW shop for some serious maintenance and, after a rest in civilization, the guys are back on the highway in time for McGregor to get rear-ended by a teenage Canadian driver (to loosely abuse that skill set). After surviving many of the worst roads on earth, from eastern Europe to the eastern tip of Siberia, the world's worst road hazard, a bubble-head driver nearly ends the trip in disaster. Thanks to the stability of the big BMW, the protection provided by their heavy duty panniers, and McGregor's riding skill, the only damage suffered is to the kid's car and the luggage. Only in North America are there large quantities of drivers bereft of the intelligence, skill, or common sense necessary for driving. Where are the LA cops and their batons when you really need them?

There is a book version of the trip, Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World, although I'm hard pressed to imagine what could be written that wasn't demonstrated in the video. I think this is a must-see show for motorcyclists. For the third time this year (and the eleventh in my lifetime) I've been tempted into owning a video so I can watch it more than once. I bought the Canadian version and I'm on at least my fourth pass through the set.

Music to Ride By

Now I'm on a roll. Listening to Heartbreaker, I'm reminded of all of the rock and roll songs I used to crank up in my head to get motivated before a race. I occasionally get asked why I don't listen to music while I ride, especially on long distances. First, I don't want to be deaf. Second, I have a lifetime of music on-line everywhere I go. I have a head full of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and classical music. The audio quality is dramatically better than any crap MP3 player and cheesy helmet headphone rig. I don't have to worry about batteries (although I need to recharge with breakfast and lunch). The selection is practically endless and I don't have to fumble with the player's tiny controls when some tune I hate accidentally slips into the cue. So, in some particular order, I've decided to list some of my favorite racing and riding head-tunes:

• Heartbreaker - Rolling Stones (The Stones' best song from their best album.)
• Frankenstein - Edgar Winter (My moto gate go-to song from 1973 on. Synthesizers should have been abandoned as musical instruments after Edgar put this tune on tape. They've done nothing new or better since.)
• Medicated Goo - Traffic (Pretty much anything quick from Stevie Winwood and/or Traffic will do when the road is twisty, rough, or missing altogether. I've been a fan since he was "Little Stevie Winwood" with Spencer Ward.)
• Hocus Pocus - Focus (The band Van Halen wishes it could be if Eddie had the chops and Roth had a sense of humor and  Van Halen had a rhythm section.)
• Scatterbrain - Jeff Beck (Actually, all things Jeff Beck are worthy of riding and racing. All other guitar players are just cheap imitations. Get the real thing, listen to Jeff. Once, I thought I could play guitar but Jeff reminded me that I just own guitars.) 
• Give It Everything You Got - Edgar Winter's White Trash (I freakin' love this song. The closest I ever came to winning a moto was when I had this going hard in my skull. The Rickman caught nothing but neutrals in a big sweeper and down I went.)
• Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo - Johnny Winter  (Rick Zerringer wrote this one for Johnny. It didn't hit, so Zerringer renamed himself "Derringer" and did it again.)
• Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who (I used to drag out the synth intro in my head until the gate dropped, then . . . not much. I could never ride as fast as Pete can windmill. It is a good covering-miles-tune. A solid block pass motivated by a Townshend power chord is hard to forget, though.)
• Living in America - James Brown (I can ride for days on this song. It should be the 21st Century's national anthem. It isn't because we're a nation of pussies and other sorts of gutless conservatives. On my way back from Canada, I have to get this tune going or I might immigrate.)
• Ballroom Blitz - Sweet (Racing is semi-organized war. What better music than a bar fight tune?)
• Whammer Jammer - J. Geils Band with Magic Dick (One of the great, rarely heard rock motorcycling tunes. When Hancock started with this jam, I knew I was gonna like that movie. I did, thank you for asking.)
• 1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky (Not a race tune, but a wonderful thing to be able to replay on long, boring cross-country trips. You wouldn't believe how loud the cannons are in my version.)
• A Night In Tunisia - Dizzy Gillespie (Dizzy's music got me into music. I hear this song a half-dozen ways; from his New York 5-piece combo  to this big band which I was blessed to hear in the 70's.)
• Traveling Lady - Manfred Mann Chapter Three (Traveling music, not racing music. There are a few songs from this album that I get going on a great day: Snakeskin Garter, Mister You're A Better Man than I, and Time. I recently converted my LP to digital audio and have been re-enjoying this music a lot lately. I need a trip to somewhere a long ways away.)
• High Falls and One Way Out - Allman Brothers (I think I did the entire Alaska and British Columbia mountain section with High Falls in my head. I saw this band -- the High Falls band -- in '73 and have never forgotten how great a rock and roll band can sound. The best day on the road almost always coincides with my being able to pull up the entire Live at the Filmore East album from memory; lead parts included.)

And my "new" (post-racing) travel-pump favorites:

• Jack You Dead - Joe Jackson (The version I really hear in my head was from the Sum Fun Band in SoCal. I ran sound for them for 8 years and they kicked the snot out of Louie Jordan's song. This is the closest thing to their version, add a killer harp solo, a much hipper rhythm section, and a bigger, blusier voice, and you've got Sum Fun.)
• Let's Get Fucked Up and Die - Motion City Soundtrack
• Whatever Happened to My Rock and Roll - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (As best I can tell, the theme song from "Faster." I can't watch road racing without having WHTMRR in my head.)

I'm not even close to running out, but I am getting bored. I think I'll go for a ride and listen to music. See 'ya.

Product Review: Added Insurance

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

Thirty-nine years ago, I began my collection of protective gear. I started with a helmet, which promptly proved its value when I did an unintentional headstand on a large pyramid-shaped rock. A while later, I started wearing calf-high linemans' boots instead of hiking boots or sneakers. I followed that brilliant triumph with denim coveralls (no kidding!) with factory-installed knee and hip pads. Later, I moved up to tear-off goggles, hockey-style shoulder pads, real motocross gloves, High Point racing boots, early Malcolm Smith racing pants and armored jacket, and racing gloves.

The thing that I discovered about real riding gear is that the more of it I owned, the more experimental I became on the track and trail. That might sound like I was only taking extra risks, but I was also experimenting with my riding style, control techniques, and exploring the connection between myself and my motorcycle and doing it with less fear. Fear is not a useful component of a learning environment. The more we are afraid, the more conservative we become, the fewer options we have when exposed to hazards, and the less we learn from riding experiences. My protective gear allowed me the luxury of feeling confident in moments where I'd previously felt exposed to danger. On the practical side, when those "educational moments" turned into a crash, the gear did its job and protected me from serious injury. If today's chest protection had been around in the 1970s, I'd have probably managed to avoid broken ribs and busted collarbones.

All this brings me to a new kind of protection I used on a trip to Alaska in 2007. While studying what others had experienced in Alaska and on adventure tours, I stumbled on an article about a serious deficiency in medical insurance. Mainly, most US medical insurance providers only cover basic doctor visits in the 50 states and rarely pay for medical evacuation from remote areas. Most policies don't reimburse you for emergency medical expenses outside of the US. Since evacuation can cost as much as $50,000 and there appears to be no upper limit to hospital bills, an adventure tour could be a lot more of a financial adventure than most of us can stand. The more I learned about the crap we call "medical insurance," the more I realized I needed additional protection from a bankrupting accident and visit to a hospital; US or Canadian. That comforting Canadian national medical system doesn't apply to non-taxpaying, non-residents. Everyone else has to pay for a visit to a Canadian hospital and those unprotected visits aren't much cheaper in Canada than they are in the US.

There is a type of insurance that appears to be designed for adventure touring; it is called "Emergency Medical Evacuation Insurance," also known as "Supplemental Medical Coverage for Travelers." This kind of policy can provide coverage for emergency evacuation to the nearest medical facility. It will pay your "reasonable travel" expenses for a spouse or caregiver who may need to come to where you are hospitalized until you can travel home. When you are ready to travel again, the insurance will pay for the cost of returning home.

I ended up going with MEDEX (http://www.medexassist.com/), but there are several companies providing various levels of coverage for a variety of costs. Some other possibilities are:

• MedJetAssist http://www.medjet.com/
• SkyMed http://www.skymed.com/
• AeroMedical http://www.travelinsuranceservices.com/
• IMGlobal http://www.imglobal.com/

In 2007, I paid about $300 for 30 days of coverage. When I crashed 100 miles north of the Artic Circle on the Dempster Highway, one option available to me was to ask a truck driver who stopped to provide assistance to radio in a helicopter to fly me to a hospital. I was on the 9th day of a 30 tour and I was pretty sure, in my crashing past, I'd suffered through each of the injuries caused by the Dempster crash. Over the years, I've become a rehab semi-expert and while I was testing my limbs and bodily functions I was figuring out what I'd need to do to get better fast. When I made the decision to turn around, keep riding, and head for the semi-civilization of Dawson City and a hot bath, I had the security of knowing that if I was wrong needed medical attention, I could call it in at any time. My Emergency Medical Insurance was like a piece of gear that added confidence and security. Without it, fear would have had more control on my decision and I might have missed out on the next 20 days of the adventure of my life.

The next year, when I rode from home to the tip of Nova Scotia, I bought another 30 day policy for that trip. The price wasn't much different than it had been the previous year. To the surprise of everyone who knows me, I didn't have a single moment of excitement on that trip. There aren't a lot of interesting dirt roads out east, though.

When friends and family tell you that you are crazy for riding your bike from Timbuktu to Bolivia, you might have to concede that point. But you don't have to be stupid. You can armor up to minimize the damage when things go wrong and you can be prepared to deal with all sorts of disasters and distractions. "Emergency Medical Evacuation Insurance" is one more way you can put some padding between yourself and catastrophe.

Aerostich Earplug Sample Kits

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

Disposable Kit: Photo courtesy of the 2007 RiderWearhouse Catalog.

Sometimes a product is more than a product. A really good product can even be a public service. The RiderWearhouse Aerostich Earplug Sample Kits (offered in a "Disposable Kit" for $10 or a "Reusable Kit" for $25) are that kind of product.

Riding a motorcycle is a well-known cause of hearing damage. It's almost impossible to find a hearing damage chart that doesn't include a picture of a motorcyclist with a suggested decibel caption beside the picture. Those charts seriously disagree about the level of noise exposure a motorcyclist suffers (from an impossible low of 85dbA to a more believable 125dBA), but they all agree that motorcycle riding is detrimental to the health of your hearing. If you experience the joy of a continuous tone, whine, "metallic waterfall" noise, or hiss when you are in a quiet room, you're one of the millions of tinnitus sufferers. Don't worry, if you like the sound of that tone, it won't go away for the rest of your life. Enjoy.

One of the additional joys of the "loud pipes" theory is that while you may think other people can hear you and, accordingly, watch out for you, you're not hearing much because you're driving yourself deaf. Helmet haters are getting the same benefit from their preference.

Exhaust noise is not engine noise and is mostly useless for troubleshooting purposes and wind noise is totally distracting. Lowering the overall noise level allows me to discriminate odd mechanical sounds, sirens, car horns, and even voices from the two major useless noises. The obvious solution is to ride wearing hearing protection. In a 90-125dBA environment, you have lost much of the subtlety in your ability to discern noises; important from unimportant. A high-noise environment is well known to cause fatigue, stress, loss of concentration, circulation and respiratory anomalies, and a weird psychological characteristic known as "learned helplessness syndrome." I've found that, if I want to hear the sound of my engine, I have to reduce the overall noise level to something tolerable. So, if you want to be able to put in a long, focused day on the bike, you're going to need to protect yourself from the noise of your vehicle, helmet, and wind.

Reusable Kit: Photo courtesy of the 2007 RiderWearhouse Catalog.

That's easy to say, but it's difficult to find an earplug that fits. At the corner drugstore, Walmonster, or hardware store, you can find all kinds of earplugs and maybe you'll find one that works for you. I've tried the cylindrical industrial foam earplugs and they do a great job of shutting out noise, but they irritate my ears after a few hours. The latex flanged plugs I found in an industrial supply store were even more painful. The waxy sleep plugs work, but they get filthy quickly and stick to my helmet and are expensive. My expensive "musician's earplugs" work really well, but I'm afraid I'm going to misplace those $140 plugs in a restaurant after a long day's ride. When I discovered these kits from Aerostich, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to try out a variety of plugs (many of which are stocked individually at RiderWearhouse) to see what best fit my ears and personality.

The "reusable" kit comes with ten different pairs of reusable plugs. Moldex Rockets, North Com-Fits, and others are in that kit. Seven are corded (for us forgetful types) and three are not. The "disposable" kit supplies you with twelve different pairs of plugs, six corded and six not. This kit includes Howard Leight Max's, EAR Express Pod Plugs, Moldex Pura-Fits, and others.

Most of the plugs in both kits were reasonably comfortable and all of Aerostich's choices provided good hearing protection. I found the reusable latex (or latex-like) plugs to be too stiff for long use, except for a couple earplugs (I liked the Moldex models). Some of the disposables wouldn't fit in my ear well enough to provide good isolation. In the end, I found that the Howard Leight Multi-Max was the optimum protection and most comfortable fit for my ears. I bought a case of 200 and I use them on the bike, mowing the lawn, working in my shop, in the recording studio and around live music, and when my wife is trying to get me to do some job I don't want to do. Your mileage will probably vary, which is the point in these two kits. Like snowflakes, no two ears are alike (even your own, probably). What fits and works for me probably won't work for you. The best way to find a good fit is to try a lot of earplugs and, for $35, you can try out 22 of the best.

The End of North Dakota

Nothing is open at 6AM in northeastern North Dakota, so I put in a 110 miles before breakfast. The bike was barely warmed up before I passed Rock Lake. That town’s campsite is on the lake, in a pristine location, with a decent john and showers. Freakin’ perfect.

I have a couple of ND roads to hit and a historic site and a scenic highway or two: Pembina Gorge, the Rendezvous Region Scenic Byway, and the Icelandic State Park. I’ll be back in Minnesota before the day is over.

I ripped through the recommended northeastern scenic byways, both of which were nice but required traveling through an awful lot of boring farmed plains to get to. Considering the pain required to see those spots, the phrase “fly-over territory” comes to mind. Stepping disks or teleporting would be a nice alternative to flying.

There is nothing to experience in the in-between territory and way too many opportunities to be dosed by commercial farming chemicals. I ought to repel or kill bugs and be weed-free for a couple of years now. Anyone who doesn’t think farming is industry has not spent time near farms. Between the animal factories (feed lots) and the plant factories (corn fields), there are enough chemicals, pollutants, and environmental hazards to make General Motors and 3M executives to feel good about themselves.

To test my luck and to get a picture, I went right up to the border crossing before turning south and east to go into Minnesota. After hitting the absolute northeastern tip of North Dakota, I crossed the river into Minnesota. My target for the night is the nation’s “ice box,” International Falls, Minnesota. When ever friends in other places hear about Minnesota, it’s almost always during the winter when International Falls sets the nation’s cold temperature records. It’s often colder in International Falls than most of Alaska. -50oF is sunbathing weather in January.

A clue to the area came at Roseau, a small college and tourist town that I hear about occasionally as part of the state’s MSF program. On the western edge of Roseau, I passed a really nice off-road motorcycle park, complete with big jumps, triple whoops, and some water crossings. Now I’m jealous. Roseau appears to be a healthy, middle-class Midwestern town. Much larger and much more urban than I expected.

I’ve wondered what this area would be like since moving to Minnesota. In January, when International Falls is regularly the coldest place in the States, I often get calls and email from friends asking, “How the hell can you live in that place?” International Falls is regularly 40oF colder than where I live. Their summer lasts about 2 fewer months. Their mosquitoes are a couple of pounds larger. They are on the boundary of Canada and the States, which is why their national park is called the Boundary Waters National Park.

I anticipated International Falls being like most of the small towns I know in Nebraska, especially the dying part. International Falls appears to be a prosperous, lively town with a decent middle class, industry (Marvin Windows), and a strong tourist and sporting trade.

It began to rain the moment I entered the city limits, at about 8PM. My butt was sore and I was in no mood for playing tourist. I found a cheap campsite on the edge of town, set up camp, and died for the night at 9PM.

Cruising through Oil Fields and Forests

I did the tourist bit out of Roosevelt park, took some pictures, walked some distance, and had fun owning the park road at 6AM. Heading north. I got up close and personal with a small herd of buffalo who weren't particularly intimidated by me or my motorcycle.

I took in a collection of ND scenic roads and crossed a hell of a lot of boring plains (sorry, if I’ve offended boring plains lovers).

I ended up passing the International Peace Garden without seeing a sign announcing its existence. That put me in Rolla at quitting time. Rolla is one of those “boarder towns” that is on the edge of vanishing or growing. Unlike Bottineau or Langdon or a few other places I’ve passed that seem to be immune to small town entropy. I haven’t made the slightest attempt at keeping score, but it feels like North Dakota is mostly holding its own, rather than dying as some have reported. Some of the northwestern oil towns are booming, which could be good and could be bad since the oil reserves are pretty shaky for a long term bet.

30 years ago, a geophysicist used a bowl of spaghetti noodles to explain oil resources to me. He said, “When the bowl is full, you can stick a fork anywhere in the bowl and you’ll get spaghetti. When it empties out, you have to get creative with the fork to pick up a noodle.” North Dakotans brag that the “new fields” in the northwest are being drained by “drilling down two miles and across another two miles.” First, they aren't new discoveries. Oil geologists have known about the Bakken Formation reserves for a long, long time. We just didn't have the technology or need to drill for anything that complicated. I’d say a 2x2 mile drill routine is about as close to extremes of getting “creative with the fork” as I can imagine. The next tactic must be really close to swabbing down the bowl with a piece of bread to completely sterilize the bowl/planet of that resource.

When we are that desperate, it’s pretty obvious that the end is in sight. I wonder if there is any thought at all of saving some of this material for future generations? I wonder if we even consider our own kids a “future generation?” We seem to be desperate to strip the planet in a single generation. I suppose that's always been true, though. Clearly the Pennslyvania, Texas, Oklahoma, California, and Kansas fields have been worked dry with the same "efficiency."

Rolla was an experience. The only campground in town is the town camp at the fair grounds. It looks pretty desolate, with 8 camper hookups and no provision for tent camping. A sign says, “Pay for the site at the Sinclair station.” I found the station at the edge of town and paid my $15. The kid at the station said there was a “white building with hot showers and bathrooms near the campground. I went back, set up my tent, set out my gear to dry in the twilight and set out to find the showers. I struck out. I was about to explore another corner of the fair grounds when a cop came through the parking lot. I asked him where the showers were and he pointed at a pile of dirt and a backhoe, “It was there until yesterday. I don’t know what they’re planning to do with the campground.”

I’m hot, sweaty, and shower-less. The cop offered to open up the town hall for me to use the sink. He did. I did. Afterwards, I tried to cool down by doing a little camping maintenance and writing and was constantly interrupted by a group of kids who seemed to think I was there to entertain and supply them. I gave up and hid in my tent, reading, until the sun went down and I was comforted to sleep by a halogen light that blasted through my tent walls all night. Now that's fine camping. No wonder my wife always finds something else to do when I want to hit the road with her.

The Best Laid Plans (and mine)

Last Friday, I was feeling confident. I'm a week away from the coolest LD trip I've ever taken and I have everything lined up and set to go. I'm going to explore the backroads, ghost towns, and out-of-the-way places of North Dakota. I've been looking forward to this trip for a year, maybe two. I've installed new everything-that-matters on my 2000 Kawasaki KL250 Super Sherpa (chain and sprockets, tires, brakes, changed the fluids everywhere, rebuilt the rear shock, checked and tightened every bolt, fastener, and clamp). I built a custom touring seat, installed a larger off-road tank, wired up a GPS, sorted out luggage and camping gear, and installed a tweeky-cool headlight. When all that was reassembled, I thought the little bike was ready for a 400 mile shake-down cruise to Duluth.

The North Dakota ride was supposed to be a point of honor demonstration that a little bike can do big things. My route sheet lines out 2500 miles of dirt roads, limited access trails, and tractor ruts, along with a few hundred miles of two lane pavement. After checking everything twice, I fired up the Sherpa to check my new brakes and made it about 5' before the countershaft seal let go, dumping the engine oil out practically instantly. Nobody local had any parts for the Sherpa, so I ordered the seal and other bits on-line. Kawasaki didn't have the parts nationally, so it took all of the week for the seal to arrive. In the meantime, an internet Sherpa expert suggested that I should have replaced the o-ring, too. All I could do was hope he was wrong, since that advice came too late for the parts order.

In the meantime, I started to get my Suzuki V-Strom prepared for a modified version of the trip. No nearly as much dirt, no tractor rut trails, and a way pared down version of the original plan, mostly on two-lane roads.

Two days before the takeoff date, the parts arrive. The seal retention design leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, there is no retention design, other than slipping the seal into the seat and hoping it stays. I'm less than impressed. I install the seal and go for a bicycle ride with my dog, while the Permatex cures.

About three blocks from home, I turn left and the dog goes right and stops and I end up on the asphalt with a two-max-sized bandage rip in my elbow, a road rashed knee, and a severely chastened dog.

After doing a half-assed first aid job on myself, I decided to give the Kawasaki seal a test; it leaks. The expert was right, I should have replaced the o-ring, too.

To be honest, I shouldn't have been surprised. My "luck' with Kawasaki machines has been mediocre, at best. My first Kawi was a 1971 350 Big Horn, one of the lamest, heaviest, worst designed two-strokes in Japanese history. It and I battled out way to the end of the Canadian River Cross Country in 1972, crossing the finish line stuck in 2nd gear, with the forks all but seized, and various bits of the Big Horn littered over the last 100 miles of dry river bed. I sold the bike to a high school kid who promptly took off the silencer and the air filter and siezed the motor in less than 25 miles. He even asked me for a refund afterwards.

My second Kawasaki experience was with the original KLR600, the 1984 model. I didn't have any particular problems with the KLR, but it was the lamest excuse for a motor I've ever experienced and the least dirt-capable dual purpose probably ever built. The German kid who bought the KLR hung on to it for less than 100 miles before he tangled the kickstarter behind his leg, grinding the starter gear for several miles before the transmission blew up. He sued me for the repairs in small claims court and was disappointed when the judge disagreed with his view of responsibility.

My opinion of Kawasaki is only slightly above my opinion of military-industrial manufacturers, especially since Kawasaki Heavy Industries makes products for aerospace, oil tankers and other big ships, and all kinds of equipment where the buyer is often spending someone else's money and is less concerned with quality, reliability, and such things. If the Sherpa hadn't fallen into my hands for a relatively reasonable price, there is no chance that I would have gone looking for a Kawasaki. In fact, I was looking for a DR350 or an XT350 when I fell into the Sherpa. When I get back from North Dakota, I'll be looking again.

The Sherpa is going to have to wait a couple of weeks or more for me to get back to it. In a couple of weeks, I'll have a pair of seals and a pair of o-rings waiting for me and I'll try the repair again. I have to admit, I'm disappointed enough in the bike to be a little soured on it. That's not rational, but there you go. I don't remember claiming to be the only rational human on the planet.