20160311 - Trans Florida x2

(Please excuse the verb tense agreement.  I was writing during and after this all happened...as with all my other blogs.)

It's 10pm and everyone in my group has called it quits for the night.  I'm willing to bet they are all asleep by now.  I'm not quite ready yet, so I thought I'd blog a little.

First, I have to say one more time how happy I am to be using overpass-turbo.eu and BaseCamp.  I plotted a route from Spring Hill, Florida over to Ormond Beach Florida (west coast to east coast), using secondary, secondary link and tertiary roads - no interstate or toll roads, no dirt roads.  The route took me down 41 a little to Avery road and across I-75, and then up 301.  The route was excellent.  There was beautiful country side and many twisties along the way; definitely enough to keep me interested.  Even though I never hit a high speed highway,  I still made the trip in 4 hours and stopped for lunch along the way.  I planned a really nice ride for Sunday; but, it looks like it's going to thunderstorm and I may need to re-route to the south.  We shall see.  If that's the case, I'll be disappointed because the route takes me on the ferry to cross the St. John's river.

Before this trip started, I picked out the camping gear I wanted to use.

I've clearly accumulated a pile of camping gear.  I have 3 air mattresses, 3 sleeping bags, 2 tents and a bunch of other stuff.  When on a motorcycle, one must choose wisely as each item takes up precious space and contributes to the overall weight of the bike.  I have yet to worry about the weight recommendations of the bike.  My bike has more than enough power to take two riders and full bags and then have stuff strapped on top.  I've also seen pictures of guys in Asia that do ridiculous things like transport a 600 pound pig on the back of a moped.  Space, however is a serious concern.  So, on this trip, I went with my bivouac and my large air mattress.  I wasn't sure the large air mattress would fit inside the bivvy; but, if it didn't, I simply would have put it on top of my ground cover and pitched my bivvy on top of it.  No problem.

 For my sleeping bag, I selected my REI light weight bag.  I think it's a 3 season bag.  I had this bag and tent combination in Death Valley and it got down to a bit below 40 degrees if I remember correctly.  I was toasty warm.  The bivvy adds about 15 degrees of warmth all by itself and the sleeping bag many more, particularly if you know who to use it correctly.

I also brought my MSR Whisperlite camping stove.  This little stove is truly awesome.  This trip, I left the spot tracker behind as nobody was following my travels and I'd post the GPS track anyway.  I brought an extension cord, mess kit and hand axe.  I thought that should definitely cover it.

I arrived to see Fred coming out of the camp site.  He said the others were out and were going to stop at the store.  He also said I could set up anywhere I like, folks were starting to pull up stakes already.  I remembered they were by a porta-john; and pulled in close by; but, couldn't see Cliff's car and trailer.  Almost on queue, Cliff called to see if I was there.  He said his car and trailer were there, nothing moved and maybe I wasn't far enough down the path.  He was right.  I found the camp site right away.  The campsite looked something like a modern day western.  There's big cover on 4 telescoping legs and under it is all the cooking stuff.  There were no sides, so it's not really a tent.   The tents were pitched around it.  Cliff was gong to be back and start cooking soon, so I wanted to get my bivvy staked out and get some shorts on.  It was pretty hot and I was sweating being still in the heat.  Fortunately, I packed well and didn't have to search for anything.  I pulled open one hard case on the motorcycle and there was my bivvy, ground cover, etc. I got that pitched and dove inside for a quick change.  It must have been 130 in there already.  WOW.  About then, Cliff, his brother Brian and Fred came back to the campground.  They were going to start cooking soon.

 (Cliff - Red shirt, and Brian, his brother)

I had to run back up to the campground office because last weekend, I had to pay a $20 deposit and I didn't stay to camp.  I wanted it back and the manager obliged.  I also ran to the gas station on the corner and grabbed some sweet tea.  The guys had beer and water and I wanted something else.  On the way back, I picked up 2 bags of ice and carried it all back to camp.  I didn't realize they just bought ice; but, there was room for more.  I took the second bag to another bunch of campers right next to us.  They were too happy to have it.  These are the people that were helping with Brian's bike last weekend.

Cliff had dinner going and I asked if he needed some help.  Cliff always says no.  I was telling him about my MSR stove and how I wanted to burn off some of my fuel.  He said to set it up because he could use another burner.

This stove has a small pump that screws directly into an MSR can and feeds the stove with fuel.  Every so often, you need to give it another pump.  The manual recommends 10 strokes every 10 minutes.  I don't think it needs quite that much.  Perhaps it will need that much when the fuel is mostly drained out.  From a heating point of view, this little stove is awesome.  It puts out a lot of heat.  We heated up a kettle of water faster than my stove at home.  It's HOT.  The thing is, you really can't turn the burner down to a lower temperature.  Once the valve is cracked, it's pretty much full on, so cook fast or find some way to elevate your pan, pot, or whatever a little higher off the flame.  This stove packs down amazingly small.  I think I bought this stove about 5 years ago for about $25-$30 and it was worth every penny.  I understand they now go for $40 and they are still worth every penny.  I highly recommend it.

Dinner was steak with peppers and onions.  Fantastic.  Cliff seems to be the campsite chef; but, I wish he'd share some of the responsibility.   I almost didn't mention Steve.  He wandered over and ate with us at some point.  Steve is camping on another site adjacent to ours.  He's got a Ford Explorer and trailer.  He's got 2 BMW's with him.  He also has a big tent set up (no sides) as well as an awning off his trailer.  He sleeps on a cot under the tent with no sides.  This is pretty smart for Florida.  There's plenty of air circulation and you're protected from the dew.  If it rains hard, he can go in the trailer if he needed to.  We went over to Steve's camp for a fire.  We all gabbed about motorcycles and the event and who knows what else.  It was a lot of talking for guys.  I think all that talking wears guys out because by 9pm, everyone was wanting to go to bed.

Right now, it's twenty to eleven and this campground is still very busy.  Motorcycles are still coming into the campground and someone is revving their car engine.  There's a group across the way still sitting around the fire talking.  My group, I think is fast asleep.  I'm about ready to turn off the computer and rest myself.  Tomorrow, we're supposed to go to the Daytona 200, a motorcycle race.  I'm looking forward to that.  Sunday may get cut a little short because of rain.

I wanted to mention my GoPro Hero 3.  I thought that for this trip, I would try time lapse photography and sort of stitch together a vine of the trip.  Just as I got to my lunch place, I heard the camera shut off.  I could not turn it back on - the battery was dead.  I don't know why it ran out so fast.  I was not continually recording, just one snapshot every minute for 90 minutes.  I need to check the battery to see what's what.  I think it should have lasted longer.

Another thing I wanted to mention was the BMW Nav IV GPS I have.  I bought a micro SD for it because I was running out of space on it (94% full) and it wouldn't accept any more custom routes from me.  Initially, I put in a 16GB card and it wouldn't recognize it.  I read online that it can't read bigger cards and 4GB was recommended.  Where does anyone find a 4GB micro SD card in 2016?  I bought the smallest one I could find, 8GB and fortunately it worked.  I put the new route on there and when I started the Nav IV, it recognized it and asked me if I wanted to import the new route.  Once imported, it began calculating the route.  My guess is that BaseCamp saves the way points only and the GPS calculates the route.  No worries, I had enough way points to force the route where I wanted it to go.  Particularly annoying though was that it would lose the route periodically and indicate that it can't route from where I am to the next point... which may only be a mile or so up the road.  It happened 8 times with 24 way points.  I think this is horrible.  Fortunately, as soon as I told it to follow the route again, it did.  I'm so happy that this GPS will let me program it while I'm moving.  I'd be livid if I had to pull over every time it happened.

---- Saturday March 12th ---

I woke up to Cliff at my tent telling me breakfast was ready.  I thought I had another couple hours of sleep to go.  Cliff is an early riser.  I was happy to see it was light out and that it was just my lazy ass wanting to stay asleep for a while longer.

At this point, Cliff's brother Brian is going to start his trip back to Texas and Fred is going home to North Carolina via his mother, whose 93rd birthday is today.  I think his wife was picking him up and they were going to visit mom.  So, the morning would be filled with activities to get those two guys on the road.  There were bikes to be loaded on trailers, camping items to pack, etc.

 (Brian's bike ready to go to Texas)

In the midst of all this, we got to talking about my rear tier, which, before I started this trip, was having trouble with holding air.  The issue was that after I filled, air would come out the valve stem.  As seems to be quite normal on these sorts of trips, Fred has everything, including a valve stem and a valve stem change tool.  Steve had a tank of compressed air.  So, we changed the valve stem.  The tire still hold air, although, at one point while we were filling it, the same problem occurred.  We'll have to see the next time I go to top it off if the problem is solved or not.  Either way, I have a new valve stem and a tire full of air, so the day will go on without a service call taking priority over everything else.  I brought the right sized torx socket, just in case I had to pull the wheel and have someone ride it into town.

Now that Brian is on his way and Fred is in a holding pattern, it was time to go use the wireless and then head into Daytona for a Ducatti demo ride.  It seems that Ducatti came out with a new bike, only 2 days before Daytona - the Ducatti Xdiavlo.  It is competing with the Harley V-Rod.  I will write an blog about just this bike and the demo ride.  It definitely deserves it's own blog post.

After the demo ride, we headed over to the HIlton for lunch.  Cliff had a free lunch coming to him for some reason.  While I was there, I somehow got into a conversation with a motorcycle gang member.  Without mentioning names, this gang was recently involved in a terrible shooting.  He was from LA and I was shocked to hear that they trailered their motorcycles to Florida from Los Angeles.  I totally didn't expect that one.  Big tough biker gang members trailering their motorcycles and staying at the Hilton.

After lunch, we decided to go the speedway for more demo rides.  Unfortunately, the only one we were able to get was a Suzuki VStrom 1000.  I'll write a separate blog about this bike as well.  By the time we were finished, everyone was packing up at Daytona.

I should have gotten a picture at Daytona.  Outside the track, there is a concrete walkway.  It's wide, maybe 35 or 40 yards in width and on the other side of that are the vendors.  The walkway is PACKED with people and moving motorcycles.  The motorcycles are slowly working their way around walking people.  I was glad to not see anyone get knocked over.  Sometimes, you had to ride really slow and wait for pedestrians to move out of the way.  If you don't know how to slow ride, you weren't going to have a good time getting around this.  Also of note were a particular type of motorcycle.  These are Harley's with very big, thin front tires, almost like a big wheel.  They seem to be all show - bright colors, chrome, immaculately kept and annoyingly loud pipes and stereos.

 (This bike has a 32" front wheel)

Traffic was a nightmare; but, we took the interstate back to the campground, so it wasn't an issue.

Cliff wanted to break down most of his stuff, so we did that.  We loaded his bike on the trailer and packed his big tent and many of the things we would not need in the morning.  I also packed most of my stuff and left the hard cases open for the sleeping bag, bivvy, etc.  We had a camp fire going also; but, around 9pm, I was ready to turn in.  I slept really light last night.  Now, I can't get to sleep!  So, I blog, again.

About bivouac tents:

One problem that has to be addressed with the bivvy and tents in general is condensation.  In most cases, the temperature and dew point seem to collide somewhere around early morning; but, tonight, I noted dew starting to form on things by about 9pm.  I was fortunate enough to get the rain fly on my bivvy in place before the contents inside got wet.  That said, by the time I crawled inside, the temperature was still in the low 70's.  Remember that 15 degrees of heat 'savings' I mentioned earlier?  Well, inside the bivvy it was probably 85 degrees and that's not good for sleeping.  Now, if I open the rain fly, I get wet and there's simply not enough ventilation in this bivvy to decrease the temperature.  The other problem is that by morning, if I do nothing, my breath will have condensate on the rain fly and I could be wet anyway.  My two man tent deals with this problem by having an air gap between the top of the tent and the rain fly.  I have woken up to condensate on the rain fly, so this isn't exactly optimal either; but, it's never been so much that things in the tent got wet.  As I write, I have the rain fly partially open by my head so my breath can escape.  There isn't very much place for dew to collect where it could drip in, so I plan to leave it that way for awhile.  If it gets cold, or I feel something starting to get wet inside, I'll close it.

So, over night daylight savings happened.  At 5 am (on my Iphone) 4am (on my biological clock), I heard Cliff stirring about.  I had to pee anyway, so I got up.  He was already in the process of packing up.  I peed and told him I was going back to bed.  I couldn't get to sleep, so I got up and made coffee and tea while he packed.  There was no point in my rushing through packing the motorcycle.  I didn't want to leave until it was light out anyway.   Go MSR Whisperlite.  I had boiled water ready in a heartbeat.  We went through 1 tank of gas, and I was very happy about that.  I want to re-purpose it for unleaded gas to have as a reserve for my motorcycle.  I have one now, I want two to carry.

After Cliff packed, he was gone.  The sun wasn't up yet.  The sun wasn't even thinking about coming up yet.  The sun was still tucked under the covers and not coming out.  The sun apparently did not get the memo about the daylight savings time change.  So, I started packing.  Packing up with a hand light is just as much fun as setting up camp with a flashlight, the only difference is that you don't have to be concerned about how things are packed when you're unpacking.  When I packed the motorcycle, there wasn't any space left.  I had to pack it just as tightly to get home.  No, I do not regret bringing my full size pillow.  I was more comfortable on this trip than on many others, simply because I had a full size pillow.  I'm going to be hard pressed to pack an air pillow next time.  I need to write about improvements I can do to my camping gear to be more comfortable next time.

So, now, I'm packed, Cliff is gone, Steve has pulled out and it's still dark.  It's not even that kind of dark where you'd be wondering if it's light enough to hunt yet.  It's pitch black.  Off to the bathhouse.  Fortunately, when I got out, it was starting to lighten up and that was good enough for me.  I rode out.

My GPS would not reverse the route that I had gotten there on because it "couldn't find the destination."  Whatever.  I  had a breadcrumb trail.  At some point, I noticed a button on my GPS that said something about reverse track, so I pushed that.  Well, that wasn't what was intended.  It wiped out my breadcrumb trail.  Fortunately, I was already on my way to Rt 1, and I could figure something out from there.  I knew that I generally needed to ride south and west.  I also knew I wanted to go back to through Ocala National Forest and that was the big green blob on my GPS, so I pointed to that.  It wasn't long after I got off Rt. 1 that the sun came up behind me.  It was big and beautiful.  I turned north as it was about 7/8ths of the way up and was able to watch it come all the way up.  Not soon after, I was back going west again.  I took only county and state roads as I have been doing lately.  I'm really liking this, I find an occasional twisty road, see a lot of farmers fields, animals, horse farms, trees, and other wonderful things.  I generally know I'm in the right spot when I see homes that were abandoned so long ago that the roof caved in and they are falling apart.  I managed to come across a Denny's, so I stopped for breakfast.  I was curious how close the rain was also.

I decided that I would take 35 south to 301 south.  I hadn't been on 35 south or, that far up on 301, so that worked out.  At some point, I started seeing my breadcrumb trail again and I was about to get on a section of 301 that I'd already been on, so I turned off on another county road and started working south and west on other county roads.  Sumter county is very nice.  I also found that county roads with a letter designation generally aren't the same quality as maintained paved roads.  I went down one that was better described as 'hard pack' than pavement.  It was rough.  I had to adjust my suspension because I bottomed out twice.  That road took me through someone's orange orchard.  I don't think it was a private road and it intersected a more well maintained road about 2 miles up, or so.  After that, I wasn't far from home and came out right on a segment of road that I started this trip on.  I had no idea I was that far south.  It was another awesome trip.

More maps and pictures:

(I made the right decision.  This was right after I got home.  I would have been in rain all day long.)

(The route)

(Florida routes to date)

(All K1600 routes of 250 miles or greater to date)

(Who could resist these ladies when they asked if we wanted to go for a ride on their motorcycle?)

(Camp fire.  Jeff Kurtz said I need a professional photographer.  He should have been there.)

(Cliff after riding a Vstrom 1000)

(Self explanatory)

(Cliff before riding the Ducatti)

(Ducatti brought a bunch with them.  The Daytona dealer got the first delivery of this new bike 2 days before bike week started)

20160304 - Trans Florida x4

Last year about this time of year, I called my friend Jeff Kurtz to see if he was in the state, or close to the state and what his plans were for riding.  I really had no idea where he was; but, our paths had crisscrossed multiple times over the last couple of years, so it wasn't unreasonable to think it would happen again.  Sure enough, he was at a camp ground on the east coast and planning an adventure ride across Florida with advriders.  He invited me to come along and I did.  That was last year.  This year, Cliff Loose, whom I met on the above trip, called me to let me know he was doing the trans-Florida ride again.  Jeff had other commitments.  I said I would love to do it again.

So, I knew I needed to ride to St. Augustine for the start of the ride; and I knew that I wanted to take a route that I hadn't been on before.  I began my planning with overpass-turbu.eu to find all the secondary, secondary connector and tertiary roads in the area between Spring Hill and St. Augustine.  That equates to county and state highways.  I really wanted to avoid interstate.  Once I got the results back (about 8MB), I started putting together a route.  I used Garmin BaseCamp to do that.  BaseCamp is becoming very easy to use.  Once you have the hang of it, route planning goes pretty quickly.  I planned to start on the Gulf coast, get an obligatory picture of the bike with the Gulf in the background and, when I got the east coast, do the same in St. Augustine.  I used a selection of roads I found with overpass and viola, I had a route with 25 way points.  Routing between two waypoints took me on 15 miles of interstate; but, I suppose that's not bad on a 300 mile trip.  I was pretty satisfied with the routing.  I learned from the last planning with BaseCamp to put my waypoints before the intersection, and not after, or in the intersection.  This worked out pretty well; but, somehow, I got routing that involved making a U-Turn.  I was able to avoid it when I got to it though.  This time around, there were no GPS rerouting failures.  I'm learning.

The trip to Cedar Springs was uneventful.  I grabbed an early breakfast, got gas and headed up there.  I snapped a couple pictures and grabbed some video.

Breakfast. (Bike way in the background)

The temperature was supposed to be in the low to mid-seventies.  It barely broke 60 and that was for just a short while in the morning.  When I got to Alachua, it was time to take a break and warm up a bit.  I found a Sonny's BBQ and that would do the job just fine, so I pulled in.  Soon after, a motor officer from Alachua pulled in.  Apparently, it was time for the Alachua Pd to have lunch also.  Once warm, I hit the road again.  I had to do a little back tracking because the roads I selected didn't join, so GPS routed between the two points and, actually put me on some nice roads.  No complaints there.
-Weather before I left on the first leg.

- Cedar Key - before I found a spot to get better pictures of the Gulf.

The Gulf of Mexico as seen from Cedar Key.

Clearly, the temperature is going in the wrong direction today!

Arriving in St. Augustine, I went for the lighthouse right away and got my finishing picture.  I wanted to stay around where Cliff and Jeff were staying, so I could meet up with them quickly.  Last year, they stayed in the Atlassian, I think.  I managed to get a room across the street from that.  I think on the hotel scale, this is probably a 3.  It's clean and that is what really matters.  Internet is ridiculously slow though.  It brings back memories of being on dial up.

Last year's kickoff dinner was at a lodge.  This year's was at Jaybirds.  It's a pizza restaurant.  I happened to sit down at the table with 3 other firefighter/paramedics.  2 of them knew and worked with each other and were doing the ride together.  The other just happened to sit with them before I arrived.  Of course, we talked about many of the differences between Florida and Pennsylvania EMS.  Dinner was free!  One of the sponsors picked it up.

---Day 2 (3/5/2016)

So, at this point, I'd traveled across the State of Florida once, had dinner with the guys and was about to do it again with them.   This was the same ride as last year's ride that found me riding my K16 in a freshly plowed farmers field.  This year, they had a street ride.  When I arrived, Wolfgang saw me pull in and realize I had to be there for that ride.  He was going to be riding sweep and described Todd, the ride leader, to me.  I quickly found Todd.  Todd also had a Sena headset and showed me that you can pair them by taking them off the helmets and shaking them both.  The light turns green and voila, they paired.  This was great.  Todd designed the route and pointed out everything to me as we went.  So much work goes into planning and leading a ride.  Even if you know what routes you want to take, you need to map them, load them into the GPS and for this group, produce a roll chart.  Todd also pre-rode this route to make sure it would be OK for the bikes to do.  Each way, this route is 6 hours, plus the time to create it, do the computer/gps work, etc. - Todd really put in some hours on this and I was most grateful.  So, this is a rally format.  Ride the ride and take the pictures at all the designated places.  You accumulate points for the pictures and time.  He who has all the pictures and the best time wins.  In our case, there were 4 riders going to Steinhatchie and 3 of us coming back.  The returning 3 would all get prizes, whether we took pictures or not.  Picture taking does give you a chance to get off the bike though.

The first picture we needed to take was of this 'Alligator removal truck and trailer.'  Zoom in.  It's an interesting site.

Required picture # 2 - an ocean view.  Behold the Atlantic ocean.

Required picture #3 - this boat.

Required picture #4 - This post building.  Up front is Todd, second is Gustavo and our sweep was Wolfgang.

Time for lunch.  Meet Todd, the leader of this group.  Wolfgang is in the background.  This is the Yearling Restaurant in Cross Creek.  I ate a shrimp and alligator po' boy and it was outstanding.  This is a must return restaurant.

This guy was playing the blues.  I will  go back to this restaurant in the future and enjoy a lazy afternoon of food and blues.

Another required picture and an pretty cool building.

Water tower.

So, we stroll in to Steinhatchie at 3:30 - 4:00 after having gassed up just outside of town.    Bikes would begin rolling in soon.  There were about 100 of us and this was the only restaurant in town that could possibly accommodate us all.  Fortunately, they were serving a seafood buffet and were able to move us all through pretty quickly.  I had dinner with Wolfgang, Todd and Steve (medic I met last night) and after they left, Cliff and Brian came in, so I sat down with them to catch up.  We all had a great time and when we all left, I needed to get back on my bike as my hotel reservation was in Perry Fl., about 35 miles away.  There were no rooms left in Steinhatchie and Perry was the closest place with rooms.  It was a cool evening ride; but, the heated gear kept me nice and warm.

When morning came, I was up around 7 and knew that the group wouldn't pull out before 8:30 and probably start breakfast around 8.  I wanted to see if there were any back roads to get from Perry to Steinhatchie and there were; but, I wasn't going to be able to do them.  There wasn't enough time.  I was able to get going at 7:30.  I sent Todd a text to tell him I'd meet him there.  The ride was a cool 40 degrees when I left.  The dense air kept the smell from the paper plant hanging in the air and I smelt that from the time I left Perry until I turned off 19 onto 51.  Yuck.  I was about 5 minutes late in arriving.  There were plenty of bikes getting ready for the ride back.  Not many were ready to go though.  When I walked in, Cliff and Brian were sitting right in front of me with Mark, another person I met the night before.  They told me that they had been there an hour and they haven't even gotten coffee yet.  The story was that there was a power failure in one of the waitress stations and they were percolating it now.  The fact was that there were more than a hundred people in the restaurant and only 2 waitresses.  Finally, we got a waitress to take our orders and our food was delivered to us; but, none of us had coffee or orange juice.  Forget about tea - they were out.  It was a horrible showing.  When our meal was over, I went to pay the waitress, and she said that she was so sorry for the horrible service and that she was picking up the check.  I asked her if she was picking up the check or if the restaurant was picking up the check and she wavered in her answer.  She didn't want to give me a straight answer.  At that point, I looked her in the eyes and said "Little lady, I asked you a direct question.  Are you picking up the check, or is the restaurant."  She started to tear up.  She said she felt so bad and that the manager wouldn't even come out and talk to us when she asked him to.  She was worried that nobody would come back, so she was picking up our check.  I told her that I wasn't going to let her do that.  It wasn't her fault and she tried her best.  She continued to argue with me and I finally said to her 'look, you don't make enough to pick up checks if something goes wrong.  How much do you make?"  She said $4.19/hr + tips.  I told her that she could either ring our table up and let me pay for it, or I would leave the money on the table.  She charged me $18 and change.  I gave her $30.  I had no doubt in my mind that we weren't the only table she was comping, would have no earnings today and, chances are, would get fired for having her heart in the right place and not enough life experience to let the restaurant management worry about it.  I hope she gets to keep her job.  She deserves to.

During this conversation, I received  a very nice complement.  It was from Wolfgang, who was our sweep yesterday and will be our sweep today.  He said 'watching you corner is a beautiful thing.'  At the time, we had been talking about motorcycle performance and how nimble the GT was for it's mass.  Wolfgang has probably been riding for 40+ years, so I really felt that.  I put a lot of effort into not just getting around corners; but, gently pushing the degree of lean, apexing late, etc.  I apply the skills I learned during the California Bike School track day I was at and try to improve as much as I can.  It was nice to hear an unsolicited compliment like that.

So, we saddle up.  Going back, we had 7 riders.  We picked up some GS guys that had just had it with the trail riding.  By the first stop (Perry railroad depot - .5 miles from where I stayed), we learned that one had a knee that was giving them troubles and they were going to break off from the group and get home sooner.  That left us with 5.  I'm not sure exactly when they bailed out on us; but, it was pretty early in the trip.  Early into this ride, we took a 90 degree left turn.  I am very good about checking intersections for gravel and I distinctly remember checking before I made this turn.  I missed the gravel in the road and my front end came out from under me.  I was already in the lean when I felt it go.  The bike started going down; but, I wasn't about to let it.  I put my left boot on the ground hard and kicked the bike up. About that time, the front tire caught some good pavement and the bike came back up to a straight up position.  I continued the turn without incident.  I was very lucky.  I could have spilled out right there.  Todd heard me say 'oh shit' or something similar.  He was glad I was OK as well.  It was much too close and just proved that no matter how careful you are, bad things can still happen.  A couple hours after this, we had kicked up some vultures on the side of the road and one of them flew toward us.  As I was going past, the vulture hadn't gotten much altitude and nearly missed my windscreen and helmet.  I ducked and he went right over.  He was big to.  With his wings fully spread open, he covered the whole front end of my motorcycle.  I wish I were rolling video for that one!

At this point, we were way behind schedule.  We didn't leave until 9:20.  We intended to leave at 8:30.  As a result, we got to the restaurant an hour late and right in the middle of the crowd of GS riders, who were also dining there.  We waited about 15 minutes for a table, so not too long.  At this point, it was Todd, Wolfgang, Mark (a physical therapist who had been with us since Steinhatchie and Patrick, a retired man from PA who flew down to pick up a used R80GS.  This is a story in itself.

At lunch, we pulled in to a big restaurant in High Springs called 'Great Outdoors.'  I didn't see any outdoor seating and the place was packed.  I think all the riders that left Steinhatchie were already there, plus their normal crowd.  I had to circle around for parking and finally got a space right outside the restaurant.  We waited about 15 minutes for a table, at which time the place was clearing out.  Our waitress was pretty lively and Wolfgang picked up the vibe and had quite the banter going with her.  While that was all going on, he mentioned something about one of his ex-wives and Patrick asked how many wives he's had.  Wolfgang said he was on #7 and loved all of them.  He said he still has great relationships with them all.  Patrick asked him how many kids he's had and that was when things really started to get amusing.  Wolfgang said he had between 10 and 20 kids he knows about; but, he doesn't interact with them.  He goes and sees them, gets a bead on how they're doing in life and leaves, not saying a word; but, he'll send them something if they need it.  The story was getting deeper and deeper and Patrick even said that this conversation was firmly in strange land; but, he appeared to be buying it.  I couldn't tell if Matt was also buying it or not.  It was entertaining though.  Wolfgang is a no holds barred and very lively fellow.  He's in his 70's and looks like he's 50.

Soon after this, I asked Patrick if he rode his bike down here for this ride and he said he flew.  So I asked how he got his motorcycle  for the ride and he said he flew down in November to buy it.  He went into detail about the issues with the bike and the back and forth with the original owner.  This bike had some serious valve issues and left him stranded more than once.  The previous owner was able to fix them and Patrick went through with the sale.  This whole transaction took place over several months and Patrick stuck with it.  I, personally would have bailed out on it at the first indication of serious trouble.  I was riding behind Patrick the whole time and didn't notice any smoking like he had trouble with and I didn't notice any pings, knocks, skips or any other issues.  It would appear that he has things in hand.  He said the plan was to ride it back to Pennsylvania and that the weather was good.  I said he needed to take advantage of that and told him about my trip during winter storm Boreas in December (Houston to NJ), where I arrived and it was 11 degrees.

Lunch took a long time and that had to cut into our riding time.  Todd planned to cut off a couple of segments so we'd get to the restaurant on time.  He said he'd be surprised if all of us went to the restaurant.  It is Sunday night and folks needed to get home to their families, etc.  We were also going to lose Patrick and Matt along the way.  That would leave me with Todd and Wolfgang.  We stopped for very few pictures on the way back.  We didn't need to do anything except show up to win the E-Class trophy (all 3 of us).

St. Augustine was busy with people - so many people and traffic.  We pulled into the restaurant and I thought I'd work on getting a room first.  Todd told me about some nice B&B's in the area, so I started with Airbnb.  I'd never booked a room with Airbnb, and after my experience, I don't think I ever will.  First, I registered a while ago and forgot my login credentials, so I did a password reset.  The link they send takes you to the login page, not the change password page, so that was useless.  I had to create another account, using another email address.  I did that.   I found a room and went to book it.  As expected, it asked me for my credit card information, which I supplied.  Then it asked me for a picture of my drivers license, which was unusual; but, not unreasonable as the Airbnb service is probably doing this as a service for the BNB owners and to have it on hand before people actually show up at the door.  Then I was asked to supply a message to the owner so they knew when I'd arrive.  Also expected and I supplied that.  After all that was done, and I'd been working on this reservation for probably half an hour now, I was asked to supply either my FaceBook or LinkedIn information to confirm my online identity.  That was the last straw.  There is no reason for that.  I bailed out of the reservation, after putting down a credit card deposit.  The credit card information is the last thing they should take in case someone wants to bail out of the process mid way.  I could see no reason at all that they needed to 'confirm my online identity.'   What if I were retired and didn't have a Linkedin account, and didn't have a Facebook account?  So much time wasted.  I was ticked off.  So, after that, I found that Travelocity showed no rooms available in St. Augustine.  I called Best Western direct at that point.  A very nice lady from Beliz answered the phone and helped me with my reservations.  She asked which I wanted to stay at as there were actually 6 in St. Augustine.  I said lowest cost.  I've stayed at Best Westerns many times and have never had a quality issue.  Wifi is always pretty good, the room clean, bed comfortable and linens plentiful.  She found me a room in the Historic district, 5 miles from where I was sitting for $90.  That is pretty darn good considering the amount of people here.  I thought for sure rates would be extraordinarily high.   I booked.  The whole process of searching for best rate, etc. took about half an hour.  So, within about an hour of arriving, I had a room reservation for the night.  On to dinner.

Todd and Wolfgang were sitting at a table on the dock.  We had a great view of the airport on the other side and the sunset.  The plan was to eat light since we had such a big lunch.  Mission accomplished,  we split conch fritters, alligator fritters and I ordered a bowl of clam soup (red).  Their iced tea was horrible.  I didn't drink much of that.  Along the way, Cliff and Brian joined us.  We received our trophies for completing the ride and there was a prize drawing.  Cliff and Brian both won!

So, here I sit in my hotel room catching up on my blog.  It's not even 8am yet.  The plan is to meet up with Cliff and Brian today.  They want to do demo rides - try out other motorcycles.  I'd like to ride a GS and some others.  I really want to get into dual sport and will eventually buy one.  I know nothing about dual sport bikes, so selecting the right machine could we as easy as plunking down a whole lot of money for a GS and having the best of everything, or making a few sacrifices here and there and saving thousands.  I think I'm going to get an education from Cliff today!

Here's some pics!

Another train depot.

I'm a fan of clocks (actually, this and the previous pic were from yesterday)

Todd, Mark, Patrick

Lunch at the Outdoor Restaurant - Lots O Bikes

Got Bow tie?  This is my track from my spot tracker for the last couple days.

 Sunsets are always good pictures.

Cliff in Silhouette

Cliff and Brian in silhouette

Todd.  Awesome ride planner and all around guy.  It would be a priveledge to ride with him again.

Space shuttle tank.  This is going to be transported as soon as all the permits are done.  It's been sitting there for months and will probably sit for months more.

 

This weekends trips. 3/4/2016 - 3/7/2016. 

3/7/2016 - 

Right after finishing the blog entry above, I jumped in the shower, packed and was on the bike and ready to go.  I had texted and called Cliff without answer.  I have a Bluetooth headset, so I'd get his call or text if he were to call me back.  I thought that I should get going since I had about a half hour to 45 minute ride to get to their campground.  When I was nearing exit 295, I was getting concerned because I thought that was the exit for the camp ground and Cliff had not called back.  There was no exit 295 and I kept going.  Finally Cliff called and I asked him what exit I needed and he said 278.  I was at exit 278 at that very moment.  I pulled off and Cliff talked me in to his camp site.  I had to pay $20 at the campsite with the promise that I'd get it back at the end of the day. As things worked out, I didn't get the $20 back because we went out and never came back to the site.  :-(

I was hoping that those guys would not have eaten breakfast yet; but, they had and it looked like they weren't going out for a while.  They did offer me a corn muffin and some yogurt, which totally did the job.  Given all the over eating I'd been doing lately, this was a nice light breakfast and a good change of pace.  The plan was to first figure out what was going on with Brian's brand new (1000 miles) Kawasaki KLR dual sport bike.  Most of those miles were put on the bike during this trip.

The  problem was that he would only get about 2 gallons of gas per tank before the engine started sputtering.  He'd switch to reserver; but, only get a few miles and have to pull into a gas station.  The bike still had several gallons of fuel in it.  My thought was that one of two possibilities existed - either there was a problem with the petcock, or the fuel wasn't making it from one side of the fuel tank to the other.  That was until I heard that he had installed a fuel filter on the bike where one previously did not exist.  I was betting that there was already a fuel filter on the petcock and that the double filtering was causing flow issues.  Fred was very convinced that the fuel filter had nothing to do with it and demonstrated that fuel would flow through the filter with the engine side of the fuel line disconnected.  That said, he went on line and asked in the Kawasaki forum for help and someone replied that you should not put a fuel filter on the KLR.  So, we took it off and test road the bike.  Brian was not having any further issues.  I am waiting for them to tell me about the ride home from Daytona, where I left them to come home.

Our ride to test this possible solution to the bike sputtering out started at the campground and took some back roads to A1A and then all the way down to Ponce inlet.  We ate lunch there and then went the back way to the Daytona speedway.  Brian had no trouble at all.  At the speedway, we did some demo rides on some Yamaha bikes.  I'd never ridden a Yamaha and one of the few left was an R3.  This is a little girl's bike.  It's about 350 pounds and 44.1 horsepower.  That's about half the weight of my K1600GT and under 1/3 the horsepower.  This bike didn't have a lot of giddy-up and go.  It was highly maneuverable though and easy to place on any patch of pavement I wanted.

We left the speedway at about 5:45 and I headed home, while the rest of the guys went back to the campground.  My ride home was 3 hours.  I went across on Rt. 92 to Rt. 44 and down Rt41.  I was looking to avoid all things around Orlando.  Traffic in Daytona was a bear; but, once I was about 30 miles out of town, things lightened up significantly.  I just barely made it in Chulas, the local Mexican restaurant by my house, before they closed.

This was a very memorable trip.  I met new friends and got to catch up with one I made last year.  I'm already looking forward to next years trip and hopefully, by then, I'll be on a dual sport or endo bike and doing the off road stuff!

All Florida trips to date. (K1600GT only)

 All trips to date (K1600GT only)

20160221 - Spring Hill - Orlando and back (dinner with Craig Barrett)

Let me just say that I am not a planner.  I have to repeat that, mostly to convince myself.  I am not a planner.  The majority of my riding has been to point the bike in a direction and ride it.  I may have had a destination in mind and I have used the GPS to get me places; but, on most of my destination rides, I'll look at a road atlas, get a general idea of where I want to go and ride.  If I get off course, fine.  I've used Google Maps on my iPhone extensively to figure out where I was in relation to where I want to be and picked cardinal points that got me going toward that point.  I've discovered many things that way.  When riding across country, I had to have an idea of when I needed to be at a certain point in order to make it to work on time...weeks later.  I'm not a planner though.  I don't recall making a hotel reservation, outside work, for domestic travel EVER.  I've gotten into 'town' late and on more than one occasion found that everything in the town was booked up and had to ride an additional our and something more to get to a town with a place to stay.  My contingency was camping gear and I don't think I've ever had to use it because I couldn't find a place to stay.  Now that it's clear that I'm not a planner, I have to confess that I actually planned the first half of this ride and had an awesome time doing it.

I have Garmin BaseCamp, a not all that intuitive mapping tool.  You can do route planning with this tool and download the plan (route or waypoints) to your GPS.  My objective is to not use Interstates, Toll Roads.  I prefer county roads over state highways.  Basemaps allows me to make that happen.  For the first time, I created a route and rode the route.  When I found that I had more time on my hand than expected, I went exploring; but, for a large part, I rode the route I planned.  There, I said it.  I planned my ride.  As you can see, I'm trying to get myself to accept that planning is OK.   I've also found an API called overpass.turbo.eu that allows me to box an area on a map and query the map data about what's in that area.  As an example, I can ask it to show me all the secondary, secondary_link, tertiary roads in the box.  With this, some Python and BaseCamp, I can craft routes that I haven't been on, are off the beaten path and much more fun than riding on highways!  I didn't know about this tool until after this route was planned (I said it again); but, I will use it in the future.  My route partially used a track from a previous ride, so I already knew that I would be on some awesome roads!

So, the destination was Flemmings Prime Steak House in WinterPark (Orlando) and I was going to be meeting Craig Barrett, a friend who used to work with me on the Treasury Communication System.  I planned to ride for 3 hours before getting there and then ride home for another hour and a half.  We talked for 3 and a half hours.  There was so much to catch up on - family stuff, work stuff, stuff stuff.  It was a great time, the food was great and so was the riding!  Going home, a dead racoon jumped out in front of me.  It must have jumped out because it wasn't there before I saw it.  I had enough time to decide to run it over as opposed to trying to steer around it.  Steering around it would be dangerous.  If I hit it on an angle, I would have a high probability of wrecking.  This brings the number of dead animals that either hit me or I hit to 6 - 2 birds flew into me (one hit me square in the chest and one flew into my lower right leg);  1 bat (it glanced off the right side of my helmet); 1 snake (he didn't deserve to get run over; but, he was completely stretched across the lane when I came around a curve); one running ground hog and now, one dead racoon that magically appeared in my lane.  Hopefully, there won't be more.

Here is the all important map of the route.  I just realized I did not get a picture with Craig.  I am now very bummed out.

20160205 - Springhill - Jupiter and return via Cape Canaveral

At this point, I've ridden from the west coast of Florida to Jupiter and back many times, and most times, I don't bother to write about the ride.  This time, I decided to take the long way home and ride A1A and Rt. 1 up the east coast to Cape Canaveral before turning west.  I'd never been to Cape Canaveral before.

Most of this ride, and most all coastal rides in Florida are pretty disappointing.  Florida is so built up that it is hardly possible to see the water from the roadway.  Instead, you see well landscaped buildings - luxury vacation rentals, hotels and the like.  The obvious exception to this is the ride to Key West.  That has miles and miles of ocean view.  Even out on the panhandle, the view of the Gulf is limited, except for some spotty bridge crossings.  This trip was the same - limited view of the ocean.



That having been said, there were some pretty cool things to see during this trip.  The US Navy Seals museum is in Ft. Pierce, right on A1A.  They were closed when I pulled in; but, I got some pictures anyway.




The Disney cruise liner was in port at Port Canaveral.  I never cease to be amazed at how big cruise ships are.  I also can't imaging how the lifeboats can possibly accommodate all the people that are on board.  There was an offset gate that was big enough for a motorcycle to go through that led to the employee lot.  It was from there that I took the pictures.  The other gates would have taken me to palaces within the port where pictures would have been obstructed by buildings.  It was interesting that nobody saw me and nobody asked any questions.








Cape Canaveral is a place I need to go and spend some time.  I think I will put an invitation out to the local BMW motorcycle chapter and see if anyone wants to ride out there, do the tour and come back.  I expected to see a little more from the road than I could.  That said, I got a picture of a rocket booster and I was able to see the launch pad for a good amount of the travel on A1A.  I can imagine that all the parking lots that face it must have been filled when the shuttle would launch.  I can only imagine what a site it was.  Interestingly enough, just south of the turn off on A1A, a space shuttle can be seen on the ground.  I tried and other people were trying to get to it.  It is way back in a junk yard.  I couldn't get to it and people are probably not allowed back there anyway.  I don't know if it's some kind of replica or what it is; but, it is interesting that it is just sitting there.  I couldn't tell; but, it might just be a model.  I couldn't find a place to get a picture of it.




From the Cape, I decided to not go through Orlando.  Even though the trip would be longer, I would do much less stop and go and interface with cars much less...or so I thought.  While riding on Rt. 50 just west of Orlando, a car decided to pass a large motorhome with me in the oncoming lane.  It was too close.  I had to go out on the shoulder...if you can call it that.  It was only about 30" wide.  I don't know why people take risks like that.

Other than that, the trip was uneventful.  The trip home stayed in the 60's the whole time.

20150921 - Baton Rouge to Spring Hill

Riding home after such a nice stay in Baton Rouge was disappointing.  The good news is that I left at 6:10 in the morning managed to get within half an hour of my house before the temperatures broke 90 degrees.  I had 618 miles to cover in one day and really wanted to get the lawn cut before the sun went down.  I took interstate.  Now for the obligatory maps!

This weekend:

All trips over 250 miles until now:

20150920 - Baton Rouge LA

The whole plan for this day would be to ride into Baton Rouge, LA and meet up with my friend of 20+ years and current District Fire Chief of St. George's Parish - Jack Jones.

Once again, I left without breakfast.  The GPS indicated I was about 2 hours away and I expected Jack to be working with his guys on training.  The man has to work and I really didn't want him to be having to play host to me.  I was expecting to get there, find a corner of the fire station to crawl into, light up my wireless hot spot and start blogging until he was done for the day.  Truly, I was very excited about getting there and catching up.  20 years is a long time and I'll comment once more about FaceBook bringing people together.  20 years ago, the technology wasn't there.  If you didn't get their phone number before they lost town, generally speaking, you expected them to be lost forever unless you had friends in common that could put you back in touch.

So, as I road from Natchez to Baton Rouge, I reflected on how happy I was that I wasn't sweating my a$$ off.  It was still 70 something degrees.  I was also thinking about what a shame it was that on this trip, I would only have 3 meal opportunities to sample some world renowned cuisine.  It was sort of depressing.  I had considered going to the French Quarter; but, truth be told, I was road weary and was looking for a day out of the saddle to rest up for tomorrow's 600 mile ride home.

I pulled into town and just about did an end when I saw a cafe on the side of the road with 2 police cars.  If it's meal time and I see emergency services folks piled into a restaurant, that is where I want to be.  These people know the local area well and know what's good and what's not.  Think about it.  How often do you see the local police, ambulance or fire crews at McDonalds?  You don't.  They are at that little restaurant that sells great food, a little off the beaten path, that knows them all by first name.  This is the place I'm always looking for.  So, I slammed on the brakes, did a quick U-turn and came pulled in.

I was definitely looking for something different for breakfast.  American breakfasts can be somewhat boring; eggs, omelets, french toast, pancakes, waffles, cereal, oatmeal and that's about it.  Maybe sometimes, you'll find a Huevos rancheros dish somewhere; but, for all intents and purposes, an American breakfast is pretty dull.  I found what I was looking for when I read "Catfish fillet and eggs, Toast or girts."  I can honestly say, catfish has never been on my breakfast menu; but, when in Baton Rouge do what the Baton Rougi ... people from Baton Rouge do.  Order up!  So, I read what I wanted right off the menu to the waitress, who asked if i wanted grits and I looked at her funny because it was either toast or grits.  She said the menu was wrong and I could have both and that if I didn't want toast, they had homemade biscuits.  This is getting better by the second.  I'll have grits and a homemade biscuit please!  So, when she came back she asked where I was from because I looked at her strange when she mentioned grits.  I told her I love grits and prefer to have them plain, unlike those folks from Mississippi who mix their scrambled eggs in their grits.  At that point, it was clear that I was a member of the grit eating community and not some damn yankee (this is our secret).

So, while I'm enjoying this killer biscuit, I notice some guy taking a long look at my bike.  He came in and saw me right away and said he had a K16 of his own and was looking at my crash bars.  I introduced myself and offered him a seat.  I knew this wasn't going to be a short conversation.  He politely refused; but, when a well dressed church going couple came in and took his seat, he took me up on my offer.  We talked for the better part of an hour about bikes and riding.  He's a lineman from Detroit; but home is Louisiana.  He said that he doesn't ride much; but, that's because he just had his hip resurfaced and was just cleared back to work.  He was rightfully concerned that he couldn't support the weight of the bike on that hip.  He's planning on getting back to it soon.  As good as the conversation was, I had to excuse myself because a full day of catching up was in store for me.  James bought my my breakfast, which was entirely unnecessary; but, very nice.  So, my day started out with a free and very tasty breakfast.  On the way out, I complimented the waitress on her biscuits.  I had a feeling it was her restaurant and she made those little beauty's from scratch.  Her whole face lit up.  That's awesome.

So, literally, I went into the restaurant and it was in the low 80's and when I came out, the temperature was more than 90.  OMG.  Fortunately, I was only 7 miles away from getting out of my riding duds and into some cooler clothing.

The GPS almost took me to the firehouse.  I was just about to blow by it when I saw the bay doors open and two firetrucks inside.  I doubted there were two nations on the same street less than a mile apart, so once again, I tested the limits of the braking abilities of the K16, swung a U turn in front of the engine and parked around back.   Jack heard me coming and was out back.

People could learn a thing or two about hosting from Jack.  I was barely off the bike and Jack was showing me inside to my room.  He had a sleeping bag, a sheet, and towels waiting for me.  The room was air-conditioned and cold.  He told me to get myself comfortable and come out so he could introduce me to everyone.  I would not say that I had low expectations; but, I would say that I would be perfectly happy sleeping on the couch.  I had a whole crews quarter with it's own bathroom to myself.  Did I mention that it was nice and cold?

I met the guys and Jack and I had a chance to catch up.  We also talked about FaceBook and how once you get past all the cat and dog pics, you actually do get insight into what's going on in people's lives.  Catching up is much quicker.  The one thing FaceBook didn't prepare me for was how deep Jack's voice has become.  He told me he was taught how to whisper in a sawmill.  This would be true.

Before too long, we were out in the Department's Tahoe looking over St. George.  We drifted in to another station, where Jack had Walt give me the tour of the rescue.  Walt is a rescue Captain, and there is good reason for it.  He exudes knowledge about every inch of that truck and it's capabilities.  He can tell you the specifications on every piece of hardware and exactly what it's capabilities are.  The people of St. George are lucky to have him.  Judging by the others at this department, he was one of many talented individuals.

After the tour, we drifted over to HQ, where I met an assistant Chief, Mike Armanini.  Mike went to Paramedic school in Williamsport with Angelo Porecca - small world.  It became very clear that there was lots of trust and a solid working relationship between Mike and Jack.  Later in the day, I'd meet another District Chief and it was even clearer that there is very open and fluent communication and support for each other at the top of this company.  I was very clear that the lines of communication were open all day and that they were each responsive to one another's needs within their districts.

Before too long, Jack, Mike and I wandered over to the simulator.  Yes, they have a $250,000 fire engine simulator.

Jack, being the perfect host, did not tease me with such a wonderful combination of fun and technology and fired it up for me.  I will say that it takes a little getting used to.  There is lots of realism; but, there are also some things that are strange - like if you go over railroad tracks, the screen bounces; but, it's not a full motion sim, so you don't feel anything.  The simulator focuses on many aspects of driving a fire engine - control, response time ( to unexpected events), blind corners, driving at appropriate speeds, control limits, etc.  I can see how some might complain that it's not like the real thing, and they would be right; but, it is absolutely world class in that it demands good judgement from you and allows you to make errors in a controlled environment.  Here's my run where I'm supposed to go down to K street, turn left and find a vehicle fire.  There never was a vehicle fire due to a computer error; but, it was a good run.

After about an hour or so of simulator time, we said goodbye to Mike and headed out for more of a tour of the town and it wasn't too long before we were out on vehicle wreck.  It was my first response with Jack in over 20 years.  I have to say that 20 years has changed things drastically.  We definitely had our issues with people not getting out of the way of an emergency vehicle, no doubt; but, things are ten times worse now.  Firefighters meticulously plan everything just so they can get out of the station faster and to the scene as quickly as possible.  They take incredible risk by dressing in the back of the piece, only to have one a$$hole after another pull in front of them or not yield the right of way, all while talking on their cellphone.  In a 3 minute response, we had at least that many drivers that would not yield to us.  I'm thinking that emergency vehicles should be equipped with  cellphone jammers.  When the lights and siren go on, every call in a 1000' semi-circle in front of the vehicle is dropped and their cellphone goes dead - until the vehicle passes.  The technology is available.  It would really anger a lot of people; but, it would save lives and do a lot to guarantee the safety of emergency responders.

Jack and I had a mission.  I wanted to bring desert to dinner.  Jack, again being a flawless host, planned for us to have dinner at the firehouse.  On the menu was Josh's pastalaia.  This is a combination of jambalaya and pasta.  It's a firehouse special and it's damn good.  Excuse the pic below.  At one point this really awesome cast iron dutch oven was full; but, the picture had to wait until after I we were done eating.  Josh is an awesome cook.  When I came in, they were talking about whether or not they needed the rest of the stock.  They cooked this up from scratch - no microwave involved.  AND, they had a caesar salad on the side.  Truly awesome.

So, just a comment about the smoke eaters.  Simply put, these guys are family.  It is a highly social environment.  Not a single person picked up an smartphone the entire time I was there.  Now, finding your place in the family is a requirement is a process and time honored tradition.  The person with the least seniority can count on being the brunt of all jokes and be required to do a lot of the house chores.  When I pledged Sigma-Phi-Epsilon, this is exactly how it was.  The brothers were relentless and unmerciful and your only solace is that on that glorious day, when some poor noob joins your station, you will no longer be the low man.  Cayman, my brother, keep smiling.  You have a great personality and you handle it well.  Know full well that when you're in the station, you're their punching bag; but, when you're out of the station, every single one of those guys has your back - and you can bet your life on it.

I really liked this dutch oven and had to get a picture with the lid.

After dinner, we rolled on two calls - one where someone pulled the alarm in the section 8 housing district and a fatal overdose.  The dispatcher was obviously trained by the very best and everyone at our station sleep the whole night through; other stations weren't so lucky though.

I had to grab a pic of my motorcycle's sleeping accommodations.

and, this story wouldn't be complete without a picture of me and Jack.

Before I close out this day's post, I really want to say thank you to the St. George Fire Department for making me feel so welcome.  Every station I visited had a really awesome clue and my only regret is that I didn't get to spend more time with each of you.  Josh, again, great grub.  Cayman, thank you for the iced tea.  Erik, Joe, Brad, Mike, it was great meeting all of you.  There are so many more of you and I am so sorry I didn't write down all your names.  Please be safe.

Jack, if you're reading, what can I say.  You rock.  My day off the bike was way more than I expected.  Just catching up and kicking back would have been plenty for me; but, you went all out and showed me a great time.  I know you have a ton of brothers around you every day; but, don't forget about the one that is only 618 miles away.  If I can ever host while you're in Florida, I'd be honored and please expect another visit soon - this time on your day off and probably in the French Quarter.

20150918 - Mississippi

Who said that all plans fail the first incursion with the enemy?  They were correct.  When I woke up and checked the weather, Oklahoma and Arkansas were hosting thunderstorms and they looked mean.  The good news is that they would stay there and I had plenty of riding I could do right from where I was.

I consulted motorcycle roads as I often do and found that the Natchez parkway was a highly rated ride and apparently was a national parkway.  I thought that since the Blue Ridge and Skyline Drive were both gorgeous national parkways, this one should be also, so the new plan was to take the interstate up to Tupelo and ride the parkway back south.  This would give me a great cross section of Mississippi.  My thinking was that if I made it all the way to the end, I'd be in excellent position for a very short run to Baton Rouge in the morning.  Game on, let's go.

As usual, my bad habits continue and I left without having breakfast.  I always tell myself that I'd like to get some miles under the wheels first, and then stop for breakfast.  The problem is that once I get going,  I don't want to stop and sit for breakfast.  I end up eating horribly.  I have no clue what I ate; but, chances are, it was bad for me.  Temperatures quickly climbed into the 90's.  By 11am, it was 95 and climbing.  I knew it would be hot and chose to wear a tee shirt.  ATGATT maniacs can kiss my butt.  If your'e too afraid to ride without looking like an astronaut all the time, you shouldn't be riding.  Plus, I'm much more likely to wreck due to heat exhaustion and dehydration than I am from an incursion with the ground.  I have good skills and am relentlessly vigilant in my scan of the road

I needed fuel about 45 minutes out of Tupelo and just as I was about to get on the bike, a farmer came over and wanted to talk about my bike and my travels.  This happens a lot.  Many want to tell me about their Harley; some want to know all about my bike; and most want to know where I'm off to and where I've been.  I'm never in so much of a rush that I can't spend a few minutes with everyone.  Many tell me about how life has taken over and they don't have time to ride.  Usually, they look at me, after just having heard about how I'm about a thousand miles into a two thousand mile weekend journey and realize they need to make time if they really want to enjoy this aspect of their life.  It's not that I have no sympathy for them, it's just that I don't have any sympathy for them.  I am polite about it; but, generally their eyes start searching for the ground when they realize they didn't find an empathetic ear.  Well, upon leaving the gas station, I thought I was getting back out on the highway; but, realized that it must have zigged and I zagged at some point.  I was on some back road.  This didn't bother me in the least as there is always exploring to be done.  So I poked around for a while and when it was time to get back on course, I put Tupelo in the GPS.  My GPS is set to avoid highways, toll roads and the like.  There is no setting for dirt / gravel roads, and that is how I found myself on a mile or so of the road below.  Now, I'm always up for excitement; but, I have to say I'm very happy that my GPS took me over this road during the day and that the loose gravel part only lasted about a mile and a half; navigating 1000+ of motorcycle and rider through a couple inches of loose stone is slow as your riding must be very deliberate.  With ruts made by other vehicles, the road is anything but smooth and traction less than optimal.  It's also roads like these that make me want to trade my K1600 for a R1200GS so I can start riding street and off road.

;

So, I made Tupelo around lunch time.  I'm always on the search for that quaint, aesthetically pleasing, lunch site where you can get something small and maybe sit outside under the shade of a large tree and enjoy the scenery and people.  That dream is omnipresent; but, rarely comes true.  What I continue to find, again and again, are chain restaurants - either national chains or small franchises.  They're everywhere.  It's so disappointing; and so it was for lunch in Tupelo.  I had lunch at some small Mexican food franchise.  That being said, they had an interesting taco dish.  It's a hard taco, wrapped in a flour tortilla.  This is an excellent combination because when the hard taco starts breaking apart, the flour tortilla is there to save the day.

So, after lunch, it was somewhere around 95-97 degrees and I'd been riding in it for hours.  I was a sweaty blob and the air conditioning and ice water in the Mexican restaurant failed to cool me down. I was longing for my pool.  I knew that a 10 minute swim would cool me right down and I'd be ready to go.  In fact, if there were a lake on the side of the road, I would have taken my electronics off and walked right in - boots and all.  So, with that not being an option, and being I was about to get on the parkway, with no clue if there would be anywhere to stop for drinks, I stopped off and bought a few bottles of water.  I drank one and poured one on my head, neck, chest and back.  It was cold and shocking; but, after the initial jolt, refreshing.  I also knew that the wind against my now wet clothes would help cool me down.

So, I made my way to the Natchez parkway in Tupelo and started heading back South.  It is pretty as there are lots of trees all around; but, this is nothing like the Blue Ridge or Skyline with the very majestic landscapes.  Things here are decidedly flat and it's like riding in a tree tunnel.   Ride 10 miles of this and you've seen it all until you get down to Ross R Barnett Reservoir near Jackson.  I've been told since that the parkway is much better from Nashville Tn down to Tupelo.

There are no fuel stops between Tupelo and Natchez on the parkway.  That said, my DTE was greater than the distance I would travel, so I didn't worry about fuel; although, I started getting concerned about it when I passed Jackson Mississippi and my fuel reserves were dwindling.  It looked like I would make it to the end with about 6 miles in the tank.  Life is good.

I made it to the gas station with exactly 6 miles of gas left in my tank.  It was about 8 something pm and I was exhausted from a long day of riding.  I needed more water, gas and rest - in that order.  After filling my tank and getting some more water, I came out to find a guy on a Harley at the pump next to mine.  It was 90 something and he was decked out in full leathers, chaps and all.  He asked me about my riding pants and we started talking about riding.  He just bought a new Harley and I came to find out that he was an Army Major that did logistics.  You would never know it by how he carried himself - calm, easy going, social.  He served in all our recent wars.  I chatted with him for what seemed like half an hour, thanked him for his service and wished him and his men Godspeed.  I found hotel accommodations a few miles down the road.  The day was done.