I Did It!

I did it!  12 days, 9 states (all pictured above except California), 3,883 miles, all on the back of a motorcycle!

Thank you all for following along for the last month and long after the trip atually ended.  This blog started as a way to update friends and family, but it's also turned into a trip journal to look back on and say, hey remember that crazy, fun, awesome trip to Sturgis?!  Did I really do that??  Oh yeah, I did! And it was rad! 

I truly couldn't have, wouldn't have, done it without these 3 other rock stars who paved the way the year before.  So I'm going to copy Mike and do a few shout outs now.

Derek, you are my junk food soul mate. From chicken fried steak (or chicken) and gravy, to fake nacho cheese, to donuts, to a side of ranch with most everything and ALL things dessert, including half melted M&M's...we are kindred spirits! 

Cari, we had girl power going on, Fireball power and Jedi mind tricks to keep our butts in those seats for 3,883 miles!  Plus you kicked arse at pinball and your selfie stick was the bomb.  I am seriously thinking I need one of those.  Thanks for sharing all your photos--many of which are on the blog and are favorites from the trip.  And thank you for being my riding buddy!  Only 50 miles to go, right?

Mike, if you would have asked me a year ago if I thought I would ever take a cross country road trip on a motorcycle for 12 days, I would have probably said, are you out of your mind???  Well apparently you are.  I thought long and hard before deciding to do this crazy thing with you.  But ultimately it really wasn't as crazy as I thought.  Something I can say, now that I've done it. ;) It was awe-inspiring, breathtaking, challenging, exciting and most importantly, really fun.  And nobody wanted to kill each other along the way (at least that I know of), which is very impressive!  I'm glad I got to do this with you.  

Thanks to all 3 of you for taking such good care of me! 

I also want to thank Pat and Marlene who were so generous and gracious to host us for 5 nights in South Dakota.  We truly could not have asked for a better place to stay. 

Gosh, I feel like I'm giving an acceptance speech at the Emmy's or something.  Unlucky for you, there is no tele-prompter advising me to wrap up in 20 seconds or music to drown me out when I continue blathering on. 

Seriously, if you are still reading this, you deserve major kudos.  Rest assured, just a few more final thoughts and the end is in sight.

Newsflash! I  had an AMAZING time on this trip.  I was skeptical in the beginning, as I think anyone would be...but so, so, glad I didn't let any fears hold me back.  It was an opportunity to see our country and see it from a different perspective than a typical road trip in a car (with air conditioning and heat when needed). 

There's a free feeling in riding out on the wide open, sparsely populated roads of much of our country.  The air rushes around you and when you look up, you see the wide and vast sky, larger than life.  You are so small in comparison.  You feel the warmth of the sun, you feel the wind gusting by, you hear the drops of rain hit your helmet (and you stay dry if you are properly attired), you feel the cool of night seep through your clothes.  You are out there and exposed, but that's the beauty of it.

Mike said something similar in his post yesterday, I can't get over how BIG this country really is and how much there is to experience.  Though we saw A LOT on this trip, more than I have ever seen during any one vacation, I feel like we barely scratched the surface.  Which means more adventures are in the future because there is so much more to explore.

When it all comes down to it though, what really made the trip was the company.  That might sound cliché, but this is the kind of thing that is best shared.

Hey guys, can we go to Carhenge???  I heard it's rad!


I'll tee up one final post for tomorrow. Taking pictures was a big part of the journey for me. I'm almost embarrassed to say, but between my cell phone and my big camera I took 1,921 pictures! That's an average of 160 pictures a day! Anyway, a lot of those pictures were completely unusable. I was able to narrow the field down to about 750 pictures and then down to around 200.

Tomorrow's post will tie up the whole trip....sharing 3,883 miles in pictures (some of which you've seen here on previous posts, but most of which will be new). I'm not sue how many pictures will make it in tomorrow's post just yet (or how many Blogger will allow me to put in one post). You'll have to check in tomorrow and see!

1,452 Beers...

You've heard a lot from me over the past month.  But this adventure wouldn't have been possible without my partner in crime.  So today I'm going to turn the blog over to Mike, our Road Captain...

So, what an adventure.  This was my second time to Sturgis and it didn't disappoint. Before I go too far, there are a few people I need to acknowledge:

Pat & Marlene – saying that they simply provided a place to stay is a gross understatement. For all intents and purposes, they gave us the keys to the castle and said “have fun!” Narnia, the Compound, the Camp, whatever you want to call it, is simply beautiful. I cannot thank you enough for your most generous hospitality.

Derek – my brother from another mother. We’ve done this twice now and I am glad to have you as my riding buddy. I know that if we got into trouble, one way or another, you’d have my back just the way I would have yours. Frankly, the quality of work you perform at Sygnos is a big part of what makes these trips possible.

Cari – you brought a selfie stick! There’s no way we would have taken some of the great group photos without it! Especially that great photo of us from above at Four Corners. You were also fantastic in helping me ease Gloria’s anxiety about such a seemingly daunting trip. You did a lot of things all along the way that made this trip successful. Aside from all of that though, you’re like a little sister to me and I’m just glad you were there. It wouldn’t be the same without you.

Gloria – now, it wasn’t that bad, was it? I told you so... I am very, very happy that you came along. This was your first experience riding on a bike for such a long trip. You took it all in stride and absorbed everything. You also took on the task of documenting the trip – from photos (some of which might not be sharable, it is Sturgis after all) to this blog. Without you, we would likely only have our memories and a few pictures to remind us of this adventure. Thank you.

Another note about the girls…What troopers! Some would say that taking a long motorcycle trip is daunting in and of itself. For the passenger on a motorcycle, it can be downright boring. Imagine sitting on a seat for a couple hours, not being able to talk to anyone, barely being able to make out what’s playing on the radio, having only the scenery to look at, and not being allowed to take a nap, or so I'm told, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there may have been a nap or two.  Then you make a 30 minute stop for fuel, bathroom and a snack, then do it all over again. This cycle would repeat itself as many as 3-4 times a day on the ride up to Sturgis and back. As a rider, I have a lot to keep my mind engaged – riding the bike, checking out traffic, playing mobile DJ, etc. The passenger just has to sit there and go along for the ride. You two didn’t complain, or revolt, there were no pink-panty meltdowns…nothing. An occasional bathroom stop was it. I am truly impressed and proud of both of you.

About the trip. In one word…Awesome. We had our fair share of challenges. Late, late night arrival at one destination, rain, cold temperatures, rain, re-repacking in the morning because things never go back in the bag the way they came out, rain, getting to concerts late because they started early, rain, extreme heat, flash floods, and rain. When I started planning this route almost a year ago, the goal was to try a different route than last year, but still avoid the interstate as much as possible. I also shortened the ride up by one day, so we would have an extra day riding home…which worked out well, I think.

Unfortunately, there are not many non-interstate routes from Southern California to South Dakota that will still get you there in 4 days. We re-traced some of our route from last year, but still largely avoided the super slab. We also rode through Nebraska for the first time.

Sturgis was the destination, but to me, this trip is just as much about the journey there. Here’s what stands out to me the most though – how big our country really is, how diverse it’s people are, and how much you miss if you don’t get out and experience it.

We live in the greatest, most beautiful country in the world. So much of our country does not revolve around shopping malls, food courts, chain restaurants, SIG Alerts, and racing to be that guy who passes the most cars on the freeway.

Once you get out of California, it seems that people are just more courteous and unrushed. They let you merge into traffic and if you ask them when they expect to get where they’re going, they’ll answer “I’ll get there when I get there.” The front desk at the Flagstaff motel (where we arrived super late) even called me a couple of times to make sure we were ok, still on our way, and when she learned we were riding, gave me updates on the weather. Where does stuff like that happen here? We rode through towns that had no supermarket, no Wal-Mart, no gas station, not even Pokemon Go. It’s hard to explain, but just being in that environment – where life just slows down a step or two – is relaxing.

I’m already looking forward to the next adventure. Thinking back to when we left…

…Seems like yesterday, even though, that was fourteen hundred and fifty two beers ago…

 

It's me again.  Tomorrow I'll post my wrap up of the trip and Thursday will be a special all picture post.

Last Hurrah in Las Vegas!

I'm a little sad that the recap of our amazing trip is soon coming to an end.  Today's post is the last official destination of the trip before heading back to reality. 

On day 11, August 13th, 2016 we left Richfield, Utah for a 289 mile ride to the city of sensory overload in the middle of the Nevada desert.  Though this was one of our shortest rides of the trip, it was one of the tougher ones (day 12 going home was right up there too).  The last 90 miles into Vegas was the most extreme heat we experienced on the trip, hitting 113 degrees.  There is no relief in that kind of heat.  It literally feels like you crawled inside your clothes dryer and a set yourself to tumble on "Cotton/High" for the longest hour+ of your life.  I had a few moments where I thought, I don't know if I can do this.  I obsessively watched the miles tick down in a painful, watching paint dry kind of way.  At one point we passed a sign that said "Valley of Fire, Lake Mead" next exit.  I attempted to photograph this sign, but something was way off on my camera setting and the photo was so blurry that it was completely unreadable.  But let me tell you when I saw that sign, I was certain that I was already in the Valley of Fire. 

Finally Las Vegas came into view in the distance and my moment of doubt slowly faded away.  I could see the light at the end of the Vegas strip.  We pulled up to the Golden Nugget in downtown around 2:30 pm.  If you've ever stayed in a Las Vegas hotel you know that checking in on a weekend is never a quick process.  Especially if you are trying to get an early check in.  I got in the  line while Mike, Derek and Cari unloaded our gear from the bikes, waiting for the verdict if we would get a room now or would have to wait until official check in time at 4:00 pm.  As I inched toward the front of the line, which was about 20 people deep, I downed an entire 32 ounce thermos of ice water long before it was my turn at the desk, still trying to recover from being overheated. I was so very thankful that we did in fact get to check in early! 

Our first order of business was to stand in front of the AC in our hotel room until our body temperatures came back to normal.  That really happened (for some of us anyway). 

Speaking of temperatures...in case you are wondering what happens to a bag of M&M's that has been in your saddle bag for a few days and then through 113 degree heat....you get warm, crunchy M&M goodness that you have to pretty much suck out of the bag.  Can't let a good bag of M&M's go to waste! 

Our second order of business was to head to the pool.  After drinks and pool time for a couple of hours we went back to the room to get ready to go out for the evening. 

We did a little gambling, a little drinking, a little eating, checked out the scene on Fremont Street and saw the fake Guns n Roses play.  Cari and I also found "the" golden nugget of the Golden Nugget. And cute little bottles of Fireball. 

 

Special shout out to my brother who made sure we were taken care of for dinner at Claim Jumper in the Golden Nugget.

The evening was pretty tame considering it was Vegas.  It was a place for us to take a breath after 11 days of going non stop.  I think we were also anticipating the ride home in the morning and hoping to get an early start to get ahead of the heat.

Even though no one vomited or got arrested, Vegas was a super fun time and a great place for our last hurrah!

Stay tuned for few more posts to wrap up this crazy, fun adventure...

Coors Brewery and Beautiful Utah

Hey, can we go to Carhenge again???

Darn, I guess we actually have to get home at some point. 

The remainder of our Carhenge day was spent riding through more of Nebraska and into Colorado with the eventual goal of arriving in Golden.  The weather was pretty nice that day, warm, but not too hot.  We thought we were in the clear with rain until we turned west and faced Denver in the distance. 

Big black clouds sat on the horizon.  I'm pretty sure those clouds were taunting us. 

You know where this is going. 

About 30 miles from Golden the rain started really coming down.   We had to pull over under an overpass and don the rain gear one final time.  The upside of the rain was it resulted in a larger than life, beautiful rainbow arching over the entire city.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture.  But trust me when I say it was cool.  It's not often you see a rainbow end to end.

We made it to our hotel in Golden and then met one of Derek and Cari's friends for dinner nearby.  One sort of notable item from dinner was that I learned how to make a Fireball shot even better...you drop it into a glass of Angry Orchard.  It's cinnamon apple yumminess!  Apple pie in liquid form. I think it's called an Angry Ball?  Whatever it was called, it was really tasty!

You know what else is in Golden?  The Coors Brewery. 

It was not a coincidence that we were staying in Golden.  When Mike was planning the route it was looking very likely we would need to make a stop in the Denver area...so why not go just a tad further to Golden and work in a brewery tour if possible?  Derek and Cari are big Keystone Light fans (both had done the tour before) and I didn't even know this, but Coors also makes my favorite beer, Blue Moon. 

We arrived too late on the 11th to do the tour so we planned to go first thing on Friday morning.  Coors starts the tours at 10 am and when we arrived around 9:45 am there was already a large line. 

A small bus picks up about a dozen people at a time and you get a quick ride around downtown Golden with a history lesson before getting dropped back off at the brewery to start the actual tour.

The tour involves one of those portable devices that you listen to at various stations as you make your way through.  You get a small taste of beer halfway through and the tour ends in the Coors lounge where you get 3 larger samples of beer.  I have to say, beer, fresh and ice cold from those kegs, tastes pretty damn good!  No comparison to drinking it from a can or bottle or even on draft from a bar.  

I learned quite a few fun and interesting facts about the brewing process and Coors.  But I can't tell you about them.  They are top secret. 

Wait, that's not true. 

It's just that my brain isn't so great at holding onto those kinds of detailed details.  And the internet isn't doing a good job of giving me a down and dirty list to share with you right now (I'm sure that's user error). 

Here's what I can tell you.  They say the secret to Coors beer is all about the water.  Coors was first to introduce beer in aluminum cans, which opened the door to manufacturers producing other products in aluminum cans.  And Coors pretty much pioneered the can recycling revolution that we know today.  In their early years they would buy back the cans and had somewhere in the 90% return rate on their cans.  Or maybe it was 80%...ugh, I don't know?  Please don't quote me on any of this.  If you want to know all the fun facts, go there and take a tour.  It's free, it's fun and it's really interesting even if you aren't a beer fan.  Plus you get free beer!

 

After spending the morning touring Coors, our day of riding got off to late start somewhere around 12:30ish pm.  We still had 400+ miles to cover to end up in Richfield, Utah for the night.  

Riding through Colorado was beautiful.  Riding through Utah was, wow!  I had some camera issues in Utah. For some reason many of my pictures were a little blurry, which was a little disappointing.  I'm going to share some of them anyway to at least give you a sense of what we saw.

Not sure why Mike's face looks like he just emerged from a coal mine...

 

 

 

The mountains and landscape were just stunning.  These pictures don't even come close to doing it justice.  We were riding west, into the sun and we got to see the sun set in this beautiful place.  It was nice evening ride.

I would like to go back and see more of Utah for sure!

We finally arrived in Richfield around 9:45 pm and made it to one of the few restaurants in town open after 10pm.  Where, by the way, you can only order alcohol if you also order food to accompany it.  Welcome to Utah!

Next up on Monday is our final destination before going home--Vegas!

Carhenge

After 4 1/2 action packed filled days in South Dakota we had to say goodbye to Narnia and start the journey home on Thursday, August 11, 2016.  I have to say I wasn't really looking forward to the ride home as much because when you turn back towards home there's a finality in the vacation coming to an end.  But with Cari's help, I adjusted my mindset to focus on the fact that the ride home was another part of the adventure.  And indeed it was. 

The route took us from South Dakota, south down through Nebraska and west through Colorado to hit our destination for the night in Golden, Colorado.  It's interesting to see what each state's landscape has to offer.  Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska all provided infinite views of grasslands, hay fields and pastures with heards of cattle.  Nebraska also added in quite a few corn fields and trains into the mix.  But the thing that Nebraska had that the other states didn't was an AWESOME place called Carhenge.  And we just happened upon it. 

As we were riding through Nebraska I noticed a couple of signs that referenced Carhenge, but didn't really think much about it.  Until we were riding through a small town and I saw a sign saying it was only 4 miles away!  I quickly pulled out my cell phone to google it to see what it was all about. I learned that Carhenge is a replica of England's famous Stonehenge, but with cars!?  How rad is that?  (By the way, I'm on a mission to bring back the word rad.) 

I was super excited to see Carhenge and I pretty aggressively tapped Mike on the shoulder, pointing out the sign and saying we should stop and see that.  Because how can you not stop at something called Carhenge?  

The funny thing was I was so jazzed about this unique, unplanned stop, that I totally missed Mike saying we were stopping in this town for lunch (where we could work out the details of this fun  detour).  And I proceeded to google the directions to Carhenge and was urgently shouting to Mike (shouting is how you communicate when riding a motorcycle) that he needed to turn left just ahead on Highway 87 in 2.4 miles.  And he kept saying, okay, okay, as he was trying to spot a decent place for us to eat and me still not realizing we were stopping for food.  This is the beauty of trying to communicate on a motorcycle! It then became a joke and I would randomly say to the group, "Hey, can we go to Carhenge???", about every 7 minutes between the time we stopped for lunch and actually arriving at this amazing place.

Hey, can we go to Carhenge???

Located in a small town called Alliance, Carhenge is a fun, bizarre attraction in the middle of Nebraska's corn fields.  Carhenge is free to visit and is quite a unique site to see.  So next time you are cruising through Alliance, Nebraska...put Carhenge on your itinerary.  It's so worth it!  We spent maybe 30 minutes there but it was one of my top sights of the trip!  It was just so random and different that it ranked high on my list. 

On the outskirts of Carhenge was some other interesting car art...

Here's some close up shots of Carhenge...

 

The other cool thing about Carhenge was that it was right next to a huge field of sunflowers.  If you look close at the photo below you can see the sunflower field behind Carhenge on the left side.

I had seen a couple of random sunflower fields earlier in the day, but never had my camera out in time take a picture as we were riding by.  But this was way better, because Cari and I actually walked right into the sunflower field since it wasn't fenced off.  It was pretty neat to stand in field of flowers nearly as tall as you.  Certainly a first for me.  My only complaint was the flowers were all facing the wrong way. ;) 

Hey, can we go to Carhenge???

 

This is what I love most about road trips...seeing something random and having the flexibility to make a detour and check it out.  Carhenge was as cool as it sounded in my head and definitely a trip highlight! 

Hey, can we go to Carhenge???  YES! YES! YES!

Tomorrow we head to the Coor's Brewery, which was cool...but not as cool as....you guessed it, Carhenge! ;)