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!