mr_ed
Toolbag
So about 8 months ago I decided to travel from Elizabeth City North Carolina where I’m stationed to northern Idaho where I’m from . At first I was going to do it in a diesel Dodge Ram but that’s just dumb. The mighty Cummins would make it but that POS truck that Chrysler built (for SHAME) sure as shootin’ wouldn’t. So then I was going to do it in my VW diesel-fired Suzuki Samurai. But that project is slow…and that’s has multiple meanings. It’s a work in progress and it’s a non-turbo diesel.
Anyhoo I said well shoot I’ll fly, but then I’ll be stuck up there just relying on friends and such for getting around (I was taking 34 days of leave).
What about riding a bike? All the dudes and dudettes on Advrider do it! But my 92 Vulcan 88 with the antique metal tractor seat and ape bars would not suffice. Not cuz of the ape bars and tractor seat but because it’s not really running right now.
So I bought an ‘08 V-Strom 650 back in March and started outfitting it for a cross-country-and-back trek. This consisted of welding some 40mm ammo cans to the sides, bought a $17 gel ATV seat pad from Walmart, and on the tail rack I stuck some rediculous orange pelican case that I spray-painted black so I would feel better about myself. And I lived that Miller High Life. Whatever.
Of course, since I belong to a military service whose motto is “Semper Paratus,” my personal life is in a constant state of “Numquam Paratus” so the night before I left this was the extent of my preparations:
This took me about 30 minutes. I got bored, popped a beer, and started looking for the end of the internet.
The rest of the kit and kaboodle was frantically thrown together at the last minute in the rain the next morning. If you’re familiar with the author Patrick McManus, then you’ll understand.
My plan was to take lots of pics, including a pic of every stateline sign I passed, but once I started riding that whole plan went out the window, especially the signs, so if you’re looking for material for a State line calendar, all I got was W. VA, CO, and ID. Here’s W. VA:
I wanted to camp most of the time, but that was hard at first. I got to the Blue Ridge Parkway around midnight, and the only campground I could find was closed, so I set up alongside the road somewhere. Darn 5.0 ran me off; something about not being able to just sleep anywhere, bums, and whatnot. So I ended up in a motel. Oh well there’s plenty of places further west that would be free of such nitpicky nonsense.
Here’s somewhere in Indiana…er…Illinois…er…Missouri…one of them:
In Missouri I had the closest call of the whole trip. The weather had been nasty all through the Midwest, lots of rain. Well I’m tooling along, thinking of God, the future, and Bridget The Midget, and I see another thunderhead coming up. Oh well I’ll keep going I got raingear. I drive into the rain and it’s immediately waaaaaaaaay more then I’d been through yet. I couldn’t see 20 feet in front of me, and I was doing 65. There weren’t nobody behind me so I threw on the air and got it down to about 30, when a crosswind hit me. I have no idea how fast it was going but it was enough to blow me sideways across 2 lanes of interstate. I was able to stop it on the shoulder right before the ditch, but it was raining and blowing so hard I didn’t want to stay there, so I shut the bike off, laid it on it’s side (it was blowing to hard for side or center stands) and clambered over to the other side of the ditch. Once it lightened up I kept going. Glad the rain hit first though, that cross wind was making 18 wheeler trailers drift out from behind their tractors!
Stopped to visit friends in Kansas, than headed for Colorado. Ran into another storm about 100 miles short of Colorado. Common sense said to cowboy up and keep riding, but my ego said “are you a bloody idiot pull the heck over and wait it out for crying out loud” so being a manly man I holed up in an underpass.
This, as it turned out, was Colorado:
About 1130 at night and 80 miles from Denver, I developed a flat rear tire due to a puncture. While I was plugging it on the side of I-70, a Yamaha touring bike with a gent on board by the name of Maverick pulled up to lend assistance, and the godsend of his LED forehead lamp (lesson learned; I too have one of these now). After plugging the tire and pumping it up with the little Slime compressor I was off again (many thanks Maverick! If you ever find yourself in Elizabeth City get ahold of me we got you a warm bed, cold beer, and a mangy mutt who’ll want to sleep with you).
Anyhoo I said well shoot I’ll fly, but then I’ll be stuck up there just relying on friends and such for getting around (I was taking 34 days of leave).
What about riding a bike? All the dudes and dudettes on Advrider do it! But my 92 Vulcan 88 with the antique metal tractor seat and ape bars would not suffice. Not cuz of the ape bars and tractor seat but because it’s not really running right now.
So I bought an ‘08 V-Strom 650 back in March and started outfitting it for a cross-country-and-back trek. This consisted of welding some 40mm ammo cans to the sides, bought a $17 gel ATV seat pad from Walmart, and on the tail rack I stuck some rediculous orange pelican case that I spray-painted black so I would feel better about myself. And I lived that Miller High Life. Whatever.
Of course, since I belong to a military service whose motto is “Semper Paratus,” my personal life is in a constant state of “Numquam Paratus” so the night before I left this was the extent of my preparations:
This took me about 30 minutes. I got bored, popped a beer, and started looking for the end of the internet.
The rest of the kit and kaboodle was frantically thrown together at the last minute in the rain the next morning. If you’re familiar with the author Patrick McManus, then you’ll understand.
My plan was to take lots of pics, including a pic of every stateline sign I passed, but once I started riding that whole plan went out the window, especially the signs, so if you’re looking for material for a State line calendar, all I got was W. VA, CO, and ID. Here’s W. VA:
I wanted to camp most of the time, but that was hard at first. I got to the Blue Ridge Parkway around midnight, and the only campground I could find was closed, so I set up alongside the road somewhere. Darn 5.0 ran me off; something about not being able to just sleep anywhere, bums, and whatnot. So I ended up in a motel. Oh well there’s plenty of places further west that would be free of such nitpicky nonsense.
Here’s somewhere in Indiana…er…Illinois…er…Missouri…one of them:
In Missouri I had the closest call of the whole trip. The weather had been nasty all through the Midwest, lots of rain. Well I’m tooling along, thinking of God, the future, and Bridget The Midget, and I see another thunderhead coming up. Oh well I’ll keep going I got raingear. I drive into the rain and it’s immediately waaaaaaaaay more then I’d been through yet. I couldn’t see 20 feet in front of me, and I was doing 65. There weren’t nobody behind me so I threw on the air and got it down to about 30, when a crosswind hit me. I have no idea how fast it was going but it was enough to blow me sideways across 2 lanes of interstate. I was able to stop it on the shoulder right before the ditch, but it was raining and blowing so hard I didn’t want to stay there, so I shut the bike off, laid it on it’s side (it was blowing to hard for side or center stands) and clambered over to the other side of the ditch. Once it lightened up I kept going. Glad the rain hit first though, that cross wind was making 18 wheeler trailers drift out from behind their tractors!
Stopped to visit friends in Kansas, than headed for Colorado. Ran into another storm about 100 miles short of Colorado. Common sense said to cowboy up and keep riding, but my ego said “are you a bloody idiot pull the heck over and wait it out for crying out loud” so being a manly man I holed up in an underpass.
This, as it turned out, was Colorado:
About 1130 at night and 80 miles from Denver, I developed a flat rear tire due to a puncture. While I was plugging it on the side of I-70, a Yamaha touring bike with a gent on board by the name of Maverick pulled up to lend assistance, and the godsend of his LED forehead lamp (lesson learned; I too have one of these now). After plugging the tire and pumping it up with the little Slime compressor I was off again (many thanks Maverick! If you ever find yourself in Elizabeth City get ahold of me we got you a warm bed, cold beer, and a mangy mutt who’ll want to sleep with you).
