Cross-Country 2013 Part 1 of 2

please note this entry will be edited for corrections and so on

Cross-country Motorcycle Trip 2013
Part 1

or

American-made bikes prove their true colors 

or

Erik Buell is a genius and Harleys aren't as bad as some people think

Boor described this scenery aptly: "Its hard to tell where the clouds end and the mountains begin" (Near Sheridan, WY)

It began as a joke.  A frustrated posting stated simply "Anyone want to ride to Alaska with me?".  The rest, as they say, is complicated.  Or history.  Either way it was that post that lead to a much more realistic plan to ride to the west coast.  Officially it would be Seattle, Portland, Redwood Park.  Unofficially it was a chance to fully appreciate the country, the roads, the land, the people, our motorcycles, and quite possibly alter our lives forever.

Day One:

The morning of departure arrived.  I had already packed my bike 3 different times.  Tweaks here and there offered more efficiency and by the time I met with Boor and his '00 Fatboy I had the packing and unpacking of my gear down to a science.  Half a gallon of spare fuel was secured to my bike, an '08 Buell Ulysses XT named Brünnhilde.  We topped off with fuel and began our quest for the coast, leaving Rochester, NY behind at 7AM on Monday, the 20th of May.

The previous weeks had involved an obsessive amount of planning.  I'd vetted a slew of offline GPS systems, found a weather resistant phone to handle those GPS and audiobook/podcast duties, found an excellent backpack to add some storage to the bike (really I should have brought less clothes), and calculated how many nights my excessive hotel points would cover.  In the end much of the route planning would go right the fuck out the... window.  Kind of an odd statement considering there wasn't a window for anything to go out of.

As we journeyed on we became aware of exactly how far we could ride and what the limits of fighting the weather would do to our ride time.  Each bike already had a personality but Boor's Fatboy would infuriate and impress.  Brünnhilde did her usual - absolutely astounding reliability and zero problems.  All that while, as Boor stated "Being faster, cornering better, braking better, getting better gas mileage, and being more comfortable." than the Harley.  The Ulysses was built for this kind of riding.  Harleys are built to go from bar to bar.

This first leg of our journey was simple.  Get to Omaha, NE.  In our way was a byzantine toll road system that ran through several states via I-90.  We weren't looking for scenery out of these first few days of travel and I-90 was ideal for getting us to the Chicago area quickly, where we would then switch to I-80.

Pennsylvania.  No tolls.

The toll issues began in New York.  By the time we were on I-80 outside of Chicago, my own toll booth problems would reach aneurysm levels.  Thankfully there were respites of non-tolls.  Pennsylvania's section of I-90 is well maintained, offers plenty of fuel exits, a lovely welcoming rest area, and is free to travel upon.  The grape vines behind the Pennsylvania rest area are a nice break from what one usually expects - barren land or a 10-foot high concrete barrier.

I had my EZ-pass ready for the roads ahead but hitting the first booth outside of New York proved something I knew already: I hate toll roads.  New York and Pennsylvania were largely uneventful other than having to hold the transponder above my head to get it to read..  I-90 is a reasonable road up until Ohio.  That is when the weird things start.

Most of this involves construction.  For several years I was driving through I-90 in Ohio for work.  In that time the same exact portions of the road have been under construction yet nothing of note has changed.  I wonder if any work really is being done on the roads or if the funding ran out and they just left all of the equipment and signage.  It certainly seems that way.

Then came the toll booths.  In Ohio, as well as Indiana, the toll booths have crossing arms that are normally down.  This wouldn't be an issue except that the EZ-pass didn't work on any of the entry gates (worked on the exit gates just fine).  In Ohio I had to shut my bike off and lean over to have the booth print a ticket... which I quickly dropped as, you know, you wear gloves while on a bike and thin crappy pieces of paper tend to fly out of them.  I'm not sure how this will effect my EZ-pass bill.  But I have an idea on how to solve this issue.  First another toll story.

The entry into Indiana was a nightmare.  First the EZ-pass didn't work, then the ticket wouldn't print, then I was stuck on hold after pressing the "help" button.  Meanwhile cars are backing up behind me as I wave the EZ-pass in the air and come up with new kinds of swear words.  5 minutes of this and I finally decide to ride around the crossing arm.  I'm hoping to get a letter in the mail with a picture of me whipping around the asinine barrier.

So this brings me to my point about toll booths.  Why in the hell do they still exist?  Just snap a photo of my vehicle entering and exiting and send me the bill.  Hell I'm on EZ-pass already and my plates are registered, why do I even need a freaking transponder?  And on a bike this coming to a stop crap is annoying.  Trucks must be equally frustrated with this but I can't tell you how annoying and byzantine this toll booth system is.  I feel like we are living in the steam engine era.  It, so far, is my biggest frustration about trying to ride a motorcycle across the country.

Our first day was over.  Joliet, IN welcomed us with a Taco Bell for dinner and a hotel that had exactly two yogurts, no coffee, and some stale bread for breakfast.  It was wonderful.  Boor made a stop at a local store called "Wal-mart" (quaint, I know) for supplies before we rode out for the day.

This was one of two trips to Wal-mart.  Boor needed better cargo straps and later would purchase a camelback.

Day Two and Three:

Our second day's ride to Omaha was largely uneventful.  This raises the issue of Iowa, though.  As many of you know Iowa doesn't exist.  It consists of exactly one hill which is copy, pasted, copy, pasted through several hundred of the most maddeningly dull miles on that side of the Mississippi.  The only thing that is truly there is the world's largest rest stop.  Thus the population of "Iowa" is always in flux and depends on how many people are visiting.  It is a bit like the holodeck in Star Trek.  You enter a kind of alternate reality where the same scenery texture is repeated in an obvious pattern.

This map would have you believe that Iowa has topography.  Iowa doesn't exist.

I lived in Omaha, NE for several years so I was familiar with the area.  Growing up the landscape was quite a bit different, however.  Omaha has grown substantially since I last lived there in 1994.  Boor remarked on how he expected Omaha to be a small collection of trailer parks and some cows.  My own memory involved rather a lot of cornfields and scattered suburbs.  My old suburb, Bellevue, was already in a growth phase just as I left to move to Rochester.  The area surrounding my old neighborhood is nigh unrecognizable and even for tens of miles further out there are sprouts of housing and businesses.

Looking back on my life there I can't say for sure if I would have appreciated the area had I been older or if, in some kind of convoluted time machine mishap, my younger self would have been happier in today's Omaha.

My sister's driveway goes straight up for 30 feet before leveling off directly into a garage door.  Thankfully we were able to park our bikes inside for the night and she graciously let us use her Jeep to schlep around town.  My sister moved to Rochester with my parents and I but she never really let go of Omaha.  She moved back there as soon as she could and hasn't uprooted since.  It is easy to see why she stays.

Old Market, Omaha, NE

The Old Market area of Omaha was always one of my favorites, even as a tween/young teen.  Its boundaries have become larger and the area as whole more refined but I'm not so sure that is to the benefit of the feel of the Old Market.  In days of yore one could be sure of some really strange shenanigans at all hours of the day.  Now even the core is buttoned down and professional feeling.  Clean, yes.  Sophisticated, surely.  Overflowing with energy?  Not anymore.  The trade off is that there is little to worry about but at the cost of places like The Antiquarium, which left the Old Market due to a number of factors.

My brother and I used to visit The Antiquarium on a fairly regular basis.  Always there were a group of erudite, pipe-smoking, chess-playing regulars who (I'll defend this to my death) were actually book fairies.  They lived inside the Antiquarium, their days and nights filled with esoteric musings on the wonderful new way to organize books by author's birthplace in reverse alphabetical order in a random ancient alphabet.

Boor and I enter a coffee shop that is also a bank.  Scattered throughout the older stores (Homer's!) are places like this.  It is not that a combination bank/coffee shop is such a bad thing.  It is that their bathroom key is, in itself, a statement on what the Old Market has lost.

It turns our having a combination bank/coffee shop leads to creative ways of keeping track of the bathroom key.  This thing also lit up with LEDs.  To complete the effect they need to add a jingle.  Like... this.

The bathroom key of my Old Market would have been a skeleton key.  And there would have been two flights of stairs involved - one going up to the bathroom door, and another (made of cast iron) going back down to where the toilet was actually located.  Possibly a pentagram would have been involved.  Also this would be the sink.

The area is considerably more hilly than one might expect out of the midwest.  In fact it is so hilly that Boor commented on how he didn't need to visit San Francisco anymore.  We toured around in the Jeep visiting what I considered important landmarks.  My old neighborhood (which for some reason I used to try to skateboard around.  It is hilly enough that the concept seems insane now), old Bellevue, downtown, the crossroads area, and we even visited a motorcycle store.

Now I should state for the record that Boor really did almost trade in his Fatboy for a Triumph.  At this point (only two days on the bikes so far) he was sufficiently pissed off at his bike that he was on the edge of signing paperwork for a Triumph Tiger 800 but the numbers just didn't add up.  I eyed the Triumphs myself, but could find nothing in the entire lineup that matched my Buell on all counts.  In fact there is currently nothing on earth that would make me trade in my Buell (unless EBR offers their AX soon, and for direct trade).

The differences between the bikes was clear but this would really come into play later in the trip, where altitude and weather conditions would leave Boor longing for a true touring machine.  In fairness the Harley only had two minor issues during the entire trip but we'll cover those as they come into play.

Day Four:

We left Omaha on a chilly, wet morning.  The gas station up the street wasn't open yet and the station further up the street was having issues with the credit card service.  We opted to simply head for our next target - Keystone, SD - and fuel on our way out of Council Bluffs, IA.  This route took us north to Sioux Falls, SD where we would then meet up with 'ole faithful I-90.  Our fuel problems would prove to be ongoing and random, culminating in something I shall refer to simply as "The Denio Fucktronic Shitty Event-a-thon".  More on that later.

We passed by a town on the north western tip of Iowa called Sioux City.  For some reason this was the point at which I felt like we were really heading west.  Like Sioux City was some kind of frontier town.  I pictured horses and a saloon for some reason.  It struck me as a working town.  One where trucks are hewn from hickory and people eat jerky for breakfast.

The terrain started to change in some subtle and other not so subtle ways.  For example the greenery was still green but the ground slowly became red.  The horizon also started moving further and further away.  At our crossing of the Missouri River, near Chamberlain, SD, the landscape went into an almost permanently absurd "big-sky" mode.  South Dakota is not "big sky country".  That title goes to Montana.  But certainly the world opened up, the sky much larger than anywhere else I'd been.

We entered South Dakota knowing that the weather was about to get questionable.  What we encountered for the entire duration of our I-90 west route, all the way into Keystone, was 45-55mph winds that hit us at a horrible 30 degree angle - oncoming and from the left.  I've never had to hold on to my bike with such force before.  This was a battle and it was unending.  Just when the arm muscles start to relax another gust comes along and a series of complicated inputs to the bike are required to correct for the new wind.  I'm partially amazed I didn't just get blown completely off the road.  Some of these gusts had my hands straining to stay on the handlebars.

This was real work and it was wearing my nerves fairly thin.  Its it rare to have to lean over so far just to keep going straight.  I pictured what this must look like from the various cars that we encountered.  Two bikes almost constantly leaning far to the left.

The only comfort for this portion of the ride was a steady stream of Neko Case and Anne and Pete Sibley playing into my right ear.  Montana and Idaho demanded a different set of music but for now the only thing that got me through the beating of the wind was good, real country music.

Nearly everyone we encountered asked if we were going to stop in Sturgis.  Sturgis, for those that can't guess my opinion on it already, is anathema to everything that I stand for when it comes to motorcycles.  I have never had, no will I ever have, a desire to see a bunch of drunken pirates on their overpriced, uncornerable, chrome penis extensions having a party in the middle of fuck-all.  Boor and I both agreed early on that Sturgis (even off-season) was to be avoided.  Bikes are to be ridden - not parked in a fucking wheat field so you can go to some bar and watch nappity biker skanks wobble their flat, droopy funbags at barely functional mouthbreathers for a free well drink.

But I have no strong feelings on the matter.

No instead we opted to stop by a different type of trap.  Wall Drug.

People here asked us if we were going to Sturgis.  One tourist trap for another?  No thanks.  Avoid this place unless you have kids.  It is the Wall...mart (hah!) of tourist destinations.

Wall Drug is not exactly a bad place.  If I had a family and was in the area I would stop here, in fact.  It is the kind of place where you give your kids each 10 bucks to buy a trinket and they are happy for the next 3 days until the trinket breaks.  There were small shiny stones for sale, plastic bear claws that were made in china, a wide variety of t-shirts and hats, and t-shirts-with-hats (combo deal!), a large amount of velvet oil paintings that I personally would adorn a small motel with, and so on.  I like my trinkets rare and not made in china so I opted not to purchase anything from Wall Drug.

We moved on, my GPS unit showing signs of schizophrenic behavior.  That would only get worse as luck would have it.

Our descent into Keystone was beautiful.  We checked into a hotel and Boor found a mexican restaurant to raid.  I can't recall having a better margarita and the food was excellent.

Day Five:

Mount Rushmore can be seen poking out through the mountains as you approach.  It makes you wonder how this place was ever found.  It seems so hidden, almost like a secret fold in the valleys and mountains.  You must approach at a certain time of day during a certain month or else the valley disappears for another year.

This lens is almost wide enough to get Mount Rushmore AND the back of my head.

Wait a second.  Do I look like George Washington?

Unfortunately we were unable to take the bikes on this trail.  Also this resembles a digestive tract of some sort.  In fact I've spotted polyps.

Very impressive in person.

All 50 states are represented here via flag.  To walk past New York you have to pay a toll and fill out paperwork.  A crossing arm near the Ohio flag will hit you on the head if you don't tuck and roll.

This rock formation almost appears to be giving you the finger.

Mount Rushmore was much more relaxing and much less outwardly patriotic than I thought it would be.  There's no real feeling of "'murica!" going on.  At least when we were there, anyway.  It felt more like a large scale art installation.  Less presidential and more sculpture.  I was caught off guard by this.  One expects a marching band to be playing Souza marches and Uncle Sam posters as pavers for the walkways.  I would never have sought out Mount Rushmore as a destination, and the fact that it was partially on our route was the only real reason we even stopped in the first place.  But having been there I would gladly go back.  It is oddly relaxing.

Our stop in Mount Rushmore was brief and we were back on the road by 10AM.  Our goal was to get as far into Montana as possible.  This meant a brief ride through the northeast corner of Wyoming followed by what I expected to be more vast emptiness in Montana.  I was wrong.

Where Iowa was one repeating hill after another, Montana was a steadily building itself into a crescendo of rock formations and massive scale.  Boring it was not.  The weather could have been warmer but somehow the cloud cover was appropriate.  There were actual towns on a regular basis and the roads were maintained well.  We had no trouble finding locations to fuel and with such little traffic we had no insane drivers to deal with.  Boor's Harley began exhibiting a... trait.  Upon refilling, his Fatboy would piss about a cup of fuel directly onto the ground.  I ended up doing this by overfilling in Oregon (reasons for that will become obvious when I bitch about it later on) but his did it all the time.

We pushed on and on, targeting Bozeman, MT as our stopping point.  This would allow for a shorter run into Washington and based on how cold our next day would be, I think it was a wise choice.  I should mention, before moving on to the next day, that Boor consumed so much food at the chinese buffet that night that we got banned from the restaurant.  Okay I made that up.  But seriously that man can pack away the food.

Day 6:

The path out of Bozeman, MT took use to Butte, MT and onward.  Between these two was the continental divide.  The climb up the mountains meant steadily decreasing temperature.  I switched my music to The Knife - something that would worm its way into my brain and keep me warm.  I switched on my hand grip heaters and pulled my legs close to the frame of Brünnhilde, radiant heat working its way little by little into my legs.  The sky was dark and as we climbed more and more snow appeared on the ground.  It had yet to melt.

One of the major disadvantages of modern GPS and mapping (yes, I mean you, Google Maps - you can suck my effing balls) is that many features are simply skipped over or ignored.  In this case it was made obvious by a sign that stated, simply "Continental Divide - 6,329 feet".  Holy crap.  Why the hell didn't I know this was coming up?  The insane mountain roads and steep angles were indicators but I still was frustrated that I didn't know.  I felt like a moron.  Surely if there weren't snow here I'd be worried.

My hands were warm yet I looked in my shaky, fuzzy mirror and realized that Boor must be a popsicle by now.  We descended quickly into Butte and made a stop at a large coffee chain that sells very expensive milkshakes.  Cheesy pretzels and coffee was like abrosia after such a cold, tense ride.  Boor's double set of gloves were not keeping his hands very warm and I seriously wondered if he would agree to continuing.  Boor's resolve was steadfast, though.  In fact I was perfectly comfortable but he was suffering and would not stop riding towards Seattle unless his hands fell off first.  In Omaha he had purchased some knee and shin guards at a motorcycle store and that alone is likely the reason he opted to continue.  The wind protection was enough that he wasn't freezing his legs off too.

Twisty highways and mountain passes abounded, especially as we worked out way towards the thin patch of Idaho that we were to cross.  The road was twisty more than it was straight and for perhaps the first time the entire trip, my bike was leaning to turn.  Most of the twisty mountain passes meant I'd get ahead of Boor's Fatboy by a pretty good amount.  To his credit, Boor scraped his floorboards a few times before deciding on a slower pace around the curves.

We came across a convenience store that I swear I could work at for the rest of my life.  It was set into a bend in the road, with mountains just behind it and a view that you can't buy for less than a winning lottery ticket.  Clinton, MT is the place and its easy to spot on your favorite map.  Just west of Missoula, we topped off our fuel and the Fatboy pissed all over the ground again.

Nearing Idaho and yet another mountain pass.  This also meant another fuel stop.  This one would turn out to be one of the weirdest in memory.

Let me explain something first.  Have you ever seen a zombie movie where someone stops in to an abandoned gas station to grab a snack?  Well that is where we stopped.  I think Boor explains it better than I can, really.

"Seriously its like we walked into an episode of The Living Dead," Boor said as I was decoding the series of 14 button presses to pay for fuel.  "You have to see it."

The method for fueling here was simple.  Walk 25 feet away from the pump to a kiosk that looked sort of like a missile launch control panel.  Enter the number of the pump you wanted to activate (1), then enter the hose that you wanted to activate (7).  If you selected hose 7 then that meant 87 octane on Pump 1 but hose 5 was 87 octane on Pump 2 but you first had to select the pump anyway so what the everloving fuck was this stupid thing?

The *ahem* attendant came out to assist me as I, keeper of ancient technology (ask my wife), couldn't decode this setup at first.  In the distance, wafting on the light breeze, came a banjo and lo - it playedth the song of yonder hill people.  Dueling Banjos.  Boor can back me up on this.  Ask him in person.  They guy had one tooth in his head and it is under debate as to the provenance of that tooth.  It is also the considered opinion of this author that the attendant was holding down quite possibly the least-well-stocked convenience stores in the western world.

There is no shit being offered here: the entire store had roughly 6 items left for sale.  One frozen pizza, lonely in a wall of freezers.  Two bags of chips (though in defense - one WAS barbecue flavor).  I may have spotted a used pack of cigarettes but due to some lighting issues it is hard to say.  And lighting issues were the word of the day for the restroom.  Ever play Half-Life?  Know those bathrooms where you wonder if a headcrab is about to jump at you?  That's what we'd found.  And the lights.  Oh the lights.  If ever I could make a case for room temperature Bose-Einstein condensate... this room surely was it.  Light dripped its way out of the fluorescent tubes, meandered down the sticky walls, and poured like molasses on the floor.  It hurt my eyes to be in that room.  It was very much like if you stare at one fixed point for too long... everything was that off-white washed out haze of nothing.

I've found the location on the map but I won't link it.  There were many events during this trip that don't come through no matter how I express them.  Zombie Apocalypse Store was one.  We rested momentarily and did a one-mile long burnout, never looking back.

Everything smells like pine and reminds you of Twin Peaks.  In fact I had the opening sequence playing over and over again in my mind as we exited Idaho and made our way to Spokane. This far north, Idaho isn't very wide and so we found ourselves in Spokane, WA very quickly.  A bit like crossing Pennsylvania but with considerably more pine trees and twisty mountain roads.

*end part one*
link to part 2