The following ride report
was written in September of 1998 after I subscribed to the Iron
Butt
Association's mail list. I began to see many ride reports,
but they all put my ride to shame. Up until
that time, I thought my ride was pretty impressive. That's
when I realized that I still had done
something that many motorcyclists have only dreamed of doing.
So, I decided to sit down with my photo album, and
log book, and detail the ride my
friend and I took from Joliet, Illinois to the West coast and
back. I affectionately call it:
Cross Country Vulcan
(Click on the underlined links to see a related photo - click your browser's BACK button to return)
I love
to ride my bike, a 90' Kawasaki Vulcan 750, as much as
possible, but unfortunately I don't seem to have
enough time. Since
I only live four miles from my place of work, the
engine barely warms
up before I have to climb off. In mid 1994,
a co-worker and I began
talking about how we both have always wanted to
ride cross country.
Tim, who used to be an MSF Instructor while in the
Air Force, is a bit
wilder than I am behind the bars, but we both
decided that some day
soon we were going to make the trip.
Tim has gone through a
lot of different motorcycles. Presently,
he has a Honda Pacific Coast 800. In 1977,
when I was 10, I started
riding a HondaCT-70 in the woods West of Como, WI. I moved up to
a new 79' Kawasaki KX-80 when I was 12, and also did a lot of riding
on my younger brother's 80' Honda CR-80. I became quite a daredevil,
but that went away when I got too big for the
KX-80 and passed it on
to my brothers. I didn't do anymore serious
riding until I took an MRC
class in 1986 so I could drive my father's 1975
Honda CB360T. I was
officially hooked when I bought my own bike, and
my only one so far,
in October of 1989.
While passing the time
during a lull in our workload, Tim and I
sat down with a road atlas and decided what places
we definitely
wanted to see if we were to ride from our homes in
Joliet, IL to the
West coast and back. We were curious as to
what kind of places we
could see if we were to take a Northern route to
the coast, travel
down 101 and the PCH, and take a Southern route
home. We decided
that the places we definitely had to see were
Badlands National Park,
Mount Rushmore, Devil's Tower, Yellowstone
National Park, the
Pacific Coast Highway, the Golden Gate Bridge,
Yosemite National Park,
Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon.
It seemed like quite a
task to figure out a route, but I had a
very old copy of Automap, and began to work on
it. That didn't work
too well, so I bought a copy of Rand McNally's
Tripmaker. We agreed
that we probably wouldn't see much from the
interstates, so I set the
preferences to take the shortest routes, which
mostly gave us U.S. and
State Highways, with some Interstates thrown in
where we couldn't
avoid them. As it got closer to the Summer
of 1995, we decided on an
11 day window from June 24th to July 4th so we
could take advantage
of the four day holiday weekend and only use five
vacation days. The
trip calculated out to 5,716 miles, so we knew we
had to make at least
520 miles per day, which everyone else thought was
nuts. We enjoyed
the whole idea.
For months before the
trip, we were obtaining many of the things
we thought we'd need, such as tank bags, saddle
bags, bungee cords,
cycle covers, tire repair kit, new hand grips,
first aid kit, a new
windshield for my bike, throttle locks, and with
funds dwindling, we
also put a pair of 49 Mhz headset walkie talkies
in our helmets so we
could talk without having to pull over. The
radios worked excellent
at speeds below 55 mph, but anything higher and it
was hard to hear
each other through the wind noise. We also
had to keep our distance
within 1/8th mile to hear each other clearly, but
overall, they were a
great idea and saved us a lot of time on the road.
All the way up until the
week before the planned trip, we looked
at it as a tentative plan. We didn't want to
get our hopes up too
high, or get too excited because, as we all know,
the best laid plans
can be changed at a moments notice. Our
vacation days were already
scheduled, but who knew what would actually
happen.
A couple days before we
were to leave, we looked at each other
and asked the same question, "Well, are we
gonna go?" I had a little
money left over from a loan I just got, and Tim
had just sold his
house, so he had a bit of cash laying
around. We decided at that
moment that if we didn't do it then, we probably
never would. We got
off work on Friday the 23rd, and went home to do
some final packing
and get some sleep for the 5:00am departure.
Knowing we'd be hitting
the road in less than six hours, I had
a hard time sleeping. I finally got a few
hours in, but when I woke,
I was ready to go. Tim showed up earlier
than planned, and with the
idea in mind that the trip would relieve a lot of
stress, he gave the
last of his cigarettes to my wife, as she
made us a good bye
breakfast. At 5:30am, we looked one last
time at our check list, I
kissed my wife good bye, and we mounted our machines
for the first day
of eleven, toward the unknown.
The very beginning was
pretty uneventful since we'd already seen
a lot of this stuff before. Up until this
day, I'd never been further
West than Freeport, IL. I'd spent 20+ hours
in the car to and from
Florida, with my parents, a couple times, and even
spent three days
riding my bike back home, in the rain, from Ocala,
FL. To make a
long story short, we loaded my bike in the back of
a U-Haul truck
when my parents moved to Florida in 4/94.
After my dad, his friend,
and I cruised from Ocala to Daytona Beach and back, I started back
for Joliet the next day. Now this was going
to be an entirely new
experience. One I was not soon going to
forget! I still look back
on it, after all this time, and think how much I
enjoyed it and want to
do it again.
Most of
the first day was planned as an all out banzai run to
make as many miles as we could, since we didn't
have any planned stops
for that day. The most notable thing was
that at our first gas stop, in
Rock Falls, IL, 103 miles into the ride, Tim
bought a new pack of
cigarettes and decided he wasn't going to quit
this week. Oh yeah,
and there was also the warning for speeding we got from Trooper T.D.
King, badge 56, of the Iowa State Police. I have to admit, he was a
very nice guy, and was very interested in our
ride. I was actually
sorry for speeding after meeting him. We
went through Northeastern
Nebraska and our first days ride ended about
9:00pm in Burke, SD . I
left a message at home for my wife so she would know
where I was, we got
a bite to eat, and off to our motel rooms for a
shower and a good nights
sleep. My wife says she called me back that
night and I was talking some
gibberish to her, but I don't remember any of
it. We traveled 656 miles.
Day 2,
I woke to the alarm and watched the weather channel while
I got dressed. I immediately realized that I
had forgotten to pack
something. I went to Tim's room and asked
him if he had a spare
T-shirt I could borrow for the day until I bought
some. He got quite
a chuckle out of that. So, when I see a few
of our many photos, I'm
wearing a shirt that doesn't belong to me, and I'm
reminded of my
forgetfulness in leaving all my shirts sitting on
top of my dresser
at home. We visited Badlands National Park , where I was sure to buy
some shirts, and I was able to pick up some more,
real cheap, at a
shop in Keystone, SD, on the way to Mount Rushmore . We headed
North-West through the black hills on 385, and through Deadwood and
Lead. Unfortunately, we didn't make it as
far as we had hoped, but we
spent the night in a KOA Campground at the foot
of Devils Tower,
where you can see an outdoor showing of Close
Encounters Of The
Third Kind every night! The tower looks very
eerie at night. Tim
brought his tent so we could try to rough it a
bit. It rolls up pretty small,
and when strapped on his bike, it isn't any wider
than his turn signals. We
traveled only 391 miles, due to excessive
sightseeing, totaling 1,047 miles.
Day 3,
we left Devils
Tower and Tim led the way toward
Moorcroft
to get on I-90. On one stretch of Hwy 14, I
could see something in
the road ahead of Tim. As he approached it,
I could tell it was a
bird, but what kind, I don't know. All I do
know is that when it
took off over his head, as he went under it, it's
wingspan dwarfed
Tim and his bike. Luckily, he didn't hit it,
because I'm sure it
would have taken him off the bike. We had a
blast riding through
the mountains of Wyoming. The day went pretty smooth until we got
to Yellowstone National Park. There was no
traffic, but the road
construction on the East entrance road to the park
made for a lot
of gravel and pot holes. We had to drive
about 10 mph for about 5
miles or more. Being from Illinois, it
amazed me to see snow in June,
so I got a few pictures of us on our bikes in front
of the snow.
Of course, we had to have a snow-ball fight
first! Thanks to the
seemingly abandoned car on the side of the road, I
was able to place
my camera on it for a time delay photo. My wife's Mom had bought us
a 35mm Minolta for Christmas, and it was getting a
workout on this
trip. Although I found, after the trip was
over, that the camera's
clock was off by 12 hours, so some of our photo's
have the wrong
date on them. As we were approaching our
turn to head South around
the park, we noticed a lot of backed up traffic,
Police cars with
their lights on, and a large crowd of
people. We immediately thought
there was a bad accident. As we sat in
traffic, I stopped a woman
and asked her what had happened. She pointed
to our right and said
there was a bear. That's when I told Tim to
hold on a second as I put
the bike in neutral, grabbed the camera, zoomed
in, and waited for a
break in the moving crowd. You would never
think the picture was
taken from the saddle. We finally made it to
Old Faithful by 7:30pm.
The geyser had erupted just before we got there,
so we had about 70
to 90 minutes to wait before it happened
again. Our problem was that
the park gates were going to be locked at 9:00pm
for construction
crews to work on the roads. Everything in
the park was booked, so
we had to get back on the roads before 9:00pm so
we could get out
of the park. To make a long story short, all
I have is a post card
of the geyser and a photo of it idly
steaming. We made it to West
Yellowstone, MT and got a room at the Madison Hotel, which looks
like it was a saloon many years ago. We only
traveled 460 miles,
again due to sightseeing, for a total of 1,507
miles.
Day 4,
we started off by uncovering and wiping off our bikes due
to the rain we got during the night. We
figured we could try to make
up some time across South central Idaho.
There were a few small towns
we stopped at, but mostly open road and lots of
scenery. We eventually
had to hop on the interstate to go through Boise
and into Oregon,
where everything opened up again, so we could
again try to make up
more time. We ran across another biker while
heading West out of
Ontario. He, like Tim, seemed to like
pushing the envelope a bit.
Until we all stopped together for gas, we pretty
much played a game
of who's passing who for a while. Marty
seemed to be a pretty nice
guy. He rode a Honda V65 Sabre, which has
quite a large gas tank!
I don't know about the rest of Oregon, but the
Southeastern part of
the state we rode through didn't offer very many
gas stops. Marty
stopped in Drewsey, and they were out of gas, we
stopped at 6:55pm at
a small filling station, about 30 miles East of
Burns, that appeared
to be closed. There was a sign on the door
that said we had to pay
$5.00 extra for gas after 7:00pm. Needless
to say, as we were pulling
away at 7:05pm, the front door magically opened,
even though I saw no
one inside when we got there. Poor Marty was
more desperate for gas
than we were and paid about $12.00 to fill his
tank. I opted not to
be scammed out of $5.00, and therefore ended up
coasting into Burns
on fumes and pumping 3.35 gallons into my 3.57
gallon tank. It's
amazing how small this world is. Marty
turned out to be from Madison,
WI, and was heading to Klamath Falls, OR. He
continued South on 395
with us, and except for the Free Range hamburgers
we almost made, it
was pretty uneventful until we parted ways in
Lakeview. We ended our
day there, again riding on fumes, and not one open
gas station to be
found. Unfortunately, we were both ready to
keep going, but had to
get a room at a Best Western, where a spooky
little East Indian guy
popped out of nowhere, scared the hell out of Tim,
and asked if we
needed a room. We had to settle for
traveling 679 miles for a total
of 2,186 miles.
Day 5,
we filled our tanks and got out of Lakeview as quickly as
possible. It was evident this town had quite
a scam going on. People
drive into town after hours, needing gas, and
can't get any. The only
thing you can do is stay the night in Achnad &
Punjab's motel, and pay
the piper for your gas in the morning. I may
be very wrong, but this
little town could make a killing off
travelers. Just find it on a map,
and you'll get the picture. We went on to
Alturas, where a nice gas
station attendant allowed us to change our oil
behind the station. We
bought our oil and gas there, and we had spare oil
filters with us. We
turned in our old oil to him for recycling and we
were on our way again,
but not before I noticed a coolant leak at the
base of my front cylinder.
It must have been due to the 'reduced time' run on
395 the evening
before. The afternoon was spent twisting and
turning on very
scenic
Hwy 299. We had a little
scare at one point, when Tim leaned into a turn
and a gust of wind stood him back up. It
wouldn't have been so bad if
he didn't end up in the left lane heading at the
grill of a logging truck.
He recovered his turn pretty quickly, and
immediately shouted a slew
of colorful words over the radio. It was
probably the scariest moment
of our whole trip. I noticed later, while
entering a turn, that I was only
going 0 mph. I had obviously broken my
speedometer cable. Tim
mentioned later, that I rode much faster after the
cable broke. Luckily,
I was able to pick one up at O&E Cycle in
Eureka, CA. We decided
early to call it a day, since we had some laundry
to do. Tim found a
KOA Campground in Fortuna, where we made camp and
relaxed for the
night. There, we met a gentleman who had his
Harley Davidson loaded
like a pack mule. He told us how he had gone
through Yosemite N.P.
three days earlier, and it was snowed in up in the
mountains. We could
only hope that was not the case when we got
there. We traveled only
372 miles this day, for a total of 2,558 miles.
Day 6,
we rode the Pacific Coast Highway from Leggett to San
Francisco. On the way, we happened along a light house in Point
Arena
that we felt compelled to visit. It turned
out to be the same one
filmed in the movie Forever Young. I also
found out very quickly that
if the speed sign says 15 mph on the PCH, they aren't kidding, and if
you plan to ride the PCH, plan to make a day of it. Because of all
the slow speeds, it seemed to take forever to get
to SF. I wanted to
get some nice pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge
before we crossed it,
but couldn't seem to find a good vantage
point. We ended up on some
side streets in Sausalito before deciding to get
across the bridge and
look for a place to eat. We planned to sit
down there and figure out
where we were going to stop that day. The
bridge goes by in a few
blinks. You don't have time to soak it in
before you're on the other
side. We paid our tolls, and began looking
for Route 1 so we could
avoid the downtown area. I must have missed
the exit, because the
next thing I knew, I saw only two signs at a fork
in the road, and one
said Downtown. I knew I didn't want to go
there, so I turned sharply
right. The last thing I heard on the radio
was, "You lost me". I
looked over my left shoulder, and saw Tim going
over an overpass.
Since our radios didn't transmit too far, I wasn't
able to hear him
say, "I'll meet you on the other side of the
San Mateo Bridge". Since
I had the maps, and our trip route, I pulled over
and waited for Tim
to double back and meet me where I was. I
waited about 30 minutes
before deciding to fall back on our emergency
plan. I found the
nearest gas station and called home. I told my wife to give Tim the
phone number where I was, if he called her.
It's pretty scary being
alone in a strange city. After about three
hours, Tim finally got in
touch with me and it took another hour for me to
catch up with him.
Not only did I lose him, but on the way to find
him, I also passed
up the San Mateo Bridge, and ended up going across
the Dumbarton
Bridge, and back North to find him. By time
I did, I was frustrated
and felt stupid for my mistakes. For the
first time ever, all I wanted
to do was get off my bike. We headed East on
580 toward Manteca,
but somehow ended up going South toward I-5.
We got back in the
right direction, but not until we went 20 miles
out of our way. We
rode on to Manteca and got a room for the night,
but not before
listening to a story about the female clerk's
dysfunctional marriage
and family problems. Sometimes you put your
own problems in a
different perspective when you hear someone else's
horror stories.
We couldn't do anything but go to our room feeling
better about our
day. My next mistake was that I forgot to
call my wife back to let
her know we found each other. So she sat at
home, since I called her
five hours earlier, worrying about us, and I
didn't get one picture
in San Francisco. We rode 381 miles that day
for a total of 2,939
miles.
Days 7
& 8, we rode East to Yosemite NationalPark, only to find
that we could not cross the park on Tioga Rd because it was snowed in!
The only thing we could do was go South around the
mountains and head
back North into Las Vegas. This would add
124 miles to our trip, so
we prepared to ride through the night. We
went through Fresno,
Bakersfield, and Barstow and finally on to Las
Vegas. It was amazing
to see the line of traffic on I-15 at night.
The tail lights went on
forever in front of us, and the headlights did the
same behind us.
Another cool thing is coming down out of the
mountains and seeing the
State Line. It's like an island of light out
there in the pitch black.
We finally reached Vegas by 4:00am. Tim had
been there before, so
he showed me around a little bit. We stopped
at Westward Ho to
gamble a little and get a 52 cent breakfast before
heading out to the
Grand Canyon two hours later. Tim had been
to the South Rim of
the canyon, so he enjoyed the idea of visiting the
North Rim. We had
to make camp at a State Park in Jacob
Lake since everything closer to
the canyon was booked. We got to the canyon at about 1:00pm and spent
about two hours staring and taking pictures.
The ride back to camp
wasn't as fun, since fatigue started to take hold
and I found myself
nodding off. We had been riding for over 24
hours. I had to shake it
off and keep my head and eyes moving as much as
possible, but we made
it back OK by 4:30pm. We got something to
eat and settled in for the
rest of the day so we'd be well rested for the
three day trek home.
We traveled 923 miles in two days for a total of
3,862 miles.
Day 9,
our plan was to make our way North to I-70 so we could
spend the last three days on the interstates,
making up any lost time.
Hopefully we'd be back home by the evening of July
4th. We spent some
time in the desert areas of Arizona and Utah, which
prompted us to
change into shorts and put on sun-screen. It was a
beautiful ride, at
about 100 degrees - but a dry heat! We
stopped in Moab, Utah to eat.
The most memorable thing of this part of the ride
was watching the
people walk around the parking lot outside as if
the beautiful
mountain landscape behind them didn't exist.
I guess if you see it
every day, you take it for granted. As we
continued North toward
I-70, we got some scary clouds with a bit of
drizzle. Being in an
open area, we were able to see where it was
raining ahead of us.
It was kind of a challenge timing our passes
between the downpours.
We eventually found an overpass on I-70 and put on
our rain gear.
The rest of the evening we rode in the rain until
we got to Fruita,
CO, where we got a room for the night. We
went 454 miles that day
for a total of 3,862 miles.
Day 10,
we uncovered and dried off the bikes for what looked to
be a beautiful day of riding. We stopped in
Parachute, CO for some
breakfast, and continued on into the mountains for
a 35 degree ride
through snow covered Vail. It was a big
difference from the Arizona
desert the day before. My best recollection
is of the cold air,
and we had to downshift to 3rd gear and roll the
throttle wide open
to get up the hills due to the high altitude. As we came down out
of the mountains, it was amazing to see the snow
line far below us.
We went around Denver and headed Northeast toward
I-80. In a gas
station, before we hit the Nebraska border, I
paused to watch the
weather report on TV. It didn't look
good. There was a big storm
over Denver, and it was heading right for
us. We figured the best
thing to do was try to stay ahead of it, which we
were able to do
for some time, but it finally caught up with us in
South central
Nebraska. We were finally forced to stop and
wait it out while we
had dinner in Lexington. After we were done,
the rain showed no
sign of letting up, so we put our rain gear back
on and climbed on
our soaking bikes in an attempt to make up some
miles. Wet is wet,
and we figured we couldn't get any more wet.
It was dark when we got
back on I-80, and we made it about 30 miles before
driving rain
turned to pea sized hail. Our windshields
kept most of it off us, but
we decided we had to get off the road when Tim
could only see one
dashed line ahead of him. I was following
his tail light, so that
didn't make it a very safe ride at all. We
stopped in Kearney for the
night, hoping the rain would stop by
morning. The weather report
mentioned a snow storm in Vail, which happened 90
minutes after we
passed through there. We traveled 623 miles
for a total of 4,939 miles.
Day 11,
we opened the door of our room and were greeted by more
rain. We couldn't do anything but get
dressed in our rain gear and
hope we didn't have to ride in it all day.
We stopped first at a gas
station to top off our tanks. I was putting
my bike up on the center
stand so I could fill my tank as high as possible,
when the wet
hand grip slipped out of my hand. The bike
fell over on its right
side. I went into shock as I thought of the
damage I might have just
done. One year earlier, I was washing my
bike, and basically the same
thing happened. Only that time, the
windshield hit the ground and it
broke in three pieces. This time I was
extremely lucky as all I did
was break about two inches off the end of my front
brake lever. We
rode about 2 hours before the rain lightened and
the sky started to
break and turn blue in front of us. For the
remainder of the afternoon
we were playing tag with the storm behind
us. It would start to drizzle
as we left each fuel stop. We were making up
some serious time, and
we were staying far enough ahead of the storm to
stay dry. We had
planned on cutting down the speed considerably
when we reached
Iowa, due to the warning we got there ten days
earlier. Unfortunately,
things didn't go quite our way. I could see
a white car approaching
very quickly from the rear, and warned Tim on the
radio. That didn't
help us in the least. A Nebraska State
Trooper passed me and pulled
Tim over. I pulled over behind the squad,
and he waved me around him.
When I got off my bike, I figured we were nailed,
and started getting my
paperwork prepared. I was shocked when the
trooper pointed to me and
said, "You can put your stuff away, I didn't
get the switches on you".
I felt very relieved, but my stomach dropped again
when I realized
that didn't apply to Tim. We figured he'd
show some mercy on us when
we explained about the storm, which looked like
hell approaching from
the West. He took his time in his squad, as
we stared at the ominous
clouds approaching. He gave Tim a speeding
ticket and said, "Good
luck staying ahead of the storm". Well,
you can imagine some of the
words we used as we conversed over our radios
about him. We seemed
to get pretty far ahead of the storm, and it
looked like we were
going to have an uneventful ride the rest of the
way home. That was
when I saw something that concerned me quite a
bit. While passing
through Des Moines, I noticed something white on
the tread of Tim's
rear tire. I mentioned this to him over the
radio, so we got off
I-80 in Altoona and headed for a gas
station. It was pretty grim.
Tim had worn his tire down to the threads in a patch about an inch
wide and ten inches long. Since it was the
Fourth of July, we were not
going to find a motorcycle shop open that could
replace a tire quickly
enough, so Tim decided he would stay overnight and
get a new tire put
on in the morning. I was prepared to ride
the last 300 miles myself,
after talking to my wife on the phone. She was
worried because of the
approaching storm behind us, but I assured her
it'd be OK. I took one
last look at my tire before I left, since I was
showing no tread at
all. My heart stopped when I found a spot on
the tire that was very
thin, and it moved around as I pressed with my
finger. We were both
done. We were 300 miles from home, both of
us were supposed to be at
work the next day, and neither of us could go
anywhere. We scratched
our heads for a while and tried to figure out what
to do. We rode
333 miles for a total of 5,272 miles.
Tim
contacted his father, who has a friend named Mace who lives
in Clinton, Iowa. Mace drove his new Ford
pickup out to Altoona to
pick us up. We spent another hour there,
since Mace hadn't eaten yet
and needed to get a bite. Tim and I were
happy to pay for his meal.
In that hour, I learned that Mace was a very nice
guy, but a pretty
crazy character. We loaded the bikes in his
truck and strapped them
in. He said he was embarrassed to have two
Jap bikes in the back of
his Harley-hauler. About thirty minutes into
our ride, the sky got
very scary and sort of green behind us.
Suddenly there was grass and
dirt flying across the interstate as Mace was
trying to maintain control
of the truck. It was over as fast as it
started. We began hearing a
lot of chatter on the CB about overturned trucks,
and I thanked God we
were OK. We pulled over in a rest stop to
check the bikes and tighten
everything down. We found a scratch in the
bed of his truck, but that
didn't bother him. What really pissed him
off was that the wind took
a little plastic one-eyed guy off his bug guard
that was held on by
his nose. We made it to Mace's house by dusk
and Tim's parents were
waiting there with a flat trailer to haul the
bikes. We spent the
next three hours sleeping in the back of the
pickup, while riderless
motorcycles followed us on the trailer in the
rain. We dropped off
Tim's parents and Tim took me home so I could
unload my bike before
he went home. It was 1:30am on July 5th as I
shook his hand and told
him, "Great ride Tim. Let's do it
again". We were home safe, with
over 300 pictures to help us tell the story of the
two nuts who love
to ride.
We laugh as we look back
at the ride now, but that was over three
years ago. We got new tires on our bikes
within a week, I got a new
brake lever, and I have since replaced all the
head gaskets on both
front and back cylinders of my bike. It was
a lot of work which
included removal of the engine from the frame, but
it finally got done,
with Tim's help. It took me way too long,
and I hope my presence is
welcome at the Mc Keller household again after my
bike's excessively
long stay in their garage.
The need for another ride is tugging at my seat. I feel it
every
time I turn the throttle and feel the power, the
freedom, and the love
of the open road. I've already gotten a
thousand mile route around
Lake Michigan in mind, but that might have to wait
until next year.
Hopefully, Tim, and a few other friends, will be
able to accompany
me, but only time will tell.
Ralph Allas Jr -
jrallas@yahoo.com
September 1998
