So things might be wonky for a few days

I’ve finally posted the write up on the Dalton Highway, the road that took me to the Arctic Circle. You can link to it here: The Dalton Highway - Day 9

Well, a few of you have known I’ve been belaboring buying the 1200 or sticking with the 1150. I remember reading somewhere “You’ll be totally happy with the 1150 as long as you don’t ride the 1200.” Last weekend, I rode the 1200…. Since then I’ve been shopping for a used one trying to find the bike I want. Either they didn’t have what I wanted on it, had more than I wanted, had some problem they weren’t forthcoming about, or they just flat out wanted too much for their bike. While visiting North County BMW checking to see if they had any used bikes (SD BMW had 1 used 05 that had been laid down) I met Bob, the new owner. He offered me pretty close to what I was going to ask for it on the Trader, and I got to keep all my farkles! So, I said screw it and decided that I’ll get a new one, in the new black (Vedy sexy) and order the two things it was lacking. Crash bars, and mounts for my bags. By next week I should be all set! WHOOHOOO!

Ok, not a real Ape, but an Aprilia. After much deliberation I’ve decided its time to sell the Aprilia. Between my back, and my recently broken wrist I just can’t ride a bike with such an aggressive riding position. So, she’s for sale.

Details:
Asking $9000
2004 Aprilia RSVR
Aprilia Race Pipes (Akropovic branded for Aprilia)
Stock pipes in a box
6756 Miles on it (The Dashboard crapped out around 5000 miles, dealer replaced it so it reads 1756 now)

So a friend of mine showed me this Photosynth Demo and its pretty fricken cool!

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

Day 14
Today’s Mileage: 657
Total Mileage: 5468

The ferry docked at 8 AM, I was the last bike off at 8:45 making sure everything was squared away on the bike before I bailed out. Got gas and was on the highway by 9 AM. Kevin was heading off to Idaho to park his bike at his Dad’s so he didn’t have to pack it up and move it to Idaho the next week. I had a appointment with South Sound BMW to get an oil change as I was a bit overdue for one. I think South Sound is the biggest BMW only dealership I’ve ever seen. Their service department was great and their floor sales people were awesome. I picked up some new gloves since the ones I’ve been wearing were pretty beat. After heading out from the dealership with new synthetic oil I motored down the freeway towards home.

Once again passing through Oregon (That weird state). I still don’t understand why you can’t pump your own gas other than to employ people who need to be employed. The two gas stops I made in Oregon were interesting as always as I won’t let someone else pump my gas on the bike. I passed Crater Lake and was really tempted to take the scenic bypass to see the lake but I decided not to, and save it for another ride. I’m not a fan of Interstate riding but the 5 from Bellingham to the California border isn’t too bad of a ride. I finished off today after dark by getting a hotel room in Shasta Lake. Overall, pretty mellow day.

Day 15
Today’s Mileage: 685
Total Mileage: 6153

I woke up early and got on the road before 7 AM. I had fueled up the night before so I basically had to throw my bag and my ass on the bike and twist the throttle. After coming out of the mountains north of Redding the 5 got well, boring as hell. Good thing I had music and XM Radio! I found several new ways to sit on the bike. With my feet on the crash bars, on the rear pegs, laying on the gas tank…etc. In Sacramento I stopped to get gas and some food at the McDonald’s across the street and a nice lady waved at me as I pulled through. After going inside for food I noticed she was wearing riding gear. She invited me to sit with her as she was waiting for the rest of her women’s riding club. She was fascinated and asked to take some pictures so she could share with her husband. Apparently her husband really wants a bike like mine to make a similar journey.

Eventually I hit LA and realized that the worst part of my whole trip was LA. Traffic was bad. At one point someone thought they were Johnny Law and tried to cut me off by closing the gap on me while I was lane sharing. He discovered that I really didn’t care and was going to get around him anyway, unfortunately my left boot scratched the side of his car as I squeezed through. I really don’t understand why people get upset when a bike is moving through traffic. Most people don’t realize that bikes will overheat if they aren’t moving, and it increases the risk to the rider if you’re sitting still in traffic as people will forget you’re there and roll into to you. Anyway, after fighting my way through LA I hit clear traffic in Orange County and motored on home from there.

I’ll post a trip recap in the next day or two.

Not much to report really. I learned how to play Rummy (And kicked some butt). Finished my Ghost Rider book and started on Harry Potter. And, it was the last day the Fairy…Ferry Biker Club would get to hang out.

(Jason, Anna, Di, Phil & Kevin)

And here’s a picture of the room we stayed in. Pretty small. If I did it again and the weather was good I’d sleep in the Solarium up top.

Day 13
Ketchikan
Today we arrived in Ketchikan Alaska with a 7 hour layover (I’m not sure what they call it on a boat but this will do). With that the Columbia Ferry Motorcycle Club took the bikes off the ferry and rode the highway here. All 22 miles of it! We started off by heading north and visited the Bight Totem park. This park had a number of totems with different meanings. There’s quite a story behind each totem which I don’t have the knowledge to get into. Each of the animals on the pole mean something different and somehow indicate the status of the house that owns the pole. Quite interesting indeed. Also Di, our team eagle eye spotted several bald eagles and got a few pictures of them. I was either not paying attention or was too slow to get a picture of any of them. (DOH!)

After visiting the totem poles we proceeded north to the ‘END’ of the road. Since we had found the end, it was time to go find the other end and we turned ourselves around and headed south. Shortly after passing through downtown Phil spotted a pod of Orca out in the water. We all hurried to park and we hustled down this driveway to get pictures. I took a bunch and you can see the best one I have here (again, I SHOULD have bought a telephoto lens). Then turning around we noticed several bald eagles perched behind us. Now it was, do we watch the orcas or the eagles? I got a few pictures of the eagles which you can see in my flickr album. Resuming our trip south to the other ‘END’ of the road we looked for the Forest Canopy tours. Basically its a nature hike/ride through the forest canopy on zip lines. We missed it and backtracked. Unfortunately upon finding the tour we discovered 1) we didn’t have enough time and 2) it was a $150. So, we asked about a good place to eat and hopped on the bikes back into town.

We had lunch at Anna Belle’s. It turned out to be a pretty good lunch. Most of us had some form of Halibut (Fish and chips here) and enjoyed it muchly. Phil (Adventure Rider Guy) bought is lunch which was pretty cool. After wrapping up for lunch we all split off to do things on our own for the last hour and a half. I dropped by a bar called The Raven which had good bear and the Internet. I updated my pictures and blog for the day and then moved on to catch the ferry again. Not much happened after the ferry. I read some more of my book and got some rest. With mention of the book, there’s a quote in there that has stuck out in my head.

All of my friends have seen me change in the last 4 years. And, I have to admit I’ve not been too happy with the change. My divorce with Danae affected more than I would have admitted to most. Which is why this paragraph from this book stands out to me. Granted, I didn’t loose as much as the author did, but this stood out. This trip was pretty significant to me as it gave me time to focus on something I enjoy, and to find something new to build on moving forward.

Everything that we were, everything that we based our lives upon, everything that we believed is gone. In my journal one time, I expressed the feeling of hurt that I carried around, so similar to the feeling of being betrayed, and I concluded that I had been betrayed, by Life itself, and that’s pretty deep. So, the betrayed ones, like you and me, have to start all over again, from Absolute Zero, and construct some new version of “Life,” one that we can “live with.” no way can we hold onto what we used to believe, and no way can we forget what has actually happened in our lives, and in our worlds. We will never trust Life again.

(Neil Peart, Ghost Rider, p. 257)

This trip was pretty significant to me as it gave me time to focus on something I enjoy, and to find something new to build on moving forward. Look for a future post explaining why I took this trip, if you care to understand. But to wrap it up, here’s a beautiful sunset from the boat.

Ciao!

First night of sleep on the boat was tough. Its constantly shaking and vibrating. Especially after it stops in port and takes off again. We socialized some more with Di, Anna, and Phil and told some motorcycle stories. Spent some more time reading. I’m about halfway through this book. Its a good read and i’ll pass it on to Di to read on her summer adventure. She’s going to spend her summer riding around the states and visiting places before she heads back up to Alaska for the school year. The boat stopped in Sitka and we got to get off and wander around there for a bit. Some interesting history but unfortunately the town is a tourist trap due to the number of cruise ships that drop in there. Not much else really happened today so I’ll leave it at that.

Today we slept in and checked out of the hotel late. Since we had been through some construction zones where they mix in some calcium chloride stuff (verify) we thought it would be wise to clean the bikes and our gear. The unfortunate side effect of this is we don’t really look like we went through and adventure. Sad indeed. After washing our bikes down Kevin decided the best way to get the bike dry was to take it for a spin. Something most of you probably don’t know is there is no helmet law in Alaska, so he took full advantage of that and sped off down the road. I personally have only ridden without a helmet once before after we finished the Baja 500. After Kevin got back from his spin, l took mine and was putting my helmet on and he says something like “Hey, you should try it. You probably won’t be able to do it for a while!” So, I figured what the hell and went for it. I started out slow and got stuck behind some truck spewing black diesel soot all over the place and slinging gravel. So I backed off a ways and let him go. I have to admit, after all the water quit hitting me in the face, and the one bug that nailed me in the cheek. It was pretty fun if you couldn’t tell by the smile on my face. (I’ll update with a pic later)

We cruised around town on foot for a while looking for memorabilia and gifts before heading up to the Chillkoot (Verify) park just a few miles north of the Haines Ferry stop. Along the way I got some pictures of a bald eagle and a juvenile bald eagle hanging out on the coast. Then a few miles after that I got a pic of one of the animals we wanted to see the most. A brown bear. We found out that brown bears and grizzly bears are the same species but the brown bears get bigger because of the greater amount of food found on the coast. Where as the grizzly bears live inland and in the mountains don’t reach the same size. Either way, it was a grizzly bear to us and we didn’t care. At this time I had wished I’d bought the telephoto lens.

We showed up at the Ferry Terminal around 6:30 and waited to board. We ran into Phil again who we had met on the road the previous day. Apparently he was about 15 minutes ahead of us all the way to Haines. We thought he was going to Watson Lake but he apparently reconsidered and went down to Haines to catch the Ferry. he’s got a story to tell which I’m sure he will at some point. Then I’ll link you guys to it. We also met Di and Anna. Two school teachers from Emil Alaska (verify). They teach a school that is in the Alaska outback in a village of 280 people. They rode together on Di’s bike from Anchorage to Haines on a Honda Shadow 250. They make us look like noobs when it comes to ‘adventuring’ after hearings some of their stories from where they live

Getting our bikes on the ferry and tied down wasn’t a fun experience. The crew was marginally helpful except one guy who is a fellow rider. The way in which they have you tie a bike down on the ferry is a bit disconcerting. After that ordeal we got our cabin and dropped all of our stuff off and settled in for the ride. I got to see some whales before turning in. I don’t think my pictures do them justice (again, shoulda had that telephoto). Then I got ready for bed and started reading Ghost Rider by Neal Peart (of Rush).