Milestones

[ShinyPartsUp]

Just caught up with the thread and saw the pics of WFO: some of the best I've seen.

Great meeting you buddy, and hope to see you and the misses soon again. What an epic ride!

 

[BikerGeek99]

Just caught up with the thread and saw the pics of WFO: some of the best I've seen.

Thanks!

Great meeting you buddy, and hope to see you and the misses soon again. What an epic ride!

Great meeting you as well! Looking forward to seeing youz guyz again, too!

 

[BikerGeek99]

In case you haven't figgered it out yet, we're heading to Mount Rushmore. See??

Profile shot of the big guys from a distance.

Getting closer...

We paid the fee to get to park and, after dodging the touristas in their RV's and mini-vans, walked to the walkway to get to a photo-oppable spot.

Made it!

This was my third time here. The first time, I was a kid and it's barely a blur. The second time was back in 1995. This was Sooze's first time here. All in all it was worth it since Sooze hadn't been here before.

A sense of scale – the place is massive.

While, yes, the place IS a national monument and, yes, it IS a place that everyone should see at least once in their lifetime, holy crap it was crowded, and we were there on a dang Thursday morning and it was crowded!

Oy.

On our way out, while Sooze was in the little ladies room, as I was standing around taking up space, a fella noted my gear and asked me about it. Nice enough fella – one of those guys who used to ride but scared the crap outta himself because he was young and dumb and is too chicken-shit to exercise common sense and ride again, so our chat was brief, but nice enough.

After our requisite stop in the trach 'n trinkets shop for some, well, trash 'n trinkets, we went back to the bike, loaded up, and left that tourist trap.

We had talked about heading over to Crazy Horse as well, but from what I recall from going there in '95, it's even worse, tourist-trap-wise, than Mount Rushmore, so we bypassed that stop. Plus, we had some miles to go, so away we went.

The tunnel / arch, heading the other direction.

Ah, Wall Drug. I remembered the signs for this place. They're out there hundreds of miles from the actual place. Go figure.

Now, not to crap on South Dakota or anything, but about all there was for Sooze to take pictures of was the signs for Wall Drug.

Ah, the joys of heading back east across the plains.

 

[BikerGeek99]

When we were at Mount Rushmore, the sun was out and it was fairly warm. As we were heading father east, the skies clouded up a bit. And there were more signs for Wall Drug.

I'm not exactly sure what this is, but it's some kind of an old truck or bus chassis that's a light pole. Go figure.

Whaddaya know? Another Wall Drug sign!

There were more. I'll spare ya.

GAAHHH!! RUN FOR THE HILLS!! IT'S A .. oh, wait. Nevermind – it's made of fiberglass.

We briefly discussed stopping at Wall Drug, but Mount Rushmore tourist-trapped us out.

So, we just continued our moseying across South Dakota.

Even play King Of The Hill when you were a kid? I wonder if the local kids play King Of The Hill on this stack of hay bale roundle things. If not, they should. The don't know what they're missing.

Yep – 1200 pounds each. I can say that I learned something this trip.

The farther east we got, the more threatening the skies became. Feeling that rain was imminent, we pulled into a rest area to put our visors on our helmets and – whattaya know! - we caught up with dad again.

After communing with nature and popping the visors back on our helmets, we headed back out together. I figured that if we're heading into some weather, and since we're heading to same destination, it makes sense to just hang out and ride with dad, even though his pace is a tad slower than mine.

We were definitely flirting with the weather. The road was still wet in places and skies not very purty.

While threatening, only nature can create a scene in the distance like this, using only whites and greys.

 

[BikerGeek99]

Yeah, I was kinda dreading what we'd have to ride through if / when we caught up to these clouds, but it was some cool stuff to see while we weren't in it. The part that caught the attention of me and Sooze was the lower-appearing lighter-colored layer of clouds.

Yankton. For those of you who are fellow fans of the former HBO show (that kicked ass!) Deadwood, all I could do is refer to Yankton as only Swearengen did...

Mess with the bull and you'll deal with the horns.

Well, ya can't escape fate – or mother nature – forever. We got into some rain.

All in all, the rain wasn't horrid, but damn annoying.

We got to out hotel for the evening in Sioux Falls, and did the Evening Routine. As luck has it, our hotel had an Outback Steakhouse across the parking lot. So, yeah, we broke one of our Road Trip Eating Rules of avoiding chain restaurants that we have at home, but … ah, screw it. We were tired, and wet, and the weather still sucked, so oh, well. It worked for us.

And here ya have our nightly food porn!

Sooze had the steak and schwimps.

I had some crab legs. Damn I love those things...

Miles ridden this day was 475.

We're on our final push home now, leg 1 of 3 complete.

2 days 'til we get home.

 

[Niehart]

Good stuff, my friend, good stuff. Thanks!

 

[ShinyPartsUp]

I've been to Rushmore twice. I'm not sure why I went the second time, but it was as you described. A fun read.

 

[BikerGeek99]

July 30, 2010.

The voyage home continues.

Storms had blown through overnight in Sioux Falls. When I was outside sipping on some coffee in the morning and having a smoke, I got to chit-chatting with a fella doing the same. He was a fellow Harley rider – there were a group of bikes sporting Illinois plates and he was with that group, on their way to Sturgis. They go out the week before the rally officially begins because, as he said, “Say you want to go to Devil's Tower during Sturgis. You're going to have to get gas. There are 2 gas stations. During Sturgis, every pump will be 40-deep to get gas. It ain't worth it.”

Words of wisdom, right there.

Nice guy. Nice chat. He also told of a gal they know who sets up a hot dog stand during the Sturgis rally. She makes enough – selling hot dogs – to make her mortgage payment for the YEAR! Ya gotta admit – that's a lot of weenies, ya know?

We had a lot of miles to cover this day, and this is kinda how we were feeling by now.

Heading out of Sioux Falls, the skies still had remnants of the night's activities, and there was standing water in the fields on either side of the slab.

We were in and out of the clouds.

More clouds and more evidence of the localized flooding that was happening in the area.

Eventually, though, we got out of the clouds into clear weather.

Sorta...

Back in the breadbasket of America, we were treated to some awesome views.

This was one of the more, uh, 'unique' gas stops. The white thingy between the gas pumps is where you pay. I think our stopping in was the talk of the town. Seemed like every old-timer around stopped in and we had The Talk about our trip. Don't get me wrong – everyone we spoke with was super nice. It was just a unique experience.

Ya just gotta love middle America, you know? Nice, honest, genuine people.

We got to see more of these things...

Uhhh... Huh … huh.... <snicker> '69' <snicker>

No, we didn't stop. We had a crap load of miles to ride this day.

 

[BikerGeek99]

One of the joys of taking the slab? Traffic backups thanks to an accident. Yippee. Woulda been nice if lane sharing were legal right about now, but we weren't in Kali anymore.

Inside joke with my brother-in-law. Doo-bee-que...

When we crossed the Mississippi River in Minnesota, it wasn't this big. Funny how that works!

Crap! Forgot to mention that we did hit Iowa which was state number … uh … lessee here... 16!

And here we are coming back into Illinois. So, not a new state. Bummer.

Our digs for the evening were in Bloomington, Illinois. It was a pretty boring ride getting there, so we'll just end the day with some food porn for ya.

We met back up with my dad in Bloomington and we walked to a Mexican joint.

Mmm... Fajitas...

Mmm... More fajitas...

Miles ridden this day was our highest miles for this trip: 590, dodging rain. But this will make the final push home a relatively short-mileage day.

It was nice to hang out with my dad at this point in the trip. It was getting surreal thinking of being home again after 3 weeks on the road, already starting to look back on this trip.

Tomorrow, we make the final push home.

 

[BikerGeek99]

July 31, 2010.

Today we're going home.

Home. Wow.

We went through our Morning Routine for the final time.

Looking at the weather, I was concerned – the radar was looking pretty gnarly. There was some rain in the region that may come our way, so we hit the road, hoping to out-run it. Would we or wouldn't we?

Let's see!

I swear that we've seen this before.

We headed back into state number 2.

Dad left a bit before we did but we caught up to him on the road again.

He had his rain gear on 'cause the skies were not looking like we'd stay dry.

Heading into Indianapolis, whattaya know? Construction! What a novel idea!

Not long after getting into Indy, the skies caught up with us. It started to rain, and traffic sucked.

Sooze couldn't take many pictures, but there wasn't much to see other than rain, stupid cagers, and stuff you've already seen.

We made our way back to our home state. Round on the ends and hi in the middle...

We got dumped on from Indy to Columbus.

If you have the right gear, riding in the rain has a certain surreal quality to it. You know it's raining – you can feel the rain hitting you, see it on our helmet visor, hear it pinging on your helmet, hear it getting kicked up by other traffic, but when your gear keep you dry, it's kinda cool – it's like you're truly in the element. Our gear kept us dry and that surreal feeling crept in.

The skies did kinda clear up, but the roads were still wet.

We didn't dilly-dally and, as the saying goes, humble may it be, there's no place like home.

 

[BikerGeek99]

We left home on July 10, 2010, and got home on July 31, 2010.

22 days on the road. We were on the bike 21 of those days – our only day not riding was our day walking around Seattle, Washington. Our lowest-mile day was when we went to Sturgis and Deadwood – that day was 120 miles. Out longest-mile day was going from Sioux Falls to Bloomington, when we rode 590 miles.

One thing we learned last year while on our Route 66 trip: when you buy touristy crap and you're on a bike, the USPS flat-rate boxes rule! We had all this waiting for us on the front porch when we got home.

The bike.

When the intermittent starting issue reared it's ugly head in Minnesota, I was concerned. After the awesome folks at Fargo HD got 'er fixed up, it never missed a beat for the rest of the trip. I'd like to have more power – when we were going through the mountain passes out west, I had 'er in 4th gear running the dog-snot out of 'er to keep at the speed limit. So, eventually I'll look into doing some mods to get more power to the pavement.

I have a Russell Day-Long seat on the FJR. That seat is insanely comfortable. After about 40 or so miles on the Ultra, I start to get fidgety. A Russell is coming soon to the Ultra. I can only imagine the miles we'll put on the Ultra with the addition of the Russell.

All in all, the Ultra was a fine steed for this trip. I'd ride this bike anywhere.

A little momento from Montana that rode back with us on the left saddle-bag.

The gear.

I ride wearing the Aerostitch Transit Suit. It has it's ups and downs. In temperate weather, it's great. In wet weather, it's great – I've ridden in some heavy rain in that thing and have stayed totally dry. It's Achilles heal, though, is hot weather – when we were riding through Redding, California, and it was 109, I was dying. Other than that, though, it offers top-notch protection and it really is waterproof.

Boots? Sidi Tepor. They've been 100% waterproof for the 2+ years I've had 'em, but they're not as comfortable as they used to be. Dunno what's up with that.

Gloves. Most of the time, I wore my Aerostitch 3-season vegans. They're awesome warm-weather gloves, but they're showing their wear, so I'll be getting some new warm-weather gloves. For cooler weather, I wore my tried-and-true HD FXRG gloves. Awesome gloves. When it rained, I just put my Aerostitch rain-glove cover three-finger thingies on over my regular gloves. Do they look kinda dorky? Oh, youbetchya! Were my hands kept dry in steady rain? Oh, youbetchya!

Helmet. Sooze and I both have Nolan N43 Trilogy helmets. I made one small mod to mine – it was bugging the crap outta me right at the crown of my forehead at the scalp line, so before we left, I shaved off just a wee bit of the foam in there – maybe 1/16” thick and 1” square. That made all the difference in the world. I really like that helmet.

Unmentionables. Guys, if you're gonna take a long ride, LD Comfort unmentionables are da bomb. Period. Sooze and I like Tech Sox as well. There are several options out there but for us, Tech Sox have served us quite well.

One thing Sooze bought us in Eureka, California – these neck-wrap thingies. They're kinda like doo-rags with some cooling crystal things. Let me just say they were the best five bucks ever spent. When we were in the stupid-hot-weather, we'd just soak 'em in some water and wrap 'em around our necks – BAM! Instant 10-degree+ temperature reduction.

Home safe, yours truly was graced with the presence of Krazzy Scully, one of my crazy cats.

And the Dumb One, Nikita, wasn't sure if we had actually left or not.

So, after 22 days on the road, and after 16 states, we rode 7593 miles.

Damn, what a ride it was.

If you EVER have the opportunity and have the desire, DO IT!

Thank you for following along with us. It was a trip the defies description.

This, kind friends, concludes this Milestone.

Ride safe.

Andy & Susie

AKA BikerGeek & Sooze

 

[huron52]

Cool road report. Maybe sometime I should think about a ride just like that.

Three weeks on the road ...Naaaaaaa

thank you Andy and Suz for taking us along for the ride! :yahoo:

 

[Greb]

Very entertaining and epic ride report. Thanks for sharing.

It is my goal to keep the FJR and someday add an Ultra to the stable. I sometimes miss the Street Glide I once owned, but like you said the H-D is down on power and that got to me after awhile. I also agree that there is something about the sitting position that is less comfortable than it looks. The ability to stand up on the FJR has its benefits on the long haul.

Why the nostalgic style hand grips? Are they more comfortable than the stockers?

 

[BikerGeek99]

Very entertaining and epic ride report. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks!

Why the nostalgic style hand grips? Are they more comfortable than the stockers?

YES! I couldn't stand the stock grips! For me, they weren't think enough nor long enough. The nostalgic grips are much more comfortable for me.