0Face
Well-known member
Hmmm… Where to start? This could have been the craziest trip I’ve ever taken. I’m not a big picture taker. I bring a camera but usually forget to snap pictures. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed.
I left a little later than expected on Tuesday the 26th. So of course, I had to contend with Chicago traffic in the blazing heat. Anybody who is not familiar with Chicago traffic should consider themselves lucky. When I got to the south side of downtown things started to ease up. We call this the Dan Ryan expressway
It is quite the experience. It’s either a parking lot for miles or the Indy 500 of shit box cars which at anytime some miscellaneous part could fall off of. If you survive this, you jump onto the Chicago Skyway. It’s a massive toll bridge the cuts through the steel mill area of southern Chicago and Gary Indiana.
As you approach this bridge with its steel mills and some huge abandoned factory sites I always feel like I’m approaching the gates of hell. After that, the speed kicks up to 70mph and before you know it you’re into the farmland of Indiana. I stopped for gas a couple times and spotted these
I always wonder who eats those. I’ll eat a lot of stuff… but those weird me out.
I grabbed an old route I had and change the destination to Athens Ohio.
The ride there was uneventful and doesn’t get to be much fun until the end. It’s about 475 miles so you’re pretty much done for the first day. However there is a great pizza place there called Avalanche Pizza. They make this awesome pizza “Wheels on Fire” which has a spicy buffalo wing theme to it. It’s not on the website menu but trust me, they make it.
After I demolished the pizza, I fell asleep.
The next two days rocked as I did the two loops from the SE Ohio Ramble in May that I missed interspersed with milkshake intermissions. I just adjusted them to start in Athens. After the second loop, I landed in Marietta, OH and planed my route into West Virginia for the next day over a tasty milkshake.
WV Route:
I gotta tell ya, I love WV. The riding is great, the people are nice, and the gas is way cheaper than Chicago. Plus they seem to have these everywhere.
It’s an awesome place.
Now here’s where things start to get interesting. I was a little tired so I cut the little north east part of the route short near Parsons and took 72 (I think) up to 50 and into Bridgeport. Thank god I did that because ten minutes after I checked in all hell broke loose. Crazy winds, pouring rain, hail…
And then the power went out. Luckily I had my trusty headlamp
so I made it to my room no problem, unloaded, and went to sleep.
Here’s all my sweaty stuff…
Now at the end of a day of riding I always get a tank of gas so I’m not screwing around in the morning. One guess what I didn’t do last night. Ordinarily, not a big deal, but when the power is out from Virginia through southern Ohio, nobody is pumping gas and I only had two bars left. I headed out from Bridgeport to New Martinsville hoping something would be open there. No luck. By the way, New Martinsville is where they film that reality show “my big fat American gypsy wedding”. My wife watches it I swear.
So I headed down the river on the OH side. I got to Newport on fumes and pulled into a gas station that looked like they were pumping. It turned out that the owner had generator that only powered his cooler and the cash register. So he was making some good money selling ice and beer but not gas. While contemplating my situation I talked to some locals and ended up having a motorcycle conversation with a super nice guy when he realized he might have a can of gas in the back of his pickup. Sure enough I was in luck and got half a tank from him. He wouldn’t let me pay him or buy him a beer, nor would he tell me his name. I know I’m kinda creepy but this time I think he was just being humble and nice. After that I jumped on 77 and headed north looking for power to be on. Eventually I was able to find gas and cut over to Zanesville. From there I decided what the hell and headed back south down 22, 159, 50, 41 to the river and went west on 52 south of Cincinnati stayed down along the river in Indiana to 7 and cut northwest to wander my way back home.
I stopped in Seymour, IN and that’s when I checked my tire. Ah, Oh.
It’s Saturday night and nothing is going to be open on Sunday, so I contemplated riding it but then thought better. I can’t believe I actually thought about riding it 350 miles home across the Skyway and up the Dan Ryan again. Instead I walked a mile and a half in my flip-flops down the side of the road to the Steak and Shake. Next time you drive by a guy walking down the side of a busy road with flip-flops on in the blazing heat and wonder what the hell he’s doing, he might just be some poor soul in search of some frozen refreshment.
The next morning I found this note on my door.
Nobody gave anybody my room number or anything and I never found the guy. Weird, but a nice guy again.
So, to talk about the tire, I’m not usually a knucklehead, Cougar, Evilmedic and I bought a No-Mar tire changer we share, I have no problem changing tires. But I really thought it had plenty of rubber left for this trip, but between misjudging the tread life and the scorching temperatures, I blew through the tire. My bad. However, the FJR community came to the rescue. Bluebullet had a brand new PR2 and a changer and I could have it. Now, I was about 100 miles from him and he even offered to come down get the wheel go back, change it, and come back down. There was no way I was going to ask that of anybody. Plus, I have AAA Premium service, which is totally worth it because they’ll tow you 200 miles. Just not on this particular Sunday. Come Monday nothing was open again as most dealerships are closed on Monday. I called AAA, we loaded up the bike and drove up to North Salem where Beth (Nate’s wife) was waiting with ice cold lemonade. When Nate got home we changed the tire. Well, really Nate did. He balanced it in no time too.
Now it’s Monday, I was planning on being home Sunday as my wife was going out of town and I wasn’t going to meet her until Friday. First, I called my partner and she was cool with me being gone and then called the wife and she was also was cool with me staying out a few more days. Awesome!
Nate gave me a great route through southern Indiana and into Kentucky. We worked it out on the map so I don’t have a file for it. So, I go cranking down Nate’s route towards Bloomington and just south of Morgantown the lights go on behind me. Damn! I pull over in a safe spot and officer friendly greets me. Now, when I travel alone on the back roads I carry a gun. If I’m with a group I leave it at home. I have a carry permit that is good in Indiana so that’s not a problem. However, when you get stopped, the cops like to know right away that you have one, that way there’s no misunderstanding. I told him I had it and after we nervously exchanged it he went to run all my info. Well, when he put into the radio that he was running the numbers on my gun that brought a couple more county sheriffs to check everything out. It took at least an hour for me to get a ticket for 78 in a 55 and I had to endure the lecture from the sheriff about how they’re always putting guys like me into body bags, blah, blah, blah. Luckily I resisted the urge to give him a reason to taze me. After lightening my bank account by $250 I was on my way down the road. It was getting late so I stopped in Bloomington and had a huge steak and a milkshake for desert.
I put together a route with Nate’s suggestions for the next day. There’s some General Patton museum by Fort Knox I wanted to check out too.
The next day I get up have one of these,
Bite down on something hard and realize a filling just fell out.
So then I head out (after checking my tires) and it’s brutally hot already. I make it down to State road 66 and this left hander.
Now this trip I’m definitely riding a little harder than I normally do. Usually, I hang in the back and cruise along. But I’m in the groove and feeling good the whole trip. But I think the combination of day dreaming a little, and my not choosing the right line; I went a little wide coming out of this turn. I didn’t think it anything to freak out about, I figured I’d just touch the white line and keep on going. I don’t think touching the white line had anything to do with it it was pretty beat up not freshly painted or anything so I’m not blaming slippage in the paint. I just misjudged it and the front tire caught the edge of the road and we all know the rest of the story… I kept going down the road and the bike took a trip into the ditch and as they have a tendency to under these circumstances, blew into a million pieces and ended up right here.
Before I even stopped sliding I was totally pissed and sad at the same time. I knew the bike was done and we all put so much work and time into these things it was like my stupidity killed my buddy.
I’m totally fine. I have a quarter sized raspberry by my elbow where the jacket tore. I wasn’t even sore the next day.
Here’s some pictures.
A few people stopped to make sure all was ok. A couple guys went and got me a bottle of water and a Gatorade which really helped with the heat. Nice guys again.
AAA comes into the picture again but it takes 2 ½ hours for the tow truck to get there. When they show up it’s this really old guy and his wife.
While I’m waiting for the tow truck I have to cancel my reservation at the next hotel so as not to get charged for it and since it’s the 3rd of July I’m wondering if I’m going to get another hotel nearby. After a few calls I get a room in Tell City about 25 miles down the road. The tow guy, Dallas is his name, along with his wife Sue, gives me a ride there.
Now I have one of those giant contractor garbage bags in my side bag in case of who knows? Well, it comes in handy as a place to toss all my stuff, helmet, jacket, gloves, tank bag, both side bags, my rain gear, laptop, and the kitchen sink. So here’s me showing up to the hotel, riding pants on, totally soaked in sweat with a garbage bag for luggage over my shoulder checking in.
I get checked in, go to the room to take a shower. When I undress I discover I’m covered with ticks. They’re on my neck, back, arms, chest, one or two on my legs. Now what am I supposed to do? Put alcohol on them? Burn them with a match? All the things you hear about getting a tick out without it leaving its damn head in your skin. Now I’m aggravated and I get my trusty Swiss army knife and just start scraping them off. It works. Luckily none on the unit. Now I get to take a tick free shower. For your sake I didn't take pictures of a fat, pasty, nude guy covered in ticks.
After the shower I get to work on getting the hell out of Tell City and back to Chicago. Of course the next day is the 4th of July and nothing is open. The only place I can get a rental car I can take to Chicago is the Louisville Kentucky airport, a hundred miles away. Turns out there’s a cab service that will take me there for about $250. For some reason this really pisses me off. I’m not paying $250 to get to the airport so I can pay another huge amount to drive a rental car point to point. Hertz wants $350, Enterprise wants $280. Finally I get Avis for $202. Now to get there… I start asking around the hotel employees if they or one of their friends wants to drive me to the airport for $100. No dice. So I call Jimmy John’s and try to talk to one of their delivery guys to see if he’ll take me to the airport when he’s not working. I get hung up on for that brilliant idea and my wife tells me to knock it off ‘cuz I’m creeping people out. Hey, I’m in sales, it’s a contact sport. So I start calling hotels closer to Louisville to see if they have a shuttle service. I get a number, call them, and they’ll come get me and take to the airport for $85. Sweet, that’s why I negotiate for people for a living. Only problem is it’s cash only and I have about $26 on me. So, it’s me and my flip-flops taking another walk to a cash station. Believe it or not, I didn’t get to have a milkshake that night.
The next day I’m on the phone with the insurance company (Progressive). They’ll give me $3K above what they total the bike for for accessories (gear, aftermarket add-ons, etc.). I run the numbers and realize I have more than $3K in add-ons. So, I go to the airport pick up a car and drive a hundred miles back to my bike to strip off stuff that’s going to put me above the $3K mark. (If you’ve actually read the report this far you get a heads up that I’m selling a PC III, an Autocom system, a garauld rack and backrest, and a fuzeblock. PM me if interested). I get to my bike in the 105 degree blast furnace heat and for 2 1/2 hours work on getting this stuff off my bike plus some. By the time I’m done I’m absolutely covered in sweat and my clothes are soaked. So I strip down, towel off with the shop rag in my tank bag, and change my clothes. At this point the old guy from the tow truck shows up with a big red cup full of iced tea. Another fricken nice guy. I’m starting to think I’m in the twilight zone. Nobody is this nice in Illinois.
Fast forward and I’m driving back to Chicago. I stop in Columbus, IN to eat and eat too much follow it with a milkshake and now I’m too tired to drive so I call it a day. The next day (it’s the 5th of July now), I’m driving for about an hour when the air conditioning goes out. You have got to be shitting me! I drive all the way back to Chicago, get stuck on the Dan Ryan because it’s a G-D Parking lot, and the steering wheel it almost too hot to touch as the temperature gauge in the car mockingly reads 106 degrees.
Finally, I’m home, unload the car, sit down with a giant glass of ice water and my phone dings there’s an email. I look at it and it’s from the “for sale” thread on the forum. ScoobyVroom is selling his suspension system because he’s thinking of selling his bike. I PM him and tell him to call me right away. He calls, we talk about his bike and make a deal for it as is. I’m home ten minutes and I buy and ’08 with practically all the farkles I have plus an upgraded suspension, sweet!
Now to return the car to the airport and bitch about the air conditioner. As I pull out of my driveway the air conditioning starts blowing freezing cold air at me. MFer! Now they’ll never believe me that it wasn’t working!! I get to the car rental place incident free, just give up and don’t even mention the cruel joke of the air conditioner. I ask the attendant if I need to take the shuttle back to the terminal to get a cab or if there is another way. She says she’ll get a cab and to just wait over there. I walk over to the spot in the middle of the parking lot and just then it starts pouring rain…
The End.
I left a little later than expected on Tuesday the 26th. So of course, I had to contend with Chicago traffic in the blazing heat. Anybody who is not familiar with Chicago traffic should consider themselves lucky. When I got to the south side of downtown things started to ease up. We call this the Dan Ryan expressway
It is quite the experience. It’s either a parking lot for miles or the Indy 500 of shit box cars which at anytime some miscellaneous part could fall off of. If you survive this, you jump onto the Chicago Skyway. It’s a massive toll bridge the cuts through the steel mill area of southern Chicago and Gary Indiana.
As you approach this bridge with its steel mills and some huge abandoned factory sites I always feel like I’m approaching the gates of hell. After that, the speed kicks up to 70mph and before you know it you’re into the farmland of Indiana. I stopped for gas a couple times and spotted these
I always wonder who eats those. I’ll eat a lot of stuff… but those weird me out.
I grabbed an old route I had and change the destination to Athens Ohio.
The ride there was uneventful and doesn’t get to be much fun until the end. It’s about 475 miles so you’re pretty much done for the first day. However there is a great pizza place there called Avalanche Pizza. They make this awesome pizza “Wheels on Fire” which has a spicy buffalo wing theme to it. It’s not on the website menu but trust me, they make it.
After I demolished the pizza, I fell asleep.
The next two days rocked as I did the two loops from the SE Ohio Ramble in May that I missed interspersed with milkshake intermissions. I just adjusted them to start in Athens. After the second loop, I landed in Marietta, OH and planed my route into West Virginia for the next day over a tasty milkshake.
WV Route:
I gotta tell ya, I love WV. The riding is great, the people are nice, and the gas is way cheaper than Chicago. Plus they seem to have these everywhere.
It’s an awesome place.
Now here’s where things start to get interesting. I was a little tired so I cut the little north east part of the route short near Parsons and took 72 (I think) up to 50 and into Bridgeport. Thank god I did that because ten minutes after I checked in all hell broke loose. Crazy winds, pouring rain, hail…
And then the power went out. Luckily I had my trusty headlamp
so I made it to my room no problem, unloaded, and went to sleep.
Here’s all my sweaty stuff…
Now at the end of a day of riding I always get a tank of gas so I’m not screwing around in the morning. One guess what I didn’t do last night. Ordinarily, not a big deal, but when the power is out from Virginia through southern Ohio, nobody is pumping gas and I only had two bars left. I headed out from Bridgeport to New Martinsville hoping something would be open there. No luck. By the way, New Martinsville is where they film that reality show “my big fat American gypsy wedding”. My wife watches it I swear.
So I headed down the river on the OH side. I got to Newport on fumes and pulled into a gas station that looked like they were pumping. It turned out that the owner had generator that only powered his cooler and the cash register. So he was making some good money selling ice and beer but not gas. While contemplating my situation I talked to some locals and ended up having a motorcycle conversation with a super nice guy when he realized he might have a can of gas in the back of his pickup. Sure enough I was in luck and got half a tank from him. He wouldn’t let me pay him or buy him a beer, nor would he tell me his name. I know I’m kinda creepy but this time I think he was just being humble and nice. After that I jumped on 77 and headed north looking for power to be on. Eventually I was able to find gas and cut over to Zanesville. From there I decided what the hell and headed back south down 22, 159, 50, 41 to the river and went west on 52 south of Cincinnati stayed down along the river in Indiana to 7 and cut northwest to wander my way back home.
I stopped in Seymour, IN and that’s when I checked my tire. Ah, Oh.
It’s Saturday night and nothing is going to be open on Sunday, so I contemplated riding it but then thought better. I can’t believe I actually thought about riding it 350 miles home across the Skyway and up the Dan Ryan again. Instead I walked a mile and a half in my flip-flops down the side of the road to the Steak and Shake. Next time you drive by a guy walking down the side of a busy road with flip-flops on in the blazing heat and wonder what the hell he’s doing, he might just be some poor soul in search of some frozen refreshment.
The next morning I found this note on my door.
Nobody gave anybody my room number or anything and I never found the guy. Weird, but a nice guy again.
So, to talk about the tire, I’m not usually a knucklehead, Cougar, Evilmedic and I bought a No-Mar tire changer we share, I have no problem changing tires. But I really thought it had plenty of rubber left for this trip, but between misjudging the tread life and the scorching temperatures, I blew through the tire. My bad. However, the FJR community came to the rescue. Bluebullet had a brand new PR2 and a changer and I could have it. Now, I was about 100 miles from him and he even offered to come down get the wheel go back, change it, and come back down. There was no way I was going to ask that of anybody. Plus, I have AAA Premium service, which is totally worth it because they’ll tow you 200 miles. Just not on this particular Sunday. Come Monday nothing was open again as most dealerships are closed on Monday. I called AAA, we loaded up the bike and drove up to North Salem where Beth (Nate’s wife) was waiting with ice cold lemonade. When Nate got home we changed the tire. Well, really Nate did. He balanced it in no time too.
Now it’s Monday, I was planning on being home Sunday as my wife was going out of town and I wasn’t going to meet her until Friday. First, I called my partner and she was cool with me being gone and then called the wife and she was also was cool with me staying out a few more days. Awesome!
Nate gave me a great route through southern Indiana and into Kentucky. We worked it out on the map so I don’t have a file for it. So, I go cranking down Nate’s route towards Bloomington and just south of Morgantown the lights go on behind me. Damn! I pull over in a safe spot and officer friendly greets me. Now, when I travel alone on the back roads I carry a gun. If I’m with a group I leave it at home. I have a carry permit that is good in Indiana so that’s not a problem. However, when you get stopped, the cops like to know right away that you have one, that way there’s no misunderstanding. I told him I had it and after we nervously exchanged it he went to run all my info. Well, when he put into the radio that he was running the numbers on my gun that brought a couple more county sheriffs to check everything out. It took at least an hour for me to get a ticket for 78 in a 55 and I had to endure the lecture from the sheriff about how they’re always putting guys like me into body bags, blah, blah, blah. Luckily I resisted the urge to give him a reason to taze me. After lightening my bank account by $250 I was on my way down the road. It was getting late so I stopped in Bloomington and had a huge steak and a milkshake for desert.
I put together a route with Nate’s suggestions for the next day. There’s some General Patton museum by Fort Knox I wanted to check out too.
The next day I get up have one of these,
Bite down on something hard and realize a filling just fell out.
So then I head out (after checking my tires) and it’s brutally hot already. I make it down to State road 66 and this left hander.
Now this trip I’m definitely riding a little harder than I normally do. Usually, I hang in the back and cruise along. But I’m in the groove and feeling good the whole trip. But I think the combination of day dreaming a little, and my not choosing the right line; I went a little wide coming out of this turn. I didn’t think it anything to freak out about, I figured I’d just touch the white line and keep on going. I don’t think touching the white line had anything to do with it it was pretty beat up not freshly painted or anything so I’m not blaming slippage in the paint. I just misjudged it and the front tire caught the edge of the road and we all know the rest of the story… I kept going down the road and the bike took a trip into the ditch and as they have a tendency to under these circumstances, blew into a million pieces and ended up right here.
Before I even stopped sliding I was totally pissed and sad at the same time. I knew the bike was done and we all put so much work and time into these things it was like my stupidity killed my buddy.
I’m totally fine. I have a quarter sized raspberry by my elbow where the jacket tore. I wasn’t even sore the next day.
Here’s some pictures.
A few people stopped to make sure all was ok. A couple guys went and got me a bottle of water and a Gatorade which really helped with the heat. Nice guys again.
AAA comes into the picture again but it takes 2 ½ hours for the tow truck to get there. When they show up it’s this really old guy and his wife.
While I’m waiting for the tow truck I have to cancel my reservation at the next hotel so as not to get charged for it and since it’s the 3rd of July I’m wondering if I’m going to get another hotel nearby. After a few calls I get a room in Tell City about 25 miles down the road. The tow guy, Dallas is his name, along with his wife Sue, gives me a ride there.
Now I have one of those giant contractor garbage bags in my side bag in case of who knows? Well, it comes in handy as a place to toss all my stuff, helmet, jacket, gloves, tank bag, both side bags, my rain gear, laptop, and the kitchen sink. So here’s me showing up to the hotel, riding pants on, totally soaked in sweat with a garbage bag for luggage over my shoulder checking in.
I get checked in, go to the room to take a shower. When I undress I discover I’m covered with ticks. They’re on my neck, back, arms, chest, one or two on my legs. Now what am I supposed to do? Put alcohol on them? Burn them with a match? All the things you hear about getting a tick out without it leaving its damn head in your skin. Now I’m aggravated and I get my trusty Swiss army knife and just start scraping them off. It works. Luckily none on the unit. Now I get to take a tick free shower. For your sake I didn't take pictures of a fat, pasty, nude guy covered in ticks.
After the shower I get to work on getting the hell out of Tell City and back to Chicago. Of course the next day is the 4th of July and nothing is open. The only place I can get a rental car I can take to Chicago is the Louisville Kentucky airport, a hundred miles away. Turns out there’s a cab service that will take me there for about $250. For some reason this really pisses me off. I’m not paying $250 to get to the airport so I can pay another huge amount to drive a rental car point to point. Hertz wants $350, Enterprise wants $280. Finally I get Avis for $202. Now to get there… I start asking around the hotel employees if they or one of their friends wants to drive me to the airport for $100. No dice. So I call Jimmy John’s and try to talk to one of their delivery guys to see if he’ll take me to the airport when he’s not working. I get hung up on for that brilliant idea and my wife tells me to knock it off ‘cuz I’m creeping people out. Hey, I’m in sales, it’s a contact sport. So I start calling hotels closer to Louisville to see if they have a shuttle service. I get a number, call them, and they’ll come get me and take to the airport for $85. Sweet, that’s why I negotiate for people for a living. Only problem is it’s cash only and I have about $26 on me. So, it’s me and my flip-flops taking another walk to a cash station. Believe it or not, I didn’t get to have a milkshake that night.
The next day I’m on the phone with the insurance company (Progressive). They’ll give me $3K above what they total the bike for for accessories (gear, aftermarket add-ons, etc.). I run the numbers and realize I have more than $3K in add-ons. So, I go to the airport pick up a car and drive a hundred miles back to my bike to strip off stuff that’s going to put me above the $3K mark. (If you’ve actually read the report this far you get a heads up that I’m selling a PC III, an Autocom system, a garauld rack and backrest, and a fuzeblock. PM me if interested). I get to my bike in the 105 degree blast furnace heat and for 2 1/2 hours work on getting this stuff off my bike plus some. By the time I’m done I’m absolutely covered in sweat and my clothes are soaked. So I strip down, towel off with the shop rag in my tank bag, and change my clothes. At this point the old guy from the tow truck shows up with a big red cup full of iced tea. Another fricken nice guy. I’m starting to think I’m in the twilight zone. Nobody is this nice in Illinois.
Fast forward and I’m driving back to Chicago. I stop in Columbus, IN to eat and eat too much follow it with a milkshake and now I’m too tired to drive so I call it a day. The next day (it’s the 5th of July now), I’m driving for about an hour when the air conditioning goes out. You have got to be shitting me! I drive all the way back to Chicago, get stuck on the Dan Ryan because it’s a G-D Parking lot, and the steering wheel it almost too hot to touch as the temperature gauge in the car mockingly reads 106 degrees.
Finally, I’m home, unload the car, sit down with a giant glass of ice water and my phone dings there’s an email. I look at it and it’s from the “for sale” thread on the forum. ScoobyVroom is selling his suspension system because he’s thinking of selling his bike. I PM him and tell him to call me right away. He calls, we talk about his bike and make a deal for it as is. I’m home ten minutes and I buy and ’08 with practically all the farkles I have plus an upgraded suspension, sweet!
Now to return the car to the airport and bitch about the air conditioner. As I pull out of my driveway the air conditioning starts blowing freezing cold air at me. MFer! Now they’ll never believe me that it wasn’t working!! I get to the car rental place incident free, just give up and don’t even mention the cruel joke of the air conditioner. I ask the attendant if I need to take the shuttle back to the terminal to get a cab or if there is another way. She says she’ll get a cab and to just wait over there. I walk over to the spot in the middle of the parking lot and just then it starts pouring rain…
The End.
