| Unpacking the bike following a long trip is always interesting. The time when you find out if all the goodies packed at the start are still there and what goodies--or critters fall out of the packs. It is also the time when decisions are made regarding clothing--whether you burn, bury or clean certain articles that may have been worn a little too long. For example, there is one pair of socks that should be burned, the local sewerage treatment plant may not like the results of washing and from the volatile aroma, a pyrotechnics permit may be required to set a match to them. The plan for this little ride was to tour the 4 corners of the US with a Iron Butt 50CC thrown in as well as a visit to Deals Gap and to return to Ely, NV in time to help man checkpoints for the DED rally. A trip that would span over 6,000 miles to Madawaska, ME in 8 days and over 3,000 miles to Ely in another 4 days The paperwork will reflect 11 days. We had elected to make the short run to Blaine, WA on Thursday for one more test of fully loaded bikes and time to return for doctor's appointments and clean up some business obligations that would keep us late on Friday night. We made it to Madawaska, ME on Sunday the 21st but the time stamp reflected the next business day in the post office. The schedule was a little aggressive butt with the maintenance completed and after a few test rides we set out from Seattle on May 13, 2000. We had originally planned on spending Saturday night visiting Bruno in Gerlach, NV butt 3 and 4 inches of snow on the passes the day before prompted a rout change to I-5 to San Diego where Terry Smith would sign our paperwork for the 50CC. As we hit the cold rain and wind in the Siskiyou Mountains in Oregon my heated clothing stopped working so the warm sun of Northern California was a welcome relief after several hours in the cold rain. First tip: I had problems with a "hot spot" with this set of Gerbing electric gloves and Bob Gerbing checked them for possible wiring problems. What we didn't know was the molded plug was defective and during this part of the trip the plugs actually welded themselves together before blowing the fuse. A quick call to Terry that evening prompted him to bring a few extra parts and I hard wired the liner to the extension cord that attaches to the bike. This would make putting the Solo on a little more difficult since the extension cord normally stays with the Solo and is simply unplugged from both the bike and the liner. For the remainder of the ride the extension cord would have to be fed back through the Solo or retrieved when changing to or from the electric's. The second day found us in the San Diego area early enough to complete the pictures and receipt for the 2nd corner and locate the gas station for the start of the 50CC. Terry showed up at the Motel shortly after we checked in and we enjoyed a lengthy dinner before turning in for the night. A quick trip for our starting gas receipt Monday morning and we were on the road about 18 minutes behind our schedule (5:18 a.m.), time that was made up within the first few hours of the day. We had selected a town for our first fill-up based on the capacity and mileage of the two Wings butt were surprised when the town shown on the map did not exist--or was far away from the freeway, so we chose to continue on. Of course the fuel warning light added excitement for a while butt we did find fuel and I had about .4 of a gallon left on the tank. (you may not be able get to the last few tenths on some Wings since the internal fuel pump may not rest on the bottom of the tank) We had scheduled a rest break at about the half way point so we found a motel near Sequin, TX about 3:00 a.m. and hit the pillows for about 4 hours of sleep. A little less than the 6 hours we had planned. Up early and back on the road Verne started experiencing acceleration problems only when the Aux tank was empty. We added fuel conditioner at one gas stop and the symptoms appeared to disappear only to return later in the day. Since I had a spare fuel filter we elected to stop at Slidell, LA to replace it and that's when my bike failed to start. I quickly ran some voltage tests with Mark Reis on the phone and finally determined the 1 year old battery was toast. I told Mark it must have gotten a sniff of the Texas Methane Jack Tollett talks about since it was far to early for this battery to fail. Fortunately, there was a Wal Mart close by butt getting them to add the acid and give the new battery a quick charge proved to be a very trying three hours of frustration. They insisted on charging the battery for at least 24 hours before allowing me to continue on. Being nice didn't work so I took my wallet out, laid it on the counter and explained the basics of the golden rule---he or she with the gold makes up the rules and the rules are: I was going to be in St. Augustine, FL the next morning and the battery would have more than adequate time to be fully charged from the bike. All I needed was enough of a charge to start the bike once. The wide eyed clerk then asked--where is St. Augustine???? Sooooo for the fourth and last time I asked them to put the acid in the battery and give it a 45 minute quick charge and they finally agreed butt asked for 1 hour. I suspect they finally read the logo on the shirt that clearly stated 24 and 36 hour endurance rallies. Knowing Terry was tracking our progress I had called him with status prior to the last trip to Wal Mart so he could alert John in St. Augustine of the delay. We reviewed our schedule and found we could, in fact, still make it butt we would have to ride our buns off. So what's new here??? I returned after 1 hour and they were just starting to add the acid--and ruptured both the filler line and the acid container spilling acid on themselves and the shop floor. I knew I was in deep doo-doo then, butt after another 45 minutes they handed the battery back to me and I reassembled the bike, picked up a fuel receipt and we were once again back on the road. (Another tip here--As we pulled into the service station I could hear a low whine in the helmet speakers--something that was not there before. This proved to caused by the battery failing. A point worth remembering.) Then we started to hit some good luck. A SUV went by us at a nice pace and they quickly became our rabbit--clearing the way of LEO's (Law Enforcement Officers) and small game and were replaced by yet another "rabbit" after each fill-up. New rabbits proved to have progressively faster vehicles so we made up for some lost time throughout the night. We sure went through a lot of fuel in a hurry on this leg of our journey. About the only problem we hit was working with the wobble brought on by the Texas tire tracks in the pavement, something we have come to understand on some Washington and Oregon roads. A problem that clears itself when we hit flatter pavement. The events of the day and the faster pace kept our adrenaline flowing until we were close to the turn off to the beach where we got our fuel receipt for the end of the 50CC. There was one occasion where I had to fight off the nods butt with the exit in sight those nods went away and we finally had our ending receipt at 6:23 a.m., well within the 50 hour limit for the coast-to-coast run. We made a quick call to John then headed for his place for some rest. It was really great to see the progress John has made since tangling with a light pole during the Butt and we even had a chance to talk to Bryce on the 'phone. It would have been nice to spend more time and have dinner with these two butt in order to keep with the schedule we had but a few hours before heading for Key West. A quick nap was in order. Thanks again John for putting us up and being there for the signing of the witness forms. This is where I joined the "Jack Tollett tip over club" and found you can hear the shutter click on a digital camera with a helmet on!!! As we pulled out of the circular drive I stopped to let Verne go ahead and the brain told the right leg to put the right foot down. I seems as though these two had a disagreement and the foot was perfectly happy resting on the peg until it realized the bike was stopped and whole damn thing was heading for it. The foot moved, butt not in time to stop the slow roll of the bike. By 2:30 p.m. we had topped off the tanks and were headed for Key West, FL. Of course we missed the turn to the toll road so took the more leisure rout down 95 to a KOA camp ground somewhere in the Keys. There, for the first time in a few days we finally had a chance to sprawl out and get some complete sleep time. Up early the next morning we dropped into the traffic flow and chugged our way to the 3rd corner at Key West. With the secret 'phone number recorded, the picture and receipt in the envelope and mailed we headed for a KOA near Lake City Fl. This route would take us up through Alligator Alley. Well worth doing at least once. Once there, a quick call to Greg Roberts confirmed the exit number and time to meet for breakfast the next day. Off and running again the next morning we found we were a little early to meet Greg and Duke butt knew they too would be early. During our 'phone conversation the previous night Greg thought the meeting place, the Waffle House, would be left of the freeway butt as we rolled to the stop sign we saw it's name to the right. Little did we know there were two of them, one on each side of the freeway!!! Fortunately, Duke had his CB on and heard us talking so it took only a few minutes to get together for breakfast. This was a very meaningful meeting for me since Greg and I had been communicating for about two years via e-mail and Greg was the one person who provided so much encouragement and technical knowledge during the design phase of the aux tank for the Wing. Seeing Duke again was another big highlight of this trip. Duke made the trip cross country two years before so I could install a tank on his Wing and he became a hit at the Spring Fling. Greg looked great and Duke had a slight limp butt he will have to tell the story about taking 2nd place in dog walking------:):) Greg had noticed one of my headlights was out so we made a quick trip to the local Honda shop for replacement of both bulbs. I had (used) spares with me butt with our schedule I didn't want to take a chance on the other one burning out so the time was well used to kick tires with both Greg and Duke. We were back on the road and just about on schedule in a short time. Our next destination was a KOA near Scranton, PA and as before, we made it there about 15 minutes before the office closed for the night. A quick dinner and some sleep and we were back on the road to Deals Gap, and it is everything I thought it would be!!!!! I have read several articles about the Gap and totally enjoyed the trip through there and met some very nice people in the campground. The trip in was interesting, the V-1 (radar detector) sounded off with a warning in plenty of time for both of us to insure we were on the speed limit before we saw the Camero with the light bar. We progressed up the road for about 2 miles when the V-1 once again sounded off butt indicated the hit was coming from behind. We quickly adjusted our speed before the Camero's front end came into view, He followed along for about a mile before turning back to find other prey. Of all the electronic stuff available for us, the V-1 is the most valuable in my opinion. It gave us ample warnings throughout this tip as it has done in many others. The camp ground at the Gap was not full that evening butt there was enough activity to keep everyone entertained as bikes roared out and some returned on trailers with broken transmissions---etc. We had our chance to enjoy the dragon the next morning as we wound our way toward our 4th corner. We anticipated heavy traffic and road problems during the planning of this ride and allowed extra time butt had to hustle at the northern end to make it to our 4th corner within our schedule. With the fuel receipt and pictures sent off from Madawaska we found a quiet motel with good dinning that evening and the next day found us on the road and heading back toward Scranton. We had elected to take the longer rout back to 84 rather than the quicker route through Canada and I'm glad we did because the scenery we passed through was great. We both wanted another look at New York and PA and we did have enough time for me to make it to Ely and for Verne to try for yet another BBG on the last leg. One side comment here, the Northwet really knows how to rain butt New York and PA have been taking lessons--it too knows how to let the water fly!!!! We rode through some beautiful scenery and rain that really reminded us of home. Leaving New York and PA behind we hammered out the miles on I-80 to a nice KOA near Scranton and another near Joliet. Il. Construction activity on I-80 has it down to a one lane crawl in numerous places and when both lanes are open the semi's are either side by side or trying to pass you. The construction work consumes miles of stretches where you are on one lane of a 4 lane highway from east to west. The Western portion seems to have more activity and the traffic seems to flow at the posted truck speeds or a little less so making time is difficult. From the overnight stay near Joliet Ill we headed for Gothenberg NE. Where Verne would stop for the night and prepare for yet another BBG. (He made it with few problems considering the weather he had to ride through.) 3:00 p.m. is a little early to stop so I continued on to Laramie, WY in order to shorten the ride into Ely on Thursday. About the only thing noteworthy on this portion of the trip was the truckers found us on Channel 4 and started to give us a bad time. Their comments made reference about blocking our path and swerving into us so I simply called to Verne and asked if he had his recorder on. He said "yep", you got the camera on?? I replied yes and the cell phone also. The problem went away. As has been the habit this last week and a half, I had no problems falling asleep early in the evening and back on the road early the next morning. It seems like 5 or 6 hours of sleep is enough once you get use to it. We did enjoy a good dinner most of the evenings to replace the taste of the balance bars. Another note: I started to have slight headache problems and I got into some food or water somewhere along the way that gave me slight diarrhea so evening stops became more important as the days progressed. This finally subsided shortly after arriving in Ely. Thanks to suggestions by Kerry Church, I had a good supply of Balance bars on hand and when I could no longer "pound" another power bar down, they became the major food source during the day. The ride from Laramie to Ely seemed short and I arrived early enough Thursday afternoon to get unpacked and enjoy some tire kicking with early participants for the DED. Total mileage for the 4 corners tour, including the 50CC and Deal's Gap was about 6,500 miles in 8 days of riding. The odo registered about 9,500 at Ely 4 days later and 10,700 by the time the Wing found the garage at home. I haven't recorded two receipts yet for gallon consumed butt to date it is over 350 gallons. Products tested: Water proofing the V-1 is still a problem. I have tried custom plastic covers to no avail and this time I tried shower caps. The caps did help for a few hours butt moisture finally works it's way to the plug and the audio stoops working. I finally resorted to putting it away during rain. I also tried out plastic cleaner sold under the name of 210 and it worked great. My wife found some chemically treated shop rags at Costco the really did the trick on bugs for both the windshields and face masks. ( I do not have the brand name yet butt will try to get it for those of you that are interested.) Toll Booths: We have all been cautioned about this before butt it needs to be repeated--they are treacherous!!! Consider cages running at freeway speeds then stopping for a minute or two at the same spot. Any weak gaskets, cooling systems or air conditioners will leak and right in the place where you put your right foot while you pay the toll. You will find it is difficult to keep the bike up and your right foot may slip off the peg when you hit the road again. If you can, keep your toll cash separate from you wallet. More that one person has had to get out (or off) and chase large bills down the road due to fumbling. Cell phones: Don't leave home without them if possible. I use Verizon as my SP and Verne uses U. S. West. Verne had better reception in several areas. I had to stand in the right spot for some of my calls; my calls that were made when not close to the freeways where cell sites are more prevalent. Highlights---far too numerous to list except for the biggest ones---the people we met!!! Short visits with friends, working with the riders and volunteers at the DED and people we met along the way all made the trip more interesting. If your still reading--thanks for hanging in there. Hope there was some tidbits you could use. I am sure I'm missing some details here butt this is enough chatter for now. Now it's time to repack for another little ride. Ride safe. Ron |