July 31, 2010 - Day 1
It’s often said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
I had nothing but good intentions to keep these missives going once I started them. I actually wanted to finish them on this short excursion to Hawaii, however, that isn’t how things worked out.
In grand voyage tradition, I gathered with a group friends for a few drinks and some food, just a little send off. I figured I could get home by 10pm, catch a good 6-7 hours of sleep and one last night with the dogs. I had all my clothes, tools and weather/protective gear packed. All that was left to do was strap on the aftermarket gas tank I’d bought, drop the dogs off, gas up and go. I’ll touch on the gas tank in a moment.
For clothing I wanted to go as light as possible but make sure I had enough so I didn’t need to do laundry every other day and given that I’d decided I was going to be riding to Alaska through the Canadian Rockies I decided that I should bring some warm clothing. So for clothing I ended up bringing 3 pairs of denim jeans, 4 T-Shirts, 6 changes of underwear, 6 pairs of socks, and for the warm stuff I brought 1 flannel shirt and 1 pair of sweatpants to put on under my jeans if necessary, in case I had time I also brought a pair of swim trunks, just in case.
For tools I brought basically everything: metric wrenches and sockets, tire patch kit, small air compressor, crescent wrenches, vise grips, leatherman, duct tape, electrical tape, electrical connectors, mallet, allen wrenches of various types/sizes; if I was going to have a problem on the road, I was going to be prepared for it.
For protective gear I was wearing a ¾ face HJC 3x helmet with a retro clear bubble shield, UV protective/tinting goggles, fingerless gel palm gloves and a Vega textile jacket with removable liner, if it rained I had a rain cover for the Vega jacket, water resistant (yeah right) gloves and a pair of rain pants that I could, after much practical use, get on in less than 30 seconds.
Now, back to the gas tank, oh that gas tank. While reading the message boards online I kept coming across people that had gotten stranded in the middle of nowhere, 30+ miles from the nearest fuel source, this forewarning prompted me to buy a 4 gallon tank to install for the trip, even if I didn’t need it, it would be nice if I didn’t quite feel like stopping when gas presented itself. That gas tank is evil. It came with 2 metal straps that were coiled into circles with the hardware in place when I got it, that should have been the first warning. While undoing the hardware, one of the nuts flew halfway across the garage and it took me a little while to find it, that should have been the second warning. After far too much time, literally hours, of messing around with the tank, I finally got it on the bike and was ready to go.
I dropped the dogs off at the parents, went home, parked the car for the next month and a half and took off for the gas station. I filled the external tank with fuel, the bike tank, took note of the mileage and made to hook it up so the fuel would first come from the rear, external tank. As I hooked up the marine connector, gas started spilling out from the connection point all over the ground and dangerously close to my now hot exhaust pipes. So, I disconnected the fuel line, went home, took of the external tank and said ‘screw it.’
And I was off, this was sometime shortly after noon.
The initial goal was to get almost get to Bismarck, North Dakota on the first day, going up Highway 10 towards Alexandria and cutting over. That’s not what happened. I own what I thought was a pretty good GPS unit, but as you’ll see from the trip, it turns out it’s pretty damn stupid. I made an assumption that most mapping software would map routes with a similar efficiency, for example, if you use Google Maps to route from Mounds View, Minnesota to Bismarck, North Dakota it will go the route I mentioned, the GPS routes it the way I went. Me and the gypsy, my vagabond GPS as I like to refer to it as, we got into some pretty heated arguments, sometimes I let her win, other times I proved she was wrong. I’m glad she didn’t try to take revenge by having me turn right while on a bridge over a 100 foot drop*.
As it turns out, I’m glad the gypsy led me the way she did those first few days. No matter how much I tell myself I’m ready for North Dakota, I never am. I’ve mentioned that I have a pretty good memory, sometimes it’s a blessing and a curse. I can recall the good times, but can’t forget the bad. North Dakota is a lot of bat times, but I’ll get into that with the next post. The reason I’m glad I didn’t end up using Highway 10 as I thought I would is because the last 2 times I’d driven up towards Hoffman and Fergus Falls it was for funerals, my godfather and grandfather respectively. Both had a big impact on my life, they both taught me to hunt and along with my dad gave me an example of service, police and military respectively.
Given my late start, and altered route - I hadn’t figured out how to persuade the gypsy to do my bidding with ‘via points’ yet - my new goal was to get out of Minnesota by nightfall and ensure that the entire month of August was away from my home state.
I ended up crossing the Minnesota/South Dakota border with light to spare.
I “was” keeping track of mileage at this point and had ridden 284 miles. Most of the time I’ll be able to tell you what towns I stopped for gas in, since I used my credit card for all gas purchases except a couple in the sticks, but I should be able to remember what towns those were. A lot of Canada will be a blur. I’m also likely to post multiple days at a time when I get home. I don’t think I can write where I live, if I’m traveling the words pour forth like from a fount.