West Coast Adventure - Day 1

This is it...the BIG trip. It's part of what I wanted to do last summer, but the BIG trip last summer turned out to be enough after about 5,000 miles and 5 or 6 weeks of travel. I left this afternoon and hope to see the western end of US-2 in about 7 days.

Some of you might ask, "why?" The answer, of course, is because I can...or maybe, more correctly, because I want to. To which the quizzical would give me a blank stare and ask again, "why?" For those who ride a motorcycle, no explanation is needed. For those who don't...none will really make much sense. The "why" is the same reason people climb mountains and go deep sea diving. That's why.

Believe it or not, today may actually be one of the harder days of the trip. It was only 275 miles, but it was almost all Interstate and I didn't leave home until after 3:00PM. Riding that far, with no windshield, on the interstate is actually a little draining. My arms and shoulders hurt tonight in ways they haven't in a long, long, time. However, once I'm on US-2, the speed limit is normally about 55, so that's going to help a ton. 55 to 60 with no windshield is manageable, in my humble opinion, while 70 to 75 is pushing it hard.

I could have left earlier in the day, taken 2 lane highways all the way up, and avoided the Interstate stress and pain, but I didn't...duh. I spent the morning and early afternoon running all the errands and taking care of all the little odds and ends one must take care of before leaving on a long trip. I could have done them yesterday, but I didn't...duh.

Once Black Max was loaded, it was pretty much off to the races. I just had one last errand to run and then a stop for gas and we were on our way.

Black Max is what I've decided to call my VTX...every bike deserves a good name, right? I'd say the name came to me in a moment of inspiration, but that would be a lie. I actually had a FB friend that was looking for names for a piece of jewelry and asked people to make up a name using the color of pants they were wearing and the name of their first pet...hence, Black Max. In truth, I was wearing black shorts with a tropical floral pattern on them..but Black Tropical Floral Pattern Max sounds kind of stupid, if you ask me.

Tomorrow is shaping up to be the worst weather day for the first week of the trip. There's a 30% chance of rain first thing in the morning that quickly escalates to 50% and then 70%. However, it looks like something I can move through/past if I time it just right. The forecast for my destination, Hurley, Wisconsin, has a very low chance of rain tomorrow...hard to tell what it will be like until I actually get up in the morning and scope out the forecast and radar. Modern day travel has it's silver lining.

First day is in the books...and we're looking pretty good...tomorrow is another day and another road.

Here's the route for Day 1: