Plagued with guilt, I checked the oil and fitted the check valve, she’s a little lower on oil and I’ll need to find a purveyor of SAE 20W-50 soon to drip feed her with. The delay cost me dear. As I packed the bike I saw, and lamely videoed, a phenomenal storm front racing in from the lake. The sheer velocity of it was shocking. I knew my dry day was over and considered retreating back inside the hotel and drinking the hours away but the road called me, dear.

I pulled into the nearest gas station to fill the tank, their internet was down along with all the traffic lights in town as 35-45 mph winds had ripped through taking down communications and scattered leafy branches across the roads. Waterproof gear now on I I lurked under the eaves waiting for the worst to pass and studying the radar for a path less sodden. They invited me inside to wait and, leaving the bike parked by a dumpster, I went in for a coffee. People often ask and compliment me on the bike and when a local came in and said something about it I trotted out a stock reply about her age and condition, “no” he said, “I’ve just backed my truck into your bike and knocked it over!”.

Continue reading “Day 44 Wash day” →

The ferry sailed at two, the lady on the phone said to be there an hour before and bring two tie-down straps. I have two, bought years ago on my first ever visit to IKEA. By the time that I had found them and filled up with gas the clock read 10 and the GPS said 3 hours.

No time to check the oil or fit the check valve. I rode like the wind, a rattling oil dripping wind, through lush green rolling hills spotted with farms and grain silos over sometimes abysmal concrete roads, their stepped joints shaking and tearing at mine and the Guzzi’s.

Continue reading “Day 43 Steaming” →

Rochester MN has a large medical presence, a lot of the businesses that I saw were healthcare related and the Mayo Clinic dominates the town center. As we rode out of town two gentlemen who had the look of doctors gesticulated towards us. “Organ donor” I assumed was their thinking but no, one mimed a V-Twin engine to the other and it was thumbs up all round. She gets a fair bit of attention like that.

Today we were off through glorious green fields to see some of the people that make this odyssey on quirky ‘discontinued’ machinery possible, MG Cycle of Albany WI, and to thank them for their service.

Continue reading “Day 42 Flys and rain” →

No rush this morning, I awoke to rain and motel WIFI so flaky I had to reconnect every 10 minutes. This blog doesn’t write itself but I have fallen into some routines to make the process more efficient, hopefully not at the expense of originality. When I hit the motel room the phone and tablet go onto the charger along with the back-up battery, also onto the WIFI to sync any photos, video and timeline. I retreat to a bar, normally pre-selected along with the motel for their proximity and dive like qualities, to scribble drivel into a notebook. A race between the alcohol and recollection, a cocktail of fatigue, frustrated creativity and the growing intoxication boosted by my ‘one meal or less’ nutrition regime.

Come the dawn I wake and transpose the scrawl, edit the photo’s (mainly to compensate for my inability to hold the phone level or keep my fingers out of the way) and try to make some sense of it all.

Continue reading “Day 41 Black blood” →

I spent an hour or so fretting over the weather forecast with its tales of apocalyptic chaos between the cold air in the north west and the record breaking heat in the south east. Route 20 seemed due to host a series of events ranging from thunder storms and tornados through plague and pestilence to hail stones of fruit like dimensions. I elected Route 44, to the north, for the role of carrying us to Sioux Falls rather than Sioux City. A remote journey through saturated fields and over rivers swollen to bursting surprising flys with extreme velocity change as they impacted my helmet and visor.

Continue reading “Day 40 Sioux me” →

It didn’t take very long to meet my first memorable people, Katja from Norway had ridden her motorcycle around the world and Steve from Florida had flown crop dusters, they had done so much more and were so cool that I wanted to be them or to have been there then. My memories are duller and I’m glad that my little journey took me to the rest area outside Orin Wyoming (pop 46) where Katja asked me something in Italian because she had clocked the strange licence plate on the Guzzi and knew a fair bit about motorcycles. She had stopped for the trophy photograph at the Golden Gate Bridge and returned 36 years later to recreate it.

I’ll have to go back.

Continue reading “Day 39 Memorial” →

Cody, an aircraft engineer, and his second wife Heidi were in Greybull for their wedding anniversary. He’d been born there, not easy given the proximity of the town of Cody and his name. He had spent time in Afghanistan working for Evergreen Aviation maintaining equipment for the Special Forces, he didn’t leave the base but was mortared constantly and said that the 120 day wind drove people mad. He also told me that my planned route over the mountains was crazy until the summer, I listened and adapted, opting for Route 20 to the south and then eastwards.

The road was long but she’s running well and the new tyres have improved her stability, except on the center stand. Their high profile lifts her and makes it easier to get her on the stand but also easier for her to topple on less than level ground. DI tried riding with noise cancelling ear-buds for the first time and although Modern English ‘After the Snow’ left me smiling the noise cancelling eliminated the engine sounds that she uses to communicate her moods and ailments. I put them away again but not until I’d shared some precious moments with the mountains. Films have soundtracks with good reason, the power to stir emotions is a potent one.

Continue reading “Day 38 Hot Springs eternal” →

Afraid of the rain and the cold, I wrapped up with waterproof gear and packed, then unpacked in a forgetful frenzy to locate the straps that hold the tank bag on. Too dumb to be afraid of the altitude, the un-paved roads, the snow and the black ice.

Continue reading “Day 37 Chillin’” →

Rising early to watch the clouds smother the mountains and ask the only motorbike shop in the village, the only motorbike shop for 50 miles in any direction I suspect, whether they could balance wheels. Memorial Day weekend was upon us and I was not looking to riding a jack-hammer for four days. The answer was “no” but Idaho Falls had a couple of potentials that I could try.

Continue reading “Day 36 Balance” →

Up at sunrise to get into Boise and back onto WIFI as early as possible, that part of the plan went well. Blag connectivity from a fast food chain, blog written, check, find JMR racing, they have the tyres, check, get tyres fitted and balanced, ahh…

Continue reading “Day 35 Wetlands” →