All Systems go (even the butterflies)

As John Denver sings, "all my bags are packed and ready to go". This week has been a bit crazy, getting the final bits of gear together, getting most of it but not the tank bag I ordered, working, planning, worrying about planning, worrying about the lousy weather we have been having. All butterflies, pretty butterflies. But once I am on the road, they fall behind.

I decided not to leave as early as planned, I have about 500 miles to do tomorrow, which will take me about 8 hours with stops. There is no point in getting to the motel at 4 PM, so I there is no need to leave at 6. 8 sounds a bit more civilized.

The weather has gotten better, and while there may be some rain on the way, I should be able to get through all of it before it actually starts raining.

Time for some dinner, double check everything one more time, and relax a bit. Tomorrow is Day One.

The Trip

The trip. This one I sort of talked myself into it. I will explain. After watching a certain travel show about these two guys who go about a trip around the world, I thought, "gee, wouldn't it be fun to do something like this?". That would have been fine had I left it there. But thanks to my big mouth I started to tell people about my idea. I would get a new bike, then go here, travel great distances and see wonderful things. I kept going about it and pretty soon everybody wanted to get in on the thing: they wanted pictures, they wanted videos, they wanted a dairy of the damned thing. Now I had a bunch of people all worked up about a trip that I had concocted while sitting on the couch having a drink and watching some guys on TV.

Years ago when I was in academia and had to go and present papers at conferences, I would submit a title about something I thought would be interesting, but on which I had written nothing yet. That way, when the conference program was printed and I saw my name plastered on the thing and a nifty title next to it, I had no place to hide, so I just did it. It worked like a charm. This trip thing, it seems, was working along the same lazy idea: make it public, then make it happen. So, why not?

Time is the key

When doing any sort of motorcycle travel in the US, the first thing that comes up is time, time being a function of the enormous distances you need to cover anywhere you go. How much time you have determines where you can go. And if I was going to do a motorcycle trip, I wanted to go far. Like Utah. Considering I live some 2,000 miles away from Salt Lake City, this was going to take some time. After deciding what I wanted to see along the way, I decided that two full weeks might do the trick. Hours passing checking places on Google Maps finally began to produce a mental picture of where to go, what to see and what route to take. I settled on a trip that would allow me to see the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, and Arches National Park. On the way back there is the Million Dollar Highway down through the mountains in Colorado. On the I can visit some friends in Albuquerque, NM, and in Lehi, UT.

The road

When I look at it, it reminds me of a kite on a huge line. The "line", from Jackson MS to Albuquerque NM, is made of 2 days' worth of nothing but empty road, with little to see. The trip really begins in Albuquerque. But I have to get there first. The way it stands it covers about 3,700 miles round trip. This is a big country indeed. To fly this kite, you need a lot of rope.

NOTE: After going through Dallas I decided not to repeat the experience. This map is the modified route I ended up taking:

Blue (and the rest)

I probably should introduce you to Blue, since she (as machines always are, it seems) will be a big part of this journey.

Blue is a 2006 Yamaha FJR 1300, a Sports Touring motorcycle. Like the model name says, it has a 1300 cc (well, 1,298 cc to be precise) inline-four engine. It is a big bike, to be sure, and made for the road. It is powerful, fast, comfortable, offers good protection against the elements, has a good deal of luggage space and, last but not least, it is a gorgeous machine. In fact, when all was said and done and I was down to three possible contenders, the others being the Honda ST and the Kawasaki Contour, I went with the JFR because I simply loved the way it looks.

If there are any tech heads in the crowd reading this, I am going to disappoint you, because I am not much into tech details. I like machines, and, if need be, I can work on them, but I was never one to recite displacements this and compressions that. So while I will no doubt talk about the experience of riding this bike, I am not goig to give you a technical review. For that, there are many good sites on line already, who do a much better job that I could ever do.

It took me several months to find this bike. I owned (and still do, until it sells) a 2008 Honda Shadow, a very different bike but also a fun bike. I had not ridden in a few years, and the Shadow proved to be a great way to get back on the saddle. So I was not in a hurry to find my new ride, I just knew I needed something bigger and better suited for long distance travel.

I also had a few requirements, namely that it had to be at least a 2006 model (that's when Gen 2 was introduced), with less than 20,000 miles and blue. It had to be blue. This is sort of dumb, because I could have gotten a newer model with less miles. But it was not blue, so that was that.

I have a long story of owning blue machines: I had a blue and white Cessna 150, a blue 1980 Honda CB900, a blue Miata, a blue and white 21 foot sail boat, I have a blue stone on my ring, and I dated a girl or two with blue eyes, but that is another story.

So I finally found Blue on Craigslist, in Dallas, Texas. 19,000 miles, in excellent condition, for a price I could afford, with a few extras to boot. After emailing the owner back and forth for a few weeks, I got on a plane, flew there, picked it up and drove all 420 miles back, smashing a fair deal of Texas bugs as I cut a path through the air heading East.

Despite its size, Blue is an easy bike to ride, as long as you are at least 6 feet tall, The vertically challenged may have a hard time getting their feet squarely on the ground, and since you will be straddling 600 pounds of steel and expensive plastic fairings, you don't want to drop it. It handles well, turning with you as you lean into a turn, remarkably nimble for a bike this size. Off course I was never into race bikes, so I don't really have a good base for comparison, but that is how it feels to me.

So now that I had Blue, I needed to go on " that trip" for which I had convinced myself I needed a bike like this in the first place. And so, in a typical chicken and egg scenario, I got the bike to go on a trip, and I am going on a trip because I have the bike.

Blue is ready, me, I am nervous about so much road, this being my first multi week trip, Hell, this is my first multi day trip. But the road is there, and there are places to see.