Last year's trip ended on an extremely sour note. Sour enough that for a while afterwards I wondered if I would ever want to take another motorcycle trip again. For a few weeks I even contemplated selling my motorcycle and getting out of the hobby altogether.
Time heals all wounds, or so they say. Soon, over the course of about three months, I found the trauma subsiding. My memory of the events, while still vivid, had blunted enough that I no longer felt the same knot in my stomach when I recalled that day in Dyersville, IA. I think it's a more accurate statement that time creates scar tissue. Reminders of the event will always linger, but eventually you get to the point where it's no longer the focal point of your life.
And before people get up in arms about my use of the word "trauma", let me explain. Trauma is defined as "an experience that causes severe anxiety or emotional distress." That doesn't imply that all instances of trauma are equal. Having a mechanical breakdown in the middle of nowhere doesn't compare to the trauma some have experienced in extreme situations, such as combat or physical assault. I am in no way trying to equate my situation to people who have suffered to a great degree.
Trauma is not an on-off switch, where you either experience it or you don't. It's more of a dimmer switch, where the initial click moves you into the realm of trauma, and the intensity of the distress and its effects will vary depending on the circumstances.
My trauma was minimal in the grand scheme of things, but it still was trauma. I underwent severe anxiety and emotional distress. After the event I had to resolve some things in my mind. I even experienced some PTSD type feelings when some people close to me had breakdowns while traveling and it triggered my brain.
It wasn't the worst trauma I have ever experienced in my life, but it was the most recent. You can call me a "weenie" if you want, but I had to figure out how to quell the emotions of the past, and calm the fears of the future.
Before I even started thinking about where to go on this year's trip, I did take a few preemptive measures to try and prevent a repeat of last year's disaster: I bought a tire plug kit and a portable battery powered inflator. Having these items along with me would have turned last year's disaster into a couple of hours (at most) of inconvenience. I also bought and installed some tie down hooks on my bike, so if the motorcycle did need to get trailered, at least I knew it would be possible to strap it down correctly.
Because of the above mentioned trauma, I waited a while before I even started thinking about where to go on this year's trip. Around the first of the year I came up with an idea for a trip destination. It was aggressive to say the least. Knowing the magnitude of what I was thinking, I chewed on it a while before I even mentioned it to the Tundra Girl.
I have a friend named Shawn. We have been best friends since kindergarten, which means for about five decades. Roughly eight years ago he moved his family out to Whidbey Island, WA, which is an island just northwest of Seattle. Five years ago he came back to visit the week before my open heart surgery, and that was the last time I've seen him in person. Since he moved to Washington I had yet to travel out to visit him.
One of my bucket list items is to ride my motorcycle in all of the lower 48 states. I'm slowly checking states off my list, and prior to leaving on this year's trip I had 29 of them under my belt. Having never been to Washington state, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone: I could visit Shawn, and I could also check at least one more state off my list.
The biggest challenge was Whidbey Island is a long, long way from Sioux Falls, SD. Google says the most direct route between the two places is 1,500 miles and more than 23 hours of driving. This direct route is pretty much all interstate, which is usually not the most scenic way to travel. A motivated person could ride this route on a motorcycle in two long days. Three days would be better.
I didn't want to just ride three days of interstate out, and then ride the same three days of interstate back home. So I began planning a route that would allow me to see more than just a divided highway. The only problem was, that made the trip even longer. Much longer. 1,100 miles longer to be exact, bringing the entirety of the planned trip to over 4,100 miles of riding.
Most years my trips are about five days (four nights) in length. Last year I negotiated for seven days. This year would need at least eight days of riding, plus I wanted a couple extra non-riding days on Whidbey Island to visit Shawn. It was going to be a ten day trip. Knowing this wouldn't be a popular idea, I hesitantly brought the idea up to the Tundra Girl. She wasn't thrilled about the trip, but she didn't say "no" either. So I took that as a green light.
My plan was to spend three days riding a more direct route out to Whidbey, two days (three nights) visiting Shawn, and then take five days on the return trip, riding a different more indirect route home. The very first day, when presumably I would be most "fresh", I planned to tackle a good chunk of interstate and put lots of miles behind me. After that, I would mostly ride back roads to try and see more interesting sights. As a bonus, I designed the route so I could stop and visit a couple additional people I knew, one on the way out and one on the way home.
The Tundra Girl was wary, but amicable about the plan. She would occasionally double-check if this trip was what I really wanted to do. Coincidentally, A few weeks prior to me leaving, my aging father-in-law reached the decision point where he was no longer going to ever drive on the interstate again. Using this as an example, I explained to her that I need to tackle long trips like this one while I'm still relatively young and physically and mentally able to ride these distances. She seemed to understand.
Like I said, it was aggressive. 4,100 miles of planned riding in 8 days means each day would average over 512 miles. That's not a small amount, especially on the days where a majority of the riding would be done on back roads. My previous year's trip was the longest I had ever taken, but only averaged 347 miles per day. At the end of each day on that trip my body made it known that it was unhappy. Part of me thought I was nuts for even considering a trip of this magnitude.
One of the major reasons I was so uncomfortable while traveling in 2023 was the stock Indian Roadmaster seat. When looking at it, one would think it would be quite comfy. However, within the first 50 miles of sitting on it my butt was complaining. And this is from a guy who put 70k miles on a stock Yamaha Road Star seat, which are considered by many to be an instrument of posterior torture.
If I were to have any hope of logging that many miles per day this year, I knew I would have to do something different to make the seat bearable. I had tried using my trusty beaded seat cover on the Indian, but it really made little difference in the comfort level of the stock seat. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would need to have a custom seat made for my motorcycle, and unfortunately those can easily cost $1,500.
Before I plunked down that much cash, I decided to experiment with a cheaper option. I spent $100 and bought an AirHawk inflatable seat cushion. If it worked, it would save me $1,400. If it didn't, I could probably sell it on eBay and recoup a good portion of my purchase price. Of course, if it didn't work I would also be suffering through 4,100 miles of severe pain. It was a gamble.
I did take the AirHawk on a 60 mile test ride and it seemed to greatly improve things. I didn't have any butt pain on this short ride, whereas without it I know I would have. So I was optimistic.
It is sad that after purchasing a $35k motorcycle, people have to spend additional money just to get a seat that's usable. Having bought my bike used, I didn't pay anywhere near $35k, but still…
Another step I took to remove stress from this trip was I renewed my vow to not schedule anything for several days after my planned return date. That was the cause of a great deal of the stress of last year's breakdown: in 2023 I had committed to be somewhere to play a concert 400 miles away on the last evening of my motorcycle trip, and the rest of the band would have been in a huge pickle if I hadn't shown up. This year, with nothing on the calendar but four blank days after my scheduled return date, if I did have a mechanical breakdown and was delayed getting home, at least I had some padding in my schedule and wouldn't have to worry about missing commitments.
I had originally planned for a departure date on June 11th. I had even gone so far as to request time off work and booking hotel rooms. I picked the 11th because that was the day my wife's best friend Dawn was scheduled to arrive in Sioux Falls for a visit. It had become somewhat an annual tradition for me to schedule my motorcycle trips for the same time as Dawn's annual visit. I did this because while I was gone it gave my wife something else to think about rather than wondering if I was laying in a ditch somewhere. Also, they could arrange their schedule without worrying about having to include me, or having their activities affect me. It worked pretty well for all of us, so I figured I would repeat the tradition again this year.
Then, as does so often happen, life threw a curveball. On April 24th, 2024, Dawn passed away unexpectedly at the age of 56. Just three days before her passing she had purchased her plane tickets for the visit. We don't know exactly what happened, but assume it was either a massive stroke or a heart attack. She was found slumped over on her couch, and did not appear to have suffered. She had a lot of health problems and was in constant pain, so at least she was now free of the suffering.
The Tundra Girl and I flew to Ohio in early May for the funeral. This took an unplanned week out of our lives, which meant we had to push out the Tundra Boy's high school graduation party a few weeks. I had to reschedule both a doctor's and a dentist's appointment. Plus my wife understandably took the death of her best friend rather hard. I decided it wouldn't be prudent to leave town the same day that Dawn would have arrived had she not passed.
I rescheduled my time off work and all the hotel rooms, and pushed the trip out a month. I would now leave on July 8th instead. As June got underway I looked at my "to do" list and was glad I had an extra month to prepare.
Speaking of preparation, I did some maintenance on the motorcycle to make it ready for the trip. My front tire had about 2k worth of safe rubber on it. Rather than trying to make it stretch through a 4k trip, I went ahead and got a new front tire. In 2016 I tried to push a few more miles out of a tire during a motorcycle trip, and it caused a lot of stress while I was traveling. I spent that entire trip wondering whether or not the tire would make it. I didn't need that stress this year.
I changed the oil and filter. I changed the air filter. I also installed an air shock valve relocation kit to make it easier for me to keep the rear shock at the proper inflation level (previously I would have to remove a side cover whenever I wanted to check/adjust the shock.)
Picture-wise, I tried something new on this trip. During the previous 18 years worth of motorcycle trips, I would rely solely on a single digital camera to capture all of the things I saw as I traveled. Countless times I would see a scenic area on the road, but due to traffic, no shoulder or lack of time/motivation I wouldn't pull over to snap a photo.
I had often thought it would be cool if I could rig up a system with a camera mounted on the motorcycle that I could somehow trigger to take a picture when I saw something interesting. I chewed on this idea for a while (literally, many years) when it finally occurred to me that if I could mount a camera that just automatically took pictures at a certain time interval, then I would likely capture most everything I saw throughout the trip. After doing a little bit of research, I purchased a Brinno TLC130 camera, along with a RAM mount that would attach it to my left side mirror.
I still would use my cell phone camera to capture photos as I normally did. But this motorcycle mounted camera would supplement the pictures I took during the trip.
Overall, the experiment was a success. I returned from the trip with almost 11,000 photos captured. That was a lot, and it took me a couple of days to whittle that number down to under 1,000 "keepers". As a result, you'll notice that the pages on this trip have a lot more photos than pages from previous trips do. I'll let you decide if the additional pictures are a good thing or not.
By the way, you can read more details about my overall experience with the camera over on the page where I talk in detail about what I liked and disliked about the camera.
As usual, the day before I leave for a trip is jammed full of things I needed to do. I wound up not starting to pack until about 9 PM, and once I finally got everything ready to go it was after midnight. My alarm was set to go off at 4 AM, so this was going to be a short night.
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This page last updated on 12/13/2024