Trip to California - Day 2, Part 2

Now that my pictures have been posted, some shots from day 2.


Morning frost on the bike cover.


Snow on the roof of the hotel in Santa Rosa, NM.


For all my trips to California, I've not once stopped for a picture at the Continental Divide. I rectified that this time around. :)

Trip to California - Day 2

Only three days into this ride, and already I'm behind. :) Catching up on Monday's events....

I woke up Monday morning to find frost across the bike cover. According to the bike, it was 34 degrees in Santa Rosa, although with the sun shining already, snow was melting off the roof of the motel and dripping down into the parking lot. I got the bike loaded back up, and was on the road just after 9am.

Once one the highway, temps rose from 34 to upper 30's, then dropped quickly as I got to the eastern edge of Albuquerque ... down to 32/33 degrees. Still, the roadway was free of any kind of moisture, with only some of the bridge shoulders having old snow and slush piled up on the sides. After passing through Albuquerque, temps gradually started to rise ... first into the 40's, and then jumping up into the 50's once I hit the Arizona border. I had a brief panic in Gallup NM when I went to dump my aux fuel tank into the main tank, but the fuel gauge didn't react for almost 20 miles. I eventually pulled off the highway to check on the tank status, and just when I got off the bike, the gauge corrected. The joys of not testing the tank before I got out on the road.

Monday's route was to take I-40 over to Holbrook Arizona, and from there take some local Arizona state highways to work my way into Phoenix. I'm glad Tom convinced me to not use my original plan for going through Flagstaff and down ... the bike really liked being off the super-slab for ~200 miles. If I go back through Phoenix on the way home, I'm going to have to try and hit that route again ... this time taking some pictures.

I got into Phoenix to find Tom already at home (I was ahead of schedule, getting in around 6:00pm instead of the planned 7pm). After some catching up, we decided to grab dinner at a nice little Mexican place just around the corner from his house. Man those margaritas were good. :) After dinner was done, we headed back to the house to catch the end of the Suns game, some general chatter, and then plotting through route options for Tuesday. With all that done, it was 11pm and time to hit the hay.

Trip to California - Day 1

Plus side, weather was not the concern I had expected it to be.

I ended up on the road by 10:00am. Not quite as early as I had originally planned, but then I had no hard plans for today anyway. Quick stop to fill the gas tanks, and I was on my way. Temps weren't too bad, about 41 degrees when I pulled out of the garage ... no rain, just some pretty dense cloud cover.

The first little "event" happened less than 5 miles from the house. I had the original seat foam from before the second fuel tank was added strapped to the back seat. We were going to re-use that foam when recovering the rear seat pan. Somewhere between when I got on the tollway and when I got off, it flew off the bike. I didn't notice it was gone until I was at the end of the tollway.

The next little event was less than 100 miles from home. There was a wreck on 380 just east of Decatur that had the highway closed. They had us detouring around the wreck on a nice soggy mud trail. That was fun. Just follow the car tracks from in front of me and all was good, but the bike did get a bit dirty ... at least on the left hand side.

As I got closer to Wichita Falls, the temps dropped. As I cranked up the heated gear, I suddenly had NO HEAT! Pulled over at a rest stop, the Heat Troller (thermostat) wasn't getting any juice. This would be fun. At this point, the fuel cell was still completely full, so I figured I'd mess with it at my next stop. The closer I got to Wichita Falls, the colder the temps dropped. Low point was 36 and rain. Just north of Wichita Falls it started snowing, but that was short lived. About 120 miles southeast of Amarillo the clouds parted and the sun came out to play. Temps jumped to a pleasant 45. I stopped for lunch in Claude TX ... at a Dairy Queen no less, and warmed up. After eating, I pulled the seats to get to the fuse block, and sure enough the fuse had blown. When we added the heated seat to the bike, we had to relocate one of the fuse blocks. When the fuse block was moved, the lead for the Heat Troller wasn't reconnected to the post with the 15A fuse, rather it was on a 7A like everything else (there are 5 fuses, in my case I run 4x7A and 1x15A). Since all the posts aren't in use, I swapped fuses around until I had the 15A in the right place, and the blown fuse was installed in an unused circuit. From there on, I had a good ride.

Fuel cell works good. Once I hit reserve, I opened the valve, and it brought me back up to half tank showing on the gauge. It seemed to level out there, and stayed at half tank until the fuel cell emptied, and then it lowered on the gauge as it normally would.

I'm in Santa Rosa NM tonight. Streets are dry here, but there's still some snow on the ground in the areas with less direct sunlight. I should be about half way, with 550-600 miles to go tomorrow. Temps should get better as I go, as the weather in Arizona was looking pretty dang good.

One more ride for 2007...

So far, 2007 has been an epic year for me relative to riding. In years past, I've been fortunate to get about 17,000 miles on the bike. This year, I'm closing in on 24,000, and with the upcoming trip ... could easily hit closer to 28,000.

The trip? Well, for two years now, I've been wanting to get a Russell Day-Long saddle for the bike. Regarded as THE most comfortable seat, it is standard operating equipment on most of the serious long distance riders' bikes. I had originally planned a trip out in 2006 when I had the ST1300, but ended up selling that bike before I could pull the trip together. I tried again this year when I was in California last May, but it wasn't to be. I had a trip lined up in early October, but had to reschedule due to work conflicts at the last minute. That led me to this late November date.

I've not tried to go cross-country so late in the year before. My previous late season ride was in 2006 when I attended NNESTOC in Vermont in October. Having talked with the people at Russell (located just north of Redding CA in Lake Shasta CA), the weather is good all year round there, so my expectation was that my only concern would be crossing the mountain ranges in the west on my way out to California. My fallback plan was simply to stick to I-10 and ride it all the way into Los Angeles, and then up the I-5 to Lake Shasta. That route would keep me out of most of the higher elevation, and in theory in warmer temperatures.

So today is Saturday, the day before it looks like I'll head out for this ride. My appointment is set for next Thursday, but I had planned to take 3 days getting out there and 2 days getting back ... stopping to visit with friends on the way out. Starting last night, I've started scrutinizing over the weather reports with some disappointment. With the current storms in the west, it looks like my backup plan with I-10 is out of the question ... right now that's where the snow is. Instead, making the jump up to I-40 and over is looking to be the better choice. Once I get to New Mexico, weather doesn't look to be a problem.

To counter the weather variable, I've decided to leave tomorrow, Sunday, to give myself two days to make it to Phoenix. At only just over 1000 miles, this would normally be a day trip for me, but with the weather being what it is right now, I'd rather pad the time and take an easy 2 days to get there than to be rushed trying to make good time. Taking two days also means the majority of the ride will be in daylight, also helping me with the weather variable.

With the chance of rain predicted for Sunday, I probably won't have the cell phone rigged up as I leave Dallas, but will get it set up once I clear the precipitation. I'm staying with friends along the way, and will update at least daily from the road as I go.

I'm also hoping to get some good pictures from the road, as I've picked up a new toy that should map the time stamps from my pictures with the GPS log off my GPS unit to give me a better map of where pictures were taken. If it works, I think it will make an interesting addition to the website.

More to come ... for now it's back to monitoring my four different weather sources to reduce the possible surprises for tomorrow.