Countdown!

Bikes are packed, GPS is loaded up. Boys are prepped.
We hope to hit the road about 7 am tomorrow, shouldn't be a problem.

Tomorrow is a fairly long day, with chances of rain, although I think we can stay pretty dry until we get close to our destination, Jackson, Mississippi.

Sunday will likely start out in the rain, it will be a nice leisurely ride up the Natchez Trace to Nashville Tennessee where we plan on spending two nights. I think we will get some effect of tropical storm Fay on this travel day.

After Nashville we will make our way to Bloomington, Illinois, and along the way we will get a rare "X" in Xenia, Il for our ABC's of touring.

Then its from Bloomington to 3 nights tenting in West Bend, Wisconson, just north of Milwaukee where we will use as our home base for the 25th HOG and 105th Harley Davidson Anniversaries.

Departure is Saturday after three days of camping on the ground with a nearly 500 mile ride to (hopefully) Jefferson City, Missouri.

Finally the last day, almost 600 miles, into home. Once we get home, with the mileage in around Milwaukee, we should have pretty much travelled approx 3000 miles.

Monday Labor Day will be a day of rest hopefully, although it does provide a buffer if we cannot complete the 1000+ miles in 2 days.

Here is the approximate map of our route.

Trip Preparations

Less than one week away. My bike is ready to go, changed my fluids on the weekend, didn't really need to, but fresh and I know what's in it after it being in the dealer. Running my preferances, Mobil 1 V-Twin, Mobil 1 75-90 Gear oil, and ATF. Shifts smoother, runs a bit cooler. I should probably lube my cables if I get a chance this week.

Tough part is going to be packing, as we are tenting 3 nights. I have the mid-size tent and 2 pads. Darlene wants to take sheets/blankets instead of sleeping bags. Weather should be warm enough we shouldn't need too heavy a jacket, but rain is a concern any time of year. Actually though, long johns may make good pjs in <60F nights. Time to start laying it out tonight and making it all fit.

I was thinking we could do laundry maybe twice, night before, and maybe after tenting if necessary. Laundry would potentially mean less clothes to pack. Need a towel as well. Not a lot of room on these bikes! Especially since I have to bring my camera. Would really like to bring my zoom lens since my 28-105 is broken but that takes up quite a bit of room.

Routes are planned as are accomodations till our return leg, but I want to leave that open as I the two return legs are 500 miles each. Not sure after camping that a 500 mile day is likely.

Minesweeper game

You all know the classic Windows game, Minesweeper, right?

I received an email today with a bunch of humourous military photographs. This one in particular almost made me fall out of my chair.



Would that be considered cheating?

Measureable rain and coat hangers

What do measureable rain and coat hangers have in common? Absolutely nothing. But I'll get to each of those points in a bit.

Haven't posted in a while, not that we haven't been busy, but no real riding. We finished up summer hockey last week, for the first time in many seasons, possibly since we have been playing at Richardson, neither the C or D team made the playoffs. Not a bad thing I guess, I can probably use the rest, although I felt like I needed it more at the end of the fall season than this past season. Maybe in part because I had a good final game on Saturday. My slapshot was on and I got an assist of our first goal, slapshop off one of our players into net, and the second was a rush from behind our net after stealing the puck with a blistering slapshot after crossing the offensive blue line into the top right hand corner. Mike K said Hate got the assist. Ha!

We finally had some measureable rain yesterday. Enough even that our kickball game got cancelled. According to the Hippy Dippy Weather Man (George Carlin any one remember that skit?) we had 0.25 inches of rain. Woo Hoo. This on the tail of roughly 28-30 days of +100 temps. I think we set records on at least one day if not two. But it was only 107 that day! We could use some more rain however, as my lawn is taking a beating even with some watering and I need to kill some crabgrass.

I felt like a criminal this morning. Ryan couldn't open his drivers door on his truck. The passenger door has been that way for some time. So effectively he was locked out and vehicleless. I had a look, the key turned but did not move the post. No slimjims here and I don't have a clue how to make one but fortunately he had knobs on his post and a very small gap when we pulled on the door to fish in a coat hanger. I don't think I've ever successfully opened a car door like this but within about 2 minutes success. Now getting the door fixed was another story but after about an hour, some zip ties and beat up arms (unibody construction) we have a working door lock. Will tackle the passenger door another time, as its likely the same issue and would be nice for Ryan to have an alternative other than a coat hanger if it happens again.

The end is also near for the fence project. Yay! One more weekend, we did some this weekend, last corner, and it was quite hot. I was able to re-use some of the damaged panels so that helped out quite a bit, although they did not line up exactly, but its in the "far" corner so is essentially un-noticeable, especially from within the yard. Basically just 3 panels left to build, another 8 hours or so over a weekend.

No riding of late, Darlene got her bike ready for our trip this weekend, I need to do my fluids, etc this week. I have everyting I need just need to take the time and body fluids to get it done. Also need to get the gear down to figure out what to bring and how to pack it all. Me thinks laundry half way through might be needed to save on space....

Big screen TV

Forgot, we finally broke down and bought a big screen tv. A nice SAMSUNG LCD, 52 incher.... Looks great, we'll get it calibrated in a month or so. So part of that is to set it up upstairs, on the wall and finally I can set up a real home theater. I hope to set up the sat speakers this weekend, at least in temporary mode. I was up in the attic to see about coming down through the wall and its not going to be an easy task as that wall is basically under one of the AC units and its greatly built up. I am not sure I can actually access the header of the wall.

Am swapping out our cable box to HD today as well, still need to figure out all the options on this beast in order to get the best picture out of it. I must say, that so far the XBOX 360 looks and sounds incredible on it!

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

Sixteen days over 100F in July, and August is starting off with a bang. At least the first 3 days over 100, and likely many more to come. The lawns and trees are starting to show the heat stress as well, and its not worth the water and cost to maintain. Will keep watering a couple of times a week but am not going to worry about keeping a green lawn, the real downside is that I have not been able to fertilize and weed and feed to kill the weeds that are notoriously drought tolerant!

The girls are off for their weekend this weekend. A 3-4 hour ride tomorrow. They are taking off a bit late so their portion after lunch should be quite toasty, however they'll still reach their destination fairly early in the afternoon. The ride home Sunday shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I have a bit of yard work tomorrow, would like to sod a couple of patchs, but don't know if they'll take with this heat, and I have some yard trash to clean up. If I can get all that done before lunch that will be about all that can be done in the heat, then its basking in the pool time.