Where I have ridden.....

Monday, May 31, 2010

Route 66, Day 4, It has begun......

First day on the Route, we made the state line out of Joplin. Since we took the very old alignment of 66, there was not much of a state line sign, so this is what I got instead:



The little bit of Kansas that we went through actually provided some fairly interesting stuff. We ran across this little place called 4 women on the Route. They are the ones that provided the truck that was the inspiration for 'Mater in the movie Cars. In fact, here is a picture of the truck that is featured in the DVD special features for the movie:




Next we went off toward the Rainbow Bridge. It is the last single span concrete Marsh Arch style bridge left on the route. It is only one lane wide, so only southbound traffic gets to go over it. Here is the shot:




After the bridge it was pretty much time to head for Oklahoma. There was some pretty scenery on the way, when we got to this little town called Commerce, OK there was a bit of a wrong turn. This put us on a very old section of 66 called the Ribbon Road. This was interesting on the motorcycles. The road is pretty much gravel with a strip of 90 year old asphalt down the center. It was like off-roading with the wrong bike. I am sorry I couldn't get pictures of it, but there was no way we were going to stop that long on that road. It was 13 miles of terror at 10 mph. After we made it back to real pavement, it was on to Foyil, OK to take a look at the totem pole. Then on to Catoosa to see the whale. Here is the whale, I will get the totem pole up later:



After Catoosa, it was a matter of going by interstate through Tulsa and then back off at Sapulpa, OK. Then we followed 66 all the way to Pop's 66 and had some dinner. Then we just hauled it to the hotel by interstate. Tomorrow is going to be the first long leg across the plains. This is likely going to be nasty. Hopefully I will post more from Amarillo, but likely I will wait till I get to Tucumcari, NM for a longer post. Here is a quick preview of all of the pictures I got:




And here is our route for today. 270 or so miles....


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Ok, time to fall down and sleep lots.

Have fun,

Dave

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Route 66, Day 3. Tomorow it begins.

Ok, We are in Joplin. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we start down 66. The goal for tomorrow is to make Yukon, OK. I have noticed over the years that when you are riding, you tend to obsess over the stupidest things. When you are trapped in a helmet with yourself, there is not much else to do. Around mile marker 82, there is a sign that reads "Ponder 1 mile". I realize that this is the exit that takes you to Ponder, TX, but I still spent the next 300 miles pondering 1 mile. My brain is certainly poo. I thought about stopping to get a picture of it, but it was near midnight and that was on I35 in the middle of nowhere.

Today it was a fairly leisurely ride up Route 69, it really exists I am not making it up. We only covered about 125 miles or so today, but they were the last miles off the route for another week or so. I got my state line pic for Missouri, and I updated my map above. Tomorrow night I will update the map with Kansas too.

Here is my state line pic for Missouri:



Here is the route for the first 3 days, A->B Friday, B->C Saturday, C->D Sunday.


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Have fun, I will update with pictures tomorrow night.

TTFN

Dave

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Route 66, Day 2 Here we go......

Day one was just a grind up to Denton,TX so we could get some miles behind us. Day 2 was a straight shot to Muskogee, OK. Tomorrow is a straight shot to Joplin, Mo so we can start Route 66 on Monday. Check the "Where is Dave" link on the right side column to see where I am and see the route that we are taking. It is more or less real time tracking, usually about 15-30 minute lag.

Enjoy

Dave

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Quick trip to Ft Worth

I decided to take a quick trip up to Ft Worth to see family. It was a rather nice little ride. It was all interstate miles, just a chance to shake down a bit more before the big trip. I am starting to get used to the tank bag. It is kind of nice to be able to lay on it when I am tucked. I also ran the wire from the Garmin mount under my tank so I plug my headphones in under my seat now, and I don't have a wire flopping around in the wind. That was very nice.

The only real out of the ordinary thing that happened was a butterfly. I actually saw it come over the semi in front of me, get caught in the slipstream, and get sucked into the vortex behind my fairing. Basically, I got a cup-shot from a butterfly. I felt the impact, I kept going. When I made it to Waco, I pulled off to get coffee and gas, and here is what I saw:



Wow, one in a million shot.....

Two out of Three Ain't Bad.....

Here is the quick slide show of the pictures that were taken for the weekend.




After the top end work on the R90, there had to be a shakedown trip. This was it, and it was fun. Angela and I started off toward Kerrville to see if we could knock out all 3 sisters in the weekend. It really isn't that far, but it is a bit of work due to the curves.

Day one was just the ride out there. It was just a nice leisurely ride. No big excitement. It was nice to discover that the little switchback on Hamilton Pool road has finally been re-surfaced, it was actually almost easy this time. The bit thing that stood out on this leg of the trip was the flowers. All of them. We managed to go right at the end of the bluebonnet season, and right when everything else was coming up. There wasn't a real safe place with a lot of flowers to get pictures, but the smell of all of those flowers was trapped in my helmet with me for a couple days. Here was the route we took out there:


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Day 2 was the loop out into the hills. We got a late start on the ride due to the fact that a hailstorm blew through with 70mph winds Friday night, and we went out at 3am and moved the bikes under the hotel awning just before the hail started falling. We got the bikes back into parking spots and locked down in time to be in bed by 4:30. Needless to say, we started Saturday late. We decided to cut one of the sisters off because it required some back tracking and we wanted to take a more leisurely ride that day and get some pics. Here is the shot of the R90 in front of a huge field of yellow flowers and the hills in the background:






One of the big gripes everybody who rides has is that they get lots of pictures of their bike, and lots of pictures of them beside their bike, but no pictures of them actually riding. Well, there is a photographer that has set up on the curves on Ranch Road 337 to get some shots of you as you go through. You pay to download them, but it really isn't that bad. Here is the shot of me going into the big curve:



And here is the shot of me coming out of the curve taken by the second photographer.





After we got to Camp Wood, we decided to go back to Leakey, The Home of the Leaky Eagles (don't look up), and just take RR 336 north instead of RR335, that way we could go check out the Rio Frio Bike Stop.

The trip back up 336 was very.....busy. There are a pretty good number of curves out there, and they are fairly high stakes. This was the road where I met the redneck squirrel. Coming out of a curve I see a squirrel running across the road. About the time he gets to my front wheel, he jumps up and bounces off my fork leg and then runs back off the side of the road where he came from. I just know that somewhere off in those bushes there was a raccoon holding that squirrel's beer.

Getting back to the hotel went smoothly. There is so much awesome scenery out there. If you haven't been, go...if you have been, go back. Especially in the spring.

Here is the route for Sat:


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For the trip back, we decided to take the long way around. We went up TX16 all the way to Llano, and then wrapped back around 1431 through Marble Falls. TX16 north from Fredericksburg is not incredibly curvy, and it is pretty flat, but the scenery is actually fairly nice, especially when the flowers are out. Here is our route back home.



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