Day 58: Aurora, CO

Hastings Minnesota is a cute little town. I was surprised to discover that it was actually its own community, and hasn't yet been swallowed up by suburbs expanding from the twin cities. My uncle showed me around town a bit, down by the locks and the river park, and the small lake, as well as downtown and out by the old mill. It's kind of strange that I've known my Uncle Bob for twenty years, and I think this was the first time we'd ever had a real conversation. It turns out he used to ride motorcycles as well. It was also the first time I'd had a conversation with my cousins Kelly and Christian. Last time I saw them I think they were seven and four, so we didn't have much to discuss at the time. My cousin Chris had been in Rapid City South Dakota working on a documentary film and purely out of coincidence ended up visiting his family the same time that I was there, so I got to catch up with him as well. It turns out that we've been living just a few miles from each other for the past several years, but I haven't actually seen him since I was 14 years old. We all went to St. Paul for lunch one day so my aunt and uncle gave me a brief tour. It's a really nice little city, a good mix of quaint and modern. My aunt loves old homes, so they took me up to Summit Hill to see the beautiful, huge gothic mansions made of bricks and stone. It was a short but lovely visit, and I'm grateful for a chance to see my aunt and the rest of her family. On my way out of Hastings I wandered through Minneapolis for a few minutes and wasn't all that impressed. It's a little larger and a lot less charming than St. Paul. It's like a smaller, less interesting version of St. Louis.

The ride from Hastings to Dickinson was mostly pretty boring. Fargo is smaller than I expected, and didn't seem to have much personality, though I guess it's not really a fair judgement to make from the interstate. I had a long way to go that day (566 miles) and it didn't look like it was worth stopping to investigate. Just east of Bismarck the landscape starts to become intersting, and is actually quite beautiful. I was lucky enough to pass through during the short time of year when everything is green. I never thought I'd say it, but I really liked North Dakota.

Apparently I arrived at the right time, because it was the start of Rough Rider Days, which is a week long festival including rodeos, demolition derbies, and other colorful events. My cousin is a Rangeland Management Specialist for the US Forest Service, so when we went out to see the badlands at Theodore Roosevelt National Park it was like having my own personal guided tour. I've never seen anything quite like the badlands, and the vast expanses of grassland to the south is also beautiful in its own way. I got to see a great storm too, not very flashy, but the hardest rain and strongest winds that I've ever seen. No golf ball sized hail though, which was disappointing to me, but good for everyone else. I went to my first real rodeo, and I think it was the first time I really understood the appeal of contemporary cowboy culture. Not that I'm about to go out and buy myself a big ol' hat or anything.

While in Dickinson I got a taste of the local cuisine, which in addition to good old-fashioned 'murican food includes things like borscht (I never thought beets and cabbage could be this good!), some kind of cream-based potato dumpling stew that I can't remember the name of, and fleischkuekle, which is basically a beef patty wrapped in pastry and deep fried, and it's absolutely delicious. I also had the opportunity to eat a buffalo dog for the first time. It was slightly better in texture than any normal hot dog, but at $7.50 with no sauerkraut, relish, or even mustard, it will probably be the last one I ever eat.  I actually had a lot of fun in Dickinson, but my cousin assured me that I just had lucky timing, and it's typically very boring.

When I left Dickinson I headed south to the Black Hills. I had a really wonderful route all mapped out, with lots of squigly lines and variations in elevation, and it was going to be the perfect ride. Except that most of the smaller roads that Google shows traversing the Black Hills National Forest turned into gravel, dirt, mud, or even grass once you got about 200 feet off the highway, so I ended up taking a much less interesting route which circumvented most of the forest and skipped Mt. Rushmore entirely. I've heard so much about Sturgis and Spearfish and Deadwood that I don't think they could have possibly lived up to my expectations. Spearfish is kind of a neat little town, but Deadwood is a horrible tourist trap of 'wild west' and 'gold rush' themed casinos with very little left of interest to me. All of the saloons that looked like they were worth stopping at were closed down and boarded up. It didn't improve my attitude much that I found myself in the middle of a thunderstorm. Once I got south of Deadwood the weather and the traffic both cleared up a bit, but the road wasn't as twisty in real life as it appeared on the map. When I finally made my way to highway 87 through Custer State Park that all changed though. Highway 87 is a great road, but you have to watch out for deer. They have a tendency to hang out in the ditches next to the road for some reason. I ended up camping at the Elk Mountain Campground, in Wind Cave National Park, which is beautiful and full of wild life. The buffalo and the antelope in particular are pretty fearless. At the campground I ran into an old biker from Texas named Wayne who had just retired and was now living his life on the road. He said he'd been saving money his whole life to do this, and it occured to me once again how lucky I am for the opportunity to do it while I'm still young. They had free firewood at the campground but I was never much of a boyscout and had to ask my neighbors for a lighter. After I somehow managed to break his lighter my new friend from the Netherlands offered to start it for me. In what seemed to be a typical European mix of old and new technology, he doused the firepit with lantern fuel and used a flint and steel to create a small explosion. With a nice warm fire started I realized I still had no cookware or utensils, so I got creative and invented something called Cowboy Nachos - beanie weenie on top of beef jerky.

Although Hot Springs South Dakota is a pretty neat little town the rest of the ride to Denver was relatively dull. The folks in Wyoming were all very friendly, but it's hot and boring, and though the country is pretty I didn't see anything that couldn't be found in more spectacular examples someplace else. Cheyene is a strange place. It's basically a small sea of suburbs surrounding an airforce base that's so vast its hangars can't even be seen from the interstate. I always assumed that Denver was in the mountains, since it's at such a high altitude, but it's actually on the high plains, just outside the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It's hot and dry, but it feels great to see some mountains again. Real ones, not like the misnamed little molehills in the midwest. I haven't seen real mountains since I left Tucson, and I haven't seen mountains with snow on them since I crossed the Sierras. I haven't seen this kind of traffic since Southern California either, but I'm a lot less excited about that.

Day 52: Hastings, MN

After being chastised and brow-beaten for failing to update my loyal fans, I've finally found some time to do a little writing.

I spent a bit longer in Chicago then I originally intended, due partly to weather and partly to my own disorganization and lack of planning.  But to be completely honest, after 7,000 miles I wasn't all that excited about jumping back on the bike right away to ride another 3,000 miles back home.  It was a much needed break, and gave me some time to do a little maintenance and a little cleaning, as well as have some fun and spend some quality time with my family.  Rather than trying to recreate a narrative of the past two weeks, I'll just list some of the highlights, not in any particular order:

I got to meet my cousin Andrew's wife for the first time, as well as my cousin Charlotte's husband and two sons.  My Uncle Dan and Aunt Audrey took us out to dinner at White Fence Farm, somewhere off of Joliet Road.  They serve the best fried chicken I've ever had, hands down.  I don't know exactly how they do it, but it's not a traditional batter.  Apparently they steam the whole chicken before they bread it and deep fry it in a pressure cooker.  The restaurant itself is huge, with seven or eight different dining rooms, and basically a small museum full of antiques, including some sweet motorcycles.  It was the first time I'd ever seen an Ariel.

I went to see a band called Catfight with my cousin Kristi.  It's a girl band that plays covers of everything from AC/DC to Greenday to Franz Ferdinand.  They're pretty talented musicians and they put on a great show.  The next day she helped me change the oil and air filter on my bike.  She has a little Kawasaki ZZR600, and I was hoping we could go for a ride, but her bike needs a battery and her registration is expired.  Maybe I can talk her into riding it out to Seattle next summer.

I went on a ride up to Lake Geneva with Uncle Kim & Aunt Terri, Uncle Jeff & Aunt Lynn, and my little cousin Kaira.  It was the longest I've ever ridden with a passenger, and apparently the longest ride she's ever been on.  Her father has a big Harley Davidson Electra Glide with a big comfy back seat, but she seemed to enjoy the sport bike quite a bit.  I think she has knee-dragger potential.  It was a beautiful day and a beautiful ride, and we had lunch at Popeye's across the street from the lake.  They've got great pulled pork sandwiches and unbelievably tasty apple pie.  The apple pie was so good it made the scoop of ice cream that came with it seem kind of pointless.

I went on a ride with Uncle Dan out to Rockford, then down to Dixon, and back to Elgin.  That was an absolutely beautiful ride.  Highway 2 between Rockford and Dixon is a nice winding road along the river.  Not exactly what I'd call twisty, but pretty good for Illinois.  We stopped at the John Deere Historical Site and I got to see one of my uncle's blacksmithing friends do a demonstration.  He gave me a little good luck charm to take with me.

One of my uncle's neighbors is an artist and author, and while I was staying there I read one of his books.  It's a collection of short stories and poems, and basically amounts to the insane ramblings of an angry old man.  It was great.  I tend to agree with the majority of his opinions.  He was having a showing/book signing at a gallery in Glen Elyn, so we went to that and I got to meet him and talk about his book, and what he went through to publish it.  He's a really interesting guy.  Afterward we went to the Bavarian Lodge for some authentic German fare.  I ordered the Braumeister's Platter, which included a bratwurst sausage, a thuringer sausage, a nockwurst sausage, a center cut smoked pork chop, and a slice of roasted pork, along with sauerkraut, red cabbage, hot german potato salad, sliced pumpernickel and rye, and a bowl of liver meatball soup.  Everything was great.  Then we went to Oberweiss Dairy for some home made ice cream.  The butter pecan was just about perfect.

Aunt Terri made the best oven baked chicken I've ever eaten, and some kind of cucumber and onion salad that she learned how to make from her mother.  Uncle Kim grilled up the most perfectly cooked pork tenderloin I've ever had.  Aunt Lynn made some delicious biscuits and gravy, maybe even better than my brother's, and some baked carmelized onions that were delicious.

I really enjoyed just sitting down after dinner and talking to my uncle, sipping the twelve year old scotch he's not allowed to drink anymore, listening to all his stories.  He has a story for everything, and usually more than one.  He's got drinking stories, cooking stories, boating stories, hunting stories, motorcycle stories, and all kinds of crazy childhood stories, which my mother insists are mostly exaggerations.  I've found that it's quite different getting to know my aunts and uncles as an adult and on my own, rather than in the context of a family gathering like weddings, funerals, and holidays.  I seem to have earned a bit of street cred with all my biker uncles for this trip, and especially for doing it on what they see as a completely uncivilized and horribly uncomfortable bike.  Uncle Dan took one look at it and exclaimed "I wouldn't give you fifty bucks for that thing!"  Oh well.  It's not for sale anyway.

On one of the rainy days I took the train into the city to meet my old boss from Safeco.  We had coffee and watched the rain, and caught up for a bit before she had to get back to work for more conference calls and meetings and reports, and all the things I'll probably never miss about my old cubicle job.  I spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering aimlessly, taking pictures of the buildings and bridges, and ducking into bars and pubs when it started raining too hard.  I found a really cool looking piano bar, but the bartender informed me that they didn't open until seven, and "oh, by the way, we have a dress code."  It was a nice little reminder that I was pretty far away from the west coast.

The ride to Hastings was nice, but I got kind of a late start and had to make some work calls every time I stopped for gas, so I didn't have as much time to explore Wisconsin as I was hoping.  I've heard a lot of good things about Madison and it would have been nice to wander around a little bit, but I guess that'll have to be another time.  Wisconsin is a beatufil state.  The roads aren't as straight and square, and they have nice rolling hills and cute little farm houses, dairy barns, and grain silos everywhere.  It's almost as picturesque as Missouri but it feels like it has a lot more personality.  I love the little towns in the midwest.  Every tiny town has a functional downtown, with a main street harboring more than just boring, kitschy little antique and gift shops.  As a result of a road closure I ended up on a detour and encountered the best twists and turns I've seen since Mt. Lemmon in Arizona.  It kind of caught me by surprise and I almost forgot how to ride them properly.  Riding along the river at sunset was beautiful, but as soon as the sun went down I was blazing my way through clouds of bugs again, just like Mississippi.  Maybe I'll hit another thunderstorm on my way to North Dakota so I won't have to wash my jacket all over again.

Day 37: Wheaton, IL

Eventually the rain in Memphis lightened up quite a bit, or at least enough that I would be able to see where I was going, so I just threw on all my rain gear and continued north.  Most of the rain was along I-55, so I wound my way northwest through Arkansas and Missouri until I hit US-67, which took me back northeast into St. Louis.  I think I may have figured out why Arkansas is the poorest state in the country.  In Mississipi I saw a lot of corn fields.  Across the river in Arkansas I saw a lot of neatly cultivated rows of dirt.  In all the heavy rain most of those neatly cultivated rows of dirt turned into lots and lots of mud.  I saw a domesticated zebra in Arkansas, just hanging out in a pasture with a bunch of mules and small horses.  One zebra.  Not even a pair.  It was possibly the strangest thing I've seen so far.  The folks in Arkansas are nearly as nice as the folks out on the bayou in Louisiana.  Everywhere I stopped people wanted to talk to me.  It was as if no one had ever seen a sportbike before, and the idea that anyone would ride one all the way from Washington state to their tiny little town in Arkansas was just unbelievable to them.  The girls at the gas station teased me about riding in the rain, the young guys wanted to know all about the bike, and all the old guys gave me somber warnings to ride safely, and be careful.

Missouri is a pretty state, and almost every view from the road could be called picturesque.  That being said, there's really nothing interesting about it.  Nothing significantly sets it apart from Mississipi, Arkansas, or Illinois, aside from the effort that they seem to put into maintaining that picturesque appearance.  Every lawn is trimmed, every house is neatly painted, even the grass growing along the highways seemed like it was actually tended and cared for.  I stopped in Fredericktown, which is a charming little community about 90 miles south of St. Louis, looking for a barbcue restaurant that my brother had heard about called The Pig.  Some yokels on the internet claimed that it was the best barbecue in the state, and worth the two hour drive from St. Louis.  Since I ended up on route 67 to avoid the rain, it seemed like providence.  With a little searching I was able to find the place, and it looked like what you'd expect from a drive-in barbecue shop that's been open since 1947.  When I saw the menu on the wall I thought it was a typo.  $2.40 for a pork sandwich.  When the price was confirmed, I thought I had hit the jackpot.  As soon as I saw it, I realized why it was only $2.40.  It was about two ounces of meat squished between two pieces of white bread and grilled in a sandwich iron.  I finished it in about two minutes, and when the girl came back and asked if I was done with my plate I said 'yeah, unless you want to put a couple more sandwiches on there.'  I figured for two and a half bucks I could sample just about everything on the menu.  All said and done, I had a 'Brown' which is theoretically made from just the edge of the pork shoulder, so it has the most smoke flavor, a 'Combo' which is basically a Brown with a slice of american cheese melted on top, a fried catfish sandwich, pulled pork, and coleslaw, along with a couple bottles of soda.  I hadn't eaten anything all day because I was anticipating the best barbecue in the state of Missouri.  After making my way through three sandwiches that were good, but less than impressive, and a tiny little dixie cup full of coleslaw that wasn't any good (and cost me a $1.75) I decided to forego the white bread and just orded the pulled pork without the sandwich.  It took the little girl a couple seconds to catch on, but she asked the cook to 'throw in a little extra, cuz he seems kinda hungry'.  The pulled pork actually turned out to be pretty good.  It was the only thing that really impressed me, which is nice, otherwise I would have walked away incredibly full, but not very satisfied.  It was a typical midwest style, with smoked, shredded pork stewed in a thick, sweet, tomato based sauce, and it was really pretty delicious.  I ate a ridiculous amount of food and the bill was still five dollars less than my rib dinner in Memphis, so I can't complain too much.  Besides, to find this place I ended up on a tiny little highway out in the country which turned out to be the best road of the entire day.  Perfect blacktop, smooth, winding turns, and beautiful farm houses and ponds and orchards and pastures to my left and to my right.

I made it into St. Louis about an hour after dark and rode straight past the Arch.  It's huge.  I was never really that impressed by it before.  I always thought 'It's a big arch; who cares?'  But it's absolutely enormous, and when it's lit up at night it's quite pretty.  St. Louis is a beautiful town, probably the prettiest city that I've seen so far.  Even some of the more beat up neighborhoods south and west of downtown are full of old brick houses and tenements that show a lot of character and soul, even if they're not so well kept or restored.  I decided to take a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery while I was there.  I'm not a big Budweiser fan (in fact I kind of hate it) but it's the biggest brewery in all of North America, so I had to check it out.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the tour is free and even includes two free beers in the tap room at the end of the tour.  Free beer always tastes better.  I've probably been to more than thirty breweries in four different countries, and this was by far the biggest and the nicest.  Parts of it were built in the 1880s and they've built new additions to it as late as the 1990s, but they've done a really nice job of maintaining the architectural style.  A lot of the brewery sits on land that was originally part of the Busch family estate, and some of the existing buildings were part of that estate.  Regardless of what you think of their beer, the brewery has a lot of history, and it was fun to see beer being made on such a massive scale.

After my brewery tour I had lunch at a place called Penny's BBQ, famous for their ribs and their pork steak.  I'd never heard of a pork steak before and I assumed it was basically a big pork chop.  It's a little more than that.  The chef used to be a meat cutter for Kroger, so he cuts every pork steak himself, and each one is smoked individually, then grilled and smothered in a honey barbecue sauce.  It's listed on the menu as an 18oz Pork Steak for $10.99, but I swear I've had 20oz porterhouse steaks that weren't as big as this.  It was enormous, about two and a half inches thick and the size of an oval dinner plate, and there was only one tiny little bone in it.  They had home made potato salad and coleslaw to go with it.  The potato salad was possibly the best I've ever had, and when I told my mother about it she was horrified.  Her coleslaw is still better though.  I don't know how they got the potato salad to be so rich without being incredibly dense and pasty.  I think they may have used whipped butter.  I don't know, but it was damn good.  The pork steak was also wonderful, and for the first time in my life I felt like I may have eaten enough pork for one day.  But that didn't stop me...

After all that food I had no choice but to go back to the hotel and take a nap.  Nap taken, I went downstairs to the lobby where they had free drinks from 5:30 to 7:00.  St. Louis is quite a beer town, but you'd better be willing to drink Bud, Bud Light, or Busch. Cuz that's what you get.  I heard a rumor that President Obama had 150 pizzas flown from a little place in St. Louis called Pi (the mathematical symbol) all the way to Washington, D.C. because it's his favorite pizza in the country.  Normally I don't pay much attention to celebrities' opinions, especially politicians, but for a Chicago kid to say that his favorite pizza comes from St. Louis, well, that's a pretty gutsy claim.  So I had no choice but to check it out.  The place itself drove me nuts.  It's in a trendy, gentrified part of town and was packed wall to wall with ageing yuppies and rich young hipsters, and is the kind of pizza place that has a bigger wine list than menu, but before I finished my first beer a seat opened up at the bar so I seized it and settled in to wait for my pizza and observe the crowd.  The bartender confirmed the rumor that it was, in fact, Obama's favorite pizza, but rather than having 150 pizzas shipped to Washington he had the chef and kitchen crew flown out to Washington D.C. and they cooked the pizzas there.  Much more sensible.  Anyhow, I ordered the South Side Classico (deep dish), which came with onions, green bell peppers, italian sausage, and of course mozarella.  The sauce was incredible.  It had huge chunks of tomato and tasted strongly of fresh basil and wasn't overly seasoned with garlic or oregano.  The crust was just right, crispy on the outside where it seared on the pan, but fluffy and chewy on the inside.  I can't however, say it's the best pizza in the country.  Too much sauce, not enough toppings.  It's a deep dish.  The reason you make a deep dish pizza is to fit more toppings on it.  That's why they were invented.  I could barely taste the sausage, and there weren't nearly enough peppers or onions on it.  It was still a fine pizza, just not the best in the country.

The following day, having exhausted my food and lodging budget for St. Louis, and still full from all the pork and pizza, I set out for Chicago, or at least the outskirts thereof.  I took the interstate, which was boring, but after all, this is Illinois.  The highway engineers of the midwest have less imagination than a slice of wonderbread.  "Go straight for 15 miles.  Make a 90 degree turn to the right.  Go straight for three quarters of a mile.  Make a 90 degree turn to the left.  Go straight for 30 more miles.  If there's a hill, get the dynamite; we're going straight through it.  I'll be damned if this road is anything but flat."  Not that there are really any hills to worry about.  I saw an exit sign for Mt. Pulaski.  The closest thing to a mountain I could see was a hill about as tall as a three story apartment building.  There are bigger hills in Seattle that don't even have names, let alone aspire to the title of 'Mountain'.

I haven't been in the Chicago area for very long, but already it looks like my schedule is filling up.  We had a big family barbecue in Elgin yesterday with my mother's side of the family.  Tonight I'm taking my grandmother out for dinner.  Later this week I'll be having dinner with my father's side of the family.  Later still I'll be having lunch or dinner with my old boss from Safeco who moved here a few years ago.  And somewhere in between I'll be changing my oil & air filter, going for bike rides with all three of my uncles, and spending some time with all of my cousins.  I should still have plenty of time to relax before I head out west, finally in the direction of home.

Day 33: Memphis, TN

Last night I had dinner at The Bar-B-Q Shop on Madison in midtown Memphis.  Apparently it's not typical of Memphis style barbecue, but it's been rated number one in the city for the past several years.  The pork ribs came highly recommended, so I tried those.  They have a really unique style.  They actually sell their own dry rub mix and their own barbecue sauce, both called Dancing Pigs.  They use the dry rub to smoke it, but then they seem to brush it with a really thin coating of the sauce, then sprinkle more dry rup on top of that.  The result is a sweet, salty and very flavorful rack of ribs.  The coleslaw and bbq beans were the best I've had since I left Seattle.  It's hard to say for sure, but I think Stubbs in Austin was a little bit better, based just on the quality and texture of the meat itself more than the flavor.  After dinner I went to a cafe down the street and was enjoying a glass of ice tea on the patio when a strong wind blew in and I saw some pretty ominous clouds to the west, which happened to be in the direction of my hotel.  I figured I should try to get to the hotel before the rain hit, but I was about 5 minutes away when it started to fall.  By the time I got to the hotel, I was almost completely soaked.  At least it cleaned most of the Mississippi bugs off my helmet and jacket.  Since I woke up this morning it's been raining hard, so I've just been passing time in the hotel lobby, drinking coffee and trying to plan my next stop in St. Louis.  It looks like a little break in the weather is coming, although it probably won't be completely dry until I get all the way into Missouri.

Day 32: Memphis, TN

My second day in New Orleans I managed to find a really nice Vietnamese man that was willing to keep an eye on my laundry while I rode my bike around the city and did a bit more sightseeing.  By the time I got back my laundry was done, and all I had to do was fold it up and pack back onto the bike.  I went back to the hotel and changed into some freshly laundered clothes, then hopped a shuttle down to the 'quarter again.  Following a suggestion from one of the locals never to eat at a restaurant on Bourbon Street, I wandered around until I found a nice little seafood bar a few blocks from the cathedral square.  It was an upscale place nicely maintained in the original art deco theme, but they had seafood and okra gumbo for only $4.50.  I followed the suggestion of a hand-painted sign on the wall and ordered a Dixie Beer to go with it, which was ice cold and absolutely delicious.  The gumbo was better than mine, and maybe better than Celestine's, but I doubt it was the best that the city had to offer.

I wanted to sample some more gumbo, so I wandered around a bit more looking for a place called The Gumbo Shop, but couldn't find it.  I did, however, wander into a place called K Paul's Louisiana Kitchen.  Apparently it's a pretty famous place, but I didn't puzzle that one out until I recognized the chef's picture on the wall near the bar.  They had some kind of chicken & sausage gumbo on the menu, but I was too intrigued by a couple appetizers to even think twice about the gumbo: pan fried rabbit tenderloin with a creole mustard sauce and sauteed spinach, and buffalo fried frog legs with onion rings.  I couldn't make up my mind so I ordered both.  They brought out a plate with a little southern biscuit (basically a really sweet cornbread muffin), a jalapeno roll, a plain white roll, and a molasses walnut muffin.  The southern biscuit was probably the best of them, but the molasses walnut was the most unique and interesting.  The rabbit tenderloin, frog legs and onion rings were all fried in what appeared to be a traditional southern buttermilk batter.  It was the first time I'd ever had rabbit.  It was like the best piece of chicken I'd ever had.  It has the texture of white meat, but the richness of dark meat, with none of the greasiness.  The buffalo sauce was more of a glaze, like it was made from hot sauce & honey instead of hot sauce and butter, like the buffalo sauce I'm used to.  For dessert I had half a slice of pecan sweet potato pie.  It's like a pecan pie, but instead of a custard filling it had a sweet potato filling.  It wasn't as good as Jason's pecan pie, and it wasn't as good as Sandra Dee's sweet potato pie, but it was good, and quite unusual.  Apparently it's so popular that people have it shipped all over the world, like Oprah and her Ezel's fried chicken (also good, but not worth express shipping from Seattle to Chicago).  As I wandered back in the direction of my hotel I walked directly past the Gumbo Shop that I was looking for, but was far too stuffed to even consider it.

The next morning I headed to the Cafe Du Monde for breakfast.  It was highly recommended by a freind (thank you Liz). The cafe is at the end of the French Marketplace, across the square from the cathedral.  It was the best cup of coffee I've had since I left California, but I couldn't convince them not to put cream in it.  I can't even remember the last time I had beignets, and these were hot and delicious, and covered in a mountain of powdered sugar.  I have to wonder how many 50 lb sacks of confectioner's sugar that place goes through in a single day.  It wasn't even a weekend and the place was packed at ten o'clock in the morning.  I wanted to stay in New Orleans one more day, but just couldn't afford it.  There's too much good food and good drink, and the cost of a comfortable bed is pretty steep.  So I headed north, toward Memphis, Tennessee.

After 4,900 miles and 31 days of traveling I ran out of gas for the first time out in the middle of the swamp about 40 miles outside of New Orleans.  I was feeling cheap and didn't want to fill up near the airport, thinking it would be less expensive to wait a couple more miles.  Eventually I started to get nervous and took the first exit I saw, which was for a town called Ruddock.  I saw the sign, and I saw the little dot on my map, but when I got off the freeway all I saw was about two dozen people fishing in the swamp under the overpass, and a a little side road going north.  The only signs around pointed back to the freeway.  I headed north for a few miles on that side road, and there was no indication of civilization anywhere in sight, so I turned around and headed back to the fishing hole apparently known as Ruddock.  I asked one of the fishermen if there was a gas station near by, and he told me there was a fueling dock in Manshac if I just kept following the side road north.  I turned around again and just as I was in sight of a few houses on my right and a big bridge in front of me the engine died and I coasted to a stop right in front of the houses.  There were no signs indicating where I was, and the only paved road aside from the bridge ended in front of the third house.  There was a little gravel road that crossed some railroad tracks toward a couple of boat houses, so I followed that, wondering if one them were the fueling dock.  One of them turned out to be a wildlife observation center, where a couple of guys were working.  They were kind enough to give me a ride across the bridge to the fueling dock, and let me use one of their gas cans to carry enough juice to get me to Ponchatoula, where they had a proper gas station.  In all my travels so far I've never met such friendly people as live out on the bayou.  It's really remarkable.

I hit a little bit of bad weather and got pretty soaked before I even had a chance to pull over and put on my rain gear.  Louisiana thunderstorms aren't like Texas thunderstorms, where they're over in 15 minutes, and you're dry again in another 15 minutes.  They're a lot more thorough, and the humidity ensures that it stays with you.  I stopped for lunch in a town called Amite, at a place advertising 'Old Fashioned Goodness Since 1947'.  I was standing around waiting for my fried catfish po-boy (which turned out to be about as big as my forearm) when the rainstorm caught up to me, and with renewed viciousness.  I ate my sandwich and drank my tea and stood around for a bit, but it showed no signs of letting up.  I was afraid that at this rate I'd never make it out of Louisiana before dark.  So I piled on all the rain gear and headed out into it.  It was coming down so hard that even with my jacket on and the rain gear over that, the droplets were stinging my arms and I could barely see anything but the lines on the road and the tail lights of the car in front of me.  I eventually outran it though, and about the time I reached Mississippi even the clouds were starting to break up.

As soon as I crossed the Mississippi state line I had a county sheriff 'escort' me all the way to other end of town, where he turned around and headed back the other direction.  He didn't pull me over or harass me, but I didn't exactly feel welcome.  Mississippi has some beautiful country, with rich red earth, rolling hills, tall pines and lush green pastures.  Coming down out of the hills the river delta is beatiful too, with ravines and islands covered in trees which are themselves draped with vines and blanketed with ivy.  The people though are distinctly unfriendly in comparison to the folks on the bayou, and the small towns throughout the farm country along the river don't really have anything to offer.  Many of them don't seem to have a functioning gas station, or even a restaurant.  Just a lot of churches and a lot of mobile homes and occasionally a liquor store.  I thought maybe my poor impression of the place was just my own experience, but it was confirmed by an off duty sheriff that I ran into in Memphis.  He told me that law enforcement there is a good old boys' network, known for their profiling, and the people really distrust outsiders.  I had intended to spend the night in Greenville, but it wasn't a very pleasant place, so I decided to try one of the smaller towns up river.  The sunset was beautiful, but none of the towns I passed through appeared to have any kind of motel that hadn't been shut down for thirty years, and the people weren't getting any friendlier.  When the sun went down the bugs got so thick it was like riding through rain.  I could see them swarming in the headlights and hear them pinging against my helmet.  After cleaning my visor for the third time I decided to just head for the interstate and get to Memphis as fast as I could.

Memphis is a great place, with a lot of history and a lot of character.  It's a very industrial town and very proud of its heritage and its music.  I spent some time wandering around the south end of town looking for Graceland, and eventually found it.  I thought the house itself would be bigger, but the grounds are pretty expansive.  He built his own gymnasium and raquet ball court, with a full bar, of course.  I think there were 7 bars in the house, and one more on each of his two jets.  The house was built in the thirties, but most of it was remodeled in the seventies.  Not as classy as Don Corleone's mansion, but not quite as tacky as Tony Montana's.  Elvis's jet is about a hundred times more luxurious than Jimmy Carter's Airforce One.  Twentyfour-karat gold buckles on the seatbelts.  Suede upholstery. Two televisions, a galley, a bar, a lounge, a bed room, and a dressing room.  Probably as much square footage on his plane as my old apartment.  I got to see his motorcycle collection, or at least what's left of it.  A custom built chopper, two custom built Harley Electro Glides, and his orignal 1965 Honda Dream.  I stopped at the cafe and ate a grilled peanut butter & banana sandwich to round out my tour.

After Graceland I headed into downtown Memphis searching for Sun Studios.  I'm a bigger fan of Sam Phillips than Elvis, so I was pretty determined to see it before I left town.  Last I heard it had been shut down, but the building was still there in more or less original condition.  I was happy to find out that it's since been reopened as a museum, and then a few years ago once again became a fully functional recording studio.  The tour at Sun cost about a third as much as Graceland and involved a real human tour guide.  It was really a lot of fun, and full of new facts and legends about the old kings of rhythm & blues and rock & roll.  We got to listen to some clips from Sam Phillips' personal recording library, out takes from recording sessions with Elvis and Carl Perkins and such.  It's odd that even though Graceland was Elvis's home, the recording studio that made him famous felt much more connected to his true personality, maybe because it had none of the layers and layers of opulence and glamor that he later surrounded himself with.  I guess it's easier for me to identify with a 21 year old kid putting all of his passion and energy in to the one thing that he loves most, instead of a fat, aging man in pursuit of the newest flavors of decadence.  Perhaps ironic then, that I bear more resemblance to the latter?

Day 30: New Orleans, LA

I woke up in San Antonio a couple of days ago intending to go downtown and check out the famous River Walk and of course the Alamo.  Downtown San Antonio really doesn't have much to it.  A lot of the old buildings are really neat, but it seemed oddly empty aside from tourists, and some sort of small parade going on right in front of the Alamo.  I'm not big on parades, and I'm not big on paying for parking, and for some reason I was really anxious to get out of Texas, so I just left.

Austin is a really neat town with a lot going on, even on a saturday morning.  There were hundreds of people downtown working, shopping, eating, drinking.  There were hundreds more down by the river, where they have a huge park, or really a string of parks on the banks across from downtown.  I never did find 'The BBQ Captiol of Texas!' but I did find a biker bar called the Dirty Dog Saloon, which directed me to Stubbs BBQ a few blocks away.  Stubbs was amazing.  The brisket was of really high quality, perfectly marbled so that it was tender, juicy and buttery without being at all fatty.  The pork ribs were meaty and juicy and just plain great.  It was served 'dry' with no sauce, but it was anything but that.  They used a really spicy and flavorfull dry rub on it.  There was a bottle of homemade sauce on the table, which I tried, but it wasn't anything special.  The mashed sweet potatoes were delicious, and topped with fresh walnuts, and the mac & cheese was creamy and cheezy and wonderful.  I think it was the only meal I ate that day.  I had intended to spend the night in Austin, but again I was compelled to continue on for some unknown reason.  On the way east I met a couple riding a big harley, who were kind enough to be my guides and help me stay on the right highway during the tricky parts, and recommended a hotel in Beaumont.  It was a long, but pleasant ride.  East Texas is really quite nice.  Once you get east of Huston (which I avoided) the countryside is really lush and green, and there were little yellow wildflowers growing along the side of the highway that smelled wonderful.  Not like cows at all.

I woke up early the next day and left Beaumont, and soon I was in Louisianna, in the bayou country.  There was a really nice breeze coming in from the Gulf, and view crossing the bridge into Lake Charles was really cool.  I was excited to try some cajun food, but I figured I should get further into the bayou first.  I was lucky enough to pick out a highway on my map that turned out to be one of Louisianna's official scenic byways, winding between lakes, and over rivers, and through tiny little towns.  I had forgotten that nothing in the south is open on Sundays, but they leave all their signs lit up, which is confusing.  I ended up stopping at three different places before I found a seafood shack that was actually open.  So it was cajun fried shrimp and fried chicken for lunch, then back on the highway.  Abut 80 miles outside of New Orleans I ended up talking to a crusty old biker at a gas station for about 30 minutes who gave me directions to get to New Orleans using scenic highways that aren't on the map, running straight through the swamp.  It seems like people on the bayou just sort of throw all their garbage into the swamp. Tires, coolers, radiators, sheet metal, beer cans, whatever.  It all goes into the swamp, which is a shame, I guess, but in a way it really adds to the swampyness of it.

When I got to New Orleans I followed the signs to the Casinos, thinking there would probably be some cheap hotels nearby.  I ended up getting stuck in a traffic jam that was due to a huge street fair on Cliborne Ave, which runs underneath the freeway and seems to separate the french quarter from the projects.  There were thousands of people there and beer vendors, daquiri vendors, and food vendors.  You could get any kind of food you wanted, so long as it was cajun and came off the back of a truck.  There were hundreds of bikers, and dozens of motorcycle gangs.  Almost all of them were on Hyabusas, with a few GSXR 1000s and a couple of ZX14s and one harley and two custom built choppers.  Every one of the was dripping with chrome and custom paint jobs and neon lights and just completely tricked out.  Everywhere you went you could hear guys popping their throttles and winding up their engines, and doing burnouts and wheelies.  They were weaving through the traffic and squeezing between cars like the squids up in the Bay.  I kind of stuck out, being the only white guy riding a stock, stripped down 600 with a hundred pounds of gear loaded onto it, but nobody seemed to care.  I got tired of listening to my engine overheat, so I took a right (having no idea where I was) and ended up in the french quarter.  I found a bar with a couple of bikes parked on the sidewalk in front of it, so I stopped and asked a guy on a harley if he knew of a decent hotel in the french quarter.  He said he was born and raised in New Orleans, and he wouldn't stay in the french quarter.  About 6 other locals who worked at the bar agreed with him, and suggested I stay in a little town just west of New Orleans, about 15 minutes away.  I ended up on the wrong freeway, so I got off and tried to turn around and ended up stuck in the middle of the street fair again.  This time some friendly people encouraged me to just zip my way through traffic like all the other bikes, because the cops were too busy to care and the people in cars couldn't do anything about it.  Eventually I made my way through and ended up finding a hotel in Downtown, or the CBD (central business district) which is actually Uptown.  I found that out last night when I was trying to make my way back from the french quarter.

The french quarter is pretty amazing.  The buildings themselves are just incredible, and as I was picking my way through some of the side streets and boulevards I found myself thinking that it might actually be a nice place to live.  There are markets and art galleries and drug stores and even a hardware store.  When I made my way back to Bourbon Street that thought pretty much went away again.  Bourbon Street is a really odd mix of a few locals seeking their own debauchery in some of the smaller bars on the side streets, and tourists who are acting like teenagers whose parents have left town for the weekend.  Teenagers with hundreds of dollars to spend on booze and hookers.  I was only solicited once, and I don't know if that was luck or an insult.  Maybe the curious and distainful look on my face gave me away as the wrong mark.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy myself.  I drank absinthe for the first time.  No hallucinations, but it did make my mouth feel funny.  Surprisingly most of the bars on bourbon street don't seem to have any good bourbon.  I did find a rum bar that was offering tastings, so I couldn't pass that up.  I ended up talking to a couple of bartenders that invited me out for a drink after their bar closed down, so I got a little insight into the real lives of the people who work in the french quarter, and how to deal with the most corrupt police force in America.  Seems that most of the people who work in the french quarter are originally from somewhere else.  If the aftermath of hurricane katrina was anything like 5AM on Bourbon street I'm surprised they ever managed to clean the place up.  The people cleaning up the streets hate you.  You can see it on their faces.  The locals who are coming and going to work are afraid of you, because they have no idea what you might do, what you might think that you can get away with.

I've decided to stay in New Orleans another night, since I didn't really get any sleep.  Today's mission is laundry and gumbo.  Tomorrow I go north, and begin Part III.

Day 27: San Antonio, TX

Well, I found a Triumph dealer in Boerne (pronounced Bur-nee) which is a bit northwest of San Antonio, but they didn't have a chain and sprocket set for a Speed 4, and had no idea if anything they had would fit.  They said if they could find a place in the state that had one they could get it within a couple days, but if they had to order it from England it would take about two weeks (as was the case when I broke a foot peg last summer).  So I called the Triumph dealer in Austin.  They had the parts, but their service department was booked solid for the next three weeks.  So my only option was to ride 80 miles to Austin on a slipping chain to buy the new parts, then 100 miles back to Boerne to get it installed.  On the way back from Austin I followed the signs to Boerne, which turned out to be the long way around.  It could have been an incredibly pleasant ride through the country, and 'Old Towne' Boerne is a neat little place full of bier halls & brat hauses that would have been fun to check out.  As it was, I was too nervous about throwing a chain, running out of gas, and arriving at the dealership too late to really enjoy it.  But I made it, and with some time to spare, and Chris & Ceasar at Alamo Triumph took good care of my bike.  The folks at Lone Star Triumph in Austin were very friendly too, and as helpful as they could be.  Riding on a new chain isn't as much fun as fresh tires, but it was a huge relief to hear and feel the bike behaving normally again.  I took a look at the old sprocket set after they pulled it off the bike.  The rear sprocket was all chewed up and the front sprocket was actually cracked in a few places.  For a while I was afraid my transmission was starting to give out as well, but it was just the chain rattling on the front sprocket.  This round of maintenance only cost me about $325.  Next up will be an oil & air filter change.  If I can find an oil filter somewhere besides a Triumph dealer I could probably get away with spending less than $100 for the whole deal.

San Antonio is full of barbecue joints; more than I could count.  And every person you ask gives you a different recommendation.  It became clear that I would have to just pick one.  So I picked one that was recommended that just happened to be closest to the motel, called The Smokehouse.  It's the real deal, alright.  You order at a window, they pull the food out of the smoker and slice it onto your styrofoam plate, give you a cup of sauce and some sides, along with pickles and onions and some plastic utensils, throw it all on a tray and off you go to a picnic table, each with its own roll of paper towels.  The meat itself was delicious, very smokey and tender.  The sauce was very tangy, but not very spicy.  The potato salad was good, the cole slaw wasn't.  The sweet tea at Sandra Dee's in Sacramento was was much better, but they do more of a Louisiana style sweet tea.  On the way to Austin today I saw a place claiming to be 'The BBQ Capitol of Texas!'.  I suppose I'll have to check that out tomorrow.

Day 26: San Antonio, TX

West Texas is a profoundly lonely place. I'm glad to have made it to San Antonio.

Yesterday I woke up in El Paso and headed east, then north, through the Guadalupe Mountains up toward Carlsbad. I had a small picnic lunch under the massive cliffs of El Capitan. I got to Carlsbad Caverns in mid afternoon and opted to walk down through the natural cave entrance. The mouth of the cave is large, but actually smaller than I expected. It's pretty spectacular though, with cacti and desert brush growing out of the cliff face, and dozens upon dozens of cave swallows zipping around, darting in and out and around the mouth of the cave in a dizzying frenzy. The chirping and chirping echoes and reverberates into quite an impressive ruckuss. It's a fairly long and steep descent, and about half way down my feet started to hurt. I was certain I'd have blisters by the time I was done. Next time I'll be smart enough to put my sneakers on first. The caves themselves were bizarre and spectacular, although not as eerie and dissorienting as I was hoping it would be. The paved walkways and handrails are nice, but it takes away a lot, if not most, of the fun and adventure inherent to exploring a cave. To be honest I had more fun crawling around and exploring the lava tubes southeast of Klamath Falls with nothing but a flashlight, even though the caverns and formations themselves weren't nearly as interesting. It was a good experience though, and I can't say I didn't enjoy it.

I made it back up to the surface in the late afternoon and continued on to Carlsbad, NM, which is an odd little town about 20 miles north of the caverns. I bought some snacks and lunch items for the road, then followed a recommendation to a local restaurant hidden behind a drive-in movie theater, completely unidentifiable from the highway. They had good barbacoa tacos, and excellent salsa, but I expected a little more from the mexican food in New Mexico. I thought about heading out to Dog Canyon to camp for the night, but I was afraid it would get dark before I had a chance to set up the tent, so instead I turned back toward Texas, where the beer is cheap and the speed limits are high.

I ended up spending the night in Pecos, Texas, which is about the saddest town I've ever seen. There was a town before I reached Pecos named Orla. Orla consists of about 25 buildings, and only three of those appear to be inhabitable. Of those three, only one seemed to actually be in current use. Pecos, on the other hand, is a town that seems to be desperately clinging to life, despite having spent the last several decades in decline. I found a dilapidated old bar advertising Disco Dances every Thursday through Saturday. Something tells me there hasn't been any disco dancing in Pecos since I was three years old. There were more broken down and dying buildings than I have ever seen, and some of the buildings that were actually lived in looked like they definitely shouldn't be. Purely by chance I ended up spending the night in the nicest motel in town, which for an extra five dollars was considerably nicer than the Motel 6 I stayed at in El Paso. The shower I took convinced me that I wouldn't be drinking any of the water in Pecos County, so I walked down the street to a gas station to buy a bottle of water. While I was there I ran into a friendly Mexican man who looked like he had personally killed three people and was responsible for the deaths of up to three more. He offered me some advice, and that advice took me to a bar at the other end of town. At the bar I met an incredibly freindly cook who claimed he made the best hot wings in Texas, and that he was living in Pecos on account of a few warrants out for his arrest in his home state. He later offered me his own advice: never trust any of the Mexicans in Pecos. Since I had been offered conflicting advice from two different felons in the same evening, I decided I should just get a good night's sleep and move on in the morning.

Today was relatively uninteresting, aside from a few small points: I saw the first patch of green, natural grass since leaving San Diego a week and a half ago. I nearly hit a flock of vultures that was startled away from its road kill; I had to swerve and duck to avoid getting a face full of tail feathers. I rode through my first Texas thunderstorm. It stung, and I was soaked, but I saw some pretty spectacular lightning, and half an hour later I was dry. I never knew it before, but parts of Texas are nearly as pretty as California. The entire area surrounding San Antonio looks almost exactly like central Oregon, except it's sunny and warm. The days in Texas feel significantly cooler than the days in Tucson, but the evenings seem much hotter and less pleasant. I think it's the humidity. About 60 miles outside of San Antonio I started to feel my chain slip occasionally, mostly when I'm slowing down quickly. First thing tomorrow, before the Alamo, before the barbecued ribs, I'll have to get my chain replaced. I'm due for an oil & air filter change anyhow. Hopefully I won't need a new sprocket to go with the chain, but I'm not holding my breath.

I just drank my first ever Lone Star Beer. Not so good, but not so bad that I wouldn't drink it for 82 cents. It's about on par with Old Milwaukee, or Milwaukee's Best. Better than Schmidt Ice, but not as good as Schmidt. Better than Camo.

Day 24: El Paso, TX

What a day. I bid farewell to Tucson and continued east for a while until heading south on highway 80. Tombstone was incredibly disappointing. Aunt Betty & Uncle Ron tried to prepare me for it, but it was absolutely horrible. I'm becoming convinced that Americans have no respect for their own history. It's more of an entertainment spectacle than historic landmark. I was annoyed by the children in the Boot Hill Cemetary treating like an amusment park rather than an actual cemetary, but I suppose there was nothing about the place to indicate to them otherwise. Apparently the town is in danger of losing its historical status because they've spent all their federal money building up tourist attractions rather than trying to preserve the historical character of the town.

Bisbee, on the other hand, is a beautiful and still vibrant mining town further south from Tombstone. I stopped for lunch at the Grand Union Hotel & Saloon for some local refreshment and also gained some local wisdom from an old timer riding an old Honda 200 twin. The town itself is built along the walls of a ravine, with a majority of its buildings still standing from the 1880s to 1920s. The Copper Queen mine still sits just outside the town, and has to be the biggest hole in the ground I've ever seen. I couldn't even see the bottom of it from the road.

I crossed into New Mexico for the first time. It's very much like Arizona, but they have dead grass instead of dirt, and weird little palm bushes instead of cacti. I also broke 3,000 miles on the trip meter, and got my very first speeding ticket on a motorcycle. I got tagged going 70 in a 55. I had no idea how fast I was going, or what the speed limit was. The road was straight and flat and there were no cross streets within 100 miles. But rules is rules I guess, and you gotta pay to play. Overall it was a very nice ride, though I'm a bit tired of looking at desert. Which I guess is bad news since I have about 700 more miles to cover before I get to the swamp. Maybe tomorrow's desert will be different.

I like Texas so far. I've never been here before. El Paso is a strange town. I got here just after seven and all of downtown was locked and shuttered. It seemed like if everything had been open it would have been an exciting place, but apparently everything shuts down right at six. I couldn't even find a restaurant open. I saw the border crossing. It's very different from the Peace Arch at the Canadian crossing. The outskirts of town seemd nice enough, if you like suburbs. El Paso's historic district is quite nice though. It reminds me of Queen Anne, but without all the yuppies. And a lot more dirt and dust. The whole town smells a bit off though, probably from the huge mill outside of town.

I've heard that the girls in Texas are very friendly, and so far it's been true. I finally found a place that I thought was serving dinner, but was, in fact, only serving drinks. The bartender was a very sweet lady who offered me free popcorn and helped me find the cheapest motel in town, then gave me directions to it.

The only place to eat within walking distance of the motel is an Arby's, so I have yet to sample any authentic Texas barbecue, or chili, or even any honest Tex-Mex.

Today I saw two jack rabbits and one tumbleweed, and an enormous hawk that looked like it had a four and half foot wingspan. The heat wasn't nearly as bad as the ride from San Diego to Tucson, or even crossing the Mojave. I wonder if I've started acclimating to it.

Day 23: Tucson, AZ

The first two days I was in Tucson it pretty much never stopped raining.  It was incredibly unusual weather for this time of year, but that didn't make it any more appealing to ride around in.  But I was able to spend some time with my aunt & uncle, and my grandmother, and swim in the pool a few times.  Granny and Aunt Betty taught me how to play Mah Jongg, but I don't think I'm good enough yet to make any money in Chinatown.  It finally quit raining Friday, so we decided to go up to Uncle Ron's cabin on Mt. Lemmon for the weekend.  To be honest, I was a bit intimidated by it after all the stories I've heard of people driving into the ravines and careless motorcyclists decorating the cliff walls.  I got to the top without incident though, and spent a good portion of the following day driving down, then back up again, then back down and back up, etc.  The speed limit is 35 all the way up the mountain, but I think that's on account of all the pedestrians and bicyclists. I'm not entirely convinced there are more than half a dozen corners on that hill that couldn't be safely taken at 50 mph with a little bit of caution and some practice.  If it weren't for all the traffic it would make a beautiful road race course, although I have to admit that the views were a little bit distracting on more than one occasion.  I went up to the ski lodge, which I found amusing since I haven't seen any snow within about 1,500 miles of this place.  I rode a ski lift for the first time, thinking I'd get some good photos from the top of the mountain.  It's nice and cool up on the mountain, about 25 to 30 degrees cooler than in the city.  The Blue Bomber once again proved capable of handling rough terrain, although we're not about to win any supercross rallies.  It's been a really nice week here in Tucson.  Tomorrow I'm headed down the highway again, although I haven't quite decided which highway yet.  I've been reading old newspaper articles from The Tombstone Epitaph all weekend, and I might have to check it out...

Day 17: Tucson, AZ

Yesterday I took the Blue Bomber up to OTD Cycle Sports of Orange County, on a recommendation from Don at I-90 Motorsports who sold me the bike.  Even though it was expensive Nate and Johnny and the guys in the service department did a great job and ended up giving me a pretty good deal.  The new tires feel great, the new brakes brake fast.

Today I bid farewell to San Diego and headed east on Interstate 8.  Riding through the desert between San Diego and Yuma was quite an experience.  It was a devilish, crushing heat with no shade for miles and miles.  The only breeze came in even hotter waves washing up from the south.  It was intensely uncomfortable, yet somehow slightly pleasant, like spending too long in a sauna.  By the time I got to Yuma, the heat had pretty much lost all of its appeal.  I thought to myself 'So this is what I have to look forward to between now and New Orleans, where it will be nearly as hot, but soggy and damp...great.'  Past Yuma the heat subsided slightly, or I just got used to it, but the miles between Yuma and Gila Bend on I-8 were incredibly unpleasant.  The sun was relentless, the wind was brutal, and I was not looking forward to another 240 miles of dirt.  Once I got onto highway 85 going south the wind relented, and so did the sun when I drifted beneath the shadow of the clouds.

Several times today I thought I was headed straight into a thunderstorm, soon to be the victim of a flash flood or a washout.  My luck held though, and all the way to Tucson I felt only a few drops of rain, and never bore the brunt of a desert thunderstorm.  Highway 86 going east from Why (it's a town, aptly named) is a really fun road for the first few miles, winding its way through rocky hills, then steeply down into Dome Valley.  Eventually it straightened out, but still had enough dips and bumps to keep me awake, and it offered a view of the desert that I hadn't seen before.  Taking the smaller highways added an hour or two, but it was well worth it.  If nothing more, the possibility of seeing something new and different was a tremendous boost to my attitude.  I'm exhausted and filthy, but it was a good ride.

Day 16: San Diego, CA

Yesterday was a big day for me.  Last summer my brother signed me up for Brickmasters, the official Lego magazine, and it came with a free pass to Lego Land, which happens to be in Carlsbad, about 30 minutes north of San Diego.  So yesterday I coerced my good friend Samantha to go with me.  I had been looking forward to this for a long time but didn't really know what to expect.  It was one of the strangest places I've ever seen.  The front entrance has loudspeakers blaring incredibly dramatic music thatsounded like something from a cheap TV version of Jurassic Park.  There were thousands of little children running around, which is something I generally try to avoid, but we were mostly able to ignore them.  I thought it would be more focused on actual legos, and less on children's entertainment.  My favorite part of the park by far was the Miniland, where they've built miniature replicas of cities like New York, DC, Las Vegas, and San Francisco.  It was really impressive.  A couple of the roller coasters were pretty fun, but Sam hated them.  Pretty much every ride in the park exits directly into a Lego store.  They had a little section that was kind of like a Lego museum, with some old sets, and examples of some of the factory equipment and production line.  We played mini golf, and that was pretty interesting.  Samantha came in 7 under par, and I finished significantly over par.  Now I owe her a bloody mary.  I was disappointed by the ratio of non-Lego versus Lego structures, but there was still a lot of really cool stuff there.  Not sure I'd pay the admission twice.

Today the Blue Bomber and I are headed up to Orange County to get her some new tires and maybe some brakes and hopefully replace the missing front fender bolt.  I was considering waiting until I got to my uncle's house in Tucson so I could borrow his tools and do the work myself, but I'm not thrilled about the prospect of traveling through 300 miles of desert on questionable tires and brakes.

Day 15: San Diego, CA

It's been a while since I've had a chance to spend some time updating the journal.  When I left Sacramento and headed for Turlock I took highway 16 east, then highway 49 south through the foothills of the Sierras.  Amador county is a perfect picture of golden rolling hills, dotted with huge green Oak trees and huge red tail hawks swooping above in the clear blue sky; it's the exact picture in my mind when I think of California as the Golden State.  I spent the night in Turlock with my friend Tim.  We stopped by to see his brother Tommy and his three boys that I haven't seen in about 5 years, then had some cheeseburgers and hit the rack.

I woke up early knowing I had a long drive ahead of me.  Stanislaus county smells like cows, but I made good time and before long I reached Visalia and headed east toward Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Forrest.  I missed a turn and didn't realize it until I reached an enormous lake that wasn't supposed to be there.  So I turned around and found the right road and headed south.  A few minutes later I missed another turn and ended up riding past Rocky Hill, a mound of dirt and rocks a couple hundred feet high covered in petroglyphs that's been used by local tribes for various ceremonies for centuries.  So after my second scenic detour I got on the right road and headed straight up in the Sierras.  If it weren't for the horrific road surface, it would have been the greatest stretch of twisties I've ever seen.  Unfortunately, I was too intimidated by the lumpy  road covered in sand and loose gravel to really push the corners, but it was a beautiful ride and I made it out alive, which I guess is what's most important.

The southern end of Sequoia National Forrest in the south Sierras is amazing.  Absolutely astounding.  Perfect road surface, perfect corners, third- and fourth-gear driving the whole way up the mountain.  It's like the Thunder Mountain ride at Disneyland, except it's real and a lot more fun.  I was going to camp at the south end of Lake Isabella, but made it there around 2:30 in the afternoon decided to keep going to Ridgecrest.

About an hour later I was in a tiny town at the northern edge of the Mojave Desert called Inyokern, about 15 minutes from Ridgecrest.  After a brief rest, and talking to the locals for a few minutes I decided that I could make it all the way to San Diego by the end of the day.  The Mojave Desert is unbelievably hot, even in May.  The northern end of the desert is beautiful and mostly pristine, then gradually is cratered with small towns mostly populated by dead and rusting cars and tractors as you go south.  By the time you reach the southern edge of the desert it's a hot, depressing mess of sprawl.

I reached San Diego around dusk, which is when the city is really at its most beautiful.  It's a bit like Las Vegas in the daylight, but not nearly as forlorn and desperate.  It was another long day, twelve hours on the road, and I was completely exhausted by the time I finally got off the bike.  The last two days in San Diego have been fun and relaxing.  I've been here several times before, but always on work trips or as a tourist.  This is the first time that I've had a chance to hang out with the locals and experience the city as its residents do to some extent.

Day 11: Sacramento, CA

The past few days in Sacramento have been a lot of fun.  All but one of my favorite places is still here, but all the cooks, bartenders, and waitresses are gone.  And almost every restaurant in the city has remodeled or painted or changed their sign.  Everything is familiar, but it's changed enough to seem strange and a bit disorienting.  Like if you woke up and found that someone had moved all of your furniture around.  My friend Lynn's old office downtown where I worked briefly is now a hotel room which you can rent for $159 a night.  I stopped by to see my old friend Alan at Megami and he still makes the most unique and tastiest sushi I've ever had, by far.  I went to the Streets of London, where they still have Fuller's ESB on tap, but they've added Sausage Rolls to the menu, which I've not had since I left New Zealand.  They also had battered pickles which were delicious, although different from what they serve at the Jolly Roger in Ballard.  The Farmers' Market is still going on every Sunday, and that's probably what I miss most.  That and the sunshine.  The markets in Seattle just can't be compete with this one.  The variety and quality of the produce is amazing, and it's typically about half the cost of a supermarket, or less.

Yesterday I went for a ride out on the river delta.  The weather was perfect and the landscape is beautiful. There are lot of neat little towns out there, although most of the shops are only open on weekends.  The roads are built on top of levees so you can see the river on one side and fields stretching out below you on the other.  When I get old I might buy a houseboat and live on the delta, and ride my bike along the levees until I miss a turn and careen headlong into a centuries-old orange grove. After that ride I can't wait to get to New Orleans and see the Mississippi River delta.

I got to spend some time with my old boss at Avis.  I even helped him wash a car or two while I was there.  When I walked in the door Marvin, who replaced me, was on the phone with a customer having the exact same conversation I had a thousand times before, and I have to say I don't miss it for a moment.

Today I'm packing up and leaving Sacramento to head for Turlock, a beautiful gem in the Central Valley, where I'll be visiting a few more old friends.

Day 8: Sacramento, CA

Today I learned that the best way to make it through a hangover is to take a three hour bike ride across the bay bridge up into the winding hills above Berkeley.  I also learned how to split lanes.  I'm still not sure that I'm quite comfortable with it, but when the alternative is roasting in the exhaust of some suit dummy talking on a cell phone parked in the middle of a freeway traffic jam, it's worth the risk.  At first it was terrifying, then convenient, then, in a very unsettling way, a lot of fun.  Riding through the streets of San Fran and Berkeley I got the sense that my friend Jarad has declared a moto-jihad, and has begun a full scale suicide mission to terrorize the citizens of the Bay Area armed only with a Ducati Monster 900.  It was pretty impressive to watch, when I could keep up, but I don't think I'll be adopting his riding style anytime soon.

When I packed up and headed for Sacramento my new lanesplitting tricks got me neatly through three more unbelievable traffic jams.  By this time the sun was hot and I was tired, sunburned, still hungover, and running late, so it wasn't exactly my most pleasant ride.  Still, it was more fun than being in a car.

Sacramento is hotter than I remember this time of year.  The city looks nicer now than it was when I left it.  The trees and lawns are greener, the sidewalks have been repaired, and the streets are cleaner.  Most of my favorite restaurants and hangouts are still here, but I've been back in Seattle now more than four years, and alot has changed.

Thoughts and Observations on Motorcycling

Even the best-written travel books are a dim reflection of the actual experience, and so I'm afraid this journal is also inadequate.  The experience of traveling by motorcycle is much more profound than that of traveling by car.  You don't simply see the weather change, you feel it change.  Often you feel it before you see it.  I can feel the cold of the rain on my knees before I can actually see droplets accumulating on my visor.  I can feel the temperature drop as I slide beneath the shadow of a cloud, and feel it rise again when emerging from the canopy of a forrest into the sunlight.  All this happens in a few seconds, or less.  You're constantly bombarded with changing sensations as the wind shifts, sometimes gently pressing against you, sometimes shoving you violently halfway across the lane, and always carrying with it a different scent.  You can smell the thick mixture of fresh foliage and decaying vegetation in the forrest, you can smell the seaweed baking on the beach and the mud and weeds growing in the coastal ponds and estuaries.  You can smell the snow in the mountains.  You can smell the poppies growing along the highway and the dry, golden grass blanketing the hills.  You can smell the cows and the sheep and the wild dill and the eucalyptus trees.

Sometimes my mind wanders.  Sometimes it seems like the world is rushing at me so fast that my mind can barely keep up.  Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the beauty of the moment.  Not only the landscape, but the moment itself, with all the wind and the noise and the roughness of the pavement and the struggle between motorcycle and physics.  It's in those moments when I'm winning the battle against gravity and inertia that I'm compelled to seek out the next crest, the next apex, the next vista.  Those moments can't be captured in any photograph or relived through any journal, and so each arrival inevitably prompts the search for a new destination.

Day 6: San Francisco, CA

Yesterday was quite a day.  I got a bit of a late start, but I was on Highway 199 headed toward Crescent City by about 10:30 am.  My brother was right, it's an absolutely gorgeous ride.  It was a little chilly, but fairly bright and sunny with a little bit of clouds when I started out.  It's a really fun road without a lot of traffic.  There are sections where it's 4 lanes and big sweeping corners that you can take at 80 mph, but then there are several 2 lane sections winding through the canyons alongside rivers and creeks, full of sharp, banked corners and hairpin turns where I even had to (gasp) downshift.  Once I got about 10 minutes south of the California border the clouds cleared and the sun came out and it started getting warmer and warmer.  Riding through the Redwood Forrest is a bit surreal.  Many of the trees lining both sides of the road are nearly as wide as the road itself, and so tall that you can't even see their lowest branches.  I wish I had a video camera mounted to my helmet.  I didn't take many pictures because I didn't want to stop riding.  I was having too much fun.  It was a perfect day to ride, and the perfect road to be on.  The California coast is incredibly beautiful, unlike any other place I've seen.

After 440 miles and 8.5 hours on the bike I arrived in San Francisco.  To be completely honest the last hundred miles of the day were pretty painful.  Riding across the Golden Gate Bridge was fun, although I couldn't really take much time to enjoy the view.  My friend Jarad let me park my bike in his garage, and set me up in his livingroom for the night.  As soon as I was unpacked we went down the street to Joe Dimaggio's to relax and chatch up.  From Jarad's apartment I can see the Coit Tower on Telegraph hill, and the cathedral where Joe Dimaggio and Marylin Monroe were married.

Today I'm still a bit sore from yesterday's long ride so I decided to see the city on foot instead of dragging the bike out of the garage.  I had breakfast at a nice little cafe in North Beach, then walked down to the Fisherman's Wharf.  I've been there before, and this time it just seemed too crowded and trashy and pointless, so I took my friend Annie's advice and headed over to the old ferry building that's been converted to a public market.  If you're into boutique food, it's the place to go.  Whatever kind of food you're into, they have a store that specializes it.  There's a store dedicated entirely to mushrooms, and place advertising 'Tasty Salted Pig Parts'.  It was hard for me to refrain from spending all my money there.  From there I walked through the financial district.  I saw entire blocks lined with motorcycles.  Nothing special, just everyday commuter parking.  I can't believe how many bikes there are in this town.  Then I walked up to Nob Hill and sat in a park and enjoyed the view while I took a work call.

Next stop was China Town.  I spent a couple hours wandering aimlessly through all the streets and alleys.  Well, not exactly aimlessly.  I was trying to find homemade Lap Qiong, which is a special kind of sweet chinese pork suasage, and I was trying to find a Sake bar that I remember seeing when I was here about 6 years ago.  Never found the sake bar, but I did find the Lap Qiong and some fresh turnip cakes for 50 cents each.  If you've never had a chinese turnip cake, you're missing out.  It's starchy and mushy and greasy and salty and has little chunks of barbecued pork in it.  Absolutely delicious.