2009 May 22nd: I got up early this morning. I knew if I got a good start I good maybe make it home today. It was a long day but I made it home.
The roads in Oklahoma have got to be the worst in the country. The interstate looked like a patchwork quilt. They have been patched and repaired beyond working order. I took quite a beating trying to negotiate my way through all of that rough pavement and concrete.
Yesterday when I left Tennessee, I noticed that the Tennessee landscape was tall thick forests with huge overgrown trees. Once I crossed the bridge west of Memphis, TN, the landscape changed to flat farmland with fresh crops of corn and wheat. In Oklahoma, the landscape changed to cattle ranches and prairie. There were also a fair number of oil fields with the prerequisite derricks and oil pumps. Mostly the land was barren and looked unused. The roads were straight as an arrow and rough. When I crossed over the border into Colorado, the prairie turned to more rolling hills with large rocks or boulders sticking out of the ground. The elevation was steadily increasing all the way through Oklahoma and continued sharply once I reached Colorado.
I was gone for 39 days and covered right at 10,600 miles. I rode through 17 different states and I only experienced about fifteen minutes of rain.
The first rain was just before Big Bend NP in Terlingua, TX while I was getting fuel. This shower of hail and rain just started to dump while I was under a canopy at the gas station. It only lasted a couple of minutes, so I just watched it and when it was done I rode away without getting wet at all.
Later that same day, I went through a shower that felt great as the temperature was well over 100 degrees. Those five minutes of rain cooled the temperature down to a tolerable 80-85 degrees. Just after I crossed into Alabama, I was given a ‘Welcome to Alabama’ shower that seriously poured on me for about five minutes and then quit. This was really the most rain that I experienced. The last time I ran into rain was in Georgia on my way to get the tire mounted, it rained for only a couple of minutes and I barely got wet.
Aside from the real cold weather in Colorado and Pennsylvania and the real hot weather in Florida, the weather was great for riding all the rest of the time. I feel really blessed to have such great weather everywhere I went.
A lot of people gave me flack for taking this trip on a 250 Ninja, but I’ll tell you, that little bike ran like a champ the whole time and never gave me a lick of trouble. It only burned oil when I was running above 10,000 rpm’s on the interstates and the amount was barely worth mentioning. The drive chain was the only thing that concerned me, but I think that if I would have kept a closer eye on it in the beginning, it wouldn’t have even been an issue. At sea level I was able to cruise right along on the interstates without any issues. The wind had a tendency to toss it around a bit, being such a light bike and all, but I was able to get it through.
Over the next couple of days, I will still continue to post comments as I reflect on the events of my adventure.