Cross country - week 1

I forgot just how much I loved riding and traveling on our motorcycle. We shipped the bike out to Charlotte, NC this winter in part to ride some areas in North and South Carolina but mostly, my hidden agenda was to setup a cross-country ride back to Seattle at the end of our time in Charlotte, NC.

One of my immediate targets for this ride was the Tail of the Dragon. The Dragon is short section of U.S. 129 running through the Smokey Mountains of eastern Tennessee that packs 318 curves into a spectacular 11 miles of riding. At one point half-way through I found myself laughing hysterically in my helmet at just how much fun this road was to ride.


Packing up the bike in Charlotte, NC.


The Tree of Shame. When you eat shit on the Dragon, pieces of your bike get hung on the tree of shame. I was determined to not decorate the Tree of Shame.

I spent a day riding through eastern Tennessee and wished I had more time. It's a beautiful area full of rolling hills and some really nice back roads. Unfortunately, I was on a schedule to meet up with good friends in Arkansas so I had to cut my time short.


Falls Creek Falls State Park in TN.

After a few days with friends in Little Rock, I was looking straight down the barrel of Oklahoma and north Texas. The weather forecast was scattered thunderstorms. I was riding through eastern Oklahoma when the sky started to darken and I started to get nervous. I found a gas station and pulled in under their awning right around the time the sky opened up. Thunder, lightening and torrential rain kept me cowering under the gas station roof for an hour before it let up. Another 30 miles down the road and the Oklahoma weather repeated the performance. This time it never let up. I wasn't relishing the idea of sleeping at a Shell station so I decided to make a run for Oklahoma City. This was probably a mistake. While riding through the lovely hamlet of Donkey Crotch, OK one particularly lightening bolt touched down close enough to convince me that being on a motorcycle in this weather was not a great idea. I pulled into the nearest pay-by-the-hour motel, paid for a full night, locked the door, and tried to decide which of three channels on the TV I was going to watch.

Turns out that same weather system that chased me indoors in Oklahoma was spinning off tornadoes in north Texas. After getting up the next morning, I decided I'd had enough of the heartland. I packed up the bike, got out on to the freeway and dropped the bike into GTFO gear and didn't stop until I got to northern New Mexico.


Here's a photo of the only beautiful thing I could find in the Texas Panhandle.

Christy, being the smarter of the two us was not terribly keen on riding through Oklahoma and Texas, decided she would work an extra week and fly out to Albuquerque, NM to meet me. Since I blew through Oklahoma and Texas faster than I thought I would I had an extra day to kill. So I headed up to Durango, CO and spent a couple days in the San Juan mountain range in southern Colorado.


On Hwy 550 to Silverton, CO.









After a couple days of hooligan riding up the San Juan Skyway and drinking really good beer in Durango, I ran down to Albequerque to pick up Christy and start on the two-up portion of the ride.

35.228554°N 80.832329°W

Cruising Comparison: Bikes vs Boats

When I thought about “cruising” a few months ago, the only thing that really came to mind was cruising on boats. Of course, we’ve lived on Hello World for over four years now, so I suppose that’s natural. It turns out there is a whole class of people who conjure up visions of motorcycles when they hear the word “cruising”. We were fortunate enough to join that group, if for a short time, while riding Jason’s bike back to Seattle from Charlotte. It was on that ride that it occurred to me that cruising on a sailboat is surprisingly similar to cruising on a motorcycle.

Boaters always have something in common. Sailors have even more. Oh and you meet a sailor that has the same boat that you do? Excitement ensues! It turns out, bikes are the same way – nearly ever biker waves to other bikers on the road – it’s just a friendly community. You stop at gas stations, you chat, you talk about gear and where people are going and which roads are the most curvy. We had beer, dinner and even invited to Switzerland with complete strangers.



Those bikers love to talk the biker-lingo (fortunately it’s not as extensive as sailor lingo):

• Salad bowl: silly half helmets that Harley riders wear so they don't get pulled over for not wearing a helmet
• Ape hangers: really tall handlebars
• Squid: the guy riding a sport bike down the freeway at a 100mph doing a wheelie, not a term of affection
• Cage: car
• 2-up: two people are riding on one bike.

Because we were riding 2-up, it meant Jason was always in my way – so it felt exactly like home. There was not the regular salon shuffle we have down below since I tried to move as little as possible, but still, I was not homesick.



When above decks, as many of you know, Jason has a nickname of “Safety Pup” – he is certainly the more safety conscious of the two of us (for which my mother is extremely happy). We have rules about when we tether in and how many backup lines he ties on me before I go up the mast. On the bike, Jason continues the Safety Pup tradition and suits me up in only the best gear, which explains our awesome partial face tans (which are eerily similar to Alaska sailing tans).




And as all safety pups of the world know (and fortunately most of the rest of us), some heeling on a sailboat is good, but too much is not-so-fun. Certainly this is true of motorcycles as well. This brings us to the differences in cruising vehicles:

• Motorcycles are not self-righting (which is really a bummer when you do heel too much)
• Typical cruising speed on a motorcycle is about 10 times that of our sailboat (yet it took us 54 weeks to sail the 4,697 miles we just covered in 2 weeks on the bike. Hmmmm...)
• It turns out maintenance on a motorcycle is much easier and certainly less frequent (we went through 3 clogged heads, 1 bowsprit repair and a waterpump replacement in that 4,697 miles vs 1 pint of oil on the bike)
• It’s not nearly as comfortable to sleep on the bike as it is the boat (yet I still manage)

Overall, I was surprised by the similarities, but upon further reflection, I suppose it comes as no surprise that we love cruising no matter what the form. Either way, we have plenty of spare time to write up really random blog posts. :)

wrapping up our time in charlotte

We moved to Charlotte in September of last year to take a contract job and squirrel away some cash for the next journey. Well... spring is here and so is that journey. My last day of work was yesterday. With a surprising amount of reluctance, I said goodbye to my Charlotte co-workers. Tonight will be a last gathering with the friends we've made here in Charlotte. Tomorrow - I hop on the motorcycle we had shipped out here to ride back to Seattle. Christy will work an extra week (someone has to pay for all this!) and then fly out to Albuquerque to meet me on the bike and ride with me through the last few western states.


Our last week in Charlotte, the weather finally turned nice. We spent an evening with Nate and Neville sitting on the grass watching live music at the U.S. National Whitewater Center.

Two of my favorite people.

Our last Food Truck Friday. We waited in line for an hour for a grilled cheese sandwich. Best damn grilled cheese sandwich evar.

We really loved our time in Charlotte. Our jobs introduced us to some incredible people that we're going to really miss.

Now? The fun starts.

35.22547°N 80.83668°W

It could have gone the other way

We spent the weekend in Savannah a while back. Another gorgeous town. In fact, we couldn't decide which we like better: Charleston or Savannah. Both beautiful and historic, both on the water.



Savannah has a very planned feel (because it was very planned, as it turned out) - but the most gorgeous overhanging trees and parks throughout town.





And we saw the greatest cop car...





And there was a really cool (modern) tall ship that we could tour - for free!



Granted, it was run by a conservative, bible thumping commune, but they were super nice.



It turns out that Jason almost went to school in Savannah instead of Oregon.



He was chatting with his mom about this and I overheard this:

"Imagine Mom, if I had gone to SCAD, I probably would have turned out Republican"

Go Ducks!!

Charleston

When we moved here, I didn't really know the difference between Charleston and Charlotte...nor did most of our friends. Oh, I suppose I knew there were two different towns, in two different states, but I had no idea which was on the water and which wasn't. Turns out we landed at the land bound town. So we had to go check out Charleston while we were here. We needed a water fix!

Charleston was absolutely gorgeous. And so, so different than Charlotte. Charlotte is a banking town. The only old buildings are random churches dotted throughout downtown (excuse me, UPtown is the proper name). It's mostly giant high rise buildings. Charleston, however, has kept that historic appeal and we had a grand time wandering around



I got Jason to take a carriage ride there (and that will never happen again, so I have to enjoy it while I can). That said, it was a great tour of the historic district.





For our water fix, we took a ride on the ferry to Fort Sumter, the spot on which the civil war started (oh yes, I've been learning lots more about the civil war than I ever thought I would while living down here - it's been fun though!)





Overall, Charleston gets a thumbs up. Maybe some day we'll come back here on a boat. I think we could take Fort Sumter...