Saturday, July 16, 2011

CA-1

Stockton, CA

Today was a looooong day. Despite only being 294 miles, it was a lot of riding, on top of a lot of hours awake. But I'm going to bet that if anyone asks me about riding my motorcycle down the west coast, today is the day I think of.

Today I decided that CA-1 has surpassed SD-16A as my favorite motorcycle road of the trip. Black Hills, you're now second place.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Quote of the Day

Klamath, CA

Apparently Netflix no longer lets you stream movies AND get DVD's for the same subscription - you have to get two different subscriptions (and pay more than before) to do both. Sayeth Radley Balko:

Travel Days

Eugene, OR

Some days, I spend the whole day in a city meeting friends, seeing the sights, and traveling between different parts of the city. Other days, I spend half the day traveling and half seeing a place - either a morning traveling and an afternoon with friends, or a lazy morning followed by traveling til I sleep, or (most often) an hour of traveling followed by an hour of resting, repeated for an entire day. And some days, like yesterday, I spend the entire day on the bike. And the thing is, I need all three types of days.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Jump Start

Portland, OR

So I learned two new things about my motorcycle today: 1) When you use jumper cables to start a motorcycle from a car, you're not supposed to have the car running. 2) It's possible to push-start my bike.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Limitations

Portland, OR

One of the defining features of most of the travel I've taken in the last few years has been the limitations on it.  I worked at Caterpillar, and they allowed me two weeks of paid vacation per year - and the few times I requested unpaid vacation (or a pay cut in return for two more weeks of vacation) it was denied.  So that meant that I had to fit whatever I wanted to do in a given year into 10 days off or less.  And honestly, I think that's part of what made the travel I did as awesome as it was.