California and back August 2010

Vail Colorado is probably the prettiest place on earth

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The Continental Divide. The air is pretty darn thin up there. This tunnel was 1.7 miles long.

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I pretty much stopped taking pictures here and pushed hard to get home.

Just on the other side of the tunnel, I hit stop and go traffic for two hours. Really wished lane splitting was legal. I had to wait out some huge storms in Golden Colorado, then pushed on past Denver to Limon, CO for the night. From Denver to Limon I was watching storms off to the south that were putting on an amazing lightning show. Unfortunately, the lightning kept getting closer and closer until suddenly, the lightning wasn't to the south, but to both the south AND north! It was right over me! This was about 20 miles to the hotel. Thankfully, the storm held off until I got checked into my hotel before letting loose. It stormed hard enough to blow the cover off of my parked bike in front of the hotel (parked under the canopy) but the manager chased down the cover and put it back on my bike. (THANKS!)

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DAY 10... the LAST DAY

After another night of too short sleeping, I woke up to head towards hell... er, um... I mean Kansas.

The only thing I saw cool enough to take pictures of in Kansas, a wind farm

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Near Kansas City, Kansas I rolled 25,000 miles on my FZ6

Kansas was so SCORCHING hot I thought my feet were melting in my boots. Note the air temp on my gauge: 107F

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Kansas was like a flat abyss that everyone speeds across to try to escape. Thankfully, I frequently had a car to follow that was traveling at about half the speed of light. On one tank of fuel in specific, I went 147 miles in just 100 minutes. Shhhhhh don't tell the po po.

Crossing into Missouri felt sooooooo good. Never before has Kansas City felt so close to home. It is almost as far from home as I can get and still be in Missouri.

Dinner was with a really good friend I hadn't seen in quite some time. His name is John Henry (insert railroad jokes here) and he and his wife met me at a truck stop in Concordia, MO for a nice (really the nicest truck stop restaurant ever!) dinner.

After spending much too much time reminiscing, I was back on the road with only one more fuel stop needed.

Here's my last stop before the house.

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Ready to be home:

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The last 100 miles went fairly quickly. Before I knew it, I was turning onto my road and shutting off the bike for the last time.

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4815.1 miles on the trip meter and trust me, it felt like it. Somewhere around 3,000 miles in I was wondering why on earth I would take a 600 on a trip like this.

Then I remember something my buddy John W. always says. "we don't do things because they are easy, we do them because they are hard." I think that is a John F. Kennedy quote or something but it applies here, regardless.

The next morning I noticed quite a distinct tan line that even now, one week to the HOUR from my return, still lingers.

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So there you have it. 10 days, 4800 miles. Averaged about 48mpg.

Questions? I welcome them.

Looks like tonight is gonna be another night with not enough sleep. It's 1:30am here now..... sigh... hope you all appreciate this ride report.

Final day's ride:

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Wow! what an epic trip ....nearly 5000 miles, or 8000km's in our "language"!

Looks like you had a ball, and by the sounds of it, incident free, other than a flat tyre...that's only cause Lone attracts caos!

Brilliant ride report....how you managed to condense all that down...great job!

Thanks heaps for sharing your great photo's...makes me keener than ever to get down to Tassie for the Aussie Forum "tour".

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:
 
Would love to tour the states someday, the trouble with the Uk is it only takes a day to get from one end of the country to the other :rolleyes:

Yeah we have some great countryside, but not compared to the you guys, so so jealous!! :BLAA:

Glad you had a good time bud :thumbup:
 
Looks like a great trip! There sure is great scenery out there! Wow, thats seems like about the nastiest time of year for bad temps crossing the desert during the day... Glad you made it without incident. I think I can see hard bags in your future - :D Thanks for sharing!
 
great trip, thanks for sharing.

Next time you wonder:

"""I was wondering why on earth I would take a 600 on a trip like this"""

Here is the answer:

"""On one tank of fuel in specific, I went 147 miles in just 100 minutes. Shhhhhh don't tell the po po."""

Unless you are talking of riding position or something else, I don't see why would a 600 be to small for a long trip. You did it :rockon::rockon:

Thanks again
 
Hoshiko said:
great trip, thanks for sharing.

Next time you wonder:

"""I was wondering why on earth I would take a 600 on a trip like this"""

Here is the answer:

"""On one tank of fuel in specific, I went 147 miles in just 100 minutes. Shhhhhh don't tell the po po."""

Unless you are talking of riding position or something else, I don't see why would a 600 be to small for a long trip. You did it :rockon::rockon:

Thanks again
Click to expand...

Yeah it wasn't the power I was commenting on, but the size of the bike in general. A FJR or Concours 14 would have been nice for the extra room.

thought I should comment on my tires for a moment.

When I left home, the Metzeler Z6 interact tires had about 800-1000 miles on them (can't remember! :spank: ). I added about 5 psi of pressure in each one time during the trip and never had a single issue with them during the whole trip. Even running through relatively tight sweepers in the mountains on the interstate at 75mph in the pouring rain near Albuquerque, NM they never gave me a reason to doubt them.

This is what they look like today.

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They are a little flat in the middle but nothing NEARLY as bad as I anticipated after doing 4,000+ miles of interstate highway. So These tires earn a score of "A" in my book.
 
Dirk, it was a pleasure to have you spend the night with us. Too bad you didn't have time to see some of Northern Ca's best roads around these parts (next time you're here I'll show you some good ones).

I must admit there is no way on God's green earth I would ride a FZ6 as far as you guys did.
I'm old and have a FJR for that.
However I tip my Iron Butt Association hat to each of you for a ride that was not for the candy a$$ rider but real Motorcyclists!
Cheers boys on a job well done:iconbeer:
 
Red Wazp said:
Dirk, it was a pleasure to have you spend the night with us. Too bad you didn't have time to see some of Northern Ca's best roads around these parts (next time you're here I'll show you some good ones).

I must admit there is no way on God's green earth I would ride a FZ6 as far as you guys did.
I'm old and have a FJR for that.
However I tip my Iron Butt Association hat to each of you for a ride that was not for the candy a$$ rider but real Motorcyclists!
Cheers boys on a job well done:iconbeer:
Click to expand...

If I make it back out there, you got yourself a deal!
 
616ah said:
Looks like a great trip! There sure is great scenery out there! Wow, thats seems like about the nastiest time of year for bad temps crossing the desert during the day... Glad you made it without incident. I think I can see hard bags in your future - :D Thanks for sharing!
Click to expand...

Re-reading through these, I thought I should comment on the bags.

The bags I have are the touring bags by Nelson Rigg. They are 35 liters each like the V35 Givi bags that I would love to have if money grew on trees. I doubt I'll put hard bags on this bike as I often only need a tank bag for my day to day use. I rarely install saddlebags unless I am either going shopping or on an overnight trip.

If I decide to upgrade to a bigger bike, I will have hard bags on it.

I am really liking bikes that have a bit of off road prowess. Dream bike right now is the Ducati Multistrada 1200. The Yamaha Super Ténéré would probably be second fiddle with the KTM Adventure and BMW 1200GS tied for third.

If money weren't an issue..... :rolleyes:
 
Wow, those pics are Jaw dropping, Im so jealous and sorry for taking so long to read it lol, Sometimes you got to force me to read something. I really like the Canyon picture. I would of loved to go on that trip, but honestly, I dont know if I have what it takes to do this kind of thing. I would probably complain some lol. Anyway very nicely done!
 
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