Let the new 2017 motorcycle adventure begin. Led Zeppelin wrote a great song called Dazed and Confused. If you’ve never heard of it — don’t fret, the world will never be the same without Zeppelin. Anyway… I have just started my five-week trip of which 28 days will be on a motorcycle — crossing America — starting in bustling Boca Raton, Florida and ending up in Los Angles, California. The plan is to visit factory tours and fun tourist sites in small and large town America along the way.
Of course I would be remiss not to mention that I will be meeting Chris Ridgeway in Utah half way through my trip to ride off-road for a week in the Utah rugged mountainous desert, camping off our bikes in tents for part of the way. That should be interesting in itself. I need to learn how to off-road for my next motorcycle journey on my bike in December — 4 months from Los Angeles down to the bottom of South America. I’m shitting my pants about this — but seriously excited at the same time. Its one of those things, a must-do or else I burn up just dreaming. Can’t let that happen — must put positive energy into making it happen and turning dreams to reality.
Back to the this trip and the here and now, Paula will meet me in Los Angeles on the 29th of April and we will stay until May 8th when we return back to Florida. Thats the big picture. First stop is only 3-4 hours away to Orlando.
Today was day one and it was a relaxing morning in Boca. I left around 11am and tried to keep calm and pieced together with the experience I’ve gained that nothing on a bike should be a rush. That part was fine — but I did hit a few road blocks that I wont call dangerous or a disaster, but definitely did cause discomfort.
I did feel dazed and confused for the first few hours — make that for the first leg of the journey. Nothing worked. I tried to connect my iPhone with my navigator and nope. iPhone connected to my helmet bluetooth speaker and nope. GPS which tracks my trip on a web based map, nope. GoPro and remote — fuck it. Nothing worked. Was a big bummer. No music is not easy.
Worse, I can get real sleepy riding a motorcycle. The road and the vibrations turn me into a narcoleptic zombie — never fails. I took 5 hour energy last year and I will certainly revisit that gig.
I decided to take the slow boat to Orlando by cutting out the straight shot of the Turnpike — which added a few hours. I went on 95 North and then cut off on 441 which took me through Kissimmee and St Cloud, two very red neck towns full of red neck locals and even worse, red neck visitors and tons of slow traffic. Temperature on this first ride day was between 91 and 93 degrees F. I was broiling like an unlucky chicken. Almost hit a car too — I faded and in front of me the car jammed its brakes and lucky, I did too and even more lucky, my anti-lock brakes worked. I was a bit more cautious thereafter.
Of course I passed G
atorLand and missed it while riding on the main local highway at 70 mph. I thought to myself that I cant let that happen so I turned around and deaked into the tacky tourist trap. I was pretty upset that I also passed a tourist village shop in the middle of the glades in Central Florida which sold Gator Jerky. How good is that? Gator Jerky. I really wish I had turned back but I was flying pretty fast so it wasn’t easy.
Back to GatorLand… What moron comes to Florida and says to themselves, “I need to visit GatorLand in Kissimmee — it looks fun”? Knock-Knock Dick-wad visitor from Asia — News Alert!.. Its a cheesy tourist trap! Florida is packed with hundreds of those stupid places to waste your hard earned money, Well, at least I got my picture to prove I was there.
To make a boring story longer, since I got to the hotel room, I’ve been getting my electronic gadgets all set up for a smoooth ride tomorrow. All is good and prepped.
Tomorrow I’ll ride to Atlanta. Google Maps says it should take about 7 hours. On a bike, add at least another or so because I have to stop more often. And thats ok, I want my rides to be comfy and relaxing and equally so, I want to get some pictures of real life and stop whenever I see something interesting unique. That’s the point of this trip.