Fall of Freedom 2007 Tour

How to make your woman happy: a four-step guide

2008-09-25T08:56:00.004-04:00

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Step 4.

Success.

I really like this bike! I picked it up yesterday at Morton's BMW in Fredericksburg, VA and rode it 50 mi back home for the big surprise. Even though I was keeping it below 4k rpms for the break in and riding the whole way on the 95 (I had to get back quickly before my cover story wore thin!), I had a stupid grin on my face the whole time. The motor just purrrrrs along. The shifting is really smooth. Nice pep, GREAT sound coming out of the pipes, and my oh my oh my is it a gorgeous shade of red.

Miriam was QUITE pleased. She's upgrading from an F650 classic (aka a "Funduro"). Great bike, but she was ready to move on. Too bad the weather stinks this weekend, but I suspect we'll be out there anyhow!

Oooh, OK, one more pic. The caption for this is "ooooh, electronics!"

The amount of gadgetry on this bike is crazy! (In stark contrast to her carbureted and very, very analog Funduro!) It puts on a pretty impressive light show when you turn the key.

ALASKA!

2008-01-03T00:23:00.000-05:00

Fall of Freedom 2007 tour! Boston to Alaska's north shore and back.

Click on the links below for the story,
or click the map for an interactive look at my route.

start here: — Ready for launch!

day 1 — A rescue mission

days 2 & 3 — We have a problem

days 4 - 7 — Stuck in Wisconsin

days 8 - 10 — Crossing the Great Plains

days 11 - 13 — The Alaska Highway

days 14 - 17 — North of the Arctic Circle

day 18 — Relaxing in Fairbanks

day 19 — Denali

days 20 & 21 — Anchorage, Seward, and the Exit Glacier

days 22 - 24 — Valdez and Haines

days 25 - 39 — The long journey home

Heading home

2008-01-03T00:14:00.000-05:00

Day 25-26: Ferry to Prince Rupert

Well, Day 25 fell on October 1. Well past the date when the mountain passes of the Alaska Highway became impassible to motorcycles without studded tires. That left the ferry. Not a bad option: it passes among the islands of the Alaska shore, making it a scenic break from riding. And Oct 1 marks the start of the off-season, so it was substantially cheaper than during the summer.

My bike. After taking this picture, I spent some time securing it to those pipes and ladder with some string. I'm glad I did:

The water started getting rough. The ferry ship was tossed. If not for my strong digestive fortitude, my pancakes would be lost. My overpriced pancakes with side of bacon from the ship cafeteria would be lost.

I lost count of the lighthouses along the waterway.

Misty mountains and fjords.

One of the many stops along the way. These towns are only accessible by ferry or small plane. Note the glacier in the background.

Finally, where I slept:

Just unrolled my sleeping bag on one of the deck chairs and slept under the roof here. I think I slept for nearly 12 hours. Which is just as well, because there is absolutely nothing to do on these ferries. I spent a good bit of time nursing a beer, chatting with the bartender, and staring out the window. Also read Cormac McCarthy's The Road in pretty much one 8 hour sitting. What a book.

Day 27: Prince Rupert, BC to Jasper, AB

No pictures. It rained almost the entire day. Lovely.

Day 28: Jasper to Great Falls, MT

Critters and mountains in Canada's Jasper National Park:

Day 29: Great Falls to Denver, CO

After getting rained on for much of the previous day, I fought some serious winds crossing through the Wyoming plains. Probably the most tiring day of my entire trip. And I got stuck with a speeding ticket. 85 in a 70 in middle of nowhere, Wyoming. Grumble, grumble.

Day 30-32: Resting in Denver

Took a break at my dad's place in Denver area. Did some much needed drying off.

Also replaced my rear brake pads and disk and changed my oil.

Day 33: Denver, Co to Gary, IN

1110 miles that day! Woohoo!!! And my butt wasn't even particularly sore.

Day 34: Gary, IN to Lansdale, PA

778 more!

Day 35-38: Hanging out with family in Lansdale

Back to Lansdale, the town where I was born and raised, to hang out with family and old friends and go to a cousin's wedding. A good way to end.

Day 39: Back to Boston

The Lansdale-to-Boston trip? I remember when that 300-odd mile trip seemed long. HA! I was back home before I knew it.

>>>DONE! Thanks for reading. Back to my main page>>>

Days 22-24: More southern Alaska

2007-11-21T22:51:00.000-05:00

Day 22: Exit Glacier to Copper Center

Southern Alaska is still wet. Nothing like waking up to find that your tent is in the middle of a two-inch-deep puddle.

Probably not the smartest place to camp, granted, but I got back late after the glacier hike and didn't realize that my campsite was in a depression. Ah well. Shove the whole mess into the side cases, have another granola bar, and move on.

Turnagain arm, again.

Hm. Well, at this point, it's taking me forever to finish this ride report. So I'll dispense with most of the narrative and stick with pictures. This is probably the right approach anyhow, as my words cannot do southern Alaska justice.

Day 23: Down to Valdez

Valdez is the southern terminus of the oil pipeline. The road to Valdez ... it is hands down the most beautiful road I have ever traveled in my life. Mile upon mile of this:

And this:

And finally, this:

Day 24: Valdez to Haines

No pictures from this day, as I had a good 700 miles to make in order to reach Haines, AK in time for the ferry, which was scheduled to depart early the next morning.

I rode back north to Anchorage, then east into the Yukon Territories. Revisited the stunning Kluane Lake and its soaring mountains, and I again got to enjoy the impromptu roller coaster of the larger ice heaves.

Then to Haines Junction, YT. Had a tense dinner as I watched the clouds gather and the darkness fall. The final 150 miles to Haines would take me through some remote mountains, and snow was a serious concern.

This road is supposed to be phenomenal during the day. At night, illuminated by a near-full moon, the immensity of the silhouetted mountains rolling past me was in no way diminished. Again, I was just struck to the core by my surroundings.

Eventually, I'd descended enough that the mountains gave way to the boreal rain forest of the Alaska coastline. And fog. Thick, thick fog. Also: rain. Slowing at times to 20 mph, I crept along. Eventually crossing back into the States. Found a small park at a pull-off, and unrolled my sleeping pad and bag onto a picnic table under a rickety roof. 5 hours of shut eye, then early wakeup to head into town for the ferry. I still got wet from the rain blowing in sideways.

>>>NEXT: Heading home

Days 20 & 21: Anchorage & Seward

2007-11-04T13:54:00.000-05:00

Day 20: Anchorage

Southern Alaska is wet. I'd learn, later on, that much of it is technically rain forest. But the night of Day 19, lying in my tent at a pull off that the signs told me was -- on clearer days -- a southern Denali viewpoint, all I knew was that it was raining. No complaints: I'd had spectacular luck with the weather so far, hitting rain only once or twice in the roughly 7000 miles I'd traveled thus far. With a little luck, it would stop by morning.

Another lovely view of mighty Denali

Or not. Woke up to still more rain. In what would soon become standard operating procedure, I didn't bother to fold up my wet tent, instead just stuffing it piecemeal into my side cases, however it would fit. Neatly rolling up the tent and fly and fitting them into the stuff sack requires more dexterity than my fingers could muster in 35°F rain.

Fortunately, I was only a little more than 2 hours north of Anchorage at that point. Even more fortunately, Anchorage is full of awesome people. Many of whom own motorcycles. (Alaska has the highest per capita motorcycle ownership rate in the United States.)

My first destination in Alaska was Alaska Leather, home of the sheepskin buttpad and other motorcycling delights, and something of an Alaskan motorcycling institution. I almost made it, but wound up sidetracked by the Glacier Brewhouse. Ahhh, nothing like a hearty bowl of soup and a pint of good porter to fend off the cold and wet. Anyhow! -- brew & stew break complete, I headed for Alaska Leather. Met the owner, Barb, and she gave gave me some references for local riders and shops. She also let me use the "courtesy computer" in her shop to type up the previous update. Continuing my extremely positive impression of Alaskans.

I headed over to the local REI to meet AKDuc, one of the local riders that Barb referred me to. (AKDuc is his screen name on ADVrider.com.) He very kindly invited me to crash at his place after he got off of work.

With some time to kill, I hung out at a bookstore for a while, then headed over to another local brew pub. Lots of them in Anchorage, apparently. As I pull in, a family waiting for a table greets me. Apparently they ride too, and the son is AlaskaZman -- yet another ADVrider! So I have a beer and dinner with them, and we swap some motorcycle stories. I'm really liking Anchorage!

Eventually I meet back up with AKDuc and go for an evening ride around the hills above Anchorage. And I crash there for the night. The only downside to this Anchorage experience is that AKDuc's dog Comet almost killed me. Not that he was vicious; we're talking about a cute little terrier here. But MAN did he set off my allergies. And all he wanted to do was say hi to the stranger and hop up in my lap. Poor Comet. He only wants to love.

I take a few shots of my asthma inhaler and hit the sack. Ahhh, it was good to sleep in a real bed!

Day 21: Seward and Exit Glacier

On AKDuc's advice, I set out the next day for Seward, AK, a coastal town on the Kenai peninsula, which extends into the Pacific south of Anchorage.

The trip to Seward was spectacular.

A shot of Turnagain Arm, a bay off the Gulf of Alaska. I was told that it had the second most extreme tidal flow in North America, with the incoming and outgoing tides sometimes advancing as six-foot-tall walls of water. I didn't have the luck to see that, unfortunately.

(And in case you're wondering, the most extreme tide is supposedly the Bay of Fundy, abutting Nova Scotia. Not sure if that's true, but that's what I've been told.)

And on to Seward! After the picturesque ride down, I was rewarded with the equally lovely Resurrection Bay, on which Seward lies.

After lunch in Seward (delicious fresh fish!), I headed to the nearby Exit Glacier, which spills (slowly) down from the icefield that dominates the Kenai Peninsula. Approaching the glacier, I was greeted by signs marking its extent in the past: the first, marked for 1860 or so, was well over a mile from the current base; the span between later signs decreased, reflecting the increasing rate of melt. Apparently the glacier has recessed by nearly 1000 ft in the last decade alone. No doubt about it: part of my motivation for visiting Alaska was to see it before even more disappeared.

The Exit Glacier and the Harding Icefield from which it flows were the highlight of the trip for me. Words cannot describe, and my pictures can't really capture. Here are some pictures from the hike up to the icefield.

Looking back down into the valley. From the signposts, I figure that the glacier used to fill this entire expanse, down to the base of the distant mountains.

Black rock; white ice; blue sky.

Finally, I reached the top. This is an arduous hike, ascending roughly 3500 ft in the course of 3 miles. Near the summit is a cabin that serves as an emergency shelter.

Like most back country huts, this one was covered with good-natured graffiti by the many hikers who had passed this way. Some observed the time-honored tradition of carving their names and dates of visit into the wood ("Izabelle was here"); others, words of love ("Tim [heart] Julie"). Some, no doubt moved by the beauty around them, wrote words of inspiration ("Carpe diem!") or Biblical verses (John 14:6). No one, however, quite captured the mood of the steep and rocky hike as well as this poor bastard:

Amen, brother. Amen.

The view from the top:

And a 360 degree panorama of the same:

For some scale, you can see another hiker in the top photo. The Harding Icefield is vast, extending far past the horizon in the above images.

The rule in the bottom left of the map indicates 10 miles.

Everything is overwhelmingly beautiful up here. Even the textures and colors of the crumbling volcanic rock are mesmerizing. The rocks...

... and the ice ...

... and the places where they collide ...

Shadows growing longer, it was time to descend back into to the valley, down to the glacier-fed Resurrection River.

Got back down to the base about an hour after sunset and made camp at the nearby tent site. Too tired to go back into town, my dinner was a couple granola bars and an orange. Ah well, I'd had a big lunch.

>>>NEXT: Days 22-25: More southern Alaska

More details soon!

2007-10-08T22:28:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the long hiatus in updates! Between being away from fast Internet connections and just being plain lazy, I haven't yet uploaded my photos from southern Alaska and the ride back to civilization. But I'm back, more or less: I'm typing this from my father's house near Denver. I've been here for a couple days resting -- enjoying a real bed, home-cooked meals, and jumping on the trampoline with my dad's stepkids.

Tomorrow I head back to PA for my cousin Nancy's wedding. The plan is to do it in two days: here to South Bend, IN tomorrow, and then to Lansdale, PA on Wednesday. Long miles, but I'd rather just get it done. Then: a real update, with pictures. Southern Alaska was absolutely stunning.

Day 19: Denali

2007-09-26T19:49:00.000-04:00

Well, Denali National Park, anyhow. As for Denali itself, it's no closer than 40 miles to any major road, and it's frequently surrounded by clouds and fog. When I passed through was no exception: it was raining off and on all day. Here's my only shot from within the park in which blue sky was visible:

I think I might have been able to see Denali.

I'm pretty sure Denali is that white rise behind the clouds and closer peaks. What impresses me is not just its height (20,300 ft), but its rise above the surrounding land: this picture was taken from no more than 2500 ft above sea level. As its Wikipedia article points out, Denali has a greater relative rise than Everest.

Well, I was disappointed by the whole Denali experience. Until I tried to leave. (Look on either side of the road, a ways away.)

Oh crap. This would be incredible ... if I was in a car. Much less cool on a motorcycle. The sign at the park's entrance read: "Any wolf that is not afraid of people should be considered dangerous."

They were loping along the road away from me, looking back over their shoulders every so often. Great. The lighter wolf ...

... ducked into the brush. (That photo is on max zoom, right beforehand.) The black one held its ground on the left side of the road. Which left me little option but to go between them. Staying put seemed a mistake, as I could no longer tell the lighter wolf's position; for all I knew, it was flanking me. So I gassed it. Blew past the black wolf, which continued to hold ground, about 10 ft away when I passed it. I could very clearly see the color of its eyes. Yellow. I kept on the gas for a few good miles.

That was Denali. I rode another 100 miles and called it a night.

>>>NEXT: Days 20 & 21: Anchorage & Seward

Day 18: a do-nothing day!

2007-09-25T00:36:00.000-04:00

Well, not quite nothing. I took my bike over to George's shop, and he fixed up the fork seal and replaced the fork oil. Charged me $107 for parts, labor, and a spare seal to carry along with me, just in case. I can't say enough about the service there. He gave me a Trail's End BMW license plate frame as a souvenir, and my bike will wear it with pride.

And then ... I blogged. And blogged. And watched Pan's Labyrinth (recommended) on HBO. And then blogged. And here I am. Done, and finally up to date.

And since I'm writing multiple entries more or less at once, the order is a bit funky. So skip down a couple entries and read 'em in order!

Tomorrow: Denali! And I'll try to keep the updates more regular.

>>>NEXT: Day 19: Denali

Days 14 - 17: North of the Arctic Circle

2007-09-24T23:40:00.000-04:00

Day 14: Crossing the Arctic Circle

I was ready to strike north from Fairbanks. But first, I badly needed new tires. My old ones (Anakees, for the connoisseurs) had some 15,000 miles on them and weren't really passing the old Lincoln-head test. Plus, I expected mud and gravel once I hit the Dalton Highway, for which knobby tires are much better suited.

So I took a trip to Trail's End BMW here in Fairbanks. This is not like any Beemer shop I've seen down south. George Rahn runs a one-man operation out of his back yard. And what an interesting back yard it is.

Plenty of bikes that he's accumulated over his 40 years of operation, along with some harrowing debris from accidents along the Dalton. (Check out this final drive and rear wheel, both off of R1150GS's.) George is a great guy, and after some chatting, he swapped my tires. No fancy-pants tire changing machines; he spooned them on with two tire irons, making the whole operation look trivial. (When I did this, I had a friend helping, and it still took me hours.)

Now prepared for the worst, I pointed my bike north. I could tell immediately that it was going to be an amazing ride.

That's gotta be a good sign.

The Dalton Highway stretches from 50 miles north of Fairbanks up to Deadhorse, the oil town immediately south of Prudhoe Bay. It's commonly referred to as the Haul Road due to the large volume of truck traffic to the oil fields and back. And when they say Wide Load, they mean W-I-D-E L-O-A-D.

This truck looked like it was carrying half a con tower off a small ship. Two entire lanes wide, so all the other traffic gets off the road.

Dalton Highway, milepost 96: Finger Mountain.

Although the landscape here is barren, I'd soon learn that this was only temporary. There are still full-blown forests well north of the Arctic Circle, much to my surprise.

At Finger Mountain, I took a picture of my bike, now setup for the rough roads.

In addition to putting on the knobby tires, I took off the heavy side cases and cut my gear down to the essentials for camping: tent, sleeping bag, pad, two changes of clothes, and the most basic toiletries. Plus bike tools and some first aid supplies. Man, that is one good looking machine.

Milepost 115: The Arctic Circle.

Yeah, so it's crooked. That's the best I could get from setting my camera on top of my helmet and using the timed photo feature. Next trip, I'll bring a lightweight tripod.

Milepost 175: Coldfoot.

Originally a Gold Rush town, Coldfoot was revitalized in the mid-70s by the construction of the Dalton Highway and oil pipeline.

Coldfoot is a wonderful place. In strong contrast with Deadhorse, all the workers I met at the cafe/hotel/gas station (the "town" is only a couple buildings) seemed to be there because they loved the place. And near the midpoint between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay, it was an ideal base of operations for my time on the Haul Road. I spent all three days above the Arctic Circle camped here --

-- on a foam mat they have in a (free!) campsite nearby. Very comfy. Plus, given that the actual hotel rooms run something like $180 per night -- everything this far north is extremely expensive -- the decision was pretty much made for me. The coldest it got during the night was probably in the low 20s. Cold, yes, but I have a great sleeping bag, and it was no problem. (So long as I didn't have to go to the bathroom. BRRRrrr.)

Day 15: Prudhoe ho!

Not far from my campsite, these guys have a campsite of their own:

These huskies work in mush teams during the winter.

After a hearty pancake breakfast, I hit the Haul Road again.

You can see the Pipeline to the left of the road, through the trees. Another overcast day, but on the plus side it hasn't rained for some 24 hours, so the dirt road wasn't too slick.

13 miles north of Coldfoot, I stopped at Wiseman. In contrast, Wiseman is actually a town rather than just a truck stop. Living this far north, the people there are quirky.

You may have to click on the image to read the signs. The rusty objects in the foreground are the remains of old mining machinery.

I decided to head up to the old Wiseman graveyard. Nothing cooler than old graveyards. Well, maybe this:

Wow. I ... yeah. That's right up there with the twine ball. Not surprisingly, most of those cans are beer.

Man. Some homeless dude needs to come up here and collect these things. At 5 cents a can, he'd be doing pretty well.

Anyhow, after passing the cans, I reached the graveyard.

Even from the graves, it was clear that these were not lives easily lived. I was particularly touched by the inscription on this Mason's marker:

"Daniel Webster, 1862 - 1922. His life is a monument of much good. Loved and honored by native and pioneer."

There are some dirt roads (rutted but passable) at the Wiseman turnoff that lead to some mines. Worth the side trip. No pictures, as the mines themselves weren't particularly interesting, but the roads were beautiful. You can actually circumvent about 15 miles on the Haul Road in this way, eventually passing under the Pipeline and returning to it.

As I continued north, the Brooks Range loomed larger.

All sorts of interesting-looking side roads beckoned, but with limited gas (and riding skill -- some of these looked pretty serious) I continued north.

Milepost 245: Atigun Pass.

The continental divide -- north vs. south, that is. After crossing this range, all the rivers flow north into the Arctic rather than the Pacific. (This raises an interesting question: where is the continental triple point, at which the Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic watersheds meet?)

This sign was pretty amusing:

The avalanche warning sign that has clearly been run over by an avalanche. Moments later...

CRAP. Note to self: riding motorcycle with snow-encrusted tires and contemplating irony do not mix. There was some snow at the top of the pass, and I was dumb enough to ride into it for a photo op. Ah well. I got it back up quickly enough. The damage: a cracked but still usable left mirror.

Now's when things started getting weird. The last real tree is just south of the pass. Nothing but tundra to the north.

And the pipeline.

Broken by the occasional hills and pumping station. The Haul Road makes no bones about going straight over the hills. It is quite steep in many places, and the spots of mud and occasional ruts made it difficult going at times. Still, it was not nearly as bad as some of the horror stories that I've read.

I passed through a particularly cold zone, in which everything was covered in thick frost.

It is a spectacularly bleak place.

And somewhere among those frost-covered hills, I met Dai.

Dai is from Japan. Dai plans to ride his bicycle from Prudhoe Bay to Mexico. Dai is nuts. Nice guy, though.

Eventually the frost cleared as I descended toward the coast.

And I thought Penn State was in the middle of nowhere. (FYI: PSU, where I was an undergrad, is also located in a "Happy Valley.")

About 100 miles north of Atigun pass, I came across this herd of musk oxen:

These ice-age beasts were perfectly content to lie about on the frozen tundra. Strange, strange creatures. How they survive up here is beyond me. (In particular, I wonder how they get enough water. Sure, there is water all around, but it's all frozen.)

About 60 miles south of the coast, even the hills end, and the landscape becomes a uniform plane descending gradually toward the ocean. The North Slope indeed.

Milepost 414: Deadhorse.

There is no grand sign welcoming you, so instead I just took a picture of the local gas pump.

I did not like it there. I am an unapologetically liberal Democrat, and this place just made my skin crawl. I felt like I was going to get ambushed and shot by Dick Cheney at any moment.

Ah, those Halliburton folks. What will they think of next? (OK, so actually that is pretty funny. In the dark kind of way you'd expect from Halliburton.)

And I never made it to the north shore. This is as close as I got, roughly 12 miles south of the ocean:

North of this point you enter the oil fields, which are closed to visitors. The only way through is on a tour bus, which was done for the season. Even then, you need to pass a security check before they let you on the bus. The guard there brusquely turned me around. (Ah, and as for the possibility of flying to Barrow, AK to see the shore: the cheapest round-trip tickets went for $370. Not worth it.)

Well, at least I can celebrate my successful journey with a beer, right?

WHAT?? I rode 5,000 miles, suffered a costly transmission failure, and traveled the roughest highway in the United States for THIS? A dry town??

Forget that. I rode back to Coldfoot.

Well, not quite immediately. I was hungry, so I had the $18 cafeteria-style buffet at the Arctic Caribou Inn in Deadhorse. I wound up sitting with a bunch of pipeline maintenance workers. Young guys, all in their early to mid-twenties, to my surprise. The few I talked to had come to work here shortly after high school. Working 2-and-2's: 14 days on, 10 hours per day, followed by 14 days off. One was working a 3-and-3. Man. Anyhow, they quite reasonably pointed out that if Deadhorse was not a dry town, all hell would break loose. I see their point.

Regardless, I wanted my beer at the end of the adventure, so I did indeed ride back to Coldfoot that evening. Although it was dark, the road was relatively dry, and the pass was clear. According to one of the truckers I talked with along the way, that was not predicted to be the case the next morning. So it all worked out.

And returning through Atigun pass, I saw the Aurora. It was beautiful. It shone all the way back to Coldfoot. And I had my beer: a Coldfoot Pilsner, brewed by the Silver Gulch Brewing company in Fairbanks. All in all, the perfect end to a great day.

Day 16: Exploring around Coldfoot

Well, not much exploring, really. I wanted a low-mileage day. But a couple people on the Coldfoot staff had mentioned a trail from Coldfoot to Chandalar Lake, roughly 60 miles away. Sounded like a good excursion.

But first, breakfast! I had pancakes again, but this time with caribou sausage. I thought that was sufficiently novel to warrant a picture.

Well, trust me, it's caribou. Tasted good to me. Not at all gamey.

Now, back to the excursion to the lake. As it turns out (and as a more informed staff member later told me), the Coldfoot-Chandlar Lake trail is a winter trail. During the summer, in contrast, it is a mud hole. Excluding, of course, the places where it's a river. And maybe a lake farther along.

I made it about 2 miles, falling twice in the mud and deep ruts. Got to the first water crossing (rocky and swift, although not too deep) and decided enough was enough. Back to Coldfoot (falling once more in the process). Total day's miles: 4.

The next half hour was spent duct taping back together my newly cracked windscreen (oops). Ah well. Adds some more character to the bike. Also busted a turn signal, but that hardly bears mention. Then, a good nap.

That night, the aurora was out again. This time, I was ready with my camera.

Note the prominent constellation in the last picture. These were all taken with 15 second exposures.

Day 17: Back to Fairbanks

After a leisurely morning, I left Coldfoot and headed back south. And I made another appointment with George at Trail's End BMW: all the battering the suspension took on the Haul Road resulted in a blown right fork seal. Not a major problem, as the front suspension geometry of the Beemers makes the fork not bear any significant weight. But still, something to be fixed sooner rather than later.

Back at my hotel, I sat around and watched TV. I was utterly beat.

>>>NEXT: Day 18: a do-nothing day!

Days 11 - 13: The Alaska Highway

2007-09-24T18:27:00.000-04:00

Day 11: 398 mi to Fort Nelson, YT

Well, I got off to a late start today. The oil change mentioned at the end of the last long update took a little longer than anticipated. Oil change in high winds? Not so much fun. Oil was everywhere. So it was a short day, heading west to Dawson Creek, mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway, and then riding up to Fort Nelson.

The Alaskan Highway is long. 1,500 odd miles from Dawson Creek, BC, through the Yukon Territories, and finally into Alaska. You can see on my GPS in the upper-right corner the distance to the next turn: 1,408 km. Long.

The ride to Fort Nelson was distinguished by some snow. Fortunately it was still a bit too warm for it to stick to the road, so it just made for some nice scenery.

Day 12: 748 mi through the Canadian Rockies to just past Whitehorse, YT

It was a veritable wildlife safari! In the eastern foothills, this little guy bounded across the road. Unfortunately he was faster than my camera, so you'll have to take my word that this is a black bear cub. Super cute. I honked my horn a couple times hoping he'd look up, but no luck. So I moved on before momma bear decided to check out what all the commotion was about.

Then there were some deer. No pictures. You know what deer look like.

Then I came across this maintenance crew trimming the grass alongside the highway.

And like any good government employees, plenty of them were just lazing about, not doing much of anything.

Or taking their good old time, probably laughing among themselves about making you wait.

In the Rocky Mountain passes of BC, there were caribou and moose everywhere! Sorry, no pics: they move much more quickly than the buffalo. Plus, those passes were generally narrow, windy, and steep single lanes in each direction. With big trucks. And a little slush accumulation. In short, not ideal for stopping for photographs.

The grass in the high plains is maintained by a different crew.

Awwww!

Then at the end of the day, there were elk west of Whitehorse. Lots and lots of elk.

Including some big elk.

I saw a few groups, which appeared to comprise some females, some youngsters, and a big bull. The females and calves would retreat when I stopped for pictures, but the bull would hold its ground until they were all safe in the cover of the woods. Women and children first. The bull in the above pic is doing just that: staring me down after his harem and litter left the roadside.

Oh yeah, and there were some mountains!

And rivers.

(why are they such a striking blue?)

And rapids.

(The above is a short side trip down to Whirlpool Canyon. I figured with a name like that I couldn't go wrong.)

And then things flattened out, and I figured I was through the Rockies. Much to my relief, given the slushy snow in the pass I'd ridden through. Eh. Wrong. After entering the Yukon ...

... I found that the mountains just go on ...

... and on ...

... and on.

(I am writing this in my tent about 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle -- more on that later -- and the mountains still roll on and on, one impassible wall of rock after another. I love it.)

Oh! and there was a gian signpost forest somewhere in the middle of the high plains.
I guess you have to keep yourself occupied somehow during the long winters.

Makes you wonder: what the hell is in Vincennes, Indiana?

At sunset, as I rode out of Whitehorse, I noticed a sun dog to the right of the sun.

These are formed by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. I have only seen them once or twice before in the southern latitudes, but I presume they are more common up here. Here's a larger pic that shows its position relative to the setting sun.

It was a full day.

Day 13: 520 mi to Fairbanks

Here's who I woke up to the next morning.

Her foot was cold and she snored loudly throughout the night (not to mention that there were trucks flying by, as I was just camped in a rest area alongside the highway). Still, I slept well and woke up with a greater sense of contentment than I had felt in a long, long time.

That morning's ride was one of the best I've ever taken. The walls of mountains continued, now interspersed with long, narrow lakes, no doubt carved by glaciers. (Most of them ran roughly north-south, strong evidence for this.) I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscapes that I stopped taking pictures. Sorry. There was absolutely no way to capture it.

Here are the two I did take. I'm approaching Kluane Lake. It's still morning, no later than 8:30 am.

Looking at the way the clouds rolled over the mountain, you can't help but think of waves breaking against a rocky shore. Just breathtaking.

I took a side trip down a dirt road I took to get closer to the lake's edge.

That side trip wound up getting much gnarlier, fording a couple streams and crossing a rather deep drainage ditch. A good shot of off-road adrenaline, accompanied by more amazing scenery.

Farther north, I saw plenty of these:

Bumps in the road due to ice heaves. Great fun, actually. Unfortunately, at this point it was raining, and I discovered that my boots were no longer waterproof.

Cold and wet, I finally came to the border of Alaska. My first view of it, rising above the fog and clouds:

Apparently Alaska has also adopted the "impenetrable walls of rock" decorating scheme. Fine by me.

Not long after, I was there:

I chatted with a couple truckers at the border, and they took my picture.

Stopping for gas shortly after the crossing -- ah, paying the low US gas prices again is so nice, even on a motorcycle -- I ran into a couple who were doing an Alaska-Canada trip on bicycles.

Great people. I didn't take a picture, but they volunteered that I could crash at their place north of Anchorage, so perhaps I'll run into them again.

And then it was a couple final hours to Fairbanks! Checked into a hotel, scheduled a tire change for the next morning, and fell quite soundly asleep.

>>>NEXT: Days 14 - 17: North of the Arctic Circle

A brief update

2007-09-20T12:52:00.000-04:00

Well, I made it to Fairbanks! In a half hour, I'll go to the local BMW mechanic and he'll swap out my mostly on-road tires for 50/50 on-road/off-road tires. Then it's north to Prudhoe Bay! It's been rainy in Alaska for the past few days, so the haul road that follows the Alaska pipeline will be muddy. Should be interesting.

My connection is slow right now, so I can't upload my pictures of the trip up the Alaskan Highway through BC and the Yukon. It was breathtaking. Absolutely stunning scenery. I'll try to get those online in a couple of days -- along with the Prudhoe Bay branch of my trip!

Days 8 - 10: from Green Bay to the AK Highway

2007-09-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

Day 8: 387 mi to Darwin, MN

GREETINGS FROM THE TWINE BALL, WISH YOU WERE HERE!

After escaping form De Pere, WI at around 2 pm, I headed west toward Minnesota. Stopping for yet another lunch at a Subway -- incidentally, Subways in Wisconsin have more cheese options than anywhere else I've found, which I suppose makes sense -- anyhow, so realizing I was about to enter Minnesota, I gave my brother a call. The conversation went something like this:

JAKE: Hey Steve, you near a computer? I'm about to enter Minnesota and need you to look something up for me.
STEVE: What's that? You lost?
JAKE: Think: I'm about to enter Minnesota.
STEVE: Minne -- NO WAY!
[clatter of Steve's chair falling as he leaps out of it]
JAKE (laughing): Yep. Can you tell me where it is?

Why is this exciting? Because we're uber-dorks and listened to Weird Al growing up. Aside from his parodies, he wrote a few original songs, including this tribute (sincere, to my ear) to Roadside Americana:

(If you don't have Flash, that's supposed to be an unofficial Youtube video for "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.")

So when I found out that it would only take me about 30 minutes off my route, I had no choice. Twine ball or bust!

Unfortunately, the Twine Ball Inn doesn't look like anything more than a run-down bar, so I wound up camping at a nearby RV park.

Day 9: 817 mi to Regina, SK

Crossing the northern American plains. Minnesota to North Dakota to Saskatchewan.

Not a very interesting ride, although northern North Dakota has a rather stark beauty.

(don't worry, Mom -- I parked the bike first. And then ran into the middle of the road to get a better shot.)

Camped about 15 mi north of Regina. There was no hot water in the shower. Not fun.

Day 10: 815 mi to Grande Prairie, AB

More dead boring riding across the plains. There were cows ...

(moo)

... and bugs ...

(splat)

But mostly there was nothing. Even more nothing than in North Dakota. Yes, yes, stark beauty and all that, but I was getting sick of flat and empty.

Fortunately, that started to change once I got past Edmonton and turned NW. Soon there were hills, trees, streams. Industry shifted from farming to logging and oil.

Another picture of my shadow. Autumn is in full swing up here!

There are additional pictures that I didn't post in my online gallery. More of the same, really, but maybe you want another look at those bugs?

I'll be in Fairbanks in 2 days, which makes my Prudhoe Bay run the 20th or 21st. Precisely on the equinox. As a result, everywhere but the northernmost latitudes will still experience a full day/night cycle: on the equinox, the inclination of the Sun above (at noon) and below (at night) the horizon is just your angle from the North Pole. Fairbanks is at about 65 degrees north, so the Sun will go from 25 degrees above the horizon to 25 degrees below it -- more than enough to ensure perfectly dark skies. ("Astronomical night," during which it's dark enough for the big telescopes to operate at their best, is defined as the sun being more than 18 degrees below the horizon.) OK, physics lesson over. In practical terms, it means: I MIGHT SEE THE AURORA!! Please send some spaceweather, my astro friends.

OK, I've got to run! Day 11's a rollin', and I still need to change my oil before I hit the road.

>>>NEXT: Days 11 - 13: The Alaska Highway

Day 4 - 7: stuck in Wisconsin!

2007-09-14T12:47:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. I have no excuse, as I've had nothing better to do while I sit around in my hotel room. (Which, luckily, does have high-speed internet.) But my situation has been sufficiently pathetic that I've been doing nothing other than watching TV, playing computer games on my laptop, and ... well, that's about it. I did travel into Green Bay on wednesday and check out the local brew pub and a few other places. And there is a pretty decent Mexican restaurant right next door to the hotel. (I know -- it must be like all 10 of the Mexicans in Wisconsin, right there.)

So, the damage to the bike: one of the seals on my transmission failed, letting crap get in there. That destroyed the transmission and caused the clutch plate to become unaligned, prematurely wearing it. OUCH. I lucked out and found a used, good-condition tranny on beemerboneyard.com, which buys totaled beemers and parts them out, so that saved me a good bit of money. Still, this hurts the old checkbook.

WOOHOO! Dealer just called as I type this. BIKE IS DONE! I'll be back on the road in an hour.

>>>NEXT: Days 8 - 10: from Green Bay to the AK Highway

Day 2 & 3: We have a problem

2007-09-09T18:42:00.000-04:00

Day 2. More or less uneventful. I rode from Alton, ON to Sault Ste. Marie along the lake. Nice ride.

Clutch started occasionally slipping in the low gears at the end of the day. Sometimes got a rattling noise when the clutch wasn't engaged. Hm. Decided to ride day 3 (goal: Winnipeg, Manitoba) in the US rather than in Canada, in case things get worse. Which brings us to ....

Day 3. We have a problem.

Rode roughly 50 miles onto the Upper Peninsula, MI. No rattling, no clutch slipping. Life feeling pretty good.

And then the clutch or the transmission or the final drive failed. Rattling and losing power to the rear wheel whenever the bike exceeds 40 mph or the engine has to put out a significant amount of torque.

I limped my way another 15 miles, to lovely Newberry, MI. Checked into the Best Western. Pulled my starter (pic above), half expecting to see debris in the clutch and flywheel housing behind it, but no debris.

Anyhow, that's academic at the moment. Regardless of whether it's the clutch or whatever else, I can't fix it here. I'll probably rent a truck tomorrow and take it to Nick's BMW in Greenbay. This is going to cost me a couple days and probably more money than I want to think about right now.

>>>NEXT: Day 4 - 7: stuck in Wisconsin!

Day 1

2007-09-08T10:43:00.000-04:00

711 miles, Cambridge, MA to North Hampton, NH to Alton, ON via Niagra

So day 1 was a bit of a rescue mission. Miriam, a good friend of mine who is also doing a Canada ride, ran into some bike problems requiring some new parts. Parts in Canada are apparently hard to find and very expensive, so I stopped by the bike shop in NH that she goes to and delivered them to Alton, a town just north of Toronto where she is staying with friends. The plus side being that I got to stay with some extremely nice Canadians.

But first -- the beginning. Here's my odometer, right before leaving. 41,969 mi.

Not much to see, scenery-wise. I wanted to be quick so it was just a straight shot down the 90 through Massachusetts and New York.

The auxiliary tank is AWESOME. 428 miles before my first refill, and I could have gone another 40. Between that, the new saddle, and the throttle lock (think a poor man's cruise control), the highway miles just flew past. An iPod and good earphones helps too.

43 mpg. Not bad.

Finally, I reached Niagra. I remember the rapids before the Falls frightening me as a child. At night they are even more menacing. Here the Horseshoe Falls are lit by spotlights from the Canadian side.

And entering Canada:

OK, that's all for now. I am being lazy since I have such wonderful hosts here but I need to hit the road!

>>>NEXT: Day 2 & 3 - We have a problem

And we are GO!!!!

2007-09-07T09:44:00.001-04:00

I'm hitting the road! (figuratively speaking, of course.) Sadly, without the camera. It was not happy with the motorcycle power supply, despite the big filtering capacitors I put in my controller circuit and on the camera itself. Ah well, something to do for the next trip.

It was a nice thought:

And here's the bike, ready and waiting for me!

Thanks to everyone who wished me off!

>>>NEXT: Day 1

Ready for launch!

2007-09-07T00:28:00.000-04:00

OK. It's been quite a process, but I'm ready to go. Leaving at 8:00 am tomorrow. Yes, I said 5 am before, but I have good reason for leaving later. But first ....

That is it. What my past 5 1/2 years at MIT have come down to. The above form indicates that I have turned in my thesis to the physics office, completing all the requirements for my PhD in astrophysics. (Note that "PhD" has been circled, rather than "SM," for a science masters.) Never mind that the above piece of paper could be easily mistaken for a dry cleaning ticket. That is it. And with it, I am done. Summarily cut off of the payroll and sent out the door. Not a moment too soon.

So, with that in hand, I could go about more interesting things. Like this trip. The past couple weeks have involved a lot of bike preparation.

Adding an electrical connection, so that my cell phone and laptop can recharge while I ride:

I also hacked together a power cord and protective case for my Macbook, but it's packed away right now.

Put a 5 gallon auxiliary tank on my bike, right over where the passenger seat would go. I'll take a pic tomorrow before I leave.

Added a headlight guard to protect the glass headlight assembly from rocks on the gravel roads of Alaska. These things cost like $50 -- or you can whip out the trusty Dremel and drill and DIY. Granted, mine looks a wee bit ragged around the edges, but ... meh. It's functional.

Did a little motorcycle-worthy hair styling. BEFORE:

And AFTER:

Again, obviously DIY. Like hell I'm gonna pay someone $15 to buzz my hair.

And finally, I hacked up this old digital camera so that it will (hopefully) take a picture every six seconds while I'm riding. Unfortunately, learning astrophysics seems to have pushed most of the electrical knowledge out of my head -- and I never had much to begin with -- so we'll see how well this thing works. I give it 8 days before it falls apart. That's probably optimistic, but I at least want it to last until Alaska.

So the idea is that the camera will sit behind my windshield, looking forward and taking pictures of the scenery ahead. Taking one picture every six seconds, a time-lapsed movie will compress 2 hours of riding into a minute of video. If this all works, I'll put the time-lapsed movies on youtube. We'll see.

So that's it for prep. The plan:

I'm going to get up to Fairbanks, AK as quickly as possible. Blitz across the Trans-Canada Highway with minimal stops for scenery. At this point, it's late enough in the season that snow starts to be a concern. So I plan to be at Fairbanks in a week. I just got a new (to me) Sargent saddle. I hope it's better than the stocker.

That's all for now. I need to hit it. I'll post a picture of my packed bike tomorrow morning.

(Click on the >>>NEXT links to continue through the story!)

>>>NEXT: And we are GO!!!!

Close ... but not quite

2007-09-05T22:41:00.001-04:00

OK, one more day. Departure is Friday, 5 am. And that is final. (Note: the previous entry only claimed "some finality" re leaving tomorrow!) But now my bags are pretty much packed, the bike is set up, and so on. I'm ready, or at least I would be with a couple more hours of prep. But I'm planning a long ride the first day, and I want a full night's sleep before it. So: one more day.

STILL in Cambridge!

2007-09-05T00:34:00.001-04:00

But I can say with some finality: the departure date is Thursday, September 6, at roughly 5:00 am. I decided that I am on vacation, so I am not rushing anything, not even vacation.

Plus, I got bogged down in a morass of electronics, trying to rig up a digital camera to take a picture every 6 seconds of my trip. So that I could create a time-lapsed video. It would have been very cool. Might still be. But I'm having problems with the camera giving me "low battery warnings." (Despite the fact that it expects 3.7 V and I've given it anywhere between that and 4.5 V. Stupid camera.) So that might not happen. But I bumped it from the priority list, so I'll leave Thursday morning regardless.

Still in Cambridge

2007-08-25T09:08:00.001-04:00

Ahhh, so, about the previous post. You see, "thesis is done" is a complicated statement. There's finishing the thesis, but there's also the minor business of defending, making revisions, and getting out a paper before the trip so it doesn't get scooped by a competitor. Also: applying for postdocs. And don't forget trip preparation.

So I am still in Cambridge. Departure date has been rolled back to Sept. 1. And I've finally conceded that this is now the "fall of freedom" tour. And I've cut out the Florida bit, instead choosing to concentrate mostly on the dirt roads of Canada. I've seen the Eisenhower highway system before, thank you very much.

But trip preparation is well on its way. More details shortly.

Thesis is DONE!!!

2007-07-20T00:04:00.000-04:00

THESIS IS DONE, MY FRIENDS, done Done DONE i SAY!!!

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

ok, still a bit of minor editing and fun stuff like writing the acknowledgements, but practically speaking it is .......

wait for it .........

DONE !!!!!!!!!!!!

Almost ... done ...

2007-07-19T00:30:00.001-04:00

... the thesis. It will be finished in less than 24 hours.

More importantly, I will be on the road in 1 month. And counting....

Notes from the thesis cave...

2007-07-17T14:43:00.000-04:00

I have sealed myself off from all civilization. There are roommates out there, I'm sure. Right now I do believe that they are cooking bacon. Maple flavored, if my nose serves me well. Or perhaps they also made pancakes. No matter! The outside world is of no use to me now.

For right now, it is just me and the thesis. 95 pages of astrophysical lore, and likely to be 110 by the week's end. Seven chapters. Two appendices — or perhaps three, should the inspiration strike. The shades are drawn, and the air conditioner maintains a steady temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Its quiet hum my only companion.

At times, I am driven to seek sustenance; as much as I try to concentrate without pause or interruption, my mortal needs cannot go unmet. At those times — and those times alone! — I venture forth from my thesis cave. Nearby, there is a friendly trader from the land of Syria, in the far-off Middle East, from whom I often order exotic falafel or lamb shwarma sandwiches. Farther, there is an establishment run by Mexicanos. I fancy their bean burritos, and the route to their shop carries me past a 7-11, at which I can procure milk at low expense.

But I waste too much time! I must return to my astrophysical lucubrations.

Summer of freedom begins ... NOW!

2007-06-21T16:20:00.000-04:00

It's the solstice, the official beginning of the summer. Funny, I don't feel any free-er. I feel like I should be working on my thesis instead of procrastinating with this silly blog. In light of the rescheduled trip, I probably should rename this thing the "Fall of Freedom" blog, but that sounds far too ominous.

Returning to work ... NOW!

SOLD! DRZ400S

2007-06-12T09:09:00.000-04:00

Back down to a one-bike stable now: just me and the 1150. I'll miss having the lighter dirt bike, but the money will certainly help finance my trip. And the bike definitely went to a good home.

Super mega update!

2007-06-07T10:58:00.000-04:00

I am neck-deep in thesis writing, which is why I haven't put up anything on here in a while. That said, I've gotten in some incredibly fun riding in the past month! Here are some pics.

April 21-22: BMW XPLOR Rally in the NJ Pine Barrens

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

MAN! what an awesome couple days of riding. On Friday through Sunday, I attended an off-road rally and lessons sponsored by BMW's XPLOR program. It was epic.

Friday, I rode down to Hammonton, NJ, with my friend Miriam and Brad (aka Beez) and Buck (aka BuckRider) from ADVrider. (All Pine Barrens photos shamelessly stolen from Beez, unless otherwise noted.) We got there in time for the registration and a discussion about the trails and riding itinerary for the next two days. It was an uneventful ride down. Or so I thought.

On Saturday morning around 8 am, we were getting ready to head out for the ride.

I was airing down the tires on my 1150 when another rider pointed out oil all over my left front brake caliper. Oh crap. Turns out my left fork seal had blown on the way down. Oh double crap. The bike was certainly not ridable in its condition. But before I could even get to the "what the hell am I gonna do now?" panic stage, a BMW rep walked up to me and gave me the keys to a brand spankin' new X-Challenge to ride all Saturday. 17 miles on the odometer.

I was bummed.

OK, not really.

This bike ROCKED. I'd never ridden in deep sand before, so I needed all the help I could get, and the smooth suspension and engine on the X-Challenge was truly confidence inspiring. I want one.

I was in the beginner group, so we were first up for lessons. I volunteered to be an example (of how not to do it, as often as not) for Jimmy Lewis. Here he is, giving some pointers.

And then off to riding!

The Pine Barrens are intense. I'm not at all used to sand, and the sand there is ... well, the locals call it "sugar sand" because it's so fine-grained. I went down a number of times (sorry BMW!) before starting to get the hang of it. But once I did, it was the most exhilarating riding I've ever done. I'm afraid my camera battery was dead that day, so no pics, but Miriam, Buck, and Brad took some good ones. One of the many highlights was riding on single-lane roads with cranberry bogs on either side.

Don't lose it on the sand and swerve! I enjoyed many, many "holy crap did I just make it through that?!?" moments with other riders.

The next day, I was back on my 1150. DeSimone Motorcycles of NJ replaced my fork seal overnight ... and charged me only $20, the cost of the parts. DAMN. Mad, mad props to them for their support of this event. Riding the 500 lb 1150 through the sand was a wee bit more nerve-racking than the 300 lb X-Challenge. Still, another great morning of riding with some fun water crossings ...

(photo courtesy of Gary5410)

... before heading back to Boston. It was a great weekend with great people. Here's my riding buddies Miriam, Buck, and Brad on the way back.

May 18: New suit!

The leather jacket and unvented pants weren't the most comfortable (HOT) at the Pine Barrens rally, so they certainly weren't going to do it for a long summer ride. So I bought a Rev'it Off-track jacket and matching Dakar pants. This is one sweet suit.

(And hey, parents! -- it features high-quality armor out the wazoo!)

May 20: Central MA dual-sport ride

Compared to the sandy mayhem of the Pine Barrens, I enjoyed a relaxed ride on the dirt roads of western MA in this organized dual-sport ride.

It was pouring that morning, but it turned out to be a beautiful day.

Rescheduling!

2007-05-01T18:16:00.000-04:00

Change of plans. It turns out that there is a conference in mid-August that I really want to attend: "40 Years of Pulsars," which will be held at McGill University in Montreal.

Looks cool, doesn't it? No? Well fine, it does to me. And it'll be a great chance to present my thesis work to the pulsar community.

So instead of going to Florida then Colorado then Alaska then home, I'll do the reverse, leaving for AK directly from Montreal. Counter-clockwise instead of clockwise. That gives me a bit more time to wrap up my thesis work and get out postdoc applications. It also means that I'm not riding through the south in the dead of August — that phase of the trip gets pushed back into September. (Hurricane season, as my advisor pointed out. Woohoo.)

I've adjusted the countdown by +1 month accordingly.

Minor accident

2007-04-28T21:41:00.000-04:00

Well, my bike is officially battle tested. I was riding home from work today and made a left onto my street. Just as I came out of the turn, a parked car pulled out. I'm happy to say that the instincts did what they were supposed to: emergency brake, slight swerve. Didn't go into the opposing lane, since that could have been really ugly, but managed to scrub enough speed to bring me down to less than 10 mph and make the collision a glancing one. I wonder if I could have avoided it entirely by swerving a bit more, but given the potential for oncoming traffic, I don't think my reaction was bad.

Meanwhile, I had time for two thoughts before collision. Thought 1: "Huh. I'm gonna hit this guy." Thought 2: "I hope my bike stays up."

Crunch.

Kept the bike upright and brought it to a near stop. Looked around and did a U-turn to park on the other side of the road. Quick self-check tells me that my right leg bumped the car, but no damage to myself.

The guy in the car gets out and is very apologetic. Very nice guy, fortunately. We exchange information and check for damage. His left-view mirror broke off and is lying in the center of the road, and there is a dent in the driver's door. My bike ... is fine. Not a hairline scratch. Some of the paint from his car rubbed off onto the bike, but I later scraped it off with my fingernail and a scrubber sponge. Given the total lack of damage to my bike, we agree there's no need to report it.

Man I love my bike. That thing is a tank. I'm a little shaken, of course, but happy that everything is OK.

How NOT to do it

2007-04-16T00:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a tale from the Dalton Highway, the haul road that parallels the Alaska pipeline from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. What he lacked in preparation, he made up for in spirit:

http://www.bmwmoa.org/features/haulroad.htm

Parental types: I'll be far, far more prepared than this guy, in just about every possible way.

Thoughts on motorcycling

2007-04-06T17:22:00.000-04:00

Wow! T-minus 97 days and counting, according to the timer here. In 98 days I'll be on the road, if all goes according to plan. I've been working like a dog this past week, trying to get things done so that I can be on the road by then. Right now, I'm finishing up a paper that's taken much of the past year to develop. But it's friday afternoon, so I'm going to slack a bit. And think about motorcycles. Which generally means that I'm going to hang out at ADVrider.com and read some threads and maybe contribute a post or two.

Today I read one that really struck me: a eulogy for Fred Tausch, who rode his 1970 BMW R60/5 for some 600,000 miles before passing away a couple years ago.

If you click on the image, you can see that it's been edited, probably more than a few times, to update the number of miles it shows!

Anyhow, Fred Tausch sounded like a truly inspiring guy, and his eulogy struck a chord with me, so I'm copying it here for others to read.

——

Tauschs: Mildred, Karen, Fred Jr., friends, Romans, countrymen.... I'm Jeff Stein, a motorcycling Friend of Fred. For the next minute or two I am going to try to give voice to some thoughts brought here today by so many more of Fred's friends.

In the last few weeks we have lost several people who brightened our lives:

Johnny Carson; the playwright Arthur Miller; Philip Johnson — America's most famous architect; and now Dr. Fred Tausch. All four of these men were entertainers, storytellers, public figures, and they all lived full and interesting lives....

But none of us ever camped with Johnny. And we never rode to breakfast with Arthur Miller, even when he was married to Marilyn Monroe (maybe we shoulda...). We didn't hang out around the coffee pot with Philip Johnson, even though we could have — he did a lot of work in Boston. So, the loss of Fred, someone we shared our days with, is a bit more personal, and frankly a little harder to take.

So my question is this: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!? And I don't mean, "How did Fred Tausch die?", a perfectly good, 70-year-old Father, Scientist, Student of Foreign Affairs, Conversationalist, Friend, Motorcyclist. What I mean to ask is, "How did all of us, men and women from all over New England, from all walks of life, come together as a community to find ourselves HERE, on a Saturday in February — the day before Fred's 71st Birthday — at a Unitarian Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, celebrating the life of our friend, whom we now miss so much.

The answer is pretty simple really.

Some 30-odd years ago, in 1973, Fred Tausch bought a motorcycle; and re-invented himself in a way that was startling to some and wonderful to us.

That's it, by the way, just outside, that very one, a 1970 BMW R60/5.

The first modern BMW; the first to be made in Berlin; THE one, according to Dr. Helmut Bonsch, who in the 1970's headed the BMW Motorcycle Engineering Department, and a man whom Fred later met — just like everyone else connected to BMW motorcycling, Fred met them all....

According to Bonsch, this model, the R60 600cc, had the most reliable of all BMW engines, the one that had the possibility of lasting longest. Because of the low mass/weight of the pistons, the engine is under-stressed... so it runs really easily. The job of this motorcycle was, and I'm quoting BMW literature here, "to carry people over mixed roads at Maximum efficiency with minimum effort." That was BMW's primary goal, and Fred's too, turns out. And this particular one, the one just outside — Fred's — seems to have done this better than any other. 632,978 miles later, we can say this with certainty.

But I digress.

On Fred's first day on a BMW Motorcycle, that one, he picked it up early in the day from the private seller. (You thought he bought it new? No way!) He climbed aboard, checked out the controls, and rode out of Boston, headed north, up route 1, onto 127, through Gloucester; and then a little further, getting the feel of it now, up through the lower tip of New Hampshire and on into Maine, riding along the coast in the salt air. About sunset, Fred pulled into a little motel on the Maine Coast and called his wife from the front desk.

"Honey? I'm up here in Maine. Yeah. 300 miles. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Well, I'm going to be late for dinner...." (How many of us have made that call!?) 300 miles the first day he owned a BMW motorcycle! Fred was hooked! And he was not afraid.

He stayed in Maine that night, and next morning Dr. Fred Tausch did not look back, he did not check his 6 — he woke up with the sun, and he was a motorcyclist, and he saw that that was good!

He went up through the rest of Maine on that first trip on a BMW, and on into Canada, back down through New York, across Pennsylvania. When he finally did arrive home, and return to work — Fred was fully employed at the time — he had put several thousand miles on the bike, and he knew how he was going to live the rest of his life: it was going to be a life lived in perfect balance, beyond the grasp of the ordinary, a life that he alone would direct. That's what he did, too.

Fred never had much to do with cars after that, after 1973. He rode his motorcycle — to work, to the grocery store, to church, in the rain, to public events and family vacations — he even had a sidecar for that, and for riding in snow and ice.

Fred liked to tell a story of a sidecar incident involving his son Fred, when young Fred was around 11 or 12 years old. The two Freds were motorcycling with sidecar up Whiteface Mountain out by Lake Placid, New York. The road winds around hairpins, in and out, and it is quite steep, too. At one point it was too much for the little engine, and the clutch began to slip, someone had to get off the bike.

Fred the father, educated in the ways of Scientific Method, knew at once what had to be done: the kid had to get out and walk! While Fred drove the motorcycle. Even that wasn't good enough, though, and Fred jr. was called back to PUSH.

So there they were, running uphill on an inside hairpin curve, just — if you've ever been there yourself — just around the corner from where visitors to the top park their cars, in full view of those folks, and within earshot, too.

I mention this last to you, because Fred was worried the bike wouldn't make it, so he was yelling at young Fred, "Faster, Faster!" Loud enough to be heard above the engine noise. "Faster, Faster!" echoing across the mountain. They did make it to the parking lot, where a bunch of frowning people were standing around waiting to see just who this evil madman was, making a young boy push him up the mountain.

"Boy did I get a lot of dirty looks!" said Fred.

Fred wasn't an evil guy, though. He wasn't even MEAN. And he never had a bad word for anyone, ever — even if they deserved it!

In the years that most of us have known him, the last decade of his life, it turns out, when Fred was a full-time motorcyclist, criss-crossing the US, attending all the BMW rallies, there was never a time that he had anything but good cheer for anyone that he met. And he met everyone! He counted among his friends University Presidents, groundskeepers, heads of state, truck drivers, German ambassadors, geologists, waiters, booksellers, BMW designers and mechanics, magazine writers and network news correspondents... and all of us in this room. He was often critical of the work these folks did, I must say, but he always had good words for them personally. And he had their respect, too.

My wife, Emilie, understood Fred from the moment they met. "He's an inventor!" she said. And they spent some interesting times together talking about that over the past few years. Fred Tausch invented a life for himself that allowed him balance: travel, a way to constantly meet new people and make new friends. He invented a way out of the materialistic dead-end we have created for ourselves in this culture — he beat the system! — and instead he lived on ideas, thrived on them. His datebook, found after his death last week, where he wrote down where he would be, who he was seeing, what event he was going to next, was filled-up right to today.

A lot of us thought Fred was FRUGAL, to put it mildly. But what he WAS went far beyond that: Fred Tausch was a rebel. He was fully conscious of what he was doing outside the mainstream of American life. He was the embodiment of freedom, a term that I would say has been somewhat devalued of late. He lived his life as an experiment, and each day was a new test to see just how far he could go on brains and heart alone. Not on somebody else's money, not on government largesse, not on the newest thing. He was focused, self-contained, and even though, in the end, his heart let him down, his experiment was a huge success.

I have some notes here, 35 pages of them, comments and pictures posted this past week on the Yankee Beemers' website by some of the people who knew Fred. In these notes are remembrances of first meetings, of Fred talking people through fixing their bikes, how famous Fred was among people all over US, of Fred winning the "Most Free Advice" award a couple years ago at the Charter Oak Rally in Connecticut. There's also a lovely story from the MotoLit site, and the first look at a remembrance of Fred that Victor Cruz has written about "Fred the Storyteller" that will appear later this month in the Yankee Beemers' Boxer Shorts, and in the national BMW Owners magazine. I'd like to give these to Fred's children, now. And just say to them, "Fred was our friend, he was so much fun, thank you for letting us have him all these years."

Long Live Fred Tausch!

Jeff Stein, Yankee Beemers

First dirt

2007-04-03T23:34:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday was the first time I really took the 1150 out on dirt. It was awesome. Great fun. More fun than I've had on my DRZ400S, which is a far better tool for that sort of thing. Yeah, the 1150 is a big and heavy beast, but I love the thing.

First off, the knobbies just about double the coolness. Putting them on was a major pain ...

But like I said, the coolness of my bike definitely went up a notch or two:

Many thanks to my friend Miriam, who helped with the tire change.

The Sunday dirt riding took place around Epping, NH. Here is one of the pictures in which I look like I have some idea what I'm doing:

There are many more pics in this ADVrider thread. It's probably some sort of trick photography, but in a few pics it would appear that I in fact do not know what I'm doing. Like when I wound up in a little puddle:

(Photo credits here go to Beez of ADVrider. Great people to ride with! Good encouragement to keep you going, and ready cameras when you screw up.) That water was cold — those are chunks of ice floating around my bike! Fortunately the knobbies did their job, and I was able to drive right out of the hole, no problem.

Tire swag!

2007-03-27T18:46:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm running Anakees on my 1150. Good road tires. I will buy another pair. But with spring (more or less) here, I want to get some practice riding the 1150 off-road, since I'll certainly be on dirt in Alaska and Canada. So I bought some Continental TKC80s, knobby tires capable of both dirt and street. Throw in a tire pressure monitor (hey Mom & Dad — it's safety gear!) and some bling tire irons from Motion Pro, and it's Christmas in, uh, March.

It's pretty funny how the tires were "packaged." The SmarTire pressure monitor and tires were both delivered today by UPS, but by two different trucks. When the first truck gave me the monitor, I asked the UPS guy if there was another package. Maybe a big one? He said: "Yeah, you the guy with the tires?" Yeah, that's me.

Huh. Wonder how he knew they were tires. Must be in a big box that says TiresUnlimited.com in big letters or something.

Nope:

I got a pretty good kick out of that. Installation this weekend, if I'm not too busy with work.

The other pair of tires are Pirelli MT21s for my DRZ400.

Itinerary

2007-03-24T18:46:00.000-04:00

Well, the first iteration anyhow. It'll surely change. But here's the idea. Times given are rough dates of arrival.

7/15 — OBX
7/21 — Wilmington, NC
7/23 — Sarasota
7/25 — Key West
8/02 — Denver via Texas & New Mexico
8/13 — Seattle
8/17 — Whitehorse
8/18 — Fairbanks
8/19 — Prudhoe Bay
9/11 — Cambridge, MA

A bit about me

2007-03-24T05:36:00.000-04:00

Hello. Welcome to my blog. I've never done a blog before. But then I haven't really had much of a reason to in the past five years, and before that .... Well, before that I'm not sure the word blog had been coined yet. That's me to the right, looking grumpy and maybe a bit hungover.

The reason I haven't had too much to blog about in the past five years is because I've been in grad school. Working my ass off to get a PhD in astrophysics from MIT. At this point it's been so long and grueling that I sometimes forget why I decided to go down this road in the first place. As a snappy comeback when someone questions my credentials? It does sound a bit silly. Of course, the real reason is because I've always been fascinated with space — both the mystery of what's out there and the adventure of human space flight. I certainly wouldn't mind going up there someday myself.

Anyhow, the past five years have been hard. But with only a few months remaining (holy crap! so much to do!), the end is in sight. And I need a vacation. A long and awesome vacation. Hence this trip.

I started riding about three years ago. You see, the MIT physics department has three general exams that you must pass in order to get the PhD: a test of your knowledge of undergraduate physics (5 hours, 20 questions); a test of graduate physics (5 hours, 4 questions); and finally an oral exam on your specialization, in my case astrophysics. Assimilating enough physics to pass one of these exams requires at least a month of doing nothing but studying for 40+ hours a week. That hurts the human brain. A lot. It makes it do crazy things like ... what the hell, sign up for an MSF course and learn to ride. Buy a bike. Have that bike explode on you. Buy another bike. Also, learn to play guitar! It's kind of like a mid-life crisis in fast-forward.

I had the second, non-exploding bike for about a year. A Honda Shadow 750CD, their chromed-out, mid-displacement cruiser. It was a good bike. But I've never been one to take things half-way, so I wanted to ride it all year round. After a trip from Boston to PA and back for Christmas 2005, I started to realize that the Shadow needed to be upgraded. I really needed to install heated grips, or ....

Or, I could buy a new bike. I think it was a craigslist ad in which BMW's awesome R1150GS first caught my attention. An "adventure touring" bike. Upright seating, off-road capabilities, bigger gas tank. And heated grips. And a million other items that are better cataloged elsewhere. Even its purely utilitarian Mars-rover aesthetics captured my astrophysicist's heart.

I've had this bike for a year and a half now, and man, do I love it. And man, does that love cost me the big bucks. It is a farkle magnet. For the non-bikers, a farkle is an extra bit of gear for the bike. Things like aftermarket shocks, a GPS, heavy-duty sidecases, an auxiliary gas tank, tire pressure monitors. All good examples of farkles, and all ones that happen to be on my bike (or will be by the time of the trip). Luckily for my wallet, I think I'm pretty happy with this setup — not much more to put on! Even luckier, this kind of bike is known to last forever. With proper maintenance, Beemers are famous for staying on the road after hundreds of thousands of miles. (Right now it has a mere 40k.)

I bought this bike to ride it! Anywhere and everywhere, may I never again own a car. Motorcycling has rapidly become a defining hobby for me. So I really can't think of anything better than finishing my obligations here at MIT, getting on that bike, and riding it as far as I can across this country. This blog will be the story of that trip, and all the preparations leading up to it.

Nerdy stuff

2007-03-24T02:04:00.000-04:00

So ... starting the blog. I could either (a) add meaningful content, or (b) add slick javascript counters, zoomable google maps, etc.

Obviously, I chose (b).

And in case you want to do the same, here's what I did.

The count down.
I can't have a road-trip blog under the name "space-jake" without having a countdown to launch. It's pretty simple. Just add an HTML/Javascript page element with the following code:

<font face="Courier" size="+1"><b>
  <p id="CountText" align="center"></p>
</b></font>

<script type="text/javascript">
// Code loosely adopted from hashemian.com/tools.

TargetDate = "07/13/2007 08:00 UTC-0400";
DateFormat = "T %PM %Dd %H:%M:%S";

function CalcDigits(T, UnitLen, UnitWrap, LeadingZero)
{
  s = ((Math.floor(Math.abs(T) / UnitLen)) %
       UnitWrap).toString();
  if( LeadingZero && s.length < 2 )
    s = "0" + s;
  return s;
}

function UpdateCount()
{
  var dThen = new Date(TargetDate);
  var dNow = new Date();
  T = Math.floor((dNow - dThen).valueOf() / 1000);
  
  s = DateFormat;
  s = s.replace(/%PM/g, (T <= 0) ? "-" : "+");
  s = s.replace(/%D/g, CalcDigits(T, 86400, 1000, 0));
  s = s.replace(/%H/g, CalcDigits(T, 3600, 24, 1));
  s = s.replace(/%M/g, CalcDigits(T, 60, 60, 1));
  s = s.replace(/%S/g, CalcDigits(T, 1, 60, 1));
  document.getElementById("CountText").innerHTML = s;
}

UpdateCount();
setInterval("UpdateCount()", 1000);
</script>

Just change the TargetDate and DateFormat variables as you like.

The map.
The map was a bit harder. I found some good instructions for how to include google maps in blogger, but they didn't quite work. I kept getting an error message about incomplete XML tags when I tried to copy the script line that loads google's javascript into the template code.

So instead I put that line in a HTML/javascript page element. Here's the contents of that element:

<script type="text/javascript">
place = "Still in Cambridge, sadly.";
mapLat = 42.363741;
mapLong = -71.105694;
mapZoom = 10;
</script>

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr>
<td width="160">
  <a style="cursor:pointer;cursor:hand" 
      onclick="OpenBigMap()">
    <script type="text/javascript">
      document.write(place);
    </script>
  </a>
</td><td width="40" align="right">
  <a style="cursor:pointer;cursor:hand" 
    onclick="map.setMapType(G_NORMAL_MAP)">N</a>
  <a style="cursor:pointer;cursor:hand" 
    onclick="map.setMapType(G_SATELLITE_MAP)">S</a>
  <a style="cursor:pointer;cursor:hand" 
    onclick="map.setMapType(G_HYBRID_MAP)">H</a>
</td></tr></table>

<div id="map" style="width:200px; height:200px">
<br>Map loading...</div>

<script
  src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=MYKEY"
  type="text/javascript"></script>

So, there are the definition of the current loation, all the interactive page elements, and the script line to load the google maps API. Be sure to change MYKEY to your google maps API key. Sign up here to get one.

The code to setup the map must go elsewhere. (Otherwise it crashes IE. Found that one out the hard way.) In the template HTML, insert the following between the <head> and <body> elements:

<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
var map;
function SetupGMap()
{
  var mapField = document.getElementById("map");
  if( GBrowserIsCompatible() )
  {
    map = new GMap2(mapField);
    var pos = new GLatLng(mapLat, mapLong);
    map.setCenter(pos, mapZoom);
    map.addControl(new GSmallZoomControl());
    map.addOverlay(new GMarker(pos));
  }
  else
  {
    mapField.innerHTML = "Sorry, your browser
      won't support a Google map here.";
  }
}

function OpenBigMap()
{
  var pos = map.getCenter();
  var type = map.getCurrentMapType();
  var zoom = map.getZoom();
  
  if( type == G_SATELLITE_MAP )
    typeText = "&t=k";
  else if( type == G_HYBRID_MAP )
    typeText = "&t=h";
  else
    typeText = "";
  posText = pos.lat() + "," + pos.lng();
  
  window.open("http://maps.google.com/maps?q=" +
    posText + "&ll=" + posText + "&z=" +
    zoom + typeText, "MapWindow");
}
//]]>
</script>

And then add the onload and onunload attributes to the <body> tag:

<body onload='SetupGMap()' onunload='GUnload()'>

That's it. If there's some functionality that doesn't seem to be covered by this code, then ... I've probably been hacking with it. But that's the basics.