Tripping Around The World, Envy Me But Wish Me Luck

[mattUKNC]

p.s did you know that at the jack daniels distillery you cant have free samples because its a dry county with no liquor!!

A good write up and informative! (I bet the management have a sneeky tipple though...)

[Graham]

so i stayed in a small town on the beach camped out obviously and the weather was perfect, i just crashed out for a few days, the bike had been fuelling badly for a few days so i quickly stripped the carb down and revealed a blocked line on the inlet side of the carb, cleaned out the bike ran like a dream(for a soddin ancient air cooled engine anyway!)



not exactly pretty underneath is it??


So i got back on the road and headed down and into virginia via twenty mile suspension bridge which is an engineering work of art, the feelin of riding with sea on either side of you is very strange and your almost praying it doesnt fall in!

Into virginia the weather was suddenly cooking and muggy, the highways were so quiet i went miles standing on the pegs and just looking around trying to work out what the hell i was doing there.

That evening i entered north carolina

[Graham]

And well you dont go to north carolina without visiting the gap do you?? i'd spent ages on dead straight roads and finally the signs were making me smile and my overloaded knobby shod steed had a vampire smile but hey get swinging and your smiling from ear to ear, a gorgeous road. I followed it up by travelling up into the appalachian mountains to head along the spine of them into teneessee and the views made up for missing out on the trail start which was under thick mud and impassable



Throw one in of the lad in his dodgy rally suit
.
I arrived in the town of boone at a fairly high altitude and found out that if you combine this with beer you dont get tipsy, this i found out after trying to figure oout why the barmaid was suddenly standing 7 feet over me. So... i was lying on the floor, good lad keeping up the english traditions i suppose.

[Graham]

Waking up early the next morning with a dodgy head i decide to get away quickly in case i'm recognised from last night, still time to grab a couple of shots of the bike to show to scale just how big some of these pickup trucks are!


I arrived in knoxville teneessee and met a friend from earlier and said she could sort me a room because they were down there for a school competition. She somehow got me a room for free with meals, a swimming pool and all i had to do was hang out with them and her students for the week because they were doing a robot wars style of competition. I was chuffed and spent the week basically playing with giant RC toys, eating well and soaking up the weather! I figure that if people are generous enough to help you then it would be rude to turn them down. As mementos of that week i have all passes and team photos so they'll be token memories to treasure.
Saturday came around and i was desperate to get going again.

The weather finally caught up with me so i spent two soaking days chugging along just getting some mileage out of the way. Sunday morning i was up and going at 7am and found a fairly famous piece of road to take across the plains into texas


Proof its me here


The reason for being up so early?? Well an alarm went off in the motel and i asked what it was. 'Dont worry honey its just to tell us a tornado is near the ground the next town over!' Pants browned i even saw a few funnel across the fields and tried to catch it but i'm too scared to get close enough but you can see the funnel as it begins to form

But the day brightened and i found another good photo oppurtunity


The towns themselves are very rundown whilst most of the route runs dead staright parralell to the interstates but i was in my element plodding along on a piece of history once again singing away in the sunshine

I arrived in amarillo but what a dump, didnt stick around long, so instead it was back on the road and north for a change across new mexcio and finally picking up the trails in colorado

[Graham]

New mexico was a nice place, the wind ahd picked up and i was using this more as a transit to get to coloorado so didnt see much more than open plains and windmills
.

I hit the small town of manitou colorado and began climbing upwards on mud and gravel towards the peak. It started out sunny but then turned beautiful but cold


quite high too
.
The following day i stayed on the trails and it was gorgeous scenery, that'll come next time, right now i'm in moab and its the best place in the world. Pictures will tell all soon.......

[CRM]

holy shit, this is awesome stuff graham, its better than some soap opera, i think i can safely say we are all looking forward to the next episode.

[viper_biker]

Graham my friend, you sir, are a legend.

[CMSMJ1]

I'll not take thirds after Paul and big G but I am well impressed and totally hacked off to be looking at the same scenery out of my windows all the sodding time.

Keep it rockin Graham, totally inspirational shizzo fo sho!

superb..

[Matchlessman]

Awesome. You must be having such a cool time.

so having done the carb strip on a park bench, whens the service at the side of the road? Apparantly in America its ok to dump the old oil straight into a drain.

[Graham]

Please let me apologise guys if the writing is brief, i couldnt afford to carry a laptop because i'd either break it or it would be stolen given a few of the places i've been so i'm doing this whenever i find an internet cafe and now i've finally donated to the site i can feel much better about clogging up so much bandwidth!

So colorado was an amzingly beautiful place and finally away from some of those touristy spots, i was riding off the road at last for large portions and despite the cold, the constant scenery was stunning and kept the smiles up, the altitude of 14,500 feet reached on one pass left me knee deep in snow and shaking despite wearing my thermals and most of my clothing. I packed in smoking after the ring trip last year and am glad because with air this thin i needed every space in my lungs to just stand up at times!


The above had me laughing and it looked more like somebody with an elvis hairdo. and i know they use the x instead of saying crossing, but it always jumps to my mind as a much ruder word!

So a new day and after a jet wash the bike was clean, i had a lovely cabin in the woods which all considered i didnt minda paying for because i was like a block of ice, heated grips folks, they make you look pansy but you can still feel your fingers!

my tires were shot and the only dealer for miles had these, so i fitted them and got back to it, the tread was not very deep so it made for an interesting ride in sand later on!
But on a plus what a gorgeous morning! Normally i'm lazy at home but here i've been on the road byt 8 every morning and it makes for the most picture perfect weather. Todays riding took me along the spines of the rockies for nothing more than scenery