I can’t believe this guy calls himself, “Mr. Fudge”.

If you don’t believe its July just trot your ass on down here to Georgia and feel the balmy 96F degrees I just left outside when I got home today!

Leo and Dave met me at 9AM for the little backroads ride up the country for lunch and then the July meeting in Blairsville.

They both opted to let me lead them so I did. I took them up the slab to the Hwy 5 exit in Canton where we connected with E. Cherokee to ride down this neat little road I like. Its actually going backward..back south…but its worth the extra few miles. Connecting with GA 20 east and then GA 369 and 9 we rode a nice curvey ride to Dahlonega and then further north on US 60 to the Two Wheels Only motorcycle resort and campground. They have a nice comfy porch to lounge on and sip sweet ice tea while you contemplate the wind or the grass growing.

I looked at my watch and figured by the time we made it over to Blairsville it would be a nice time to eat some Barbeque. And I was right. There were some other club pals there waiting for us and we all sat down for lunch. I had the half rack of baby back ribs…and I must say they hit the spot at this Sunday lunch hour.

The club meeting was scheduled for 1:15 up the road at a small technical college, so we hustled up there after eating, and had a small meeting. Only about 20 club members showed up…But we had fun anyway. Nice to see everybody again.

A much dreaded trip to Wal-Mart yesterday to fetch some oil and filter for my truck found me wandering the aisles trying to recover the memory of odd things I need to buy from the retail giant. So I picked up a favorite ball point pen refill and some Taco Bell salsa to try in the evening.

The nice Zebra pen now writes again, giving me such strange satisfaction. Its hard to describe. The salsa I mixed with some guacamole chip dip and nibbled on that for dinner as I watched that Star Trek movie for my Friday night activity. I lead a dull and boring life. What can I say?

The truck oil still is not changed. I keep forgetting to take my big drain pan and dump it at the recycle center at the auto parts store and I can’t add any more to it just now. I’m not in the mood to change that truck oil anyway…

But I did finally get out there and tidy up some loose ends on the bike. The clutch cable free play needed a slight adjustment as well as the drive chain tension. I realized that the BMW mechanic who installed my rear tire in California had tensioned the chain 10mm too tight. That had to be loosened just a tad.

Now I need to continue and clean the chain good with some kerosene before giving it some….HEY! I totally forgot to pickup my Teflon chain lube at the Wal-Mart! CRAP! Now I gotta go back down there today.

Its already noon and all I’ve eaten is a bowl of Corn Flakes with one banana, and a big cup of coffee. I guess I better go eat something.

Ride coming up tomorrow. The Georgia BMW club’s monthly meeting is up in Blairsville tomorrw at 1:15. I’ll ride around some and have a little lunch, then mosey on over to the meeting before heading home to wrap up the weekend.

July is taking off with a vengeance! Record heat all up and down the east coast and although it’s still pretty miserable here, we have it somewhat mild by comparison to other places this side of the Mississippi. I have a thermometer out on the front porch which stays in the shade. It has been registering in the high 60s to low 70s right after daybreak each morning. That’s about when I wake up these days. No need for an alarm clock yet so why bother. The highs are ranging anywhere from the high 80s to the low 90s and that’s with ample humidity to make things fun. I actually went for a little two-up ride on Monday and it was warm but not unbearable.

I managed to get the oil changed from the long ride. I did that what seems like an eternity ago, but was actually just last week one day. I was holding off pulling everything apart to check valves until this Monday…which I used to go riding instead. That put me to Tuesday  tearing the little pieces off to access the valve cover. That took the better part of the coolest part of the day and by the time I finished, I was so hot, sweaty and tired I put off actually doing the check until today…Wednesday. I went to lunch with a buddy after a quick cool-down shower and came home to relax during the hottest part of the day. Today I got out there and got the check done after struggling with the TDC fanagling! What a pain the ass! I would have to turn the rear wheel while sitting behind it, then get up and go look to see where the camshaft gears were situated, then go back to the rear wheel and turn it some more…on and on until I had TDC. This sitting down and getting up repeatedly turns out to be a very good workout for my leg muscles. My legs are as sore as if I had run several miles.

The bike has now had the valves checked and all are within spec range. I made a run to the dealer today after lunch and picked up a new air filter and some coolant. The filter needed replacing and the coolant level was down. Once I returned and got those items completed, I began the task of reconnecting the battery and putting all the accessory wiring back where it belongs. The bike started fine and now all that left is the plastic bits and pieces covering up the air box and the beak in the front. A few screws here and there and Bob’s your uncle!

This is Gwen. If you click on the small image you can see the big, clear version.

I doubt Gwen would approve of this photo of her, but it’s the only current one I have and I took it this past Friday while recuperating from my ride. I stopped by Atmore, AL and visited my Dad, my brothers… and my sister in Pensacola, Florida. This gave me some down time prior to coming home to the old routines of life in Georgia.

Gwen is sitting there eating a chocolate chip cookie right after her return from a doctor visit for yet another medical test of some sort. Gwen is my sister-in-law and she is lucky to be alive. Back a few months ago, late at night she began complaining of a bad headache and took a headache powder after which she very quickly passed out and went into a coma. Lloyd, my brother, was right there and immediately called 911. Now Atmore is a small town and the hospital is more like a clinic with few of the modern medical skills and tools needed for really serious problems. They did what they could, gave her a quick exam and called Life Flight out of Pensacola, Florida. She was flown to Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola and the treatment began. From all reports, this process I just described took less than the time we normally spend eating breakfast. They were very fast!

Well, what happened to Gwen was this. She had suffered a “bleeding stroke” in the temporal lobe of her brain. I, like others,  called it an aneurysm but I think, in the strictest sense of the word, it was not really an aneurysm. But certainly bad enough in any case. Any number of alternative scenarios that evening would have meant imminent death for Gwen. If she had simply passed out and fell in the kitchen that night instead of the bedroom, Lloyd probably would have gone on to sleep not noticing Gwen’s absence in the bedroom for some few minutes. Fortunately, for all, the events that evening led to an eventually favorable outcome.

Gwen had a lot of bleeding on the brain that night and the treatment consisted of doing a brain scan to determine where the bleeding vessel was located. However, there was so much blood around the brain, they had to do a draining procedure before they could even do the test. This took about a week, if I recall, and once they did the scan, a repair procedure was outlined. This was such a highly technical and risky procedure requiring the hands of  “special” specialists, that Gwen had to be flown over to  Shands Medical Center at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

The stint installation in the offending blood vessel was sucessful and Gwen eventually was able to sit on her couch and eat chocolate chip cookies again like the rest of us. The specialists say it will take months for Gwen to get all of her normal brain functions returned. And right now, she seems mostly like she always was…She maybe laughs a little more than before…and as Lloyd says, she has become the biggest liar of anyone he has ever known. She tells some whoppers to folks on the phone! You see, the part of her brain that was injured is the part responsible for memory. And for a while her memories will get mixed up with what she hears at any given time. Plus memories from the past get mixed up chronologically and she seems to think things happened just days ago which in reality happened years ago. It’ll all work itself out and all the misfiring synapses will begin to work in unison again pretty soon. But I have to tell you, it really gives Gwen a very relaxed, happy go lucky demeanor, and I will miss her chuckling at all the corny jokes Lloyd and I tell.

I stayed with Lloyd and Gwen Friday and Friday night, and we watched a movie, and ate dinner and breakfast together, and ate chocolate chip cookies and talked extensively. I enjoyed their hospitality and certainly appreciated Gwen’s presence. We are all lucky to still have her with us.

I pulled into Martin Creek Lake State Park in Tatum, Texas yesterday afternoon at about 2PM and it was already close 99 degrees hot. My plan was to get one of their screened enclosures to camp in so I wouldn’t need to set up the tent. The ranger lady at the front gate took one look at me and suggested the air conditioned cottage for an additional $25. I was so hot, I welcomed the change. Once there and unloaded and changed to cooler attire, I ate my sandwich and soup for dinner, planning to jump in the sack and sleep until about 10 PM when I would get up and head on across Louisiana and Mississippi to my Dad’s house in Atmore, Alabama.

I was so excited to be so close to home, I simply could not sleep! I tried to get up and plan my route and then lay back down, but it didn’t work. After trying unsuccessfully for several hours I finally got up at 9PM and packed to go ahead and head out for an all-night cooler ride. I got here at 7AM this morning.

I spent the night before in Post Texas after riding down and through Roswell, New Mexico to west Texas across some of the hottest, driest terrain I have ever been on. I got so hot I took my mesh jacket off and my arms were burned when I got to Post. I’ve been doctoring those since then and today they don’t hurt very much at all.

I’ll head on back to Atlanta on Sunday for the task of paying end of month bills, catching up on my mail and getting back to a routine as I recuperate from 3 weeks of riding a super motorcycle across much of western America.

I was sitting there eating my barbeque plate and it occurred to me I did not want to ride to Monument Valley and through Colorado. It was just a matter of being tired of being blown all over the place day after day by this unrelentless wind…and being cold. I was ready for some warmth.

So I made the executive decision to forego the remainder of my planned trip and head home on a more southern route,visiting my Dad in Alabama before going back to Atlanta.

This still means a few more days of riding, and it’ll only cut the trip short by about one day, but I’m just tired…and I want to go someplace where I know people.

So I assessed the situation geographically and just headed south right by the Grand Canyon…

I took the 89 alternate which leads in a wide arc around the northern perimeter of Marble Canyon where I was able to get a couple of shots of the Vermillion Cliffs area.

Then I took the regular US 89 to Flagstaff…just in time, by the way, to see the smoke boiling up from the fire which was in the news today. I jumped on I-40 and rode it down to Holbrook and US Hwy 180. This took me down to connect back with US 60 and pretty son I was back in Pie Town for the night.

We’ve all heard the phrase “you can’t go back”. Well, it applied in this case as well. It was free camping but the allure of Pie Town was somehow lost. Plus I left this morning much too early to have a second piece of pie. So long, Pie Town.

After awaking and getting dressed and packed for the day, I found myself at the local Wal-Mart at 4AM looking for a can of Teflon Multi-Use Chain lube. My can ran out yesterday and I forgot to go look before retiring for the evening. It turned out they didn’t even have any…so I got a suitable substitute for the rest of the trip. Now I have two cans of the suitable substitute. One just like it at home from a ride I took in April and forgot my chain lube. HaHa!

Since I was up very early and all packed and everything, I got a good head start on the day’s riding. And I was taking the I-80 to get a ways up to my highway connection, so I could ride fast and not worry about the deer in the dark of the early morning….So I made some good time, and watched the sun come up off to my left a bit.

And here are some of those “soft” hills I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Only the ones I saw yesterday were green and red from two kinds of flora growing on them.

I dumped off the slab at Nevada 278, taking it down to connect with US 50 at Eureka.

Now Eureka is a splashy little town out there in the middle of nowhere. I filled up with gas and go a hot coffee while I studied some of the locals as they came and went. Then it was on to Ely, Nevada. By the time I got to Ely I was ready for some food. I located the very same MacDonald’s I ate at 7 years ago on my first trip out here, and scarfed down a steak and egg burrito and a root beer.

Once on the road again I rode on down Hwy 50 a ways and got off to go south on US 93..marked as a scenic bypass..And it was pretty nice. The highway takes you down this huge valley, called Lake Valley, with mountain ranges on both sides, but they appear to be at least 10 miles away on each side. Distances are very deceptive out here.

I got off the US 93 finally after following a Goldwing towing a trailer for some miles. We both exited at the Pioche business loop to get gas and  it turned out to be a woman rider alone on her big ole Goldwing. We chatted for a minute and she said she was from Denver and headed to Las Vegas. I told her I didn’t need to go to Las Vegas this time and was going east over the Cedar City for the night.

After that little encounter at the gas station, I turned east onto Nevada 319 which turned into Utah 56 into Cedar City. The crosswinds on this highway were ferocious! I was doing the perpetual lean and the left sides of my tires are now worn uneven I’m sure. That wind was coming from the south up the valley and it was much like the wind tunnel I rode through near Palm Springs, California.

In Cedar City I rode around a little searching for the KOA which is right on Main Street. I just got through stuffing myself on some really good pulled pork barbeque, a vendor sells here at the campground.

I have a nice shady, grassy campsite and the showers are very clean.

I’m gonna go get one here real soon and get some more sleep. Monument Valley tomorrow!

I am really depressed that I have not been able to take the pictures of things I want to photograph! As I ride along and see some stupendous scene I wish I could just stop and click away, but there are mitigating circumstances! The sides of the roads do not offer suitable places to pull over without risking a fall over of the bike. The shoulders are narrow, or gravelly, or slope down drastically…or all three at once. The bike is so heavily loaded, it would be easy to topple over and be helpless for some time before someone came along to help. I just can’t risk that. But OH!..So many beautiful shots lost forever, only to be remembered in my mind’s eye.

Today was a perfect example of that problem. I left the campsite at Cave Junction very early…before daylight…and made my way slowly along Hwy 199…almost running into one little deer in the process as she wandered across the highway in no particular hurry.

It was also very cold. About 40 degrees, and I was bundled up in layers making maneuvering the bike cumbersome at best. I plodded along, stopping at Grants Pass to get another MacDonalds breakfast, where their WIFI didn’t seem to work by the way. After breakfast I hopped on Interstate-5 and ran up through Medford to Ashland where I took Oregon 66 across Soda Mountain to Klamath Falls. Even though it was still early, the sun was up and I pretty much had the road to myself, so I was able to stop a few times for some pictures along this route. This was one of the most beautiful scenic roads I have been on this whole trip so far. Just spectacular! One section is particularly scary with a steep drop off and NO guardrail of any sort with the wall of the mountain going up on the left side.

Of special interest was the signs I kept seeing, saying “Open Range”. Then I had to turn around and go back for this shot when I passed it suddenly.

The Klamath River figures prominently in this area, and I must have crossed it at least 4 times on this route, once with what I believe is Mount Shasta way in the background. Or that could be Mt. McLoughlin. I don’t know the area good enough to say definitely which it is.

Once I made it to Klamath Falls I just kept going on 140 to try and reach Lakeview before gassing up. Once I got gas and took a little break, I jumped back on 140 and rode the 200 more miles to Winnemucca, Nevada. This last part is the part where I wish I could have taken some pics!

Even though it was mostly dry, barren wasteland, the areas where the road transverses big hills became nice bike riding roads and the scenes looking back down on the valleys was unbelievable!
The approach to Winnemucca also had some rather striking “smooth” looking hills covered with some kind of green and red vegetation, giving them that smooth surreal appearance from the distance.

So that brings me to Winnemucca! I always wanted to see what Winnemucca looks like. Now I know. It seems to be a busy little burg with lots of activity and tons of small, medium and large motels to choose from.

At some point today I determined that I did not want to venture up the Oregon coast on the US 101. I think it was when I woke up this morning and realized how tired I still was from fighting the wind and twisties for the last two days up Hwy 1. But I’m not certain. I just remember taking a look at my maps at one of my stops and thinking I had bitten off just a little more than I could chew…Or a better analogy might be that I wanted steak so much I cooked a whole cow for dinner and then having seen that it is just too much, no matter how good it is, I had to stop at 3 juicy steaks.

The third day riding California’s coastline proved to be the easiest of the 3 days. The wind was still present, but CA Hwy 1 took me inland just enough times and for long enough to relieve the constant battering and buffeting of that pacific wind…which never lets up!

As I moved up the coast, I passed through Fort Bragg, Westport, Rock Port and as I began seeing the big redwood trees I came up on Leggett where the tourist attraction, “The Drive Through Tree” is located.

There’s a little gift shop there as well, but after getting the obligatory photo done I made a U-turn and headed out and on back up the road finishing off my redwood experience by riding up the Avenue Of The Giants.

I kept saying goodbye to the Pacific each time the road took me inland. I bet I did that 4 or 5 times. Finally it really was the last view of those enormous waves.

I happened upon a nice rest area and ate another sardine lunch near Trinidad. Once I got on the BIG Hwy 101 and made it through Crescent City I rode on up Hwy 199 along this big wild river, which I believe is the Smith River.

Once I crossed the state line into Oregon I started looking for place to stop since it was getting pretty late in the day. I found a nice National Forest campsite which was 11 miles off the main highway, but well worth the detour and the $10. My campsite was situated right beside the Little Gray Back Creek and the sound of rushing water kept me sleeping soundly through the night.

No animals of any kind disturbed my slumber this night!