Geek who loves 2 bike

After my afternoon with my daughter Sophie, I decided to do a running workout by running on the local (to Lawrence, KS) high school running track. This brought back memories of when I used to workout with my good friend, Wade M., in San Antonio, TX. At the time, 20 years ago, we were both in our early 20’s and regularly did running workouts on a local high school track and football fields.

As many may know, I am currently a big fan of multi-sport training. By this I mean workouts in a variety of sports or fitness activities. These can vary as far as swimming, running, climbing, weight-lifting, kayaking, yoga, of course biking, etc. I contrast this to “cross-training” which I define as regularly training in more than one sport.

Back in the day working out with Wade, our running workouts included many different variations. Wade had played some college football and was an ex-high school football star. Who from Texas didn’t play football? Accordingly our workouts included sprints, intervals, running backwards, running sideways, bleacher climbs, as well as some others. Thank god back then they didn’t have those little parachute things you see sports stars running with today!

Why I probably have a been on a track a few times since then, I really can’t recall them. Today’s run was good. Besides the less-jarring impact of the composite track, it is much more fun to run some of these variations on the track. I did intervals, backwards, and sideways running, on my 4.5 mile workout. I may include this track run more often.

If you haven’t visited the running track at your local high-school lately, I recommend you do. This is a great way to add an new twist to your runs.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who initially could not understand why anyone would want one of the 80GB or 160GB iPods announced by Apple yesterday. After a brief discussion I convinced him that these would be great and loved by many people.

I have commented previously about the “iPod paradigm shift” which is based on carrying all of your music with you versus just part of your collection. I currently have a 20GB iPod which is full and my music collection is much larger. (I don’t have a new iPod because I am waiting to purchase at least one new larger one when I get a new MacBook to replace my much-loved PowerBook which does not have USB 2.0).

An example of this paradigm shift in action can be illustrated by my experience today. In my wonderful afternoon with my young daughter, Sophie, we were listening to my 20GB iPod while we were driving. At the time we were listening to an “on-the-go” playlist created with Sophie’s three current favorite songs: “Last Dollar (Fly Away)” by Tim McGraw, “The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani, and “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles. By the way, Sophie asked about Yellow Submarine out of the blue last week. Of course, being a classic Beatles song, I had it on my iPod. Well the specific experience during the drive was when I asked Sophie if she would like to listen to some other Beatles songs since she liked Yellow Submarine so much. And of course this was easily accomplished because I have a large selection of Beatles songs on my iPod (as well as hundreds of other artists). To top it off, Sophie, 6-years old, was easily able to navigate the iPod with some simple directions from me to set it all up.

As a final note, I admit that I have really not grown up and still love to listen to loud music. Later in the evening when I was driving home after my day with Sophie, I was jamming to The Tragically Hip in my car. This band, far different than the Beatles, was also on my beloved iPod.

The final day (Tuesday) of this trip began when I woke up shortly before 6:00 am (MST). I had gotten to bed very early and wanted to get a relatively early start on my 700 mile trip home.

As it happens, I awoke to a beautiful mountain morning that appeared that it would be much better (no/less rain) than the previous day. I was briefly tempted to stay an additional day. But, I had a commitment for Wednesday evening and generally give myself one day in case of travel problems before my all-important Thursdays with my daughter. So I packed my tent and was off just before 6:30 am. I could have left slightly earlier but I packed up camp slowly in deference to the other campers in the campground.



It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day in the mountains.

My first plan was to ride down the mountain and stop for breakfast at the Egg and I. I really enjoy this place and knew it would be a good start to my day’s ride. The breakfast and service did not disappoint me. I then stopped at the Estes Park visitor center to use the restroom facilities (mainly to change from my warmer mountain clothes to cooler gear for the ride back to Kansas). I ended up leaving Estes Park around 8:00 am (9:00 am CST).

The morning ride eastward on 34 was nice and relaxing. Left of my Day 3 report was that I never really felt in the “groove” riding the previous day. The roads were no more technical or curvy than I have done many times in the past. Proof that wisdom is coming with my age is that I did not overdo it. For example, midway in that ride I saw two other sportsbike riders who turned onto the canyon road in front of me. Normally I could easily keep up with them and might have just to “fly the Ducati flag”. But on that day, I just chose to ride at a slightly more moderate pace. Back to the current day (4). After navigating some freshly laid gravel leading out of Estes Park, I continued on Hwy 34. There was relatively little traffic. But there was still highway patrol on the highway. Fortunately I did not make any of their acquaintances! This in conjunction with my previous days experience lead me to believe that Colorado generally patrols and enforces the speed limit rather strictly. I notice more police patrolling the back roads and canyon roads then other areas I have visited.

My route was to follow Hwy 34 all the way across Colorado to the Kansas Border. A little over 100 miles from my start I experienced some problems with my Garmin GPS unit. Based on the symptoms, I was pretty sure that I had a loose connection in the 12v wiring to the motorcycle. This was not an immediate problem as the unit just goes into battery mode (it has a rechargeable battery). But, as much as I just like my GPS, I really did not want to rely on battery power. I have never learned how long it can run in battery mode. Since I had many hours to travel I decided to stop at a gas station and fix my wiring. I rely on my GPS for my actual speed (the motorcycle speedometer is highly inaccurate), trip information as average speed and time moving, directions, and of course maps. Yes, I could have done without it, but I did not want to. I figured that the fix would take me around 15 minutes. I originally wired all the accessories and am intimately familiar with the wiring. Unfortunately, a motorcycle is a hostile environment, especially with all the vibrations so it is impossible to make completely error free wiring. The fix involved removing some of inner dash plastic to reattach the GPS wire to my added fuse block. This involved me removing the bag I had strapped to the seat to get under the seat for my tools. The fix went smoothly and probably took me around 20 minutes. Unfortunately, as I put everything I realized that I could not find my newly purchase (birthday) knife. Both because I did want a misplace knife floating around and sentiment, I removed all the luggage and spent some time finding the knife. I eventually did, but now had spent around 30 minutes on this stop. More on why this was important later. I chose to gas up before I left.


The roads along the plains are mostly straight.

I rode on along the mostly straight and lightly trafficked highway. As I approached Akron, CO I realized that this was the county seat of the area where I got a speeding ticket on my first day of the trip. As there was not much along this highway I was pretty sure I would pass the courthouse. I decide if I saw it I would stop and see if I adjudicate the ticket with the county clerk. As I pulled up to it, I should have known that I was not going to be in luck. The large court center is very modern and stands out in the area. And, unlike many jurisdictions, the county clerk indicated that they make no adjustments to tickets. Bummer. A wasted stop. I got back on my bike and continued on.

Now another item that I may have neglected to mention in earlier posts is that I rely on listening to music on my motorcycle rides. Since my satellite radio unit had been stolen out my car the previous week this meant I was relying on my two iPods (Shuffle and and regular iPod). For long trips my regular, albeit old, iPod is better because it has 20GB of music on it. Unfortunately the battery only lasts about two hours. But, I have a 12v cigarette-lighter type wiring in my tank bag and a 12v AC adapter for my iPod. Frustratingly, my 20GB iPod acts weird when trying to play it and charge it with the adapter the same time. I found a workaround by just charging the iPod and then unplugging the AC adapter when listening to me. This is where the iPod Shuffle came in handy. Every two hours or so, I would switch to the iPod shuffle and recharge my 20GB iPod. I will be happy when I upgrade to a newer iPod and hope this problem goes away. The lesson for me is to take multiple sources of music on long motorcycle trips.

My route back home was not the same as my trip out as I was leaving from farther north in Colorado. From Hwy 34 I cut over to Hwy 35 on Hwy 27. By now I was starting to sweat gas. Just another step in my adventure.

Now, motorcycling is different than traveling a car with respect to fuel range. While motorcycles generally get much better mileage (I was averaging almost 42 mpg), they have very small tanks. Despite, Ducati’s claim that my model has a 5.5 gallon tank, I generally only get around 4.8 gallons in when the tank seems mostly dry. Given that I have run out of gas on the highway (once) I am not eager to repeat the experience. But, this poses a quandary. First, in some instances my gas mileage can fall to as low as 32 mpg. This is probably related to high average speed and/or racing the engine. But you never know, and 32 times 4.8 (153) is much different than 42 times 4.8 (201). Ideally I don’t want to stop too often, like every 100 miles. To my benefit my bike has a very accurate low-fuel light. It comes on when I have almost exactly one gallon left (based on a 4.8 gallon fill). I can generally count on getting at least 35 miles from that point no matter what my total mileage up to that point is.

On this trip, that meant around 150 miles in, I would start looking for gas stations. But on these back roads they don’t necessarily come as often as on the interstate. Fortunate for me I found one in time at St. Francis, KS. By now I was hungry but I did not see any suitable place to eat so I continued on after the quick gas stop. I continue past a couple of dinky towns and ended up stoppin at the same restaurant, Suzy Q’s, that I did on the first day of my trip. This time, I chose a hamburger which was at least better than the previous visit. My lunch stop lasted about 20 minutes.

By now it was threatening rain and I was pretty sure that I was going to get rained on. I rode Hwy 34 to Phillipsburg then cut south on Hwy 183 to Plainville. Now, here I made a mistake (some people never learn). I needed gas again, but did not see any gas stations on my route. So I choose to ride on. In Plainville I turned onto Hwy 18. The GPS showed a few towns along the way. But unfortunately these were very small towns and generally off the highway on county roads. No gas stations on the road. By now it was very, very, windy and raining hard. I took a chance and got off the road at Paradise. No gas stations, so I continued on. I now came on the turn to Russell, KS. This was about 18 miles off my intended route, but I knew the town would have gas and was on I-70. I made it into town as the rain stopped and got gas.

Now, I was basically right next to I-70 so it did not make sense for me to ride back north (18 miles) to continue along my original route on Hwy 18. This was a real bummer as this was probably the best part of the ride across Kansas. But, by now, I was getting a little worried about my arrival time at home. My GPS, which is generally very accurate in this regard, told me it would be around 9:30 pm (CST) when I got home. While I don’t mind riding at night, in the dark, I generally don’t want to be on the freeway or off my known roads when I do this. I surely did not want to be on Interstate 70. So I took off eastward on I-70. This was just as bad as I imagined it would be. There was tons of traffic, much of it trucks. I spotted, as well as my radar-detector did, many, many police radar cars. And to top it off there was a tremendous wind pushing from the south against my bike.

And here is a little rant. Why is it that interstate truckers drive so aggressively and horrible. Many drove nose-to-tail with the tractor trailer in front of them. This made passing even with the extra lane a longer affair. Then, many would just drive side-by-side with another truck blocking the entire highway. But the worst was the ones that would speed up just to tailgate me after I passed them and assumed a speed higher than they were originally traveling at. I try to be considerate of other motorist, but this was inexplicable.

At any rate, I continued on. I am guessing it was around 7:30pm when I entered I-70 at Russell, KS. By 8:10 pm the sun had pretty much gone all the way down. Around halfway to Topeka (from Russell) at least the traffic has subsides somewhat. As I neared Topeka, KS I needed to stop for gas again. Based on the low-light indicator that came on earlier, I was comfortable that I would make the eastern edge of Topeka but did not think I would make it past. I stopped for gas at 176 miles. I made it a very quick stop because I was ready to get off the highway. The rest of the trip along the Kansas Turnpike (still I-70) and the roads in Kansas City was a little better as I am pretty familiar with all these road. The busy turnpike traffic offered no relaxation though.


Safely arrived at my favorite Chipotle restaurant.

I pulled into my favorite Chipotle restaurant at 9:30 pm after riding 707 miles that day. After a short respite I continued the five miles to my house and arrived safely after and adventurous but fun day of riding.