Wednesday Aug. 27, 2008
I flew from Bogota to Miami, where I spent the night in the airport, then to Dallas, then to St. Louis where I caught a shuttle to the very nice little city of Cape Girardeau, Missouri where my good friends Herb and Reno lived and where I would first see Buzz II. Hopefully all my gear had arrived so I could start fitting it onto Buzz II and get riding right away as winter in Alaska waits for no man. It was hard to be patient thinking about all the new gear and especially after having not ridden a moto for over a month.
It had been a while since I crossed a border into the US and security was noticeably more strict (and less friendly) than I remembered. Interestingly, there was more security while boarding the two domestic flights than I experienced on the flight from Colombia.
Herb and Reno were friends from the Black Gold Beemers motorcycle club in Edmonton who did a year long motorcycle trip of their own through North America with their two teenage children, years ago. They have influenced my motorcycling for many years, but throughout this journey they really supported and encouraged me with their kindness and understanding from their new home in Cape Girardeau as owners of Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles. In total I spent nine days with them while sorting out Buzz II and I couldn't have asked a nicer place to be or better people to spend it with.
Aside from the mechanical review and modification to Buzz II, I also had to prepare for importing a US moto into Canada, get insurance and temporary plates. I even had to re-learn how to pack all the new gear.
While Buzz II was in pieces in Herb's garage he kindly let me use a couple of other motos for running around to pick up parts or tools I needed. The beautiful little F800S I used for a few days was allot of fun as it had been a long time since I rode a sport bike, let alone anything that light. Occasionally we would take a much needed break and go on a short ride through the beautiful back roads in this part of the country. It was on one of those rides with Herb when all of a sudden I felt like there was just too much to get used to here again. After being away from North America for so long everything felt a little strange: The bike, good roads, fast speeds, parts, tools, big motos, expensive cars, fast food, etc... It's hard to explain, but Herb knew it by my occasional complaint about why things were like 'this' or 'that' here. I hoped that it would just be a matter of time for me to re-adjust.
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On my last day there Herb and I left early in the morning to meet a group of riders for Saturday morning breakfast in Tennessee. That's where I heard Don Harris' V-Strom with a set of Holeshot exhausts. It sounded great!
One of the problems with buying something without seeing it in person - like I did with Buzz II - is that some items can be missed. One such item was the exhausts, the other was a crack on one of the fairings, neither was mentioned by the seller. I repaired the crack at Herb's, but the original Suzuki exhausts had been drilled out and sounded bad. I never minded the sound of a stock bike, but this was annoying and when I heard Don's Holeshots with less than a 1,609 km (1,000 mi) on them I was drooling. So I made him an offer right there at breakfast: I'd pay him cash for a new set, delivered, if he'd trade me his pipes right there. I think all his buddies thought I was crazy, but being a true motorcycle enthusiast he understood my situation and agreed. We rode over to one of the fellows homes nearby and in less than an hour Buzz II was sounded great and weighed about 15 kg (33 lb) less.
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I said goodbye to Herb and the breakfast gang and continued on Buzz II's first road trip through five states that day (Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia) until 15.5 hours later we arrived at Lee's home in Atlanta. I first met Lee on a ride in the Canadian Rockies in 2004 when he rode his VFR up from Atlanta in two days. He's a die-hard motorcycle enthusiast with fourteen motorcycles of various shapes and sizes, but mostly KTM. And even though it was short, it was fun visiting with him again.
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I was invited to do an online interview by Tom Lowdermilk, host of SideStandUp.com 'the world's only motorcycle radio road show' way back when I was in Venezuela. But since I always expected to ride north from Miami, we thought it would be better if I visited them in person in Orlando when I came through. Tom introduced me to his friend and co-host Jerry Watts who offered to help me by receiving parts that I needed to order online. I originally intended on removing Buzz's blown rear shock at Jerry's house and sending it to California to get rebuilt, but the airplane crash changed everything. I still wanted to get down there and meet these guys though.
Jerry and his wife Michele made me feel right at home and helped me 'chill' as I waited for tropical storm Fay to pass. Thankfully it had been downgraded from a hurricane, but it still managed to drop huge amounts of rain on Florida. They had a very friendly chocolate lab named Woody and Jerry's completely, thoroughly, fantastically stocked garage meant I could fine tune some of the new gear on Buzz II.
When the opening finally presented itself five days later a few of Tom and Jerry's riding buddies rode out to Daytona Beach with us. Signs of the heavy rains could be seen everywhere and I thought it was amazing that flooding rains seemed to be following me north since Brazil.
From there I continued north along the Atlantic coast to beautiful Savannah, Georgia where I managed to take in the sights from a few of the beautiful historic streets before finding a camping spot for the night.
The next day I detoured inland from the coast so that I could experience two of the most notorious motorcycle routes in the US: Tail of the Dragon and Blue Ridge Parkway.
Along the way I was reminded that strange accidents happen here too. I arrived late in the day to the sweet revving sounds of sportbikes just finishing their last rides of the day as the sunlight faded and I setup camp.
Deals Gap was the name of the campground, restaurant and store at the point of highway US129 in Tennessee where it became very curvy as it ran across the state line into North Carolina before it straightened out again. This section of road is known as the 'Tail of the Dragon' and had a remarkable 318 curves in just 18 km (11 mi).
Unfortunately, the rain started early the next morning while I was packing up the tent, but it was my only opportunity to ride the Dragon, so I did. Across the state line and back before stopping for breakfast at 8 am when the restaurant opened. But my misfortune with the weather was quickly righted when I ran into a Canadian named Ben Steinberg working there who happened to be going back up to Canada by car the next day and offered to take a package up with him and then mail it home for me.
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Then it was off down the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway towards the nation's capital. This historical highway reminded me of some of my favorite highways in Colombia. Aside from the different vegetation, reduced traffic, better asphalt, lack of chickens, donkeys, dogs and dilapidated buildings; you would swear you were in Colombia. Ironically, as I was thinking about this I passed a tractor clearing the ditches - something that would have taken a entire crew of men with machetes or string trimmers to do in Latin America. This really was a different world.
The next day while enjoying the twisties a deer jumped out across the road in front of me and hit the side of my front wheel. I had managed to bring my speed down just before contact so luckily she only cracked the front fender and shook the handlebars without bringing me down. After stopping and shaking it off for a minute I went back to see if she was alright and I found her nibbling grass in the same place she was before the accident. I threw a rock at her.
Did you know that the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. is neither a city nor a state? Washington, in the District of Columbia (a federal district) was founded on July 16, 1790.
The first perimeter of security around the White House restricts public vehicles from entering, the second is much closer, it's a fence around the yard which keeps pedestrians out. I asked to ride Buzz II through the first perimeter so I could get a picture of him in front of the White House, and one guard was actually willing to let me in, but his supervisor was grumpy and said no. Perhaps it was because I was Canadian - after all, we are the only country to have ever burned down the White House. There were protestors here just like I saw in capital cities of Latin American, just not as many, possibly because of the video cameras mounted in the light posts.
The same day I arrived I rode out of the capital searching for a place in the country to drop-camp for the night.
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