2015 Transam Trail Days 1-5

Well, it’s been exciting with stuff falling off my bike on the highway and things being torn off in camp, but I think, I hope, a more normal routine will be underway starting tomorrow!

Day 1, 8/17: Shake-down Ride
Odometer start: 7735
Odometer finish: 8002
Miles: 272

Unfortunately I left my pics from this day back home and can’t post them now. I’ll share later.

Wanting to make this a full coast-to-coast ride, a trip to the beach was used as a one day shake down ride. If all went well I would continue on, if not I would fix whatever wasn’t right and then roll.

Having been to only a few beaches many times, and wanting to take side roads rather than interstate, I chose a new to me destination, Edenton, NC for the east coast start point. Leaving home after rush hour (as if rush hour is anything of note in Creedmoor) the weather was perfect. At the first intersection I smelled something akin to burning plastic so I panicked and looked everything over, finding nothing wrong. Hoping it was the odor of a neighbor’s burn barrel I continued all the way to Edmonton nonstop.

About an hour from my destination I noticed a low battery alarm on the GPS, indicating it wasn’t charging as it should. Note to self, gotta fix that pronto.

Arriving in town I saw a sign for an historic downtown waterfront which sounded perfect for a brief stay before returning. After finding a parking spot in the shade I pulled my panniers off and checked the GPS wiring and fuse, all was well which actually was not good. The charging cradle was probably bad and needed to be replaced. How long would it take Garmin to get one to me? The day was heating up so I decided to. get a few pictures of me and my steed on the waterfront first. I tossed the panniers back on and puttered to the waterfront. A loud cracking noise and something flying off to my left caused me to slam on the breaks and almost drop my bike. I pulled to the side and looked the bike over. I had left a nylon webbing strap hanging on the back of the bike and it had wrapped itself around my rear wheel. The plastic buckle on the end had snapped off and flew. Crap, that was a terrible mistake. If it had wrapped around the rear wheel just right it might freeze up going down the road easily causing me to crash. What a total noob, careless stupid mistake. Note to self, you’ve go to NEVER leave loose straps on the bike AND always check everything before you leave after messing around with the load. I cleaned up the mess, checked the spokes on the wheel, walked my bike to a nice spot and got a few pictures.

I then walked the nice park area for a bit and then walked to a nearby hardware store to see if they had a loaner multimeter I could use to troubleshoot my GPS charger. No dice. I called Garmin tech support to see if there were any common gotchas that I should check for at home that night. No, not really, they said. Just check it out and call us in the morning. While looking over the connections to the GPS I noted some serious abrasion on the back of one of my panniers where it was rubbing on the passenger foot peg. Gotta fix that.

There weren’t many restaurants to pick from so I walked into a quaint soda shop cafe and ordered a slice of pizza, a tall glass of water, and settled in to relax for a while. After taking up space for a couple of hours I walked across the street to a coffee shop, ordered a drink and relaxed for another hour before getting ready to head home.

Leaving town on the highway my bike shut off, signaling that I was out of gas much, much earlier than expected. With a 5.8 gallon tank and an expected 50 mpg I should get more than 250 miles but I was only at 180. I flipped the gas petcock to reserve and stopped at the first gas station I could find. Sure enough I was nearly dry and got only 36.5 mpg. This was a serious problem as I have to make 250 miles between gas stations in one part of the trip, far more than what I was getting.

I rode around 60 mph on the way out so I dropped to 50 mph on the way home. These dirt bikes have terrible wind drag so I thought maybe that was the major issue. Arriving at home I filled up again and noted 41.2 mpg. With my main 5.8 gallon talk and auxiliary gas can with 1.0 gallons I just might make it if I never got bogged down in mud, got lost, or had any other problems. Or, I might be stranded 50 miles from nowhere in the outback of Nevada. Note to self, gotta solve that.

Last thing I noticed was chafing on my knees from my shin/knee guards. Gotta fix that.

Very glad for the shake down ride, and glad that all was easily fixable, I made my list, relaxed and slept well.

Day 2, 8/18: Fix that Stuff
Odometer start: 8002
Odometer finish: 8107
Miles: 105

I had four things to figure out on this day:
1. GPS charging
2. Pannier wear
3. Gas mileage
4. Knee chafing

I tore into the GPS cradle first thing and got on the phone with Garmin the minute their lines opened. They overnighted a new cable to me.  Check 1 off for the day.

Denise and I had talked the night before about the pannier wear and remembered the we were about to donate some unused duffle bags to Goodwill. We decided to hack up a shoulder strap from one of those and adhere it to the back of the panniers to protect against wear. I also found a rough spot on the foot peg that was the real problem and filed it smooth, then attached the shoulder strapping to the bags. Check #2 done.

Denise had the idea of cutting a sock up to use as a bandana of sorts around my knees to prevent chafing. Good idea, I cut one up and tossed some athletic tape in the kit as backup. Check #4 done.

The gas mileage was last. A call to Dave at Combustion Cycles told me he was willing to drop everything and tear into my bike, install an O2 sensor and try to tune it but couldn’t guarantee that he could finish the job that day if parts needed to be ordered. We both thought there was something amiss with the carb needle but I was sure it was stock, had no adjustment slots and wasn’t shimmed rich. Dave suggested I could go smaller on the pilot jet and plug some holes drilled by the prior owner to lean it out. We talked about it and I decided to take a look myself rather than take the bike in but thanks to Dave for offering. Tearing the carb out I noticed a small 0.023″ shim on the carb needle that was stuck to it, making it hard to see. I pulled the shim and plugged one of two holes drilled into the slide by the prior owner and went for a 50 mile ride. Mileage went up to 48.7 mpg. Sweet. I then narrowed the pilot jet from 55 to 52 and did the same 50 mile ride, yielding 50.6 mpg. Woo-hoo, check #3 off the list pending checking a cold start in the morning!

Day 2.5, 8/19: Relax
Miles 0

Got the GPS cable, dropped it in, it charged. Cold start was perfect. Finished reading a book, watched two movies. Made 5 lbs of rosemary garlic mashed red potatoes for Denise to enjoy after I hit the road 🙂

Day 3, 8/20: On the Road Again!
Odometer start: 8107
Odometer finish: 8453
Miles: 346

My day count is a bit odd since I counted a day at home as a trip day and another day at home not as a trip day. Whatever, it works in the spreadsheet 🙂

Supremely confident that I would have problems no longer, I covered my gear with rain covers and hit the road after rush hour, about 9am.

The basic plan for the day was to cruise across North Carolina and into the higher elevations of the Asheville area where I would relax for a few days in cooler weather before riding into the heat of TN, MS, and AR. Routing down side roads to 55 south then to 64 west, there was minimal traffic and temperatures weren’t bad. The sky was overcast and I had good wind flow through my motocross gear.

I tucked in with 5 other bikers that were heading to the mountains for a while. Nice guys with two full dress tourers, an R1200GS, a VFR and a cruiser. They stopped for gas and lunch while I continued on, not wanting a 2 hour lunch break and not yet hungry.

Lunch was a quick stop at a park in Statesville for a snack which revealed I had lost one of my rain covers to the highway. Wonderful, a total of maybe 100 miles if I was lucky before I started losing stuff. I thought the rain covers weren’t as tight as I’d like but I didn’t think they were going to come off. Note, need another one soon and quit being a noob. That’s a dumb mistake.

The rest of the ride to Asheville was scenic yet uneventful. A quick stop at REI for a backpack cover, a water refill and recommendations for camping and I was once again on my way. About 40 minutes from REI I pitched camp off a forest road along a gorgeous, noisy creek, the perfect place to spent a few days!

Pulling into camp I hit my left pannier on a post. Note to self, you need more clearance than you think. Surveying the aftermath I saw that I had torn apart all three attachment straps that hold that bag to the bike. I wasn’t even out of North Carolina yet and I had shredded my brand new gear. Swear words abound the previously virgin campsite and a slight feeling of depression set in.

I have spent months touring by bicycle, motorcycle, backpacking and recently canoeing and I’ve never had the litany of problems I’ve had on this trip in terms of prep and execution. I broke my carb, stripped bolts, misadjusted things, wrapped webbing around my wheel while moving, almost dropped my bike, lost a rain cover, shredded my pannier and more. In the world of getting out and seeing the world I’m supremely confident and I really am competent. For the first time ever I sat down and wondered if I could do this. How was I going to make it 4000 miles across the country, solo, from sub-freezing to 115 degrees in sand, mud, rivers, rain and whatever else if I couldn’t ride across North Carolina and pull into a campsite?

Rationally I knew I could do this but suddenly, rationally I knew I might not make it. One stupid mistake like this could be the end of the trip. On a bicycle or backpacking it’s tough to do something so bad that it ends your trip. On a motorcycle the weight and speed and therefore forces involved make it fairly easy to bust yourself or your gear up and end a trip.

I sat down for a while and thought about my many other trips. The learning curves, the prep time, the fun, and the fact that very rarely did anything go wrong. I just don’t make many mistakes when I’m being careful. After settling down I decided I was thankful that this happened when I’m a half hour from a decent size city where I can have this fixed by lunch the next day. I decided that I needed to go back a few steps in my routines and be more diligent, move more like I did decades ago when I started becoming an outdoorsman. In a couple of weeks my routine would settle in and I’d be a well oiled machine.

I set up camp, made dinner, listened to an audiobook for a while and fell asleep.

Day 4, 8/21: Un-shread my Gear and a Nice Surprise
Odometer start: 8453
Odometer finish: 8561
Miles: 108

Worried that it might take all day, or worse, a few days to get my gear fixed I got up early and ride into town to get phone service. Just as I was about to search for a seamstress I recalled I had purchased some custom leather holsters and shotshell belt from a local leather worker, Jackson’s Western Wear, only 20 minutes away. I relaxed for a bit and caught up on email to kill time until Jackson’s opened. A quick ride and I was walking into Jackson’s front door and downstairs to their leather shop. Greeted by a friendly lady I shared my past positive experiences with Jackson’s and my more recent abuse of my motorcycle gear and asked if she could help. Sure thing she said and it was fixed up in 15 minutes. It was challenging to feed my panniers through the sewing machine so the lines aren’t pretty but 2 minutes with a black sharpie or a few weeks on the road and it will be well hidden. She wrote a ticket up for $5 which I paid and then passed her a $10 tip as thanks. Thanks, something so simple to you made my day.

Standing outside Jackson’s trying to decide what to do I chatted with a Brit that now lives here and rides. Nice guy, as most riders have been. I recalled there’s a pinball machine museum in town I’ve always wanted to visit. For a small fee you can play vintage to modern pins all day. Opens at 2pm, maybe I’ll do that later. Wheels Through Time, a motorcycle museum in the area has been on my list for years but is a long ride. Out of curiosity I checked how far my best friend Brett was from Asheville… huh,  only 1.5 hours? I texted Brett asking if he could spare time in the next few days to hook up. He said yep, slow day in sales, meet you for lunch in 2 hours. Seriously? Nice surprise! I didn’t think I’d get to see him for months. I grabbed groceries and headed back to camp to relax for a while, then rode 40 minutes to Hendersonville to meet for lunch.

I can’t imagine a nicer surprise than getting to see Brett for a few hours. We laughed about good old times, laughed at the likely possibility I’d never make it to the Tennessee state line in one piece, lamented the sad state of politics, solved some of the world’s problems, and had an awesome lunch at a deli in town.

I noted to Brett that the one piece of gear I failed to find was something to hold my camera in a more convenient location than my Camelback. Were I to drop by his place, I said, I knew he’d hook me up with something good. After thinking about it for a while he told me to roll my bike to his truck. Never failing me Brett started pulling tackle boxes of stuff out. He had clips, bungee cords, think I saw a CNC mill tucked under the seat. All of this, I’m sure, is either preparation for the coming zombie apocalypse or the rising of the South. He quickly rigged up a strapping system to hold my camera to the handlebar, well protected and secure while accessible. After 40 miles of off-road riding it hasn’t budged a millimeter. You’re the man, my man!

Sadly our time was coming to an end. We snapped a picture and Brett said a prayer to see me and my bike through safely and we parted ways until my return.

Back at camp I was rejuvenated, confident (but maintaining the respect I needed for the bike and the trip) and excited to continue my adventure. I settled into my hammock and started a new book, a birthday gift from my parents, Kitchen Confidential. An easy and entertaining read, I knocked out 30% of it, made dinner, went for a dusk hike and settled into bed for the night.

Day 5, 8/22: Relaxing
Odometer start: 8561
Odometer finish: 8622
Miles 61

Got up at 6:30 am and made oatmeal for breakfast, then settled into my hammock to read for an hour. I was going to need a refill on water today and wanted to get out so I rode to a nearby fee campground run by the Park Service. I walked the campground for an hour, refilled my Camelback and 3 liters of auxiliary water bottles and rode back to camp. Read in the hammock, short hike, played in the river, made lunch, read and napped in the hammock.

Tonight will be soup and fresh eggs for dinner and a ride down to a country barn type bar to listen to live country music. I’m a jazz fan really, but there is almost zero high quality jazz in Appalachia so I end up enjoying live bluegrass the most by far, because it’s darn good out here. Country can be fun for an hour if the band is good which is to say they can sing in tune and every song doesn’t sound like the last. Then off to bed. I will hit the road in earnest tomorrow morning and should be on the official Transamerica Trail before days end.

Thanks for reading, I’ll be back in a few days!