My first motorbike trip was called "Motorcycle Marauder" or "How I circumnavigated Nevada!" I loaded

My first motorbike trip was called "Motorcycle Marauder" hotel and baltimore or "How I circumnavigated Nevada!" I loaded up my Harley with some clothes, a tent, a sleeping bag and an air mattress and set off down the west coast of the U.S. (from Vancouver hotel and baltimore Canada).
My first fear on this motorcycle roadtrip hotel and baltimore was crossing hotel and baltimore the border with all my stuff packed on the back of the bike. It would have taken me an hour to unpack hotel and baltimore and repack it all if they asked me to. (Now, I could probably do it in 5 minutes!) Anyway, he basically said, "Where do you live? Where are you going? Have a good trip!" so, I was through the border in about 2 minutes with no line-up.
I turned off the interstate highway just South of Seattle and headed for the coast. (You can't do this any sooner without having hotel and baltimore to take a ferry.) From there on, the roads were great and un-crowded and I cruised on down to a State campground South of Newport, Oregon.
(Just a word about the weather here: it was sunny every day for at least the first week. However, along the coast, every morning this mist/fog rolls in and obscures the sun so it's very cold in the morning! By noon it's usually hot again. This happened all the way into Southern California!)
hotel and baltimore I crossed an interesting bridge in Southern Oregon hotel and baltimore that went across a large bay. It was quite high and a sign on the causeway leading up to the bridge said, "Danger hotel and baltimore - high winds when lights flashing!" The lights weren't flashing so I barreled ahead only to find that I was being batted around like a piece of tissue paper! It felt like the front wheel was being lifted hotel and baltimore off the deck! I'd like to go over there sometime when the lights are flashing! That must be quite a spectacle.
Anyway, by the end of day 2 of the motorbike trip, I found myself in the middle of a humungous Redwood forest with humungous Red Cedar trees - in the dark! (I should have stopped earlier but I was having so much fun with the winding roads that I went on a little too long.) Rule number one when camping - always bring a flashlight! I did! So I managed to crash in a very rudimentary State campground for the night.
Day 3 started with a couple of hours of spectacular roads through "wine country" which gradually turned into major highways as I neared San Francisco where I had to go over the Golden Gate toll bridge (toll being the operative word here). You see I had no idea it was a toll bridge until I happened to glance at a small little sign at the side of the road as I was entering the bridge deck at 65 mph with hundreds of cars! Now here's the problem. It said something about $5 and I didn't know what bills I had and whatever I had were in my wallet which was inside my coat (zipped and snapped) and in order to get at it I would have to stop, take off my gloves and unzip while balancing a 600 lb motorcycle!
These people crossing the bridge with me are hurrying and I know they're going to really love being stuck behind me at the other end of the bridge while I dig around for money! Anyway, I managed to get over to the right far enough so that when I came off the end of the bridge I spotted a little "V" painted on the ground between the booth for busses and ones for cars. I stopped there and dug out the money while the cars whizzed by me and then a cop let me back in line. Whew!
I then got lost in San Fran for a while before I found the coast road and it was windy and cold. About a half an hour south however, the sun came out and I had a most spectacular ride along the cliffs with the Pacific hundreds of feet below. I stopped to take some pictures here because everybody else was, but you sort of had to be there to appreciate it. This was when I first realized that not all parts of all roads have guardrails! There are just too many miles of them for that, so if you miss a turn, you could be gone for days before someone would find you! That thought came to mind several times over the next dozen days as I leaned around many mountain roads but I tried not to let that slow me down!
Anyway, even though it was Sunday, it was still not a "cruise" on those freeways around LA. It was more like a daylong NASCAR race! At times it was stop and go with no reason, other than volume of traffic. (Once, there was a real accident however.) The rest of the time, the slowest vehicles do about 70 mph!
I got lost once but finally made it to Temecula around 5:00 pm. As it turns out, my friends live just 60 miles from the Mexican border! They explained hotel and baltimore to me that when they are giving directions to someone hotel and baltimore in their area they describe it as "about an hour" ride - no matter how far someone is traveling because once you get in the race, you're too focused on survival to notice how long it actually takes!
My initial plan was to go from Temecula to Las Vegas just like a motorcycle tour would and then on to Utah but I had never been to The Grand Canyon so my friends suggested I go to Phoenix instead and then head north to The Canyon. I agreed and headed off for Day 5 on a great road that would eventually connect me with Interstate 10 to Phoenix. It was a great motorcycle road. Interstate 10 was another story!
As you can imagine, a four-lane highway across the dessert is going to be flat and straight and hot and fast! The speed limit is 75 mph; so most people are doing 90! Of course, I'm traveling the highway at the hottest time of the day. (Phoenix hit 104 degrees Fahrenheit on this particular day!) So, it's a real blast furnace with what seemed to be a constant headwind.
Do you remember seeing those little "dust devils" in farmer's fields on hot summer days? While I was killing time between gas stations, hotel and baltimore I noticed a "dust devil" off to my right although it wasn't little. In fact, it was as big as an office building, so I slowed down to get a better look and timed it so that I got to it just as it got to the highway. Mistake! It wasn't a "dust devil". It was a sand storm! I thought it was going to sandblast the paint off my helmet and bike! What a sound. From then on I watched them from a distance.
I was about 100 miles from Phoenix. It was about 3:00 pm and the bike started to sputter! Now the Harley doesn't have a gas gauge, but I have an odometer and I have a reserve tank. Since I've had the bike I have always reset the odometer when I get gas so I know how far I can go without refueling. In the city I get 230 kilometers before I hit reserve and on the highway I can usually go to 250. (On one stretch hotel and baltimore in Oregon I got 280 kilometers without touching the reserve!)
I looked at the odometer and it was saying 190. I should have been able to go a lot farther than that! I switched to the reserve however, to see if that would clear up the problem and it did, so now I was pretty sure I had a gas problem and not something worse. Now, all I had to do was get to the next gas station on my reserve. hotel and baltimore It seemed to me that I had about 30 miles to go. Good luck!
To make a long story short, I coasted to a stop in the middle of nowhere, resigned to the fact that I would have to hitch a ride to the next gas station and back. I decided I would have to stow all my gear somewhere before I left it because I didn't want to carry it with me and leaving it on the bike made it too inviting for thieves, hotel and baltimore so I looked off to the side of the road and there was a culvert right where I had stopped! It hadn't seen water since the Ice Age of course, and it was dry and rattler free so I threw the gear in there and stuck my thumb out.
The first two semis passed by, but the next vehicle was a bus and he stopped. It was completely empty. He was returning to Phoenix from an overnighter hotel and baltimore in LA. As it turns out, he had to bus a bunch of Amtrak passengers from Phoenix to LA the day before because Amtrak was so far behind schedule, they had to turn the train around in Phoenix! (And we thought hotel and baltimore our railways were bad!)
While en route, as we were chatting, I told him I had a roadside assistance program through the Harley Owner's Group (HOG) that might be able to help me get back to the bike (at no cost to me) but I didn't think my cell phone would work in the middle of the desert. He said, "Try it". I did. It worked! So, as we were pulling in to Tonopah, Arizona (2 gas stations and a restaurant/truck tire place) I was talking to a nice lady who said she would make the arrangements and call me back.
I waited in the Shell station because it was air conditioned and had lots of cold drinks and in half an hour she phoned hotel and baltimore me back and said she had arranged for someone to take me back to my bike with some gas. She said he was coming from some company in Tonopah and as she was speaking, I watched someone depart the restaurant/tire place and jump in a truck. It was right across the street! I could have done it in two minutes! Oh well, she did it all from Wisconsin, so it would take her a little longer.
This guy arrived in an old "beater" of a pickup truck with some old tire changing equipment in the back. The windshield was cracked and there was no air conditioning so I jokingly asked him if he thought it would get us out to my bike. "Oh yes" he said, "it's got a new engine in it". Well, it got us there all right and after a hair-raising turn from the 90 miles per hour lane into the sandy medium, we made it.
I put some gas in the Harley and it started. Obviously that was all that was wrong with it, so I was ready to resume my motorbike trip. I bade him farewell and headed to the ditch for my gear. When I came up again, I noticed he was still there! Then I heard: "click, click". The engine wouldn't turn over. I said, "Before I put all this gear back on the bike, do you want a ride back to Tonopah"? He said, "No", he'd radio it in. So, I packed up and left him in the desert!
Why did I run out of gas? I don't know for sure but I think it was those stupid gas hose nozzles that they have in California and Southern hotel and baltimore Arizona. They have a plastic covered spring over the nozzle and you have to push the nozzle far enough into the tank when you are filling your car so tha