The Long Way Home .... Finding Oneself ( THREAD FINISHED )

[ZTS-Ceptor]

2800 miles on a Suzuki GS500F


May 15th, 2009 ........ A day to remember for me as pretty much everything I did for 3 months lead up to that day. Over the last while I have found myself slowly going insane with the stress of day to day life and the dreary endless daily routine of getting up to the alarm, going to work and slowly pulling my hair out. The only saving grace that I have had is my kids, my friends, and my family, all gingerly doing their best to keep me from just snapping and blowing out my temples from high blood pressure. May 15th, 2009 ....... the first day of 10 that I had booked to go for a ride and find the long way home.

after finally getting my bike in the shop for some much needed repairs and maintenance I thought i was prepared to go ......... it would seem that 'Murphy' was at it again ...........

Please allow me to take everyone along with me on this journey .....

1 week before departure date .....

getting the bike ready to go to the shop ...



I got the bike back after a very expensive valve adjustment ..... time for the reassembly .......





All together and ready for first test ride



Time for some new rubber



Pilot Road 2 ..... F/R



putting the tires back on proved to be WAY to difficult for one person to do alone so I enlisted the help of my 2 1/2yr old motorcycle obsessed son Colten



"see Dad ...... you need this much tightness !!!"



Now as my luck would have it, bike was finished 2 days before the leave date ...... then the thermostat calves ..... Myself and nakedride worked till midnight to get it out and get it working again ( successfully I might add and ill add pics of that kitchen adventure later ) only to have me do something really stupid and break the TPS ( Throttle Position Sensor ) while putting it back together the night before i was supposed to leave ....... you can imagine my frustration ..... $2500 worth of repairs etc, valve adj, tires, new front brakes, new gloves, GPS, insurance, and registration ...... only to have a 1/4 inch piece of plastic break which proved to be terminal to the bike and this trip ...... AAAARGHHHHH !!!!!! ( i said a few bad words )

Nakedride and his wife Suzanne realized my need to get away and being understanding of my frustration offered to let me go on Suzanne's bike ..... borrow a bike to go to the store..... sure ....... borrow one to go on a week long tour ..... umm no .... but after much convincing I reluctantly said yes ..... it doesn't matter that it's definitely not a VFR but a bike is a bike and at this point ....... i couldn't say no to their incredible generosity

Trever and Sue i can't thank you enough .........

the adventure begins ....... no schedule, no real plans ....... just freedom

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Friday May 15th 6 am....... snow !!!!!! Great !!



I ran into more snow in Canmore AB but i managed to take a side trip down a road i have been wanting to explore for a while ..... The 1A ( back way into Lake Louise ) ...



Motorcycle Stigg lol



after freezing my butt off for 10 hours and making good time I arrived at my good friend Joanne's place in Vancouver ....... she has a great view ......





After tooling around her place and being her donkey ( strong back ) for Saturday ..... it was time to head south ...... stateside here we come

Blaine border crossing





to be continued ........... ( there's a lot more pics and a couple of vids to come )

[Tarsnakes]

You sure have great friends!

Commiserations on the frustration that you must have felt at not being able to take the VFR after all that prep. I'm not sure that I would have been able to keep it all together at all.

Looking forward to the rest of the pics and description of your trip.

Also, will be keen to hear how you are finding the PR2s on the Viffer. I'm running PR2 on the rear and Pilot Power up front and finding that a great combination.

Cheers Jules.

[X-11-MAN]

Great photo's..report...keep it coming

Good to see "wee" one getting involved with bike !!

Regards

Andrew

[SEdkins]

cant wait to see the rest!

[meskie]

Waiting for the rest now
Nice pics of a bike in bit's and jnr

[nakedride]

Originally Posted by cbrjules

You sure have great friends!

Commiserations on the frustration that you must have felt at not being able to take the VFR after all that prep. I'm not sure that I would have been able to keep it all together at all.

First off. Yes he does. But the wife and I couldn't stand to see him crying. (plus my wife doesn't ride as much as she should and the bike needed a good long ride). The other thing was his mother basically begged us to get him out of the house for a while so they could get some well needed ZTS free time.


Nice write up Des. We need to do more of these. I have an Idea. Lets talk.

[SEdkins]

looks awesome i like the action shots. for accuracy Randal WA is actually Lynden WA. we were riding down front street.

[navy8ret]

I think that about covers it Looking forward to the rest keep it laid on us!!!

[ZTS-Ceptor]

Originally Posted by SEdkins

looks awesome i like the action shots.

howz this for action shots .......

Sterling on the way down from Mt. Baker



Joanne ... same place



ok .... now where did i leave off ..... after I bought myself some new rain gear ...... i continued further south south in rain that can only be described as torrential ...... I made it as far as Astoria OR. which just so happened to be my main destination. I decided on Astoria because of the 1985 classic film Goonies was filmed there and i thought i would check it out and do the touristy thing ...... my main reason for going is that i wanted a pic of me doing this ........



ill get to that a little later .......

as soon as i got into Astoria i got a hotel and after 3 hours on the road for what turned out to be my shortest day of riding. After a hot shower i took a nap ...... 4 hours later the rain had stopped and was nothing but puffy clouds and reasonably warm i decided to go for a ride and check out Fort Stevens and the shipwreck ......

some of Ft. Stevens













this is the view through one of those sight glass things that was mounted in the command tower .......... i wouldnt want to be on that boat if it had one of those guns pointed at it







Ft Stevens as it sits today ....... interestingly enough you cant see this from the water so if any unfriendly boat wandered into these waters with malicious intent they would not have seen it coming ..... very cool engineering for 1918

[ZTS-Ceptor]

..... ok where did i leave off ......

while waiting in the line up at the border we saw a couple of bikes ahead and a guy pushing his bike ...... we didnt think anything of it but when they parked in the pull out area on the US side we knew something was wrong ...... after we went over it was to our discovery that it was her bike that was dead ( she left the ignition on and being a Speed Triple 1050 its a little hard to push start )
we graciously helped out ..... after getting it going they took off and we followed shortly there after. After pushing the bike i was absolutely cooking to death ( had sweater and insulated jeans on under my riding gear ) i stopped and took off my jacket and proceeded to pour some water over my head ...... the border guard comes over then tells us to leave as its not a rest area ( like we were taking up any room ) and then thanks us for helping them out ...... we met up with them a couple of miles down the road and went for lunch ............



this is also where we met our tour guide for the day .....

Ladies and Gentlemen ......... Its my pleasure to introduce everyone to Sterling ...... who also recently joined the pashnit.com community ( SEdkins )

We mentioned that we were thinking of heading up to Mt. Baker and then after that ....... no idea ....
Sterling said that he was from the area and looking for someone to ride with and would be glad to show us around and be our guide for the day ..... so off to Mt. Baker we go .......

I think this is Randal WA.



mmmmm big mountain ....







after we came down Sterling mentioned something about a road called Chuckanut Dr. ...... ok lets go ...





Sterling



Joanne



early in the evening .... we came upon this .....

Deception Pass





please take note of the speed of the tide coming in ......



we made our way down to Oak Harbour and that's where we called it a night...

the next morning Joanne made her way back home and I continued solo over to the Keystone - Port Townsend ferry when i saw a sign that said 'LightHouse' so i rolled into the park to see this lighthouse ( I had seen the ferry leave so I knew that I had some time ) and I had no Idea that i would stumble upon this .......