One hundred percent

Three big milestones today!

1. Today marks 100 days until my last day at work. Wow! After nearly 12 years -- and still enjoying the challenging work and fabulous people I get to work with -- the tunnel vision of having so little time left is hard to describe. So much to do between now and then, and so much to leave behind.

2. Today Julie and I booked flights for our big trip! To our happy surprise, we've locked in the biggest (and first) flights of our trip using frequent flyer miles -- 100 thousand miles each -- to take us from Anchorage, Alaska (final destination of the "South to Alaska!" summer moto tour) to Auckland, New Zealand with a nine-day layover in Hawai'i. I'm so glad we've both been banking miles all these years; they saved us thousands of dollars. Sure the flights aren't as direct as we might have planned (for example, there's a middle-of-the-night stop in Seoul en route from Honolulu to Auckland), but I'm not complaining! Thanks Northwest Delta Airlines!

3. Today marks my 100th post on Riding the Iron Rooster! Hope you enjoyed it!

My first ride of 'aught nine

Thank goodness for Louis and all the fine folks at Roy's Repair, and for the (brief?) respite the Twin Cities have experienced from the bitter cold of winter. WeatherBug reported 40 degrees Fahrenheit when R2 and I set out from my garage at 5 p.m. today -- gingerly crossing the most dangerous stretch of road I encountered, between my garage door and the curb, laden with slabs of slick melting ice.

And so, having reached the wet but grippy pavement of Garfield Avenue, I began my first -- and earliest yet -- ride of the year, delivering R2 for an annual check-up and some mods in preparation for the big departure, not to mention the riding I hope to pack in between now and then.

Thankfully, the journey was uneventful, except to remind me how inexplicably damn much I love riding a motorcycle. Happy journeys to you, wherever, however and whenever you take them.

Overnight

File under obvious: the world changed overnight. There were
spontaneous, racuous celebrations in the streets audible in every
direction in my neighborhood. People hugging strangers. A public
outpouring of relief, of hope and of joy the likes of which I've never
seen when a sports event isn't involved. We've turned a corner of
history. Thank goodness, there is no going back.

Summer's (journey's) end

Our big summer motorbike trip is over, and we're both preparing for the separation that comes with fall quarter starting next week. Julie leaves for OSU in just a few hours. Reluntantly, we're facing summer's end.

There are tons of pix from our trip to Glacier on the mobile photo blog, and Julie has posted some of her favorites as well.

My highlight of the entire trip was tackling the rugged gravel roads on the western edge of Glacier National Park, making our way up to Polebridge and then on to Bowman Lake. All told, we did over 100 miles on gravel, a challenge that helped me get to know the bike better and really added to the feeling of being away from it all.

Here's our 2,700 mile, international route:

Five days out...

Map thanks to Google

and six days back...

Map thanks to Google

We had some of the coldest motorbiking weather we might have asked for. Starting on day 3 of the trip, we encountered... memorable temps in eastern Montana, which (along with the, um, ample rain) accompanied us for the rest of the trip.


Image from The Weather Underground for Havre, Montana.

(If you read this graph to say that the temps never climbed above the normal low for those days, and were often below them, you would be correct.)

Julie and I are fans of arduous cycling, and have a renewed appreciation of what that phrase can entail. Truthfully, I'm happy to be warm and dry, but also wish we could have just kept riding. Probably south.

Into every trip...

Here was the news greeting us on the iPhone this morning: a pretty
major storm in our path along US-2 toward Glacier (from Chinook via
Cut Bank on the map), temps in the 40s, and snow advisories on the
western side of the park. (Okay, it's no Gustav, but it's tough riding
weather to be sure.)

After a leisurely morning, and an unfortunate delay due to a bone-
headed gaff on my part pertaining to the placement of my (only set of)
motorcycle keys, we set off in the rain nevertheless. Despite having
so many layers I felt a bit like a sausage packed into my shirt,
flannel, fleece, moto jacket, and raingear, it took only 20 miles to
convince us that today might be better spent indoors, which is where
we'll be today. Tomorrow calls for warmer, drier weather. And
hopefully, Glacier! Happy Labor Day one and all.

4... 3... 2... 1...

Tomorrow, Julie and I set off on our great adventure of the summer, riding our newly refurbished motorbikes on a nearly 3,000 mile loop that will take us from home in Minneapolis through the plains of the Dakotas, to my childhood habitation in northwest North Dakota, continuing westward into Montana, arriving in Glacier National Park, one of the grand-daddies of the national park system, and regarded by many as a sure-fire cause of stupefaction.

Julie and I will be dropping our jaws for three days or so -- riding, hiking, camping, dodging bears -- before turning northward into Canada, visiting the Waterton National Park, and then turning eastward toward home. (The trip's timing coinciding with the descent of thousands for the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul is just a happy accident.) We're thinking of avoiding interstates, slowing our pace and taking in more small town, middle west Americas.


View Larger Map

We hope to document the journey along the way via photos (available here or as part of RTIR's merged feed) and video we'll post when we return. While I'm sad to see the summer drawing to a close, I'm just giddy to have some play time like this with Julie before she returns to Columbus and OSU for the fall.

4 states;
3 provinces;
2 bikes; and
1 day until we're off!

Where the heck is Eric?

Goodness it has been a long silence. Apologies, friends. Lots of living to report.

It has been a time of milestones. Tomorrow will be 90 days since my accident, and this morning I had my three month follow-up visit with my doc. Amazingly, astonishingly, the bones and joint have healed as well as I could have hoped. While my wrist might be stiff for some time, I should regain my full range of motion, and have full strength and use of it. I can only repeat my common refrain: I am a lucky, lucky guy.

In the meantime, I continue with my physical therapy, inching toward flexibility comparable with my right arm, with the assistance of Amy, my physical therapist, and ultrasound, squeeze balls, Fluidotherapy (basically, a tub of corn meal attached to a hair dryer to heat and blow it around, into which I slide my arm; the corn meal conveys heat to the joint better than water or hot pads, and feels amazing, like a dry hot tub); an assorted collection of objects for use as passive resistance, especially a hammer I carry around everywhere to work on stretches for supination. Last but not least, I have a dynamic splint from J.A.S., which looks a little bit like part of an exoskeleton from that loader that makes Sigourney Weaver the ultimate bad ass in Aliens:



Another set of milestones was reached this past weekend, when I took my bicycle out for the first time since February, for a spin around Lake of the Isles. I was relieved to discover that it felt totally fine, very much like before the accident! Julie and I rode her motorcycle up to North Oaks to pick up a pair of rollerblades and pads I purchased off of Craiglist, which gave me a chance to rollerblade around the lakes for the first time ever. (My only other rollerblading experience was in the Metrodome last winter.)

I’ve also just scheduled my visit to a travel clinic, to get immunized for our trip, which we expect will start in February with New Zealand, and continue as we head generally northwest in the direction of Scotland. As Julie noted, Matt’s adventures have been an inspiration as we think ahead to 2009.

The other big milestone from the past weekend is that I am now a rider again. Meet my new wheels, an Empire Strikes Back vintage Honda CB750-F Super Sport, which I am (aptly enough, and in memory of the Rooster) calling R2.



See you on the road!