Not quite sure where I started the day from, but I hit the road around 8 or 9am ish on my way to Indio, CA. Reason is a giant music festival that lasts 3 days and has more bands/groups than I can count. For more information check out http:/www.coachella.com and you'll get an idea.
Now its almost 11pm and I'm at an IHOP awaiting my good friends, and with them comes a place to sleep! And boy do I need sleep, heres why:
757 kilometers done today. Quick math conversion says 450 miles. On a tractor seat (which really, Im sure I'd feel better with a different seat, but its not really that bad thanks to my small butt). My brain is the most exhausted, so this report might jump around a bit for the day.
For comparison sake, I started this trip with 500km on the odometer, and she now has 2727km. Therefore, the total kms I've done since the start is 2227. That means that today I did 34% of my trip so far!
Today did put me in the position I hate: only interested in making distance and time to get somewhere. Thats something I want to avoid for this whole trip, but, 'dems the breaks'.
A lot of the way was going right alongside the pacific ocean and the beautiful beaches (such as Malibu). Very pretty and mostly uneventfull. My bike (named Freya) is performing better than ever thanks to Ski and the team at Triquest. What she used to do and sound like at 55mph she now does at 60, just purrs along and sings to me. I had no problems at all, except for traffic in LA.
Thats right, downtown Los Angeles, during rush hour. I've never seen traffic like this. for a solid 75 kilometers the highest speed I obtained was 20mph for about 2 minutes. With an air cooled engine, if youre not moving air over the engine youre getting hot and can possibly overheat and cause some damage. To avoid that, I employed two methods:
Method 1: Turn the bike off and push. Which I did, and kept up with the pace of traffic much to the liking of many other motorists. Looks funny, but it works. Especially with a slight downhill!
Method 2: Pull over on the shoulder and chill out. I would take a swig of water and then give freya a little bit on the engine. With traffic slowly crawling by, I had a lot of 2 minute conversations with people from their vehicles! I also had to give the thumbs up to the tow trucks passing by. Of course nobody intentionally stopped to ask if I was ok, not even police who were also on bikes. They just stared at me like I'm the idiot! Jokes on them, I'm actually very smart by not pushing Freya too much.
5 lanes of traffic full of cars as far as I could see. Just amazing. How anybody could deal with that day after day is beyond me!
So you might be asking, "millsy why did you go through downtown LA during rush hour? thats pretty dumb". Well, youre right it is quite dumb, however, traffic in major cities has been a fairly big concern of mine and I wanted to experience it and learn to deal with it, therefore I hit it head on as bad as it gets! Most of my time was spent thinking aloud "please oh please see me and or hear me". No close calls to mention of.
After LA it was pretty smooth. Nightfall hit and I was on the interstate for a couple hours, which was another concern of mine since I do not like traveling at night. I did it anyways, as safely as I could, and thankfully Freya and I are unharmed and just about ready to call it a night.
757 kilometers. That is a personal record, and I dont want to break it anytime soon. Hopefully thats the most I'll ever do in a day. I'd be interested to know the personal "bests" of other Uralists for kms/day.
I apologize for the lack of pictures, I didnt charge my electronics nor did I really try to get any pictures.
I dont wanna think anymore tonight, I want a hot shower, a cold beer, and some much needed rest!
Coachella tomorrow!!! Its gonna be ROUGH!
