I have something on the order of a million miles behind the wheel of a car, but this was my first trip on a bike. As a result there were times when I wondered if this trip required courage or insanity. My biggest mistake was combining camping (something that I haven't done in over a decade) with my first trip. However, I had little choice because I didn't know how far I could get in a day. I had three campgrounds and one town picked out as potential stop points for the first night, and a whole slew of campgrounds for the second. If I was going to do the trip again, I would take two days each way with a slightly different route, and camp in picturesque Motel Sixes along the way.
The biggest problem that I had was when parking, particularly with the Camelback full of water. It sat atop the load, and if you weren't careful to park on the level, or if you picked soft ground, the bike wanted to topple over. This became particularly evident towards the end of the day, when my legs were getting a little wobbly. I ALMOST lost it on the second(?) day as I stopped for the night.
The wind caused the bike no problems. I started at the home of Twain's Washoe Zephyr (it blows rocks, not sand) and ended on the southern Oregon coast, where the gusts have to be over 60 mph to be noticed. She just kept tracking right on down the road. Me? By the end of the day, I was tired from having my head slapped around despite the windshield.
I had no mechanical trouble at all, other than the swaying of the rack that I mentioned in my other thread. I used enough oil during the 1200 miles that I had to top it off when I got home.
During the trip, I logged a total of 12 miles on the freeway. The rest of it was on secondary roads, about 200 miles of it at 55 mph or less, the rest at 65-70. During most of the trip, the temperatures were moderate or even cool. Only the last day was hot, with temperatures around 100 degrees.
The second night out was the worst. After my previous night's adventures on the under-inflated thermarest, I was worn out. I sacked out for a nap, and when I tried to get up off the floor and unzip the mosquito netting, I got a cramp in my upper thigh. Talk about miserable! When you're on the ground, you can't get any leverage to force the muscle to extend, and in a tent, there's nothing that you can reach stout enough to use in hauling yourself to your feet. All you can do is roll around until it stops hurting, and you can't even do much rolling while confined inside a tent.
To top it off, it was when I finally managed to hobble outside that I found that squirrels had pigged out on my large bag of peanuts. At that point, all I could think of was John Wayne's axiom,
"Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid."
If you're traveling up Hwy 97 in eastern oregon and stop in Klamath Falls, the Super 8 at the north edge of town is a good place. It's mostly used by truckers, and has a good restaurant across the parking lot. The Chevron station on the far side of the highway insisted on my using their coke machine to fill my Camelback with cold, filtered water and ice. I'm glad that they did, because this was the day that I really needed it.
I met several bikers during my trip, and picked up a lot of good advice. They were all amazed that the little Savage was hauling all that stuff, particularly the guy on the Harley that was towing a trailer.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I can't wait to get out again -- as soon as the bruises on my butt heal.
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