Shortly before sunrise, De’Andra and I headed East again from Dallas on Interstate 20 under the cover of darkness and a wet fog. It looked liked it had rained the dew was so think. After a quick pitstop in Waskom, TX for a quick hello to De’Andra’s pops, we rolled through Louisiana and descended into the river valley and crossed the mighty Mississippi river into the state of Mississippi. Our planned gas stop was just a few miles into Mississippi at a town called Edwards.
Started the day heading East on US Highway 70 through the every hyper diligent U.S. Border Patrol Check point where he asked where I was from, where I was going, why is there so much stuff in my car, do I know the person in the car behind, and am I a US citizen. Good grief. Turns out they asked DeAndra the same questions to see if our stories matched. Awe, the life experiences near the southern border where the constitution doesn’t matter (but I digress)
Ok, so blogging on the road in real time proved to be too difficult with the hours packed into actually driving. Once stopped for the day, focus was then on getting food, washing up, and resting to gear up for the next day’s slog of driving. So, like my motorcycle trips, the remainder of the drive from Ramona, California to Douglasville, Georgia will be posted in Retrospect.
I still need to continue writing about my USA West 2020 motorcycle trip, I have stalled on Day 4 (video for Day 4 is posted but not the blog post). I have a good excuse for not writing though, my wife and I successfully closed on our house in Georgia on August 14th. Since then it has been a flurry of activity flying between Southern California and Atlanta, packing, planning, etc etc. Tomorrow, September 4, 2020 we are driving two of our cars from Ramona, CA to Douglasville, GA. We are breaking the trip up into three days with only two brief detours.
So there has been a slight pause in my blog posts and YouTube videos. I have not blogged for USA West 2020 Day 4 yet (it’s coming). That last couple of weeks have been crazy as my wife and I have been working on the mortgage process for our soon to be new home. Actually as I am writing this, I am on a plane bound for Atlanta. The closing is scheduled for late afternoon tommorow. Then I fly back to San Diego on Sunday.
Blog posts should resume this weekend (may have some time to kill) or next week. Stay tuned
On a typical sunny Southern California day on Saturday July 25, 2020, I went on a day ride starting in Ramona, California, up the coast on Pacific Coast Highway in Orange County and then to Santa Monica and Los Angeles for a night time ride for a total of 337 miles.
I woke up around 7 AM to the sound of the wind rustling through the tops of the nearby Redwoods, nice. I heated some breakfast (Mountain House Breakfast Skillet) and started to break down camp after eating, took some more photos of the area, finished breaking down camp, and packed up Dexter. It was now about 9:30 AM and good grief the sun was already hot and I was sweating heavily. So I mounted Dexter and rode briefly to seek cool refuge among the towering Redwoods within the State Park.
As stated in Day 1, I arrived at the hotel in Martinez, California at about 2 AM, it was about 4:30 AM by the time I actually wrapped with the nightly chores for preparation for the next day, ate a little bit, and just let the road adrenaline wear off enough where I actually could fall asleep. I forgot to mention that check in took a little bit longer than expected. My reservation I made with an online travel service somehow magically cancelled itself. Not a big deal, but the extra 15 minutes was grating on me after a long hard day / night.
I had been planning for this motorcycle trip for just over a year (planning started before last years Nevada – Utah 2019 motorcycle trip, which I will be blogging about later. So much careful planning and preparation from how many miles I was planning for each day, the routes, how much fuel would need to be purchased, the campsites and the few motel stays. I created meal plans that determined how many Mountain House meals to purchase and pack, canned chili and spaghetti, Tabasco sauce, how may meals would be eating out and how many times would I actually cook. There was careful planning on what to pack for clothes and riding gear as I could experience extreme heat and cold, rain and maybe even a little snow all on the same trip. I had to plan how many days I could wear my motorcycle riding jeans before they would be too offensive even for me and thus determined how many riding jeans / pants I would pack. How many days of underwear, socks, and shirts would I need before I would do laundry on the road. And where would I do my laundry on the road, well this was planned out too. Every detail that I thought significant and not so significant was planned and re-planned before the trip was to start. This also of course included attention to my motorcycle, Dexter, as well.
Wanderlust Lyfe 