All Down hill from Here?

Well Thursday night we were in Louisville KY. We only have a little over 400 miles left to get Home.
We road a little over 500 miles yesterday.

Heading Back home

We had a nice visited with my uncle but it was time to leave its a long way back home.So we got up early and was on the road at 7 am. We made it all the way to Kansas City around 600 miles. We nearly ran out of gas twice. We were having to fill up every 60   miles. Our gas milage really drop. I think the gas had more ethanol in it.

Saturday

We rolled into my uncles at around noon.He looked good and was happy to see us.

While driveing up interstate 25 a truck with this windmill blade passed us. The blade must had been 200 feet long and the wide part of the blade was over my lane and shading me from the sun. It was odd feeling.
Uncle Jim took us up to Blackhawk for lunchdinner.

Friday

We spend the night in Raton New mexico. It was a neat little town surrounded by mesas all around. We started out around 9am heading toward colorado state line. After we corssed into colordao the road crossed a small mountain. Our bikes slowed down to about 65 MPH. They just would not go any faster.
These bike are really to small for a cross country trip.
   We then rode to the Royal Gorge bridge. We rode across the bridge and visited the attractions.
We then headed over to Pikes Peak and was going to ride to the top. But the the 4pm rush hour traffic was to much. So we looked for a room and thought we would ride up then next day. Come to find out all the rooms are booked. There was some kind of running Marathon the next day up the mountain.So we headed north on 25 the traffic was stopped it took nearly and hour to go 8 miles. Finely we stated moving. Now we needed gas so we pulled off an exit that said gas station so we head down the country road till  we came upon country store they had gas. We decided to sit on their bench and have a drink. The store was busy and lots of people talked to us. Everyone was getting pizza from this store.They all said it was the best pizza around. Here is the bench and the store at Larkspur Colorado
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=21.319447,56.513672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Larkspur,+Douglas,+Colorado&layer=xc&g=Larkspur,+CO,+USA&ll=39.227865,-104.884586&spn=0.020279,0.087891&z=14&cbll=39.22817,-104.884448&panoid=ya7w-OJD2gBq0UDdo-23Qg&cbp=12,334.36,,0,-0.98.

We got a room in Castle Rock.

oNly 250 miles to Golden cOLORDADO

Well its Friday AM and we should have an easy ride today. My face is sunburned and windburned! I don't know way, I have the windshield on my bike.

We may ride up pikes peak  on the bikes. Also may visit the Royal Gorge bridge.It is the worlds highest suspension bridge.My Uncle took me there back in the 70'. It was in November and noone was there. I found this gaint rock and droped it off. It took over 30 secound to hit the ground.

eNd oF the day Thusday

  This is Lewis at the end of our day outside oue motel.

We had vies like this most of the day.

Thursday Am

Sorry for all the mistypes Am tired. This death ride is going to kill me. My butt it one big knot.

   The towns along route 66 are really neat. Its like going back in time. It really reminds me of then I was young traveling with my folks. We ate at the big tex last night. One guy ate the 72 Oz  in 57 minites. I got a video of him i will share. Lewis about bit the dust in shamrock Tx. Google map it and frive down main street check out the redlights yourself . We have modifed our route and will ride to Las Vegas NM. This is the site of the jail in Easy Rider

Tuesday night video

getting up and getting ready

Up at 7 showing and getting something to eat. Hope to make Amarillo today. This is one of the hardest streches for us to make. Gas stations are few, about every 40 miles so if we miss one we could be walking to the next one.

Location Widget

I have added a new widget that shows my location.

2nd day part 1

Getting up and getting ready. Hopeing to make it a oklahoma city today. 9 hours and 555 miles. Last night we stayed in jackson and was next door to Casy Jones home place thay had aold steam engine out side his house and a little western town build around it. We ate at the couinrty store there and it was kinda late. They close at 9pm and it was 845. They said to load up so that is what I did. I had about 5 plates of food in frunt of me. The girls was real nice and seemed llike they wanted ahug when we left.

Well Packing up to start out. My butt is alittle sore and my pointer finger is numb. Other than that doing ok.Looks like it may be some more rain today.

Did"nt make Memphis

Well all in all in went ok. We got rained on twice. Not bad. The real killer is  when going highway speeds of 75mph or more the bikes only get 80 miles per tank. So we have stop and fill up(1.8 gal) every 80 miles.  Now that going to become more a problem the farther west we go.Sometimes gas stations are far and few apart.
We didnt get to memphis but we did made it to Jackson whick is about 70 miles from Memphis.Hopefully we will start early tuesday AM ,go to memphis and check a few things out.
Lewis had a hard day keeping his legs together. The wind kept hiting his knees and pulling his legs apart. He rode lead so I was behind him laughing at how he was riding. He kept blaming his shoes so I make a little video of him talking about this.

On our wAy

You can follow our progress by going to this clicking on this link.

http://goo.gl/maps/mRMY

gETTING On the rOad

Well  we will start on the road  Monday morning, Hoping to start around 8am. We will head down 81 south and will try to make Memphis Tenn.   639 mi – about 10 hours 28 mins  if we make it ! It will be a long day.

I did go by the store to get a few things like aspirin, Motrin and some sinus Meds.

PetCock

Well just received an email saying the petcock came in. Hope its the right one. Meanwhile I install a cheapo windshield on my bike. Also updating my TomTom. My son has been a good help getting the bike inspected and helping get things together.  While working on my windshield some people came over to look at his bike and then bought it. How Kenny 4 is back on his scooter.

Leaks found at the last minite

Well I got my new tank and filled it up with gas. Everything looked good till I switched the petcock over to the reserve tank. A massave leak! I stepped back to look and think about what to do.Then I notice the inspection sticker had expired. Well its Thursday at 7pm nothing a can do today . Firday morning called up the Honda dealer and ordered a new petcock . They said they could overnight it to me. We will see.

Some sites we may see on the way


Also a site showing the Route taken in Easy Riider
also a site showing the route taken in Easy Rider

My Tank came In

Well the new gas tank came in. I went to pick it up and it looked way to small.
So I left the tank at the dealer and returned later with the tank I have been working on. The New tank was alittle smaller than the other. Come to find out the older tank is off a 1992 shadow, Mine is a 1988. Funny part is they both fit on the bike and look good. I'll just use the new one for the trip and when I get back paint and seal the older larger tank and use it on the bike.

Just a few more days till we leave. My whole day is spend thinking about all the things that can go wrong. I may pick up 2 new tubes for the tires just to have on the trip. If I do have a flat I will aways find a place to do the repairs but may find it hard to get parts for the repairs.

ThE Tank

Well I picked up the gas tank from National Peening. The owner Mike Price is a real nice guy he had the tank ready the next day. It looked good but had about 12 holes all around the tank bottom. I welded these up pretty easily. Then went over to Harbor freight and bought some rust killer to let sit in the tank over night. Just with the rust killer in the tank it looks like all my welds held but one. I'll work on that one today. I did use my stud welder to pull the dent out and it looks good to. Here are some pictures of the tank after getting it Blasted. You can see the dent and the holes in it.

Coming down to the line

Well we start the trip in a little over week and I still don't have a gas tank. The one I bought off eBay has all this epoxy glue on the bottom so I started sand blasting the tank to clean it up. Well with all this rain we have been getting the blaster kept clogging up, after a few hours and I don’t know how many times cleaning the tip I gave up and took the tank down to a shot peening business. Should get it back today. Then all I have to do is weld up or solder up all the small pin holes around the bottom of the tank. Also I ordered another new tank form the local Honda dealership he guarantees that they have one in stock. I told him all about; this is the 3rd new tank I have ordered. The 1st two tanks I have order had been discontinued. I've been trying to order a gas tank for over 2 months. We see how it turns out. I do have some video of me cutting up the original tank that I want to share with you.

Gettin the Bike ready

I bought my bike back in 1988 brand new and it only has a little over 10k mile on it.
I really like this bike except the range it gets with a tank of gas. You see the tank is only 2 gallons and the bike gets about 50 mile per gallon. A few years back Lewis had taken a bike trip up to Canada and ran out of gas.
So one of the things I have done for this trip is to change the gear ratio, I changed the rear sprocket from a 44 tooth to a 40 tooth. This really helped on the cruising RPM and mileage. It gets close to 70 MPG now.

I also bought some saddle bags and a sissy bar bag.'

I;ve been working on the gas tank for over a month. It had a dent  while loading it on my trailer so I thought I would fix the dent and at the same time make the tanks bigger. I also ordered a new tank just in case things didn't work out as planned.  So I cut the tank down both sides and spread it open about 2 1/4 inch's and  started welding everything up. After around 12 hours of welding I had it together with only about 15 small leaks. Meanwhile the new tank is on back order.