The trip to Jacksonville went as planned except for running out of gas on the first tank, but that was to be expected.
It appears that my tank range has reduced from 280 miles to 220 for some reason. (I'll figure it out when I get home)
After a 5:00am Grand Slam breakfast in Jacksonville, I fueled up and rode to the beach to officially start the Coast-to-Coast trip. Tried to get a photo of the surf, but it was too dark.
The first couple of hours after daybreak in Florida were chilly and foggy.
The 50CC portion (50 hours Cost-to-Coast) of the trip was what you probably think all Iron Butt rides are:
Fill up...... Go 80mph until empty...... repeat.
But I did get to watch the states go by:
Alabama
Mississippi
Louisiana
East Texas
Texas
Houston
More Texas
West Texas
OMG WHERE IS THE REST OF THE U.S.!!!!
More Westerer Texas
..."El Paso - 563 miles"
It occurred to me in the wee hours of the morning that perhaps there was no place called El Paso.
What if the Texas DOT just keeps putting up those signs to see how far Yankees will drive if you keep selling them fuel?
BTW, I did eventually arrive at El Paso.
But it was so far that I remember passing a big planet with rings around it.
Seriously, if you have never ridden through West Texas in the night, you need to do it once.
First of all, it's amazingly dark on a clear night, away from all the cities.
And then...
There is a city in the distance... or even a town... but in this flatness, it appears as a razor-thin line of diamonds strung along the horizon, dazzlingly brilliant, and between you and the string in the distance is just blackness. Above the string - more blackness. It just seems to hover there. Then you expect to ride up and see what it is, only to discover that the shimmering lights are still 40 miles away in the clear night. I've never seen anything like it.
I was wearing my open mesh riding gear, which so far seems to be the right choice.
In the early morning fog in Florida, it was quite damp and cool, but I knew the morning sun would burn it off. And all through Texas it was fine, arriving in El Paso at around 80 degrees F, and still dark.
Then I came to New Mexico.
!!!!!
I didn't notice it happening, but I somehow worked my way to an elevation of 4500 ft.
I started getting cold, then... very cold.
The wind was ferocious, and the temperature was 43 degrees F.
I stopped at a gas station and put on everything I had - long underwear, winter gloves, jacket liner...
Then I just rode west and waited on the dawn (realizing that I was retreating from the sun that I desperately wanted to see).
(Hmm... I wonder why my wife never wants to ride with me on my little trips?)
It finally warmed a bit, and I got to see places in Arizona that I had seen long ago: Tucson, Picacho Peak...
Where I-10 enters Arizona is a place that I would like to go back to. The enormous boulders are stacked on both sides of the road like a giant child had been playing. Rocks that you look at and think that it couldn't be naturally balanced - surely someone had to stack them like that...
Before leaving home, I called the banks and notified them that I was traveling across the country, and to expect unusual spending patterns.
So in Texas, I discovered that my debit card had been frozen, and in San Diego, I found that my credit card was locked as well.
Don't you just love great customer service?
Now that I have all the documentation done, here are the stats for the "50CC":
2412 miles
35 hours, 7 minutes elapsed
53,475 dead bugs on the front of the bike.
Hopefully, future days will have more photos to share on the blog.
