He's back on the road!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andrea

Dam glad to hear he's ok and on the way at a more leisurely pace...

He's home!!!!!!

Great read, thanks! I missed the entire thing because I was on vaca for the past week but just read it from the beginning, very cool! 

Congrats Brian, glad you made it home safe brutha! 

He's home!!!!!!

Fantastic!   

Glad you got home OK Brian, at least you had enough sense to pull over, instead of ricocheting off the Penn. Turnpikes cement median, like I did.

Congrats to him, and epic thread, thanks

I am home and resting up. Too tired to post much right now but it was an interesting ride.... maybe a new catagory is in order: Coast to Coast in 100 hours with a cardiac stress- test in the middle. :-(   Everything is great and I will post more later and I promise at least a couple of laughs, starting with Mr. Elkhoof and the two truck operator....

Brian

So has this convinced you to not push as much during high heat summers?

I am home and resting up. Too tired to post much right now but it was an interesting ride.... maybe a new catagory is in order: Coast to Coast in 100 hours with a cardiac stress- test in the middle. :-(   Everything is great and I will post more later and I promise at least a couple of laughs, starting with Mr. Elkhoof and the two truck operator....

Brian

A new category, the CC100w/CSTITM.   Best of all now that we got Obamacare the stress test is free. 

Sort of.... it has finally taught me not to be abusive and totally negligent about my own needs on such a demanding trip. I really do not know what happened but I did suffer some kind of physical breakdown, whether it was heat, heart or hydration related. I did not stop due to a smart decision, I stopped simply because I could not continue. I first stopped on the side of I-80, changed some of the gear I was wearing and tried to continue but I didn't make much distance at all before stopping and giving the PA emergency network a workout (911).

But so as not to make this story too morbid, allow me to digress a bit- while in WA, Chet gave me the Pacific Northwest version of a lucky rabbit's foot and it looks like this:



It looks like a whitetail deer hoof but much, much larger. It is an elk's hoof (which is why I call it Mr. Elkhoof) and I strapped it to the back of the bike for the ride home. It is much more lucky than any rabbit's foot (look at the size of it) and it seems to ward off all members of the deer family (the proof is that I did not hit a single forest rat on the way home. In addition to that, it seems to have strange and mystical power much like KiPass.

It is a long story but my bike was towed from where I left it (via ambulance) to a local impound yard. When picking up the bike the  next day, Bob (tow company employee) asked me what in the hell that was strapped to the bike. Apparently he was down on his knees running a nylon web sling through the wheels WHEN SUDDENLY he looked up and was staring right at Mr. Elkhoof- it surprised him enough that he jumped back and fell down. All hail the elk foot.... So now I have my all- powerful talisman to mount to the bike and ward off any and all evil that KiPass itself cannot deal with. By the way, it worked on the EMT too because he was kind enough to grab as much of my gear as possible (including all GPS's, SPOT, the entire top box, etc.- what a great bunch of people!) but he said he wasn't comfortable picking up 'that foot- thing'. ROFLMAO

Brian

So has this convinced you to not push as much during high heat summers?

The only problem I had on my leisurely trip out west two years ago, was a charlie horse in my leg that put me on the ground in agony.  It wouldn't stop and I though I would have to call the hotel desk to get an ambulance.  It was that bad.  I attribute that to the heat and not drinking or stopping enough.  That convinced me that long arduous trips on a bike in the heat aren't worth the potential physical after effects.

We're all glad you still had enough sense to stop when you did and call for help.  I'm not so sure that I would have that same sense being that close to home relatively speaking.

Sort of.... it has finally taught me not to be abusive and totally negligent about my own needs on such a demanding trip. I really do not know what happened but I did suffer some kind of physical breakdown, whether it was heat, heart or hydration related. I did not stop due to a smart decision, I stopped simply because I could not continue. I first stopped on the side of I-80, changed some of the gear I was wearing and tried to continue but I didn't make much distance at all before stopping and giving the PA emergency network a workout (911).

But so as not to make this story too morbid, allow me to digress a bit- while in WA, Chet gave me the Pacific Northwest version of a lucky rabbit's foot and it looks like this:



It looks like a whitetail deer hoof but much, much larger. It is an elk's hoof (which is why I call it Mr. Elkhoof) and I strapped it to the back of the bike for the ride home. It is much more lucky than any rabbit's foot (look at the size of it) and it seems to ward off all members of the deer family (the proof is that I did not hit a single forest rat on the way home. In addition to that, it seems to have strange and mystical power much like KiPass.

It is a long story but my bike was towed from where I left it (via ambulance) to a local impound yard. When picking up the bike the  next day, Bob (tow company employee) asked me what in the hell that was strapped to the bike. Apparently he was down on his knees running a nylon web sling through the wheels WHEN SUDDENLY he looked up and was staring right at Mr. Elkhoof- it surprised him enough that he jumped back and fell down. All hail the elk foot.... So now I have my all- powerful talisman to mount to the bike and ward off any and all evil that KiPass itself cannot deal with. By the way, it worked on the EMT too because he was kind enough to grab as much of my gear as possible (including all GPS's, SPOT, the entire top box, etc.- what a great bunch of people!) but he said he wasn't comfortable picking up 'that foot- thing'. ROFLMAO

Brian

Well it's a good thing that you weren't trying to make this story too morbid Brian. 

And BTW? You may want to rethink mounting your new lucky charm to your bike anytime soon. I'd say that the luck wasn't working so well on you. On the flip side of that argument. Maybe what happened to you was good luck, perhaps something else might have happened without the foot?

How lucky was the elk though and he had 4 of them?

Glad you are OK. I won't push my limits anymore either. I have to blame age a little. I worked 64 hours last week while running the bike to work and back (about 200 miles per day). Thursday I was at lunch and started cramping up all over and should have called it a day. Worked another 6 hours and rode home. Had to stop 7 or 8 times on my ride home. I should have V-lined to an ER, but big tough guy had to go home. I saw my muscles do thinks I never thought possible. I had muscles pushing through my rib cage.. Evert muscle I have was in serious pain and freezing up. So I got stuck taking the cage for the next 2 days. 1 week later and I still feel beat up.
I hope you didn't have any of those feelings.

I think Mr. Elkhoof was a perfect lucky charm- I didn't have a single deer strike for the entire ride and that is enough for me. But the hoof went on and protected my abandoned bike from vandals, and there wasn't so much as a scratch on it after being lifted in a pair of slings onto the tow truck.

And I am not normally a morbid person- in fact, I could probably use a little bit more morbidity now and then.

Brian

Well it's a good thing that you weren't trying to make this story too morbid Brian. 

And BTW? You may want to rethink mounting your new lucky charm to your bike anytime soon. I'd say that the luck wasn't working so well on you. On the flip side of that argument. Maybe what happened to you was good luck, perhaps something else might have happened without the foot?

How lucky was the elk though and he had 4 of them?

Well I may push my limits again in the future but I will never again be downright abusive to myself. It is one thing to press and try to acheive something that is difficult but it is quite a different thing to be downright foolish while doing so. I was badly dehydrated and that was absolutely my own fault for not drinking nearly enough water even in the 102 degree F heat of South Dakota. And I was avoiding water to avoid having to stop and use the facilities along the way- as I said, stupid on my part.

It sounds like you did escape the worst of it though so in an odd way your experience is probably just a fortunate and <fairly cheap> warning. That is how I am taking my experience- a significant but relatively cheap lesson. It is one thing to push a machine (mechanical or biological) and expect a lot from it but it is another thing entirely to be abusive- running a biological machine (us) without sufficient attention is identical to running a mechanical machine (the bike) without crankcase oil. That is not being tough, that is just being stupid and abusive.

Best of luck in your recovery. I feel pretty lousy today myself but it is a good, normal kind of lousy (tired and sore) which is a tremendous improvement over the lousy of the last couple of days.

Brian

Glad you are OK. I won't push my limits anymore either. I have to blame age a little. I worked 64 hours last week while running the bike to work and back (about 200 miles per day). Thursday I was at lunch and started cramping up all over and should have called it a day. Worked another 6 hours and rode home. Had to stop 7 or 8 times on my ride home. I should have V-lined to an ER, but big tough guy had to go home. I saw my muscles do thinks I never thought possible. I had muscles pushing through my rib cage.. Evert muscle I have was in serious pain and freezing up. So I got stuck taking the cage for the next 2 days. 1 week later and I still feel beat up.
I hope you didn't have any of those feelings.

Maybe that spare fuel tank shouldn't be for holding fuel?

There's always the Texas Catheter / Camelback combo. In and out in one easy process. 

Glad to hear you made it home safely.

So how is Kirby getting along with your new lucky charm?

He was doing fine...until, SUDDENLY and without warning, he contracted Brucellosis from the Elk remnant.