$20/Night

The Pirate Haus, St. Augustine, FL
N 29°53'43.50", W 81°18'17.30"
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=29.89542,-81.30481

Another night in another hostel. This is apparently the oldest city in America, but the Friday night crowd feels like a mall near a disposessed suburban high school. Swarms of young'uns acting like they want to be adults. Give them a couple years, they'll see.

Otherwise tonight was a great night to be in St. Augustine. It's the first Friday of the month and I am only blocks from the local Art Walk. Behold the glass jellyfish statue blurry photo as evidence. It's a nice town, but it's a beach town and I'm in tourist central, so I would need a different mindset to really get into it.

Overall, I am loving hostels. I had really great experiences in San Francisco at the International Guest House/ Merry Go Round, loved the Blue Moon in Lafayette, and the Pirate Haus is pretty terrific as well. Location, staff, and amenities really make the aforementioned places awesome and highly recommended.
The Bad. El Paso's only hostel is near nothing and makes me think of the Shining, maybe it was just bad timing. Austin had no bed on a Monday night. It soured my view of the city, but it is well reviewed, even if it did ruin my night.

Name That Ocean!

Beach Blvd, Jacksonville Beach, FL

N 30°17'19.11", W 81°23'18.71"

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=30.28864,-81.38853

If you guessed the Atlantic, you are correct!

Left the Pacific behind Friday morning, greeted the Atlantic 2:30 PM Eastern today.

Penultimate

Quincy, FL
N 30°32'09.99", W 84°35'43.24"
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=30.53611,-84.59534

So close! I wrapped up Louisiana and tore through the itty bitty cross-sections of Mississippi and Alabama, then made about 170 miles of headway through Florida's panhandle. I had to call it a day as the dark snuck in and brought cold with it. 70 mph wind and 40 degree weather make for some serious windchill.

Tomorrow I cover the last couple of hundred miles - I'll go all the way to a beach on the Atlantic, for the sake of completion, then take a nice ride along the ocean to a hostel down in St. Augustine - my surprisingly good time means I have the worst timing possible for my Jacksonville friend. Sorry, Kara.

From sea to shining sea.

What's in a Name?

Lafayette, LA

N 30°12'59.82", W 92°0'46.48"

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=30.21662,-92.01291

Before the dreaded Road Fatigue claims me, a quick note on nomenclature in my road tripping.

I've never been good at naming vehicles. My blue Honda was The Blue Honda, my Buick was The Buick or the Oldmanmobile, and occasionally Pandora if Nathan was around.

The motorcycle deserves better, and as such, I have too many names.

The first proposed was Zorobabel, Zoro to the ladies. Leader of the first Jewish exodus, with a name that translates to Seed of Babylon, he befriended Zachariah in a prison camp on the grounds that Z names must stick together. Seed of Babylon, hell yeah.

The song Born to Be Wild has been stuck in my head for 2200 miles and it got me thinking about the name Steppenwolf. Yes, it's the band, but it's also the German word for the archetypal lone wolf. It only SOUNDS cliched.

Another friend has threatened to disown me for riding a motorcycle, on the grounds that it will kill me. She made some crack about my death cycle, to which I replied, "Oh, you mean Samsara, my Cycle Of Life And Death?" I think this is my current favorite. Feminine-sounding, because the bike is a lady, high brow, clever in a too-clever way, AND it's tempting fate by casually referencing death.

And the three runners up are Windshadow, because it popped in my head as I was knocked around by a tractor-trailer's gusts, Wiley, because in retrospect it may have earned the name by FAILING to kill that roadrunner, and Shadowfax, a la everyone's favorite grey wizard.

Now, I have three things with completely unambiguous names. Each glove, and the gas can.

The can is easy; He's Jerry, Jerry the Can.

The gloves are more fun and require a teeny bit of background. Wearing black leather gloves makes me want to strangle somebody. Nothing against anybody, and it's not in a 'killing' kind of way, but rather a 'making murder' kind of way. It's more sinister and theatrical. I blame crime shows, movies, and assorted cinematographers, but wearing gloves and seeing your hands do things is about the same as the Mysterious Assailant in Black Gloves shots in film. I am also conscious of the fact that I'm not leaving fingerprints, which incites mayhem. Anyway, paired with the fact that they are motorcycle gloves and the handlebars are home to fuel controls named the choke and the throttle, it was only natural that my left glove's name be Choke and my right's Throttle.

I amuse myself, I swear.

Before and After: Spot the Differences

Austin, TX
N 30°13'38.97", W 97°44'42.11"
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=30.22749,-97.74503

I got an early start out of El Paso this morning and made a very late entrance to Austin with a vanguard of housing complications, so I'll make this a quick account of the day's big adventure. Take a close look at those photos.

So, there I was, tearing along at 80 and just seven miles from my next scheduled fuel stop in Texas hill country. Hilly desert, basically. Heading up a hill, I felt power fading, so I turned the valve from PRI(mary) to RES(erve), right? Still no power. I pull over onto the shoulder and fidget for a while, and when I fail to succeed, I make another tech support call to Erik.

Come to find out, PRI stands for PRIME, and just dumps fuel into the carburetor, so I had left myself with no reserve and I had been crippling my gas mileage. I was out of gas; Erik called this the Motorcyclist's Surprise. Surprise!

I start to hoof it East, thumbing and smiling at passing cars as I trudge along in the coat some have said look like a stillsuit from Dune. I though there would be more sympathy for the overdressed guy carrying a helmet away from a motorcycle in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a half hour into the hike, a tractor trailer pulls over and I half-run to get in his cab. Meet Gil, out of Seattle and headed for Alabama.

Gil gets me to the truckstop about ten miles down the road, declines my offer of money, and wishes me luck. I buy a 2.5 gallon can and three bungies. As I'm paying for them, I make conversation with the gentleman behind me in line, laughing about running out of gas in the desert and it turned out he was heading in the direction of my bike.

Thank you Gil of Seattle and Ricky born and raised in Texas, you are princes among truckers and helped make my out-of-gas adventure a good story and not a grumpy one.

Oh, and the answer key for the before and after. In the second picture:
1. The helmet is on the ground.
2. The bike is farther from the road.
3. It's about an hour later.
4. The bike has a new friend, Jerry the Can, bungied into the passenger seat.
5. The bike has gas and can move again.

600 miles again today, I'm going to try for 400 and Lafayette, LA if I can make a reservation at a hostel there.

1000 miles left in the trip!

Back Roads, Please

311 E Franklin St, El Paso

N 31°45'42.27", W 106°29'13.77"

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=31.76174,-106.48716

Today I took it easy on myself with about a 300 mile run. Actually, I knocked about 50 off to 250 by taking a couple back roads, and that really made the day.

But first! Today I present three photos. Kat and Wyatt. Bisbee's Pit. The border wall and Douglas, AZ as seen from the wall road. Border Patrol outnumbers actual law enforcement out here at least five to one.

The day started with home made corn meal pancakes, courtesy of Wyatt, after I slept in to 8. Then he, Kat, and I toured historic Bisbee and took in the sights of this awesome old mining town before nearly off-roading along the Mexican border. We were stopped by a very friendly Border Patrolman who asked after our business and poked around in the empty dog crate in the rear of the truck. Then a delicious lunch at the Bisbee Breakfast Club, a preflight check, and some tire inflation and I was off.

Douglas, AZ kept things interesting. First, a signage failure had me turn around a few times looking for AZ-80 East, but this turned out to be an act of providence as the ignition failed utterly in a sleepy neighborhood - and not at 75 mph with a car behind me. Some fidgeting and a tech support call to Erik found the problem to be the ignition fuse, reasonably enough. The tricky thing was that it wasn't burnt out, but had to be flipped. Something about oxidization, sparks, and malevolent gypsies.

Back on track and it was a great run with amazing scenery. I have never been so bare and alone on a road as I was traveling by motorcycle down NM-9. I went for miles upon miles without seeing another vehicle. The road was smooth and curved gently if at all, and the No Passing Zone signs seemed like a private joke. This is where I had my two OGodWhereIsTheGasStation? scares, but it always turned up in a timely manner.  9's speed limit was 55 for most of the way, and to my credit I mostly kept it under 70, but come on, so hard to resist the throttle.

Now, all that about isolation having been said, the following is an incomplete list of desert creatures that have darted out in front of me and the motorcycle.

1. A roadrunner. A genuine roadrunner! Now, I'd been joking about seeing them and saying if I ran one over I'd name the bike Wiley, but this thing scared me. I'm impressed by the speed AND the stopping power. This guy was practically at my ankle when he exploded in a burst of plumage and went from full speed ahead to reverse, avoiding Not-Wiley's deadly caress.

2. A coyote. Coyotes are awesome, this one looked both ways before crossing.

3. Flocks of little birds. They had me speculating how much it would hurt to take a bird to the chest and whether the faceshield could take the abuse. They were everywhere.

4. ATV rider. C'mon kid, I'm going 70 here!

So, I'm tucked into a hostel in El Paso after a great Mexican dinner at The Tap, AKA The Only Place Open On Sunday night. This dinner, incidentally, shares a trait with dry ice in that under the right conditions it can sublimate directly from a solid to a gas. In my belly it found these conditions and the five blocks back to the hostel were hurried ones.

I took it easy with a short run today, but it's time to tackle Texas. The plan at the moment is to push for at least 500 miles tomorrow. When I get to Junction, TX on I-10 tomorrow, I will decide if I grab a motel room there or make a last dash to a hostel in Austin and another 600 mile day.

Vroom, vroom.