Its 30 freaking degrees here! Speedy has ice on the seat. WTF. I doubled up on the jeans and t-shirt and it did help somewhat but it was still cold as a well diggers butt once you got moving. So move on I did. First I rolled through Deadwood SD, kind of surreal rolling through an old western town while 2Pac played on the Ipod. Stopped in a few places and got a few pics before heading out Hwy 24 in WY to the Devils Tower. Along the way there were a few places where you could see the road stretch on for miles so I used that opportunity to open the old girl up and see what she would do fully loaded. I got 140 once or twice then I decided to try a longer run. I must have held it flat out for a solid minute and the best I got was 142. After I slowed down I noticed the lack of tunes. The Ipod was gone. I had it in my tank bag in the outer pocket with my cell phone. Since the phone was charging and the Ipod was connected to my Chatterbox the zipper wasn't closed all the way. The zipper was now fully opened and the Ipod the cord and the cord to the cell phone was now gone. The other end to the phone was under the seat so it didn't go far. I considered for a second going back and looking for the Ipod but after hitting the road at 140 I'm pretty sure it was done. Moving on, as you can guess it didn't take long to get to the Devils Tower. Man that thing is huge, pictures don't do it justice.
After a few more stops for pictures I found myself standing on top of a hill where you could see for miles in every direction. Not even a breeze was blowing and the air was clear and still, that was when I noticed about a 3 mile straight with a nice downhill slope to it. I hit 146 before I started climbing the other side and started losing speed so I came off the gas and coasted up the hill just cruising. Guess what met me at the top of the hill.
She clocked me at 78 in a 65 and wrote me a ticket for it. Remember the zipper and the Ipod, well that was the same pocket that had my license, registration and every other important piece of paper in it, and now it's gone. I had my government ID with me so she didn't worry too much about it but it did worry me so I sent Dano and Cheap a text and told them "I am done with all of the Hooligan stuff". They laughed. After a short stint on I-90 I hit Hwy 16 to Worland WY. The scenery is amazing.
You ride along the bottom of this canyon for about 40 miles. At one point I stopped to take a few pics and left the bike running and it fell over. No damage, put away the camera zip the zipper completely and roll on. I was going to stay at a Super 8 in Worland but they were "renovating" and they wanted $20 more than the web site quoted me. I ended up camping and had the pleasure of meeting some very nice folks who were camping next to me who reassured me that I was in fact crazy for crossing the country on a bike.
