Off And Crawlin' Like A Herd Of Turtles

This is going to be EPIC! The motorcycles left Ottawa in a shipping container 3 weeks ago, bound for San Jose California, and now Ray and I have finally caught up with them. Aside from a few minutes of total panic 5 days ago when the service manager at Lanesplitter Harley Davidson phoned to say he was refusing to accept them due to some miscommunication on the part of his boss, the plan has come together as I prayed it would. Except for the batteries. The ignitions had been left turned on at some point on the journey and the batteries were stone dead when we picked up our rides. We were able to bump start mine but Ray's was totally pooched and had to be replaced. Everybody in the dealership had tons of questions about the machines that had come from so far and they were all envious of our cross country ride.

We scored on our hotel reservation, we're next door to a Whole Foods Grocery store that has a Brew Pub on the second floor and a huge selection of gourmet food to go on the ground floor. We've been shopping twice so far. The San Jose Sharks home arena is 2 blocks away and Anthrax and Slayer are playing a concert there tonight. John Mehary is probably going to be ticked at me for passing up on the show but the bikes are in the parking lot and ready to roll, it's been a very long day, and we have a lot of miles to cover tomorrow.

The plan for the first day is to head southwest through Big Basin Redwoods State Park and pick up the Pacific Coast Highway, cruise through Salinas and Monterey, along Big Sur, (where half the car commercials filmed in North America are done) then up over the mountains to our destination in Taft, taking every twisty turny weavy windy road we can along the way. Over the next 2 1/2 weeks we'll wind our way home through southern California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, the Ozarks, the Appalachians, and time permitting, even a bit of New England.

Unless the whole plan blows up in our face like the last time we did this: days of pouring rain and snow, wildfires, tornadoes, road closures, Great Big Cracks In The Earth And God Knows What The Hell Else!!!! In which case we will pull out a different map and pick a different direction and a different adventure, but whatever route we take, this will be EPIC!!!!