"AMGtech - now with more recalls!" (amgtech)
07/30/2018 at 11:30 • Filed to: ADV Monster!
6
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"AMGtech - now with more recalls!" (amgtech)
07/30/2018 at 11:30 • Filed to: ADV Monster! | 6
| 11 |
After 5 days in Minnesota it was time to get back on the road. From this point on I would be completely solo! Unfortunately, my luck with weather was continuing. Minnesota was experiencing the largest storm cell in the country that day! However, I was just in the edge and it didn’t look too bad, figured I would ride right out of it. Plus, it was over 60 degrees, downtown pleasant compared to what I’d ridden through to get this far!
With my trusty rain gear on, I hit the road. Expecting to live in peace and harmony with the rain. Then everything changed when mother nature attacked.
Ten minutes after leaving town it was raining so hard I felt like I was swimming, wind gusts up to 60-70mph. This shit was dangerous. It wasn’t cold, but water was coming down in sheets and flowing across the road. But I was halfway between two towns so I kept on riding.
My mom was staying in a hotel in that next town, so I stopped to say goodbye to her and realized that my rain gear doesn’t double as scuba gear. I was almost completely soaked underneath and the weather was just getting worse. So we went to have breakfast at a diner. Killing time until the storm blew past.
When it did I rode back to the town I had just left, to my dad’s house. Took off all of my wet gear, helmet pads, gloves, even my shoes, and threw all of it in his dryer for a couple hours. We had to duct tape the drier door shut so the shoes wouldn’t knock it open!
As luck would have it, by the time my stuff was dry, the storm had passed and the sun was even peeking out between clouds every now and then.
I had planned on heading south to Des Moines to visit some cousins but they had a bad storm the night before and were still experiencing flooded and closed streets. Not something I wanted to tackle on a bike. So I headed west, back to the Badlands, and despite leaving my dad’s house around lunchtime, I still managed to make camp by nightfall.
But it was the last bit when the fun finally started. Sage Creek campground was my destination for the evening and getting there required riding 15 miles of gravel through the western edge of Badlands National Park.
I was going along about 25mph in second gear, up a hill I couldn’t see ever the top of. That’s when it happened.
I crested the hill, and there they were, a whole herd of buffalo right on the side of the road! There had to be 50-75 of them, the closest being at most thirty feet away. One step and they could be in my path. So I downshift and plan to slow down. Now, you should probably know, my bike isn’t exactly quiet despite having stock exhaust and it makes a nice little rumble. Well, downshifting means the engine revs up, which makes the exhaust louder.
Right when it revs, their eyes dart towards me betraying their fear. And they were off, all at once, running for their lives from the scary Monster! STAMPEDE!!! I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a fully grown buffalo in person, but they’re not small. So as soon as they all looked at me... Almost a code brown. They’ve been known to be aggressive to humans and have trampled some to death.
Somehow, I managed to survive this clearly harrowing ordeal, and made it safely to the campground soon after. It was just a big circle with open space in the middle. Basically the whole area was open to camp wherever you want.
After setting up camp, we had a visitor! That cute little guy in the top photo. He walked along the road, maybe only 15 feet away from it, about a quarter of the way around the campground, starting about where the Monster is parked (1 o’clock if the circle were a clock).
Everything about this place was beautiful. Have a potato pic of the night sky as proof!
The next morning I went hiking up into the bluffs around the campground. There were more buffalo grazing in the area, and a ton of prairie dogs chirping at me.
KevlarRx7
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
07/30/2018 at 11:46 |
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Looks like quite the journey! Hopefully the weather will turn in your favour soon, godspeed (:
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AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> KevlarRx7
07/30/2018 at 12:10 |
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Thanks! I'm home though, been back a few weeks now.
BobintheMtns
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
07/30/2018 at 12:47 |
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The
nice thing about rain storms on a bike— eventually the rain cloud ends.. and the wind will dry you out fast
.. So if it’s raining, just drive fast as fuck till you’re dry.....
Decay buys too many beaters
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
07/30/2018 at 13:36 |
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You probably would’v e been attacked with an exhaust, everyone knows that buffalo prefer triples. They’ve been known to charge v-twin riders that enter their territory.
So for the general trip, did you plan out each leg exactly ? Or was it more of a “Here’s a general area, I’ll find a place when I get tired” type of thing? Planning out my route now, leaning more towards the latter right now . Finished a full service on the boat over the weekend, so now it’s just down to finalizing a plan and hoping the heat wave subsides.
I’ll be looking forward to the next couple updates around the areas I’m planning to hit!
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AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> BobintheMtns
07/30/2018 at 13:49 |
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Unless it’s cold, then it’ll take a while
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AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> Decay buys too many beaters
07/30/2018 at 13:55 |
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What are you talking about? This is the Midwest. No one here rides anything other than Harleys, so they’re quite used to V twins! But a little one with a high redline sounds different so yeah maybe I am lucky they didn’t charge!
I had general areas that I wanted to make it to each night and scouted some campsites before the trip, but ultimately used apps to find places to camp, sometimes they were ones I scouted, sometimes not. Allow yourself plenty of freedom, and I recommend no more than 400 miles per day just so you can take some fun roads and check out stuff off the bike if you want.
Wishi could come to Bonneville too! But my boss said we can’t take anymore vacation this summer because we're behind and we're basically down at least one tech every day through the summer. Our vacation schedule is overbooked already.
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Decay buys too many beaters
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
07/30/2018 at 14:17 |
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Nahh, They’ve grown tired of twins from years of
overexposure, they prefer the exotic smooth sound of a
T
riple. I saw it on the discovery channel.
Yeah, right now the tentative plan is an average of about 300 miles per day. 200-
ish in the hot areas, 400-
ish along the coast. Still not sure if I want to brave D
eath V
alley or not, if so it’s going to be a night ride starting out
around 3am (when it will be a brisk
95 degrees)
which should get me
to the overlook on the west side in time for sunrise.
And figured as much on the vacation front, two motorcycle trips in one summer is a lot of time to ask off!
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AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> Decay buys too many beaters
07/30/2018 at 15:39 |
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Nah, the discovery channel is full of shit. I’ve got a buddy that’s lived his whole life in SD. He says otherwise. You might be thinking of the Grand Canyon buffalos.
Sounds like a good plan, and you’re going much further than I expected! There’s a hotel with a swimming pool in stovepipe wells in the middle of death valley, might be worth a stop. And it looks like you’re not going through Yosemite? Or Zion? That’s a mistake.
But yeah, you'll like my upcoming posts. I had the most fun of the whole trip in the southwest. Lots of great pics.
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Decay buys too many beaters
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
07/30/2018 at 16:33 |
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I’ll see if that lines up with death vally, current plan was to stage around Beatty or closer and do the majority of the ride at the “cool” part of the day. Don’t want to be any where near the center at daylight!
What do you mean skipping!? ? I’m hitting the back side of sequoia, sierra, and yosemite on 395 before eventually crossing over through the el dorado forest. I guess I could cross the Sierras a little sooner through Yosemite, but everything west of there looks a little boring, riding the whole east side of the sierras seemed like a better ride.
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AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> Decay buys too many beaters
07/30/2018 at 18:13 |
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Oh wait until you see my maps from CA. Tioga pass... Mmm mmm mmm. Good stuff. Old priest grade road. So many great roads
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Decay buys too many beaters
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
07/30/2018 at 19:00 |
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Good god