This Is Hard Work

It's not the fact that motorcycling is a tough job, its the s*** that happens along the way that makes you realize the importance in 1. planning and 2. dedication that you need when it comes to going cross country.

So things have been a little rushed lately, my last blog post was miserable in length and detail...but this is for of course good reason. The lack of sleep, the need to ride and cover as much ground as fast as we can, and the whole hurried nature of sitting around doing nothing (but of course posting is anything but nothing, bah who am I kidding it's definitely hard to find the time) make it so hard to reflect on what has happened. In fact, everytime I even think of the date or the day I get all jumbled. There's two things I can tell you right now (because 8.1 percent tall can energy beer kills more brain cells than a Vodka and Redbull shot anyday), we are one day behind already, but I am one day up in cash savings. See I take out roughly enough for 50.00 USD a day, right now I have about 60-some dollars in my wallet: good news. This is because of recent events and the story of our adventure...so let us backtrack a little...

First a picture

 

 

Yeah., mistake number one

And now another...

Field of dreams?

The two things that have killed our progress have led to a slow start..there's two, will tomorrow bring a third? Only one way to find out, but first, lets see what happened since New Orleans.

So we packed up that morning and head off towards Houma, LA. After stopping and grabbing a bunch of stuff we needed, because there's ALWAYS something else you need along the way, we passed through a lot of the marshlands that make up the Cajun side of Louisiana. We're cheap, so we camp when we get the chance. Sure, it's cold, but it seemed alright to do so...until the sun set. We were running out of options and picked a spot in a rice field/ swamp / marsh / nasty place. Luckily no one bothered us...but the creepy clown noises in the middle of the night, oh and a coyote and some weird birds. No harm done, other than the extremely cold night we weren't expecting and maybe 4 hours of sleep. You gotta remember too, this is January, in LA the sun sets at 5:30 and is up at about 6:30. That's over 12 hours of sitting in a freezing cold tent trying to either stay warm or sleep. Alright...enough complaining about the damn cold, its our faults for even going that route.

Ok, a little blurry, I'm practicing, this is still the States...

It's amazing the difference an SLR will make though

The next morning, bright and early, we got a quick start and headed for Galveston along the coast.

Almost a perfect reflection

So we got about 40 miles up the road when some how the hell Nik's tire goes flat, oh and we're both on our reserve tanks in the middle of nowhere. His being tubeless, wasn't actually the tire, it was the spokes and the valve stem. How it happened, no idea, and no way to fix it. Super glue didn't work, tire foam wouldn't do it, we had a couple kids watch us for awhile and a couple Sheriffs offer some help, but the bottom line was that I'd have to travel 100 miles one way to get the spare I had on me on his tire WITH a tube to stop the leaking. Yeah, if it wasn't for the tire we'd be stuck for 3-5 days in the boones.

Smile Nik, you get to sleep all day while I ride into Lake Charles

The ride into town I tell you was the most boring stretch of road thus far...I think...if theres one thing lower states are known and good for, its long boring roads. We're talking back in Canada, the 401 may seem boring, Albion rd. in ottawa may seem straight enough...no, these roads will go for 50-75 kilometres without a bend. It's strange.

My lonely solo journey...the first of many I'm sure

This is what country folk do for fun..where's your stick young feller?

This is what most of the road looks like (well this bridge was the only change for almost 100 miles)

Ok, ok, so I return 5 hours later with a tire, we put it on, slap on some brake pads and take off..."f*** it, we're riding till midnight" we told ourselves, and ride we did. We almost made up for lost time, we made it to Galveston that night. Riding along the coast into Texas was perhaps the best ride I've ever had to date, mind you, no pictures we're taken because we were zipping so fast. But the oil refineries look like mega casinos in the nightscape contrasting against the half moon and ocean tides. Beautiful. Galveston was historically awesome, but we flew through it towards Bay City. We made it about halfway and decided to tent it up again behind an office at midnight. This...night....was.....terrible....

Although we slept better, the night was seriously 2 degrees celcius. An arctic wind they say blew in, and boy we felt it...We woke up to find horses all around us ahah and the goddamn roosters at 5:30 am. We packed it in  and headed off for Corpus Christi.

Sun set over the Cameron ferry, if you look close, the thing popping out of the water is a dolphin!! So many, yet I never got a perfect shot

The ferry almost ran into that Aircraft Carrier, AND SO COLD HERE

Right outside our tent

The morning again started off pretty decent, then Nik started feeling like shit....like terrible shit. I didn't blank that one out, that's how bad it was. We're pretty sure it was some bologna food poisoning, a trick from the locals in southern LA to keep us out of their territory. Long story short, hours upon gruesome hours later or straight driving and stomach pains, past the not so pleasant weather of Corpus Christi, we made it to our present location...Brownsville. We have both decided we could probably live here, there is about a 95/5 percent ratio of Latino's to Caucasians, but the atmosphere, the birds, the weather, the actually really busy hustle and bustle makes this place pretty cool. We're about five minutes from the border now, the next post will be somewhere through Mexico. We plan on getting through it in 4-5 days, we'll see how it goes.

Nik's terrible morning, part deux.

King's Ranch: 60 miles of straight roads and cops everywhere waiting to bust the innocents.

Like this for example...except, me thinks this guy isn't innocent if he's got 5 cops after him

Our first hotel of the trip, rightly deserved omg we feel so much better, as do our bikes

As does my hair...but this is the half done version