Ohio to Florida.... in the cold... on a Monster....

[xdbx]

this...report...is....fantastic... must....post...more...



ahhhhhhhh!

[ADAMD]

As I sit here and wait to bring my bike in to the dealer, I say ... well I might as well read an ohio to florida post, I guess... *yawn* I'm glad I did, this is a great story!

[rmeisen]

My father always said 'if you travel long enough, everything will happen to you'. He must have been talking about you....

[achesley]

Great story, It reminds me of motorcycle travel in the 50's and 60's so much when all bikes broke, anywheres, anytime. But mostly at night on a cold wet lonely road. ;-(

[CETME]

Well….. I don’t know how it would be for most of you guys, but the wait was killing me. It was 11p.m. when the lobby closed down and the temperature was dropping. It was now around 28 degrees. It doesn’t seem cold to most of you, but lets face it, I’m from Florida. And I was just sitting on the cold asphalt. At this point I had slept 8hrs in the past 48. I was beginning to get tired, so I tried to doze off a little….. to no avail, I was still on high alert, and try as I might, I would wake up minutes later…. Time passed so slowly. My mind was hurting from the lack of stimulation, I felt like a caged animal, so I started reading the labels on my clothes to entertain myself……… Then I’d doze off again.

After what seemed like hours of hallucinations, I see this image… is this real?!:


Oh thank god……..


Despite the initial smiles, and after sitting for a minute or two, we realized that this was no f**k**g vacation:


Crissi-Lyn and Brian had to express their feelings about the whole situation… I guess therapists say it helps you heal…


Then they had to inspect the damage and had to do the whole: “shit dude… fuck….” .followed by some “fuck dude… shit……”


Of course, then I came to the realization of how do I get a 450lb motorcycle up onto the back of a truck, with one just me , a short fat dude, and a little blonde girl to help….. well… at 1:30 a.m. there was only one option… and it happened to be 20 minutes or so away…… yeah… Walmart….. So they leave again… and I’m left sitting there again for an hour until they get back…
Now we had ramps!


I didn’t get any pictures us loading it on, but I got a picture of Crissi Lyn holding the bike upright as we tie-strapped it down…


As we got onto the road, I started feeling funny… the sort of funny you get when you feel like you’ve been up for days… I had gone through such an adventure these past two days, and I’ve barely gotten any sleep. My mind and my body were both exhausted, but still I had to stay awake. I hope these pictures can begin to show how my mind was working at the time:






At this point I dozed off for about 30 minutes or so…. I woke up talking nonsense, and even before I was coherent, I took this picture of their reaction to me.


Now, I don’t know what kind of rules you guys have in other places, but in Florida, if you cross a state line, or if a Lynyrd Skynyrd song comes on, you have to give the driver shotgun head. As we crossed the line into Georgia, you would not believe what came on…. That’s right…. Free Bird…. Obligated by our state law, me and Brian got to work:




Here is Crissi Lyn, obviously pleased with herself:


About an hour or two later, we stopped a gas station, filled up the truck, and they smoked some cigarettes:


I don’t know why I put this picture up….


Don’t you hate it when people insist on putting on your helmet, only to realize that they can’t take it off? Then whine in your helmet for 10 minutes with “guys… help… I can’t breathe”


I’m telling you… it was cold:


Back on the road we went….. and in went the country music:


My reaction to said country music:


If you guys want to see what the inside of my nose looks like… here you go


After several hours of me going in and out of consciousness, the sun starts to come up:


As we drove through southern Georgia, we passed this pumpkin, I demanded we take a picture on it, and if we didn’t I would throw a tantrum to conquer all tantrums…. Fearing the consequences, my friends humored me:




Shortly afterwards we entered Florida. At this point they had been on the road for 17hrs straight. No breaks, no naps… nothing. I had been on the road for 24hrs. I was going to insist that we stop to take a picture of the “Welcome to Florida” sign… but we also have a rule that you punch someone in the crotch when you say it, and we weren’t in such a good mood at the time, and we crankily carried on into Tallahassee.

When we got to Tally, we instantly fell asleep….. 4hrs later we woke up tired, hungry, and thirsty… so we went out to eat:


Here’s Crissi-Lyn talking some sort of nonsense


My friends are jerks….


Brian can really stuff his face:


Look how dainty Crissi-lyn is in comparison with her fries:


Afterwards we spent the day together at Crissi Lyn’s house in Tallahassee, just sitting and napping…… But alas, the trip was not over yet. We had to go from Tallahassee, to St. Petersburg… and Brian was actually going to Miami….

Luckily as we tried to leave, we realized he got a flat, so we had to go to the auto parts store, get a patch kit, then come all the way back and patch the tire…..

Oh wait… how do we fill the tire? No problem…. Show the nice folks how we do it Brian:


Crissi-Lyn is happy that her part of the saga is over:


After we fixed the tire and pumped it up, it was an easy 4hr ride to St. Petersburg, filled with some good laughs and great conversations.

Getting there was sort of sad though......I unloaded the broken bike and sighed to myself…… now what?!

[pencipa]

Dude, you owe your life to your friends. Awesome.

Screw the pussies who don't like the language, that's part of the story. But I must say you've got the "angry young man" routine down-pat

And to all the yokels complaining, hey howcum "flipping the bird" in half the ADV stories is somehow OK?

I know how cold you were. I used to ride in below-zero in CT, coming home at 2am from my girlfriends house. But at least then I knew 40-minutes and it was over.

In closing, I sure hope you did some HUGE PAYBACK to your buddies, especially the chick (money doesn't count, must be "effort"). Chix who support guy-efforts (multi-day x-country hauling) are rare.

Here's a link to my somebody-was-nice-to-me story... This is the West Coast equivalent of your gas station $100...

http://www.malehorn.com/lugelessness...ies/lpr_60.htm

...and about every 5 years I stop by and thank the guy again :-)

[ConqSoft]

Very nice. The style reminds me of those goofy picture stories that Conan O'Brien does on his show.

[CETME]

Originally Posted by pencipa

Dude, you owe your life to your friends. Awesome.
.

Here's a link to my somebody-was-nice-to-me story... This is the West Coast equivalent of your gas station $100...

http://www.malehorn.com/lugelessness...ies/lpr_60.htm

...and about every 5 years I stop by and thank the guy again :-)

Wow... excellent story! I really enjoyed reading that! Definitely lets you know what there is still good out there..

[MeefZah]

Good read, man!

[sas]

But I missed the shower shot. Dang!

Welcome Monster n00b!

[mark1305]

Good story! And welcome to the Advrider world. I've gotten to where I spend way more time over here than on the DML. There's a few of us that hang out in both places.

All I can think of about your chain breaking is Thank God it didn't take out the crankcase.

[CETME]

Originally Posted by mark1305

All I can think of about your chain breaking is Thank God it didn't take out the crankcase.

It actually cracked the alternator cover and was leaking oil...

[SR1]

I assume you are going to try to get the dealer to absorb the repair costs...how is that going?

[CETME]

Well, they said they would pay for everything, repairs and towing/gas fees....

Well once they got the bill from my local ducati dealer they dragged their feet, and wanted me to just send me parts and I do it myself, but after a lot of pressure from my part, they finally agreed to pay for the repairs, though I was stuck with the $300 recovery costs of getting the bike towed and my friends coming to get me.....

It could have been worse though... at least the bike is fine now...

[DualSportDad]

that was a great report. suck that the bike broke but i think i would have spent the $300 to get my bike back and not freeze my ass off.

i had something simular happen to me. i bought a car in Longisland. i drove up there to get it with my buddy and was going to drive it back. i picked it up from the local high end (Lambo, Ferrari etc) sports car repair shop where it had just had a good go over and was told it would make the trek back to Florida no problem. i waited till all the rush our traffic in the city died down and took off for Fl. i got 20 miles away till the turbo went out. i ended up paying about $1,000 in hotel costs waiting to arrange for a car carrier to take the car to Florida. i made the seller pay to have it shipped. then when it got here it had front end damage from one of the chains. i almost killed the driver.

my point..... it could have been worse