After Thoughts:

We made our own trail mix with mixed nuts and MMs.  With a little pressure (bungee cord) and a little heat (113 deg. Arizona)  the MMs do an excellent job of coating all the nuts with chocolate.  My daughter calls this Muddy Buddies.  Yum.

This plate is what Erik has been chasing down for the whole ride and in the background is the bike that his wife wants never to see again.

Oh well,  Bikes will come and go.  Memories are forever.  (even the memory his wife has of riding 800 miles in one day)(would you want that bike in your garage?)

Eat Sleep Ride

Days before we started the ride I looked at the route and the miles and wondered if we were going to get up the 3rd or 4th day and look at each other and say: “I’m not doing this any more”.

The plan was 22 days and average 550 miles a day.  Very do-able in a car but maybe a bit much for a bike that has to stop for gas every 200 miles and butts that need bloodflow every hour.

Well…………..I has turned into a love hate situation.  While just waking up I think that there is no way that I can get back on the bike but I get up and pack anyway.

Then within the first 10 minutes of riding the feeling comes back:  “I’m the luckiest guy in the world right now.  I get to ride through this GREAT  country of ours and see what we have been blessed with.  I think back of all the ground we have covered and all those who have made it possible for us to do it. First is my wife who didn’t look at me with that look and say: “Where are you going to get the $$?”.  Second, all the people who assembled my FLAWLESS  motorcycle in Marysville Ohio.  Third,  all the people who carved the miles and miles of roads throughout this FANTASTIC country.  Forth,  All those people who farm so we can eat, make dams and hydroelectric power plants, etc.  etc.  You get the idea.

It is like being a chocolate lover and having signed up to eat chocolate 22 days in a row and after the 4th day questioning if you want any more,  but after that first smell in the morning„„  YOU GOTTA HAVE IT.

Bon Appetit

Eat Sleep Ride

I have been tracking my bike’s fuel consumption with Fuelly.com - a nifty web app written by some friends of mine.

I’ve tracked nearly every mile of the trip, excluding Canada because of their *wacky metric system - I was not exactly sure how much gas I was buying.  I wrote the litre measurements all down with plans to convert them to US gallons and enter them into Fuelly later on, but the rain destroyed my records.

A typical fuel-up in your native country/measurement system is actually very easy to do right at the pump, either with a “smart phone” with a web browser or via SMS text message.  You can also wait until you get home and enter them via a computer.

Here is a video the Fuelly guys produced to show off adding a fuel-up:

Fuelly: How to Track your Fuel Ups from Matt Haughey on Vimeo.

I have added my Fuelly “Badge” to the right sidebar of the web site.  It displays my current average fuel-consumption in MPG.  If you click through to my bike’s profile on Fuelly’s site you will notice more statistics including cost analysis.

*Note: I actually think the metric system is very sound and proper.

I am going to be posting a new type of update to the site and I am calling it “Friends of the Bike”.

I’ve learned something on this trip.  If you ride a bright orange Harley or have a camera attached to your helmet, strangers have no problem talking to you and asking you about your bike or why you have some goofy thing on your helmet.

Most people want to know where I got the camera and can they do “X” with it.  I tell them to go to http://gopro.com/ to check it out - lots of times I will be at a stop light or gas station so not much time.  If I can I will tell them about it a bit more.

Other just ask “what are you doing?” and “What is ‘4corners’” (I have the blog address on my bike).

I think it’s great meeting people.  Some of them take photos of me (I wish I was telling them all to e-mail them to me so I could post them: info@ if you read this (ex: guy in Toronto)), and others take photos of themselves with the bike, and some with me.

I am trying to get photos with my own camera and post them here.  So that is what you will see coming up.

Toll roads make me feel like I am being bullied.

I’ll come out and say that the hotel we stayed at tonight is probably the worst yet. The good news is that we are so exhausted from our riding schedule that we can fall asleep in a matter of minutes even when there is a DJ thumping out tunes in the ballroom next to your room.

There were also issues with check-in, Internet was not working (probably a good thing for me so I could sleep), and the room next to us with an alarm going off and no occupant.

Enough with the bad, here are the best things from each night as I see them:

Day 1: Ground floor motel room with our bikes parked just a few feet from our door.

Day 2: The pool and jacuzzi.

Day 3: The bed. The only problem was that we all feel asleep too fast. Mike was thrilled that we are passing back through St. Louis again as we cross paths on the 2nd half so he can look at the bed type.

Day 4: The shower water pressure.

I am using the TrackMyTour iPhone app to keep this map up to date on where we are at in our massive cross country tour.

But it is kind of confusing - so let me explain the map for you.

Green line = where we we’re going the posted speed limit

Pink line = where we we’re speeding

Red pins = where we stopped to eat/sleep/fuel-up

Blue circle = where we are currently eating/sleeping/fueling-up Hope that clears everything up.