[ST] overdue ride report part1

["triumph1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <triumph1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/12/05 a somewhat daft 43 year old man decided to do an IBA 50cc
with little planning except to print a few maps, arrange witnesses on
each coast and fit new tires to his Triumph Sprint RS.  I left 
Princeton, Illinois at 4:06am.
The weather was 45 degrees, raining and windy.  Seems every time I've
done a ride I start in weather that is crap.  My destination was
Savannah, Ga so I had a 1000 mile warm up ride before the start of my 
50cc.  I figured since I had the warm up ride to do I'd pick up a ss2000 
or ss3000 during the coast to coast.  The ride to Savannah was actually 
very easy and without any incidents.  I arrived downtown Savannah around 
10 pm Eastern time feeling great with no burning ass and thought this is 
going to be a piece of cake.  I found a room and got about 4 hrs of 
sleep and got up Friday morning ready to roll at 4:00am.
Upon leaving the room in a quest for strong coffee I discovered that the
fog had rolled in off the ocean and I couldn't see more than 20 feet,
GREAT F***in time this will be I thought.  So I drank some coffee,
smoked cigarettes and waited until a decent hour to call my east coast
witness, pissed because I was burning hrs of time waiting to get started
and I had no idea what to expect on this ride as far as fatigue and
sleep were concerned.  I did know that I had 50 hrs from 1st gas receipt
to get to San Diego and get an end receipt.
Around 6:30 I couldn't stand it anymore and call the witness and woke
him up, said I was ready and he told me to meet him SOMEWHERE,
directions were like a foreign language to me.  I got lost in the fog
and called him from the side of the interstate two times.  He met me and 
escorted me to some obscure beach 30 minutes away to collect my 
traditional east coast sand and verified my mileage.  We then went 
somewhere for breakfast, met up with a couple of other LD guys and by 
the time I got my 1st gas receipt it was 8:11 am and I was nuts to get 
on the road.  So I was about 4 hours behind the schedule I wanted to 
start with.  I took off for the dreaded Atlanta and traveled in fog for 
the first couple of hours and then it burned off.  Once the fog was gone 
it started getting hot and I was feeling tired from being up so early 
and not getting much sleep.  Atlanta came and went easily as did 
Birmingham, but the heat was really starting to beat me up.  When I say 
heat I laugh now, it was in the 80's, but remember I am used to Illinois 
weather and it was in the 40's when I left there.  I-20 is a horrible 
highway with countless bumps that also beat me up and somewhere around 
Shreveport I pulled off at a rest stop defeated.  I was tired, hot, sore 
and generally had a piss poor attitude towards the whole ride.  I called 
home and told my better half I thought I'd be calling it quits by night 
fall, but would keep going until I couldn't stand it anymore.  She 
really felt bad for me because I was really looking forward to this ride 
and it had seemingly turned to S*** quickly.

I'll do another part if there is any interest in reading this, so let me 
know

TimE


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