Crossing USA Alone: 2,907 miles in 7 days

Rule number one, never drive into a dust storm. I am about to leave on my first cross country road trip. It's going to be 3000 miles from here to the West coast. I plan to do the 3000 miles in seven days. I just bought this bike a couple months ago and I've already done about 3000 U-turns on it. And two months ago I tried picking it up and I could not do it, but I wanted to give it another shot. So last night this happened. And just this morning I wanted to see how I could do with the bags on. I thought it would be easier, but it was actually a little harder. The bags were in the way of me being able to get a good grip, but it was still doable. 3000 miles in seven days may not be a lot for some of you, but for me, this is the biggest trip I've ever done. On the way back, I'm going to take it slow and stop at scenic routes and really cool and interesting places. But on the way there I'm on a time crunch because I have a training with Jocelyn Snow. So that training I did on her GS 1250 last year, I want to do it on my bike and we have a special guest joining us so I cannot be late. But first I wanted my first cross country trip to be a coast to coast one. So this is technically day two. Made it to Tybee Island. It's actually illegal to ride a motorized vehicle that isn't certified on the beach here. So I can't do that, but I can touch the water myself. So that's what we're going to do. I made my East coast start a trial weekend a week before I left as a way to test out all my new accessories and spend time with my other two favorite things, Cody and marine animals. Okay. East coast shell. I've got my lucky shell that I got in Tybee Island and it is coming with me to the other side of America. And I am not stopping until my boots touch the West coast water. Okay. So I guess I was lying about not stopping obviously for gas and food and bathroom and blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? So I originally planned this route so that I could dodge the harsh winter. I thought I had accounted for everything. The vast stretches of desolation across the center of us where gas stations could be hundreds of miles apart, the extreme cold front that the West coast hadn't seen in decades. But what I didn't know was that by changing my route, I had put myself directly in the hub of motorcyclist, no man's land and the collision of air masses from both the desert Southwest as well as the cool air coming from the North. The trigger point for storms to form within a favorable environment is set. I was originally going to do this cross country trip a month earlier, but we had to delay it because of the floods in SoCal just like destroyed Jocelyn's challenge course. Now I am pretty warm. 83 degrees with these pants is too warm. I don't know. Maybe I'll change my route on the fly. It took so long to set it up though. Made it stop. Number one, 400 miles. I left at 11 o'clock. This is my longest road trip yet. About three to four weeks. My mom and sisters are freaking out so badly that I was seriously considering whether or not I should even do this trip. They are freaking out about me either being attacked at a gas station or stranded with no signal or getting stuck in dust storms. These are all extreme cases, but possible. My mom wanted to follow me in her car. That is so embarrassing. But then you know what I thought, you know what? A follow car would not be bad. Maybe next cross country trip. I'm going to order some food, start emailing some brands and see if hopefully I can get this cross country trip sponsored because this is very expensive. If you see a sponsored by note at the start or end of the, this video, that means I was successful. Good night. Yeah. I wish she were red though. I hate that blue. And then welcome to Texas. Intersections are actually one of the most dangerous place for a motorcyclist to be. Today there are some things that I find that I need now that I'm about a third of the way into the trip. So I'm going to stop at the nearest cycle gear I can find. It looks like there's one right off my route and get some things there. All right, I got a highway pegs. So now I've got three places to put my feet. That's going to feel so good. And I got a tire plug kit just in case. Net gator. I have a freeze out bottle of clava, but it's, there's a lot of room. So I was still getting a cold space and portable tire pump, which right after this, I actually ended up needing. Out of all the things I expected to see on the road across America, this was not one of them. Holy. You look like a hippogriff or a dinosaur. Eventually as often happens when you plan on the road, things were not going according to plan. Stopped in this gas station just to thaw. Oh, it's cold out there. I'm going a little bit further north than like Google maps would do if you were just going to California. But that's cause I was trying to stay away from the border towns just for better safety ratings. I don't know what the hell is going on with the weather, because when I looked at Amarillo, Texas, that's where I'm going. The weather today was supposed to be a high of 71. So I don't know why in between where I was at Amarillo, it is currently 43 degrees at two in the afternoon. I put on my rain suit just for some extra warmth because even my heated gear wasn't cutting it in the humid cold of North Texas. Rain suit trick helped a lot. Yesterday was definitely not an easy travel day. I am hurting today. I haven't seen this before. Red flag warning, high wind alert. The winds were so strong. It was kind of funny at first. The wind went from amusing to annoying. I didn't know it, but this was the last rider I'd see for the next two days. The winds continued to pick up so strong that I was worried if I only stood on one leg in order to get the kickstand up, my bike would fall over. My body, my neck is physically straining. High wind warning. Significant threat to life or property. Oh, my God. Southwest winds 40 to 45 with gusts up to 70. And then in the distance, there it was. Just when I thought I'd put that in first. As I was struggling to put on my rain suit, as it kept blowing away from me, a Native American man came out of nowhere and asked me if I was riding in that storm. I told him I was about to go back in it. He said it was about to get worse and it wasn't worth my life. And I should stop now. I listened. I bet you're feeling good for getting here. Yeah, this was not my plan to stop here at all. So I'm staying at this hotel. I'm like, oh, three hours away from Albuquerque. But that wind is just insane. I'm being blown all over. The bike is leaning, even though I'm going straight. I just came in and there was a man with a truck and he said that he was planning on also going to Albuquerque, but he stopped because his truck was going all over the place. He saw a semi, literally two wheels off the road. This is what my family was worried about. This is what they were warning me about. And I thought they were being ridiculous. Impacts are damaging winds could blow down trees and power lines. Power outages are possible. Travel could be difficult. A small one, but a dust storm. There is there's dirt in my eyes. I keep feeling it in my teeth. Yeah, around two or three in the morning, it stops and then it picks up again around 11 in the morning. Hopefully, if I leave early enough, I can get out of here before it starts again. I had gotten really lucky. It wasn't unheard of for dust storms to be so thick that you could be completely surrounded in darkness, unable to see even the lights of the car in front of you. So my visor wasn't closing with all the dust. I don't know that this is an approved way to wear this helmet without the sunshade visor part. But since I'm doing all highway miles again, I've got to make up for some miles in the next couple of days are going to be rough. Cannot swing that visor right now. It is very cold outside right now, so I'm not going straight to my destination in California. I am going to go south. So I'm going to go through Phoenix to get away from the cold, because right now in California, there are blizzard storms for the first time in decades. I'm like, is it the end of the world this month or what is going on? I'm really looking forward to the scenic ride home where I just stop a lot and showcase a whole bunch of cool locations. No, I did not perm my hair. I'm just not going to straighten my hair because it's a cross-country trip. We are ready to go. Seeing the aftermath of the night before storm was like a warning. The problems weren't over yet. What I didn't know when looking up the weather between my start point and the next stop was that on the West Coast, there are mountains, big ones, and riding over them could mean passing through 30 degrees colder in a matter of minutes. My heated gear and rain suit were not cutting it anymore. And at the top of the mountain, the battery in my gloves died. I'm at a gas station and that man gave me these. The sign of decreasing temperatures and elevation were marked by sandy hills and the first motorcyclists I had seen for hundreds of miles. But the relief didn't last long. I should have mentioned whenever I drop my bike, you should not drive off like I did. I guess I was just so embarrassed and flustered. I just want to get out of there. But you should always check and make sure everything on your bike is OK. Luckily, everything on bike was pretty much OK, except the handguard broke off. So I have it on this side, but not on this side. I'm sure I could just tape it on, really, if it's just for the wind deflection, because at least I still have the protection. This held pretty sturdy. And my highway peg is just dangling now. Here's what it looks like on this side. So 500 pounds of pressure just shifted it over. I'm not even sure if I have the right tools to move this over. I'm sure Jocelyn will. But I noticed something else. And this part is very concerning. This is the side where it did not drop. This is the side where it dropped. So same issue that I had with the Triumph stock guards. This it just buckled in so much with just one drop on the pavement. Now, I'm not sure if the bike's frame will survive another drop. I don't know what to do. In Jocelyn's class, this this bike could drop like half a dozen times. And I don't know if I can take another drop on this side. And another thing, I just got a text from RevZilla. They were getting tires ready for me because I was going to switch out the tires just for the ADV class to some knobby tires instead of these street tires. And right now we're having an issue where the place we're going to take it to, because at Cycle Gear, you can switch, you can get tires switched out, but they have to be off of the bike. And I don't really have the capability to do that. So right now it is Tuesday. Training with Jocelyn starts on Thursday. So I got to find somewhere last minute that we can either overnight the tires or have the tires in stock. And that they're willing to squeeze me in last minute. I didn't know if my tires would arrive in time or if my crash guards could survive another drop, which meant I wouldn't be able to do Jocelyn's class, which was the original reason I rode across the USA on my bike. All I could do was keep on trekking and hope I got lucky. Oh, yeah. And I used up my buffer day. There was no more room for delays now. It is 530 in the morning. I am pretty unsure how this is going to go down. I was having the hardest time pumping this gas. It just wasn't coming out. And apparently in California, they have this for emissions. Because I'm on a bike. You got to pull this back in order to get the gas out. It's almost two o'clock. I've done about almost 400 miles. So not bad shape for timing. But I decided I needed a break, not a gas station break, a real break. So I'm eating a chicken pesto crepe. I am in California on the other side of the country. I can literally see the ocean from across the street. The bike situation training at Jocelyn's that I don't know what's going to happen. Tires are delayed. Crash guards are shot. Jocelyn's saying maybe we should reschedule. I just crossed the country. Oh, I'm tired. That is the Pacific Ocean. Coast to coast. We made it, lucky shell. This is your West Coast brethren. You did OK. With just a couple hours before the shop closed, my tires arrived just in time and Monterey Power Sports were able to squeeze me in the last minute. I didn't know if my crash guards could handle another drop. I decided to put that aside and celebrate that I made it across the USA. And OK, it took me eight days, but I really tried for seven. I didn't cross the USA to not train on Jocelyn's obstacle course. I am coming to you from the future. I am currently five weeks into my cross-country trip. Yeah, I thought this trip would take about three to four weeks. We've had some setbacks, but I thought that now that I put about 7000 miles on this bike with all this gear, it would be a good time to give you a tour of all the accessories and how it's holding up. My lone rider bags. I've got the two in the back. I've got five total. These two in the back, the two smaller ones attached to it. The larger tail bag and also a smaller tank bag. Well, these bags have been through dust storms, rain storms, 7000 miles, most of which were highway still holding up strong. The only thing is just make sure that you check the bolts on your quick release system because you do have just one point of attachment unless you want to go be a little extra and attach some straps right here. You do have places that you can attach straps on the bag, but there was one point where I didn't check the bolts and it got loose and fell off. But other than that, it's kind of amazing how there were a couple of times where I forgot to lock those and I even forgot to lock this down and the bag still stayed on. These crash cards have been tried and tested many, many times on this trip, and they are holding up great. These hand protections from SW Motec as well. The plastic part broke on a fall, but the bar itself has. I mean, everything's protected here after literally a lot of drops. This is my bike. I can take all the risks I want now. Oh, yeah, I added highway pegs just because my knees kind of hurt on the long highway rides with these controls. They're not quite mid. They're slightly back, like I have a slight bend in my knee. Those have really helped my knees. And this is a butt saver. Got my brake free helmet light for added visibility, especially when conditions aren't ideal. But it lights up when you're stopping or slowing down. It's wire free. Accelerometer is the technology. A couple of 20 something engineers, they were on Shark Tank. I use my Cardo for listening to directions and music. Hippo hands. These were Jocelyn's actually, but she gave them to me. I don't have space to store them when it's hot, so I just leave it on. And they're OK. It kind of feels like they get in the way when it's really cold. Needed that. I got my new helmet, the XD4 that Itchy Boots has. I took the visor off because I'm doing a lot of highway today and I might be running into some crosswinds. For my kind of riding, just because I do so much highway riding, the Corsair, I think, was actually better than this. The visor on long highway rides will kind of give me a headache. I got a new mount for this helmet. I think I have a discount code for you for this one, too. If I do, I'll link it down below. I know I have one for my break free. I got a dash cam in the front and in the back so you can connect the app to your phone and you can see the files that way. As for my gear, it's been great. A lot of vents, a lot of layers. So I've used it from temperatures ranging from like 35 for short times, but mostly I would say averaging around 50 to 78. And then sunglasses. These are not ordinary sunglasses. These are specially made for people that wear helmets. Originally, they were made for pilots, I think. Oh, I'm going to put them back on. But I want to oh, I really wanted to show you this. So if you don't have an Arai helmet or some helmet that has slots for sunglasses in it, this will still fit really comfortably in it. But most importantly, they're shatterproof. So you really need that if you are on a motorcycle, because if you get an accident, they can shatter. And that is shattered glass near your eye. You don't want that. So I have a discount code for these sunglasses. I'll make sure to link those below. And I think this is the last thing I got to show you is my quad is a quad lock. Usually I keep my phone in my pocket, but this is especially helpful to also look at my maps. When I was riding around in areas where the GPS wasn't keeping up or it was really big and it would say turn right. And I'm like, on what road? So sometimes I'd put it on here so I can have that extra help. Don't do what I did for the longest time. I had a cheap Amazon phone mount and it ruined my camera lens. The vibration can ruin it. And then you have to get a whole new phone just because of that. So quad lock has a dampener to prevent that from happening. So in every video in this cross-country series, I'm going to be linking to all these things down below. And if I have any discount codes for you, I will put it next to the link as well. Shout out to these brands. Thank you so much for my sponsors. If it wasn't for you, this trip wouldn't have been possible. I'd literally have to go back to my office job. Thankfully, got lucky. They came through just in the nick of time. Whether I knew if my crash cars could handle another drop or not, my bike and I were going to take the risk because what the hell is a life without a little bit of risk? You may not have time yet to do the ultimate cross-country road trip, but until then, there are definitely some shorter, cool trips you can still take. Like in this video, where I ride to one of the most dangerous roads for motorcyclists, Tail of the Dragon.