Burning Daylight on the California Trail

I took the KLR our yesterday on my second long day trip. I left the house at 9:30am. I didn't stop for lunch, only took my helmet off a few times, and I rolled in at the house around 6pm...about an hour after dark. A full day of riding and I logged 241 glorious miles.

I've been riding a little over ten years and yesterday was different than any I can ever recall in that I genuinely was lost most of the day. Not lost in the sense that I couldn't find my way home if I had really wanted to. But lost in the sense that I did not have an accurate grasp on where I was headed most of the day. I was "dinking" around just exploring the loess hills around the Missouri River. It was warm enough yesterday that I didn't need heated gear, but it was completely overcast. At no point in the day could I tell where the sun was, and that key navigational tool threw me way off my game. I pride myself on having a good sense of direction. Yesterday was the exception. I would pass things that I thought I had seen "on the other side of the road" earlier in the day. Discarded oil jugs in the road, huge black cows wading in a creek right by the road, or major roads that I thought I had "already crossed" earlier in the route.... these were all my clues that I was getting it all wrong, but I refused to listen....like the stubborn mule that I am. I would stop to check GPS, then take off again only to find that I had traveled 2 more miles in the WRONG direction. I was just out exploring, so there was no harm done. But after the fact it looked like a drunken monkey had planned my route for the day. See below....courtesy of a cool new app I downloaded called Map My Ride.

Finally, toward the end of the day, I figured out that I could use the direction of the wind as my compass. Wind was coming out of the South and in Kansas there's pretty much always some prairie grass or something vegetative blowing in the wind.

I was following the California Trail several times throughout the day. Up in this area around Wathena, Troy and White Cloud where I've been exploring (all north of St.Joseph and KC), there are these big deep "cuts" through the land where the roads have been dug deeper and deeper into the earth over generations. They look like "cuts" the railroad used to make and they can sometimes appear several stories tall. They're cool as heck to ride through because there's trees and vegetation growing on top and earth all around you. I think it kicks ten kinds of ass, and the area near the California Trail has lots of it. That's where I saw this gnarly tree.

I had a fabulous day yesterday. The only casualty was the windshield screws vibrating out and me having to remove the windshield and cart it home in my fanny pack. My Della Reese fanny pack saves the day again once again. I'm getting more comfortable on the bike. I'm getting more brave on the bike, which causes me to wonder when I'm finally going to "eat shit" on the bike. I'm getting a compass for the bike. The KLR has fully earned my trust at this point. I can flog that sumbitch from sun up to sun down and it doesn't flinch.