Day 8-Wrap up, Detours, Fender Benders

Day 8 was another day of long stretches of straight desert highways. I think in a 100 mile stretch I saw 4 cars. It was actually very relaxing not having to worry about anyone else being on the road. I guess I was so relaxed that I failed to notice I inadvertently made a pretty significant detour. That's right, another wrong turn in my scooter cannonball trip. This one was, by far, the largest "wrong turn" of them all. Have you ever seen those pictures where there is an intersection in the middle of no where and you can go one of two ways? Usually one is labeled the "right path" and the other "wrong path".  One intersection for 100 miles and I choose the "wrong path". Typical. All I can figure out is that when I was loading day 8's gas stops one of the checkpoints was removed from the route. It was still "there" but for some reason the Garmin recalculated to "shortest route" which was AROUND the Joshua Tree National park down the east side of it to interstate 10 and then on to the Salton Sea. It was when I reached interstate 10 I realized something wasn't right. I zoomed my Garmin out and sure enough the north entrance checkpoint was flagged, but no magenta route line through it. Boy was I pissed about this. I knew our points were awarded by leg and so even if you have a problem on one of the legs, as long as you complete it you get a minimum point award for it.  I knew what I had to do, enter the park at the south entrance, head north to the northern entrance and get the photo to officially complete the leg. While heading north through the park I passed a lot of cannon ballers that left an hour before I did. I just gave them "the wave" and continued on my way. I heard a lot of funny theories by these individuals about what they were thinking at the time I passed them going the wrong way. On the bright side, Joshua Tree is definitely worth seeing twice.  The roads were fun to drive and the scenery was awesome. Once I hit that northern entrance I booked it south through a great boxed canyon and an oasis in the desert surrounding the Salton sea. Patrick, the other SYM HD200 rider caught up to me, pulled up close and give a "fist bump" as we crossed the 2nd checkpoint, 200 feet below field elevation. Both of our GPS's tried taking us down a dirt road that dead ended in the desert, so we turned around and found another path. His SYM is a bit faster than mine so he took off.

I made another climb across a mountain range through the twisties which I have grown to really enjoy. It's fun and challenging to ride these roads on two wheels. At the bottom of this range I approached a stop sign behind a line of three cars. The intersection was an awkward position as crossing traffic approaches from behind your left shoulder and is partially obscured by some trees. The car in front of me pulled up and started to move. As this was happening I looked over my left shoulder for traffic and saw a car coming. I guess the car in front of me saw it as well and decided to stop. Crunch. I drove right into the back of this guys Mercedes. He threw it into park and started flailing his arms. I was expecting to get an earful, but when he got out and saw my front fender was all cracked up and no apparent damage on his car HE apologized to me. No argument there, especially since I was probably a bit too close. The whole thing was done in less than a minute. As I followed behind him a little further down the road, I noticed in the right light you could definitely see a dent in the metal above his bumper. He'll probably never notice.

I was pretty annoyed with myself at this point not only for the "fender breaker" but the detour as well, to the point I probably didn't enjoy the drive and scenery as much as I should have. All I wanted to do was finish this thing and have a beer. Someone even accused me of doing all of this on purpose so I had something to write about!  It does make for a good story, but I wasn't that desperate to material.

To cut off sometime I met up with I-8 and took it the rest of the way to San Diego. The finish line was at the scooterwest.com facility. They threw us a great party with beer, BBQ and prizes.  As it turns out, my consistent riding throughout the last 8 days saved me from my day 8 detour. I finished 6th out of 50. The prize, a cool cannonball run hooded sweatshirt. We all eventually drove our scooters back to the hotel, which is when my scooter told me it had had enough. It won't idle anymore and stalls out at every stop light. After talking to some people I have a fairly good idea of what I need to do to remedy this. It will get some love when it gets home from shipping, perhaps the folks at second city scooters can help me out?

The cannonball run was a great adventure. Aside from the first couple hours of the run, the weather couldn't have been better. I saw so many parts of the country I've always wanted too and a lot I never had any intentions of seeing.  All of the people involved were great and very helpful, especially David (who also created the followride website). He's been putting up with a barrage of daily emails, texts and instant messages with my newbie questions. Everyone is asking if I'd do this again. As of right now I don't feel the need, but as time goes on and another scooter cannonball approaches two years from now, I bet I'll want too.

Thanks to everyone for following me on this thing, it was great to see everyone's interest. It forced me to blog daily which is something I think I will be happy I did years from now.

Scooter next to a Joshua Tree

The beginning of the second trip through JTNP

Entering the "boxed canyon" just south of JTNP

Last checkpoint before San Diego

My first fuel up of the CBR was with this gas can (not planned).  I did,  however, plan to use my last gallon of gas as my final fill up of the CBR,

Something is not right here......

Crunch

Final check in photo of the 2012 CBR

The party hadn't started yet, I got there a bit early