Monthly Archives: August 2006

like dust in the wind.

Posted on by

I’m still in Kansas. Carrying on, like a wayward son in the wind. This time in Topeka.

There is a museum here at the airport (The Combat Air Museum) that has a plan in it’s collection that was my dads plane in Vietnam (he was the crew chief for it). We got here are 4pm, a little late to find out the museum closes at 3:30pm unlike the 5pm the website claims.

So we decided to stick around and go tomorrow morning. It was kind of a rough day anyway, even though we only did ~200 miles. It was very windy out and that makes riding really annoying. Without the wind, could of probably done 400 or more miles on these roads. But having to fight the bike the whole time to keep it in it’s lane gets tiring. The wind can stop now. You win. I don’t plan on coming back to the Midwest if I can help it.

We went over 100 miles today without seeing a working gas station. The gas stations around here also carry an interesting variety of fuels. No regular/mid grade/premium, but unleaded/unleaded plus/super unleaded. “super unleaded” is 10% ethanol or E10. No idea what “unleaded plus” is. Most gas stations also carry diesel and “off road diesel”, which if I understand correctly, is the same as regular diesel, but not dyed the correct colors and not taxed the same.

Also, Pizza Hut seems willing to put restaurants in places where even Walmart and McDonald’s fear to go.

Overheard quotes of the day:
“Would you like a sack for that?”
“if you don’t start behavin, moms gonna open a can of whoop-hiney on you”

[view at adrianlikins.com ]

badlands[1]

Posted on by

Even when sitting on a motorcycle in The Badlands, I still look like a dork. There is no hope.

[1] In retrospect, the Metal Church song “Badlands” is more accurate than anything ever by the band “Badlands”

my salina, ks

Posted on by

In Salina, KS. About 400 miles today. Again mostly along deserted two highways. Lots of wind again. At one point went 97 miles between gas stations. With only about ~150 miles range on the bike if I’m doing 70mph, that means making a lot of gas stops “just to be safe”.

Fairly boring ride today. A little bit of rain.

some pics

Posted on by


Hardtail board tracker with no front brake. Oh, and a 200+hp motogp v5 engine.


I have no idea.

So, you are at Mount Rushmore. Who do you expect to run into?

How about Dee Snyder?


There were tens of thousands of trikes there. This is the only one that wasn’t lame. By Exile.


Exile cafe racer.

some pics

Posted on by


Hardtail board tracker with no front brake. Oh, and a 200+hp motogp v5 engine.


I have no idea.

So, you are at Mount Rushmore. Who do you expect to run into?

How about Dee Snyder?


There were tens of thousands of trikes there. This is the only one that wasn’t lame. By Exile.


Exile cafe racer.

[view at adrianlikins.com ]

my funny valentine, ne

Posted on by

Sitting in a hotel room in Valentine, NE. Southwest South Dakota gives me a new understanding of rural. We got off the interstate, since I was getting a bit tired of the 40mph cross winds + semis + endless chain of RVs and bike trailers. Took highway 43 though the area. At one point we went just shy of 40 miles between stops. We saw two cars on the road. None of the local gas stations (all three of them we saw in about 70 miles of highway driving) sell premium. Middle. Of. Nowhere.

The badlands however were pretty awesome. Totally worth the 10 dollar park admission fee. Probably not worth the royal hassle the Park Rangers were giving to a lot of the bikes coming though. Apparently they were searching alot of the bikes that came though. I pulled into a visitor center and what I thought was the motorcycle parking (pretty much everything in the area has dedicated motorcycle parking for the week or so). It wasn’t motorcycle parking however, but the impound lot where they were searching bikes. I’d estimated 50 bikes were in there.
At the one gas station in the middle of nowhere mentioned above, we got talking to a local who happened to work at the Badlands National Park. He seemed to indicate the rangers target bikes and the Rangers went out of there way to hassle motorcycles. Lovely.

Me and my dad split from the rest of the group today. Kind of glad. Trying to make anytime with 7 bikes in a group is a bit of a pain. “smoke breaks” start taking an hour. Etc.

Off to Kansas tomorrow. Hopefully the wind wont be quite as bad in NE as it was in SD. Man, that just about wore me out. The little Bonneville was getting tossed all over the place. First time I ever thought “man, it would be nice to have a 1000 pound Harley about now”.

day 5

Posted on by

didn’t have a lot of time to flush this out, so just the highlights.

slow morning
run to get tools to fix dads bike
pump two tubes of grease into the steering bearing grease fittings
breakfast at burger king
first section a little chilly
spent hour at Harley Dealership in Iowa. HD doesn’t make E85 kits. Irony was lost on parts clerk.
second section dad decides to take off and run 80. I follow him for no obvious reason.
lots of confusions over when, where, and how to stop
“I didn’t know if you were telling us to stop, or to keep going”. Why would I pull off at an exit to tell you not to take it?
stop at Bison Ridge. Ate bison sandwich
ended up in chamberlin
most of hotel filled with “Outlaws Illinois”
dinner at local bar/tavern