well ive been planning it since i got my first bike about 5 years ago. seeing the movie wild hogs also contributed to this crazy idea haha. after i graduated college i bought a 2009 yamaha vstar silverado 1100 thinking that would be the bike i made the trip on. after a few medium length trips i discovered that bike wasnt going to cut it so june 2011 i sold the yamaha and bought a 2011 street glide with the 103 engine. ever since getting the street glide last year there was nothing going to stop me from going cross country this summer. not even almost dying in a car accident in april haha

im going to use this website as a tool to piece together where i was and when i was there. maybe try to go day by day. im trying to use my bank statement and the pictures on the camera and a calendar to put this all together. might as well start at the beginning....

day1/tues july 3..
i think i had the bike packed for a week already. i had the service done in scranton at electric city HD where i bought the bike new just before my 20% discount ran out. this was the longest 8 hour shift i ever worked, wanted to leave so bad. so right at 330 i left work and met my parents at my dads work (who works right around the corner from me) said goodbyes and they wished me a safe ride and everything as you can imagine. after the car accident in april my parents were not crazy about the idea of this trip but like i said..nothing was stopping me this year. so after that i went over to my friends hanna's house. she planned on making the trip with me. i dont know how confident either of us were that she would do the whole thing. so i had left one saddlebag empty and about half the bookbag. (yes we travelled very light). it must have been about 5 or 6 by the time we left her place and i swear to you we got on 80 west and hadnt gone more than 2 exits and it started raining haha. it hadnt rained all day up to that point and i remember thinking that couldnt be a good sign. it was a steady rain, not torrential downpours, we probably got more water from the spray from the other vehicles than the water actually coming down. but it didnt last long maybe a half hour and we were out of it all together.
first gas stop was around state college, pa. i remember looking at the trip meter and we had gone 100 miles and thinking "that wasnt bad at all" basically had just listened to the first cd from beginning to end. the songs were still fresh. after the first initial rain it was a nice afternoon ride..i said to hanna "100 miles down. all we have to do is ride 100 miles 30 more times and we will be looking at the pacific ocean" to me that sounded easy. she had a much better grasp of how difficult that would be haha. so we hit the road again...
right around the time it started getting dark we were about 45 mins or an hour from the ohio border and we hit torrential downpoors. this was a pivotal moment in the trip...haha as you can imagine. now both of us knew that i was going to be the one pushing and cracking the whip trying to keep the schedule and she was going to be the one (probably the more sensible one) saying lets not be crazy. lets call it a day and cover more ground tomorrow. well we hadnt even gotten out of pennsylvania and it was starting. i kept going through the rain. trucks were splashing us with waves of water. i was wearing contact lenses and a rain drop got around my glasses and got me right in the eye haha. so my contact is half in and half out so i closed that eye and took the next exit and pulled of at a closed auto parts store. hanna said we should start looking for a place to stay. i couldnt accept that haha. so i convinced her we could cover a little more ground when the rain slowed up. well it really didnt. we got to a truck stop very close to the PA/OH border. had a bite to eat. thats where i caught on the tv that andy griffith died...huh..watching the rain through the window. after drying our clothes in the laundry machines at the truck stop and buying hanna a rain suit for 10 dollars at the truck stop we rolled out around probably around 11pm or midnight...it was only sprinkles and wet roads and we made it to Akron, OH before we couldnt go any farther for the day. i did some quick math and discovered that we hit our daily average for mileage right at 320 haha. so this made me happy hitting the daily average with only a half a day to ride and adverse weather so we pulled into the backside of a car wash and took a couple hours nap on a picnic table.

day2/wed july 4th we woke up around 6am to somebody vaccuming out their minivan haha. the bike as you can imagine was filthy. so i rolled it into the car wash bay and gave it a quick spray down. as you can guess that didnt get it anywhere near clean but it made a little difference. the goal for today was st. louis for the 4th of july festivities. the weather looked good today so we hit the road. not much to see through ohio and indiana. took 71 down to 70. somewhere before indianapolis we passed a guy on what looked like an older road glide. he was running about 68. we were running about 73. gave him a wave. didnt think anything of it. we pulled over to take a picture of indianapolis (not impressive) and i saw the guy go by. then about an hour from saint louis we were at a gas stop and i saw him again. talked to him for a while. turns out he delivers new trucks for freightliner and volvo and he goes through the area i live all the time. and hes supposed to be coming through on his bike in august so i told him to give me a call we can go riding.
back on the road we made it to st. louis id have to guess around 5 or 6pm. im gonna take a break now until i figure out how to upload pictures. im gonna see if this first picture of the arch went up....everybody have a great day

 

st. louis was awesome. walked around the city a little bit before the fireworks started. heart, the 80s singer, did a free concert right under the arch. she gained some weight but she still sings good. we caught the second half of that. the fireworks were pretty spectacular. attached are some pictures of that...

 

after staying at the rodeway inn in st louis (was apprehensive about a rodeway after an experience on another trip but this one wasnt too bad) we woke up and i wanted to go to the st louis harley dealership and get a shirt that had the arch on the back. a quick google search told us we would be headed to Gateway HD. good enough off we went. it was another HOT day and we sat in minor traffic. next thing i know we are about 2 traffic lights away from the dealership and i look down and my engine and battery light were on.....interesting. so since the bike was brand new i didnt think anything could be majorly wrong. my first thought was it was some kind of code related to the extreme temperature since we were stuck at red lights. so we pulled in the parking lot and instead of parking out front we went around to the service dpt and went in. explained that we were from pennslyvania what the bike was doing. the lady there was extremely nice. i told her i should be covered under warranty if it needed anything. and she got the bike in pretty much right away. hanna and i walked to a restaraunt called show-mes that was only 2 doors down from the dealership. ate some wings and had a couple drinks not much more than an hour later the phone rang and the bike was done. it was a voltage regulator. under warranty, didnt cost me a penny. took some wings back for the girls at the service desk and ended up being glad i at least did that because the bike was SPOTLESS. looked like new again. even the shoe marks on top of the left saddlebag..wont mention any names haha. this ended up being the only mechanical problem the whole trip. and happening 2 lights from the dealership thats pretty good id say huh?