Road Trip to Birmingham

I happened to mention to my friend Sascha that I was thinking of taking in the BMW RA national rally in Birmingham, Alabama. Sascha thought that sounded like a great trip. He called up Duner to see if he could borrow a bike. Duner said yes.

The only thing is, Sascha lives in Karlsruhe, Germany. And Duner lives in Bozeman, Montana. So I was now looking at traveling from Santa Cruz to Montana before getting to Birmingham.

This wasn't so bad, really, as I had already been talking to my friend Steve in Seattle about the trip, and he wanted to go also. That meant that I already had to ride to Seattle, so Bozeman wasn't really much further.

The other thing was, however, that Sascha couldn't arrive any sooner than Monday evening before the rally, which started on Thursday. It's just about exactly 2,000 miles to Birmingham from Bozeman, by the shortest route.

The logistics were a bit complicated, as well. As you can see from the map below, the combinations of riders changed regularly. I rode up the west coast alone. Then Steve and our mutual friend Andy rode to Jackson, Wyoming. Steve continued on, but and Andy and I rode up to Bozeman. Then Andy had to return home, while Sascha and I continued on to BIrmingham, staying a pretty constant 200 miles behind Steve. After the rally, Steve, Sascha and I all went to New Orleans. After that stop, Steve split from us and rode directly to his brother's house in Colorado. Sascha and I then took a bit more leisurely pace to Pueblo, and continued on the westward leg back to Santa Cruz.

All told, I put 8,600 miles on my bike, ran through a set of tires, did a service in Seattle and scheduled another service immediately after I got home.

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