Ann Arbor - west coast road trip

[DiverRay]

Glad you made it out here!! My phone number is at the top right on all my posts. Give me a call, and check out the "Yosemite" rally we will have in two weeks, June 12 through 14. I just got done with #2 of 3 finals, and am looking forward to a little "free" time. I'm about 1.5 hours from the city, and about 1.1 from your family.
We have a few owners around here, so try and keep a little spare time to ride.

[MaximPhil]

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/mepoland...eat=directlink

Well, I made it; 3,000 miles down, 3,000 to go. I left Ann Arbor, MI on May 3rd and arrived at my sister's place in Menlo Park, CA about 10 days ago. I spent a few days visiting other relatives in Boulder, CO and Portland, OR along the way, which explains why it took so long. Also, I'm stopping in LA on my way back which explains the 3,000 miles to go. I could go on and on about all the cool stuff I've seen and done on this trip, but instead I'm going to stick to the highlights below. If you want more details, check the photos, or best of all, do it yourself!


-Started out ~300 miles per day, bumped it up to 400+ after picking up a Vista Cruise cruise control in Boulder. For $25, now my a** is the first thing to get sore instead of my right hand and wrist.

-Gas mileage: 33-46 mpg, with an average of about 40 mpg. I generally cruise between 65 and 75 mph, sometimes higher or lower. Despite all the fill-ups, I haven't been able to pick up on any patterns to my mileage. Strangely, the one environment where I seem to get consistently good (43ish) mileage is on the real twisty, fun roads where I don't go much over 50mph.

-Altitude changes: Didn't seem to have much of an effect on mileage or performance; I had no problem at 8,000+ feet around the Tetons in Wyoming. I did my best to set the idle mixture screws back in Michigan.

-Best road: I rode down a lot of spectacular little roads the whole way, but I have to go with the old favorite, route 101 and route 1 in northern California. I took it most of the way from Oregon to San Francisco, and look forward to picking it up again on my way down to Los Angeles. In a close second are the state highways in Nebraska that follow just a couple miles offset from the highway. No traffic, beautiful farm land (to a guy who grew up in the city) and tons of little towns to pass through and feel like you're going through a time warp.

-The bike has been GREAT all around. When you start riding a bike for hours at a time that you previously had never really put to the test, you start to feel like there's got to be some little bolt in the engine working it's way loose, getting ready to screw you. Well, it hasn't happened yet and I've built up a lot of pride and confidence in the machine that I just never had before. It's got almost 30,000 miles at this point, and I hope the next 30,000 are as good as the last 3,000 have been.


When I was in Portland I checked my email and to my surprise, found a message from the president of this company:

www.ridemission.com

, to whom I had sent my resume and a cover letter months ago in the hopes of getting a summer internship. I told him it just so happened that I would be in San Francisco in a few days, and he ended up interviewing me this past Friday. I'm supposed to find out whether I get the job sometime this week. So if I get it, I'll spend the whole summer here before going back to school; if not, it's back to Michigan to get a job and take summer classes.

What a trip!

Cheers,

Marshall

Hi Marshall,
Well done. Nice pictures thanks for sharing. Enjoy the rest of your trip.
Maxim Phil

[Wildkat]

Great pics!

looks like an awesome trip... enjoy the rest of it!




and best of luck with the job!