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7 2 1 4 : T o t a l M i l e s 16: Number of days on the road 450.8: average miles per day. 101: Max. speed in mph 15: average speed in mph 52: Moving Avg speed (mph) 0: Speeding tickets 44: average miles per gallon 19: states travelled through 5: National parks visited 2: Number of tires purchased 100: pounds of gear and equipment carried 749: Pictures taken (keepers) 1 : Number of times rained on. 3: duration of rainfall in minutes 12073: Highest elevation in feet 4: Number of nights in a Motel 9 : Number of nights tent camping 14: Number of 32oz gatorades consumed 96: inches of Subway sandwiches consumed 105.8: degrees highest temperature measured on the road, Green River, UT 4:40pm July 23rd 59.3: degrees lowest temperature measured on the road, Glacier National Park, MT 9:00Am $369.75: amount of money spent on fuel 110: Number of Twitter/facebook status updates

After a 200 mile hot dash across the desert I made it to Arches National Park. My plan was to blow right past it in favor of Monument Valley 150 miles further down the road. However when the temp hits 106 degrees you tend to re-evaluate. The cost benefit equation becomes unbalanced. So I pulled into the Arches National Park visitor center and marveled at it's rock models, interactive displays, and air conditioning. The ranger told me the campsites were sold out so I thought I would just tour the park, take pictures, and camp outside the park on the Colorado river. I saw the sites and took tons of pictures of red rock formations. I even got lost briefly on a hike to an arch. Late that evening I came to the campground. They appeared to be full but the "reserved" area had some openings. Sure enough the nice park rangers let me camp for the night in the reserved area. I didn't have the $20 cash so I had to use an old check I keep in my wallet. I was pleasantly surprised w...

I wish I had a better mount for the camera.

Who knew eastern Washington and Oregon get so damn hot? The picture shows me soaking my riding jacket in cold water. It was bone dry again after about 30 minutes on the road but it kept me cool. Being wet at 70 mph WILL keep you cool even in 100 degree heat. After a great weekend in Seattle I am heading SE to the Bonneville Salt Flats.

I made it all the way to Wyoming with some help from the gentleman in this picture. His name is Denny. He noticed I was having tire trouble and offered to lead to the bike shop. While my bike was being worked on he took me to his shed, about a block away, and showed me some of his projects. Some really beauties here. I think my favorite is the Olds 88. The detail work on the grill and in the steering wheel is amazing. That's real brass in the globe in the grill. After my bike was done Billy even led me to the freeway so I could be on my way. Great guy.

Camping at Badlands National Park was perfect. That wind out the north that forced to ride on a 20 degree tilt on I90 made for a very pleasant camping experience. I rode up to the automated camping teller at about 730pm. It allows you to pick your campsite by number but doesn't show you a corresponding map to match the number with a location. I picked 76. I set up camp, had a cup o noodles and jerky for dinner, and prepared to do some star gazing. There wasn't a single cloud from horizon to horizon. I wasn't dissapointed. I took some great photos with my best low light lens set to the slowest shutter speed. Some photos, which only capture a small portion if the sky, have hundreds of stars in them. I havn't seen that many stars since I was at sea 13 years ago. I have no idea where I am heading today other than west. I know I'm running out of time if I want to be in Seattle on Friday. Yellowstone and Glacier NP's are the only must see spots left on my ...

I woke up this morning and made a fresh cup of coffee. That's been the highlight of my day so far. Right when I got on the bike I noticed that it wasn't handling right. Even though I was only riding 5 mph through the park I could tell something was wrong. My rear tire only had 5psi in it. So I went to a car shop a mile away and filled her up. That got me to Sioux Falls. From there I searched 'motorcycle repair' on Google Maps and started calling places. Apparently NOBODY will patch a tire due to liability reasons. So here I am at a bike shop trading $500 for two new tires. I had planned to replace both in Seattle in 4 days but I had not planned on spending $500. :(

I came up with a new system to give me more room in the saddle. Basically I crammed mire stuff into the hard cases to make the duffel thinner. Last evening I was racing the sun and the campground was the finish line. The sun won. My concilation prize was a night at the motel 6 in Davenport IA. I hope to make Sioux Falls by night fall.

Mark ( that's his hand) strolled over to chat while I was packing up. We talked a lot of things including bikes( he rides a Harley ).  Mark is in town working on a 42" long distance gas line. He thinks it starts in Canada, runs through Wyoming, and ends up in Chicago. It's one of those things most people don't know exists but makes modern life possible. Mike Roe should do a Dirty Jobs episode with Mark. He helped me pack my gear and even gave me the best invention ever: a net made of bunjie cord. This thing will change my whole trip. You just stack things up and stretch the net over it. Poof! Done. Marc since I gave you web address hopefully you're reading this. Thanks again and be careful working those gas lines. Maybe we will meet again on the flip side of my trip. -mb MB

By all accounts it was a good first day. As I type this blog entry on my iPhone I am laying in a tent at a campground in Baltimore Ohio. So I made about 400 miles today. Not a bad start but I need to do better tomorrow. Today was intended to be a shakedown day when I could learn the easiest and most efficient way to do things to make the trip go much smoother. I learned that The Weather Channel app for the iPhone is a critical piece of software. I noticed some dark clouds on the horizon so I pulled over and checked out the forcast. The app is location aware so I didn't have to bother looking up the local zipcode. I could see on the radar that the rain band would not cross my path. I didn't have to worry about putting on rain gear. The phone was also very helpful in finding a campground. You simple click on google maps, current location, then search for 'campground'. Little puns drop on the map where the local campgrounds are. By the way, KOA wanted $40 f...

I'm at the BMW store getting a once over on the bike prior to embarking on solomoto ( I'm just going to call it that. 'my solo cross county motorcycle road trip' takes too long). There are a lot of nice bikes here including a BMW HP2 with a $27k tag hanging on the handlebar.

Instamapper is an iPhone app that tracks your position and puts it on google maps so that you can share it with the world. I'll use this for my trip. Check out my embedded map at michaelb1.com . The good: it's free which is $100 cheaper than the Spot tracker. The bad: Like all iPhone apps it does not run in the background so you have to leave it on to allow it to log and upload your coordinates. I just tested it out today and it works well. Looking forward to using it on the solomoto trip.

From The New York Times: HANDLEBARS: BMW's Boxer: A Classic Design Is Updated and Refined By STUART F. BROWN The flat-twin engine has been a distinctive BMW attribute for decades, but a devoted following does not mean the company has lost interest in innovation.... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/automobiles/05BOXER.html MB

Can't change it now. View Cross Country Via Motorcycle in a larger map I'll travel through 16 states, stopping at a bunch of parks. The highlights: Yellowstone NP, WY Grand Teton NP, WY Glacier NP, MT Monument Valley NP, UT Devils Tower, WY Badlands NP, SD Mount Rushmore NP Little Big Horn, MT Rocky Mountain NP Mt Ranier NP, WA Bonneville Salt Flats SP, UT

...of the mobile blogging system. I am typing this post on my iPhone. If all goes according to plan this email will end up on brandnewinformation.com. I'm attaching a picture to see how it handles that. MB

Yesterday I gathered up all my gear, packed it into my bikes luggage system and a giant duffel bag and loaded it onto the bike. My two objectives were to see if I could get everything onto the bike and to see if I could do it safely. All this stuff.... Packed into this: The side bags will hold 22lbs each. The top case holds 11lbs. I was able to put most the heavy stuff (read expensive) in the saddle bags. Best to keep the heavy stuff low. This includes the laptop, camera, etc. The giant duffel holds my tent pegs, chair, and some other knick knacks. The test ride was successful. You gotta treat bikes like a lady. In this case it means not laying her down, mindful of the extra 70+lbs of baggage she is carrying. 6 Days until I head west. ~MB

I just finished the site for my cross country motorcycle website, michaelb1.com . Since hopefully my Mom will be visiting the site to see what I'm up to let me take a minute to pretend that she cares how it works and explain it to her in laymans terms. Soooo...all the data I create on the road will be automagically uploaded to the big internet cloud in the sky via my iPhone and MacBook. What I cannot upload cellularly I will use the nation's libraries and McDonalds free wifi for. The cloud analogy is not mine but I'll stick to it for this post. So now all this data is swirling around in the cloud. That's where michaelb1.com comes in. If you don't mind we'll keep the cloud analogy going. This internet cloud is made up of everyone's data. Data = rain. Michaelb1.com is my rain collector. The cloud is actually a bunch of sites scattered across many servers all over the internet. Flickr.com host my pictures YouTube and Vimeo have my videos this site...

I just set up an aggregator page for the RSS feeds I will be using on my trip. Michaelb1.com has a feed for my road trip flickr set, my Google Maps route, my "Tweets" from the road, as well as the blog posts on this site. There's even a flickr slide show to watch. I hope it passes the mom test. It has to be simple and informative. Anything less and she doesn't want to see it.