TAT 2013, the "I’m Just Sayin…" tour

Warning drunk post ahead!!!

We were not entirely sure yesterday just which Husky esp41 was going to be driving out of the Clarksville Small Engine shop.



In the end it was the Husky 610 but it was a near thing.

We got a late start today mostly because of a credit fraud thing that happened to me. Some knob was trying to charge crap to a card I never owned. My bank was making sure. Good Bank.

Next up was second breakfast. We got to Oark; just planning to pick up some crackers and a Gatorade.



Next thing we know this southern bell is talking us into second breakfast. Shortly there after ADVRider 10Cup shows up and introduces himself. He decides that the pancakes looked good and joins us for second breakfast and some lively conversation. Seems that 10Cup has plain worn out two WR250s… Neat guy glad we met up.

The Oark Cafe turned out to be a neat place. Some days the bear gets gotten.



We really enjoyed the signs in the Café. Especially this one.



As cute as that southern bell was, I am thinking that photography was not her strong point…

But onward, we heard this big brouhaha about Warloop Road. It did not seem to be any worse than things we experience at Hatfield and McCoy, but then things turned nasty. ESP41 is blaming his rear brake and has the picture to prove it.



Unfortunately I have the video to prove otherwise. If you think drunk postin is bad wait till you see drunk video editin…

Well, we then blew a turn and I had to stop and take a pick of the lizard with the short arms.



Right next to the lizard was this tunnel that I really wanted to make a run at…



Some days it sucks being just too hot. That looked doable.

Next up was a horse. Just because, and no I don’t know how they got him in there.



Finally I was super stoked when we happened upon a couple of hopped up CT90s. Paul and Casey, the boys from the Cycle East post. They were far more hard core that we could ever dream about.



It was very cool meeting up with them. Their bikes looked to be holding up pretty well despite being rode hard and put up wet.




Casey might not have said as much as Paul but he got his point across in that Italian fashion. Big gestures



We tried to send them on their way in true ADVrider fashion by pointing out the closed roads that they were going to hit in just a few miles.


We did notice when ESP41 was fixing his brakes that Warloop had given his luggage a love tap. He is sitting on the hotel floor trying to undo the horrors of Warloop as we speak.



He is pretty sure that making the left side bag a right side bag and making the right side bag a left side bag will do the trick. Or not.

Well that is enough drunk postin. Now I have to move on to drunk video editin…

But looking at the clock, you all may have to wait another day.

esp41 is a bit worried that his front tire is not going to hold up.

We plan on laying up in Ponca tonight. Any 411 on the motorcycle shops in the area as we may need some front tires early.

I also decided to try and patch up the gas tank with JB Weld Marine compound. I am not smelling fuel any more so I am crossing my fingers. Either way I will have a tank meeting me in Colorado...

I looked at the video and it does not look too bad. I just need to tilt the camera up a bit more and it will be spot on... We will try and get it posted tonight as last night was bike maintenance and we got in a bit later than expected.

Nice job, I know its alot of work posting in real time after a long day of riding and what not.......great job and thank you!!

drunk reading makes those posts perfectly normal.:huh

Great report, very much enjoying your updates. It's fun to read a report in real time. Enjoy the adventure.

how do you expect me to sleep if i dont get an update....... i want an update....

We have arrived at a hotel.... Today was. A massive planning fail. Coupled with a flat tire for me and esp41 running out of gas 600 yards from the gas station...

We have to do a bit more. Recon work on our fuel / hotel / base camp planning.

More details when we recover. Tomorrow will be a short day with a late leave time...

Glad you're getting your adventure on, Kirky! I'm glued to this. If you have an idea when you're going to get to Oregon ping me, I'll see if I can get time to ride up and do the end with you.

(This is Ice, btw):

so, tell us what would you do different? Planning? etc.. do you feel there were enough gas stops along the way.... how far did you guys go before you got gas... for some of us that dont want a 10 gal gas tank...lol.. i remember you can go 200-250, but any issues... do you think you should have gone slower to see more sights etc.. or just on pace..

ive got a few more people following and they are hooked... he wants to do it before he gets too old he said, and he's 37.... old... come on....lol...

at this point, would you do it again? lets say, if someone has just half the amount of time, is there a part of it they should do instead of the whole thing... for some of us, 2 weeks is all we get. meaning, whats your favorite so far and why. ( and think about hotels, attractions, sightseeing etc)

degree of difficulty so far too. lets say would the harley do the first 1000 miles? or a supermoto? or what do you feel you need up to 2000 miles etc...

Day 6- NewKirk- ~300 miles

We planned to try to go from Siloam Springs to Ponca today. My cold/flu is hanging on. I am feeding it Dayquil today.

We slept great last night. So did Kirkster’s KTM. (Waiting for the gas tank epoxy to dry)



Snapped this pic leaving the hotel parking lot. I don’t know what it is, but I am sure I need one.



The weather was great and we started our ride

We drove past this sculpture:



We had to go back and get a picture. The landowner waved us in. So in we went. Jerry was his name and we talked for about an hour. Great guy, very artistic. This is what we were looking for in this journey.



Playing with Jerry’s dog. (Red Dog)



This is OK.






About 70 miles in it turns into great open plains. Riding is in straight lines till you do a 90 degree turn.



We went through some wetlands, being chased by various insects. We did not stop for fear of being eaten alive.

We stopped for lunch a place called the PigOut in Salina. We were 75 miles in the trip. We did not fuel up. (big. rookie. mistake.). It turned out to be the last fuel stop we would see for a very long time.

We continued riding, crossed Rt 99, and proceeded north. About 5 miles in Kirkster reassessed our fuel and crossed checked it with our location. We would not make it to Ponca. We would not even make to Newkirk. We would be stranded. We backtracked to 99 and headed to Pawhuska.

We were over 200 mile in. Then the adventure started.

My Husky has a 5 gallon IMS tank. It can’t use all the fuel because the petcock that feeds the carb is higher than the fuel in the tank. My bike chugged to a stop. I had to get fuel from the left side to the ride side. I laid the bike on its’ right side to move the fuel over. Onward we went.

A half mile later Kirkster gets a rear flat. A piece of metal that looks like a barbed wire fence staple went right through a full sized tread block and into the tube.



This was our 1st flat. We were hot and tired. Kirkster had drained his 3 liters of water. We managed to fix the flat in about an hour and press on.

Finally, we see a gas station. And then my bike fuel starves. So close, yet so far.



There is still almost ½ a gallon in the right side fuel wing. Turns out I can’t use it because, as mentioned above, the fuel petcock in the wing is lower than the petcock that feeds the carb. Instead of rerouting the fuel line, I pull out my spare fuel for the camp stove and get to the gas station in Pawhuska.

Off to find a hotel. Only two in town. One is an absolute dive and the other is booked. We gas ourselves up with Gatorade and crackers and slab it 40 miles to Ponca.

Ponca is a big oil refinery city. All the nice hotels are full of oil workers.

We then slab it 15 miles to Newkirk and hole up in an Indian casino (First Council). Nice place BTW, nicest we have stayed at by a long shot.

We went about 300 miles and recieved good lesson in planning.

New plan. Have Mrs Kirkster take pictures of gas and motel stops on Sam’s roll charts (Thanks Liz). Make shorter days. Have multiple backup plans.

Sounds like you guys came through that one well. Enjoying watching your report. It gets flat, hot and a little windy until you get through the rest of Oklahoma. Supposed to be 107 here today in the Panhandle. Stock up on water and Gatorade. Good luck to you. Also, you may want to look at reroute options in Colorado. Wild fires are burning around Walsenburg and South Fork. Some of the roads have been closed.

esp41 - miss you buddy! be safe! have a blast!

how is it that you are now making me dream of planning some cross country adventure?

keep the updates coming!

Top notch ride and report. Thanks for allowing us cubicle dwellers to ride along in spirit.

114 degrees... 120 miles in an easy bake oven... Posting will resume once we cool off.

it should cool off by the weekend. might be a good time to just find a bar and hang out with the natives for a day. you may need to dumb it down a little tho, after all........they are Okies....

To the folks following us on the TAT. Its harvest season and oil workers are everywhere. Hotels book up early. Try to get a reservation before you leave for the day. It's incredibly hot. Get out early in the morning and make short hops.

Learn to like dust. You'll be choking it down. 😀

Well we were going to take a day off and try and find some tires. We made some calls while we were luxuriating in the First Council Casino and hotel.

Turns out no one has anything other than motocross tires which we decided would not cut the loads that our bikes and gear were going to put on them. Fingers crossed on the tires lasting to Colorado.

I then made the call down to the front desk to extend our stay by a day. No dice, the two bedroom rooms were all booked for tonight. Probably because we did not spend any money in the slot machines . So we rushed to pack all our gear in the hour we had before we had to check out. Loaded the bikes up in the shade and got fuel and water for the ride.

Going



Going



Going



Gone



This was our view for hours and hours.



Flat, hot and dry punctuated occasionally by a truck that would blanket the road with enough dust that you could not see the road for 4 ~ 5 seconds. That same truck also covered us in a fine powder.



It was hot, damn hot. We only found one place where there was any shade that was not part of a farmstead. Even in the shade it was damn hot.

We also saw more than our fair share of these.



Finally as we were going to take the turn down to Alva we ran into this. Which turned out to be our excitement for the day.



Mike got a couple close up shots of the not moving train before we decided to reroute



And



Bu By train…



We got around the train the first time only to have another train stopped across another part of the TAT. This time the end of the train was close to the crossing. We contemplated going over the rails. When we got to the top there turned out to be two sets of rails, With 400+ pounds of bike, gear, and us, we decided that we did not want to try out the rails. We saw a tunnel and made a try at getting to the tunnel but the rocks turned into basketball sized loose rocks and we turned around.

Eventually we got to Alva and got the last room in the nicest hotel in town. We are settled in and planning tomorrow as well as an early bed time tonight.

We are thinking we are going to lay over in Beaver OK tomorrow as we don’t want to do a 200 mile ride in this heat. Now lets see if I can get a video uploaded for you guys.

way to go guys!

I will be teasing you mercilessly next time we talk, but that will only be to cover up my excessive envy.

Sending you good vibes man-

Here is the Warloop Video. I have shortened it greatly but got the good parts.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/69290154" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/69290154">Warloop</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user6790363">Kirkster</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>