CC20 - Day 26

After yesterday's long distance ride, I wanted to take it a bit slower today and ride some backroads as well. So, my extraordinary routing skills got me into miles of this again:

Unpaved Backroads

It was mostly hard packed gravel, only a few sections were deeper gravel or a bit softer underground. Overall I managed okay, although my really worn front tire certainly didn't help. That tire has 7000 miles on it now and has only marginal tread left. Okay for dry roads, but certainly not anything else. It'll likely get me home but will then be at the legal limit or even worse. Shouldn't be a problem though. Straight home would be around 1700 miles or 2700km, but I'm likely taking some nicer roads, which will add some distance and I believe the tire will manage that. If not, I'll find a shop to change it along the way.

Now, back to today, I didn't want to ride all that much, so ended up doing 335 miles / 540km, some backroads, some freeway, and I ended up in Tulsa, OK. For the next day or two, I'll have some really boring roads in front of me to cross Oklahoma and the Northern part of Texas, then I can find some nicer roads again in New Mexico and Arizona. 

Missouri was interesting, I didn't expect the variety in scenery. 

Missouri, West Ozarks

Missouri, West Ozarks

Missouri

Regarding Hurricane Delta, I successfully avoided rain/wind or even getting stuck somewhere. I'm now west of the storm and should be okay for the rest of the trip.

This is the projected storm path for tomorrow, I'm safely West of it:

The storm path from there will be going East, I'll be heading West. 

On the practical side, since I was too tired to clean my windshield and lights from bugs last night, I ended up with some wet rags this morning and found a good way to dry them while riding. Just strapped to the top case and all was good after a very short time:

Drying microfiber rags while riding

Overall, it was a decent ride today. 

Route Day 26

CC20 - Day 25

If you are following the news, you might have seen the reports on Hurricane Delta reaching the US. I was East of it and didn't want to get into massive rainfall on my way west, so the motto today was: get west of the storm. 

And that's pretty much what I did:

Day 25 Route

I had this as my guide:

NOAA Screenshot for Delta

The NOAA app gave me a prediction for the storm path for Thursday and Friday and I planned my ride accordingly.

And since I already had quite a distance to ride, I decided to turn it into a full 1000 mile day. I didn't get the witnesses to make an IronButt Saddle Sore 1000 (1000 miles in 24 hours) ride, but that wasn't my goal anyways, I don't need the "badge", it was just fun to complete the 1000 miles. I had done this distance before, but that's a long time ago.

Here are the statistics:

Day 25 Ride Statistics

It was actually fairly easy. I left at 5:40 in the morning in Alexandria and arrived around midnight in Lebanon, MO (I got two hours back due to time zones). Had a good lunch break and most fuel stops turned into a short break. And since I was pushing the bike on the freeway I had to fill up quite a few times, six to be precise. Could have been okay with five, but I didn't "optimize" it, instead just filled when I felt like it.

And since I didn't stop much, I only have one photo from the day: