So after like, I dunno, 17 seconds of sleep. I awake to the sound of muffled talking in the other room. I get up, slap on most of my gear and roll to the living room at DP's grandparents. I expect to see everyone just chillin', but nope... everyone's fully geared and ready to roll. They let me sleep in. How nice!
The rest of the day was sort of a blur... 650+ miles of riding over the course of like 16 hours can have that effect I guess. I just remember rolling down the highway watching Gramps ride like an absolute madman. Cutting off semi's, hammering down the lane at 90+, weaving in and out alll over the place. The man is insane... or he just doesn't give a fuck. Either way, I was sold.
We get off the slab onto route 50... where exactly, I don't know. We roll along through some fun little sweepers and along these back country roads through Indiana. Twas a real nice ride. Somewhere along the way we encountered a mess of garage sales... seriously, like for a 10 mile stretch, there was nothing but garage sales. In the midst of all that retardidity, we came upon like 6 deer crossing the road...
When I first saw the deer I only noticed one and thought it was just a big dog. When I realized it was a deer and bolting towards the road, I hit the brakes and noticed the other deer there with it. A couple had already made it across the road and the one I saw put on the brakes and reversed course. The others just sat there retarded. So I put my pipes to work, grabbing the clutch and blipping the throttle a couple times... they all took off. Score one for loud pipes.
We stopped at a Hardee's in some little town along the way... I think it was still Indiana, but it may have been IL. I'd check my receipts if it really mattered... Anywho, going inside to get a bite... rockin' full leathers... some jackass goes, "Oh, out for a ride today?"... 'nope jerkoff, I dress like this all the time.'
Gramps and I strike up this conversation with a guy who was standing there... I think he was a regional manager or some shit. He was taking pictures of the place and seemed to be evaluating the crew... Turns out dude just got rid of his 998... and got a 1098. Bastard. Drewpy gave him a TWFix card... we'll see if he shows.
A few other people start asking questions about Drewpy's bike... nevermind the piece of pure two wheeled sickness that looks like nothing else you've ever seen sitting right next to it... aka, my bike. Retards.
Back on the road, nothing extremely interesting. The road flattened and straightened out through IL so it was pretty boring. Drewpy and I broke a few speed limit laws (excessively) to keep sane... Gramps pulled over at some point in time and we all got separated. After a half hour or 45 minutes or something of dicking around, we were finally all together again and moving in the right direction.
The trip continued and started to get really boring... Never thought riding could get boring, and pretty much it didn't the rest of the trip... For whatever reason about halfway through things were getting stale. I blipped some little wheelies through some shitball towns and we stopped to eat Subway in one of them. We happened to find a sillhouette that offered a fun photo opportunity. We took it, saw some squids pass by, and continued on our way.
At this point I had completely lost track of time. I know we left at like 7am or something, but I do not recall any other times for the day. I do recall that the St. Louis Arch looked pretty good when passing at 90mph and across the street from the gas station on the west side of St. Louis there were some squidly homey G nuckas with bling bling bikes and girls with fat asses on the back.
Then things got interesting.
No more than 5 miles after that gas stop, my bike starts misfiring. The engine light comes on, it misses, then's fine.... repeat. It only happened a couple of times, but scared me so I pulled off... Of course, I was in the rear so everyone else kept going. From what I remember it was a chore for them to make it back to me.
Right off the highway I ended up in a parking lot. I'm engine retarded so the first thing I want to check is oil (didn't really dawn on me that my oil light never came on, but rather my engine light did). Pull the dipstick and it's dry. Holy shit! Easy fix right...
Wrong.
I just so happened to break down on the exit where there's a Harley dealer. Perfect. Once the gang all made it back around to me, I ran over to the dealer to pick up some oil. Unfortunately the place was closed, but there was a guy getting on his bike outside. I explained the situation and he said he worked there and there were other guys inside. I'd just have to wait until one of them came out.
Well, one of them came out and I went in. Stopped and harassed a sales guy who was closing on a bike deal and finally made it to the parts desk. After convincing the guy that I didn't break in through a window or something, I got four quarts of oil, discussed possible ring issues or bent valves, and went back across the street. Well, not before drooling over a blue/white DRZ-400SM they had - FUCKIN' MONEY.
Ok, $40 worth of oil, including some extra for later (in case it was burning a ton)... Start pouring it in and almost immediately... it starts overflowing. DAMNIT! I guess it's not oil! Why then would my dipstick be dry? Well, Nighthawk had an interesting observation... 'maybe the oil was probably still all up in the engine.' Hmm... I did just jump right off the fucker and pull the dipstick. Makes sense.
After draining some oil into a plastic bag, all over myself, and into the parking lot... we continued our journey.
The situtation with my bike running like ass continued to get worse. The more miles I logged the worse it got. I pulled over a couple times and finally just said, screw it. If it blows up at least I made it this far.
During one of those moments Nighthawk and I got separated from Drewpy and Gramps. Well, Gramps just hammered it probably to triple digits and DP couldn't help but follow. Thankfully NH stayed back with me as I nursed my bike down the road.
There was a lot of fucking around over the next few hours trying find everyone. We got together, then lost Drewpy, and finally figured out he was like 70 miles ahead of us and already at the campsite.
We encountered some interesting bugs that hit our face sheilds like baseballs and my bike continued to run like shit. The gas mileage was falling off greatly. I started off the trip getting like 50mpg, but ended the day around half that.
FINALLY we made it into camp around 12:30am or so... Pissed off and stupid, I decided to start ripping apart my bike on the spot. Drewpy was kind enough to set up my tent... strategically placed on top of mini-Mt Everest. Cooler heads finally prevailed however, so we decided to work on it first thing in the AM.
Drewpy managed to set his bike on some nice soft, gravely earth... and it fell over. Kinda one of those slow-motion things... Like 'ooooooooooooooh nooooooooooooo' *crash* He took it real well... actually didn't seem like he gave much of a fuck at all. Well, we were all extremely tired.
Before crashing out we decided to hit up the truck stop near the campsite to get a bite. Nighthawk let me ride his Beamer up the hill... very cool of him. We went into the truckstop, ordered a ridiculous amount of food, and BS'ed with a local about bikes... well, and tried to decide which ugly waitress was less ugly than the other. The one was a big ogre chick who said she used to be in beauty pagents (to be fair, her face wasn't terrible). And the other one was just beat up lookin. Meh, back to the camp to crash out.
As I layed down in the tent I realized a couple things. Number one, my one man tent was probably designed for one sub-200lb man. Second, Drewpy was a real nice guy for setting up my tent, but he set it up on the most unholy, uneven patch of land possible. Then I closed my eyes and was OUT.