Hamburg Pa.

Our first day went very well. Departure was bittersweet for Dillon. He admitted to thinking about 'being strong" but got a little tender when he was hit with the reality that he was leaving home.

It isn't like he'll never come back or won't be welcome with open arms but this is different. He is on his way to start writing the book of his life and by choice he is doing it where his family is an all day plane ride away.

Life isn't about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself.

Being somewhat of a nomadic sailor boy, a motorcycle traveler and having been packed off to boarding school by the 7th grade feeling sad at a departure is not something I am used to experiencing. Watching Dillon drove home the magnitude of what lies ahead for the dillmeister. Fortunately he is a very smart kid and makes friends easily. I only hope that after breezing through High School with little hard work and great grades he doesn't fall too far behind before realizing that the Game is On.

The bike is running great and all systems are working remarkably well for being finished at 8am on the day of departure. I have one issue with an electronic stack on the shelf, it wants to bounce and launch off the bike, only the safety cords are keeping it all in place. I'll sort this out before we get going today. It is great to have a good intercom system and the Autocom I had installed at the MOA National is working great. We can chat with little effort up to 75mph which is great.

While I am New England born and bread and I love the area getting in and out of New England is getting to be more and more of a pain in the ass. No matter when you leave it will suck, leave at night and you have construction and lot's of idling behind trucks, leave during the day and you get grid lock and lots of time idling behind trucks although often not as much as in the middle of the night, only because of all the idiots in their cages.

Regardless we pushed on through, going over the Tappan Zee bridge and down 287. It added distance but made for a less painful experience than the GW bridge on a Friday afternoon. My SO, Chace is also heading west on her GS. She left three hours ahead of us and had to sit on the side of the Cross Bronx when her bike overheated. I joked that we were riding sweep but as we took a different route we would have seen her.

For our first night it worked out that Chace got us all a room in Hamburg at the lovely Dutch Motel. It shows the pervasiveness of the Internet that a dump like this has free wireless. Two beds and a cot for $80, chains can't or won't touch this plus we have an exterior door which is great for traveling with a bike.

Our goal for today is westward ho! I'd be pumped if we could knock off 700 miles but that may be unrealistic. Chace is heading to Boulder and we're heading to Colorado Springs so at some point we'll part company. Could be sooner than later as she wants to be in St. Louis tonight which is 835 away. One thing I got to say about Dillon, our stops yesterday were very quick to perhaps we can throw down a monster day. The sooner we get to the Rockies the sooner we'll be camping in the woods, eating meat and doing things best not put "on the record" :)