Day 2

Well, this day started out nice. Just a little cool but not bad with the mesh jacket on. As the day wore on though, it began to get even cooler. To the point where I had to stop and put the liner on too. The main problem was the wind again. This was hurricane winds. In fact, I remember hurricanes in Florida that didn't have winds this bad.  

I had one scare and re-learned something I already knew about the Beemer but had forgotten.

I was cruising along and happened to look down at my gas gauge and it showed ZERO bars. Now the way the BMW gas gauge works is it shows you the quantity of gas you have left in the tank with a number of horizonal bars on a display. When the tank is full there are 9 bars and as you use gas, the number of bars decreases. What I normally do is keep checking the mileage and when it gets up around 175 miles, I start thinking about getting gas. The problem was, I was only about 150 miles down the road and I now had NO gas, or almost no gas. I expected the bike to stop at any moment. I took the next exit for some small town and what looked like a gas station. Turns out the town used to have a gas station but it went out of business. I had Garmin tell me where I could find gas and it took me around in a circle in the town and brought me back to the same closed station. Thanks a lot, Garmin.

So I got back on the highway and headed for the next exit. I happened to look at my gauge again and now it showed 2 bars. So how in the world did I go from no gas to maybe 30 miles worth of gas? Then it hit me. The BMW tank is like a saddle sitting on top of the frame. It holds some gas in the right side where the pickup is, and some gas in the left side. What happens is if you are going down the highway in a straight line and never make any half way decent turns, the gas that is in the left side just stays there and you'll technically run out of gas earlier than you expect to. Plus, I had been going down the highway with the wind causing me to lean way to the left, keeping the gas I did have, away from the pickup on the right side.  

But, if you make a turn to the right, like when Garmin had me looking for the gas station, then the gas on the left side flows over to the right side and stays there. I then remembered that someone had said if you run out of gas on a BMW, you just tilt the bike over to the right as far as you can and you'll have enough gas, hopefully, to get to a station. Anyway, I was fine getting to the next gas exit.

But the weather was still not cooperating. The farther North I got the worse the weather looked and the more the wind blew. There were times when I could just reach over to the left and touch the road, I was leaning into the wind so much.

Maybe I'm exaggerating a little but I was way over. Then the wind started really picking up. I mean I felt like the wind was going to yank my helmet off my head, it was so strong. Then the bike started feeling kind of light when the wind would gust so I decided it was time to think about getting off the highway. Plus, the clouds were coming in again with what looked like serious rain included.

So here I am in a hotel again working on emails while the bike gets rained on again. My original plan was to camp out almost all the time but my plan isn't working. If this keeps up, I'll set a record for the most days in a row without camping. 

It was funny at the rest stops when all the people would get out of their cars to go to the rest rooms and most of them were wearing shorts and tee shirts. They must have thought since it was almost July that the weather would be hot. NOT ! It was cold. There was a period there where I could have been comfortable in my big winter parka coat and winter gloves.

I'll make another try tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be nice for the next couple of days. Maybe I can get far enough North and West so I'll be out of the constant bad weather in the afternoons.  

I saw a lot of motorcycles heading South. I wonder how many of them are coming back from Alaska?  Tomorrow I'll be on I-90 west and I'll probably see even more bikes heading home.