North to Alaska - 1

June 20, 2007

Jim Sutherland and I left Fishkill after the rain stopped and everything was packed, a little
 after 10:00. Since Jim sold his house yesterday and stayed in a motel last night he brought 
everything inside and had to pack everything again after the rain stopped so our start was a 
bit late. Once on the road we made good progress and the weather was great. We were feeling 
our way during our first day. We stopped every couple of hours and spent time adjusting 
clothing, seats, helmets, radios and various other things. It will probably take us a day 
or two for us to feel comfortable with our loaded bikes and riding gear.

We traveled a little over 400 miles today. We stopped about 7:00pm. And found a reasonable 
motel to spend our first night on the road. We were on the road almost 9 hours. We found 
several long delays for road construction and one accident. A small trailer separated from the 
tow car and deposited their belongings all over the road. What a mess! Needless to say there 
was a backup of several miles and a long delay.

We stayed on interstates all day. We need to get past Chicago as soon as possible. A little 
further and we’ll start to ride on side roads, I can’t wait! The truck traffic is tough…fast, 
loud and way too many…oh well. We do get thrown around quite a bit when we get near any of 
these monsters. The drivers are generally courteous but the trucks still make riding a 
motorcycle on the interstate difficult.

Our butts are sore and we spent a good amount of time trying to find comfortable riding 
positions all day. I hope it gets easier!

Tomorrow we should get an earlier start and hopefully another 400 miles or so.