He's at it again

For the friends and family who read this site, here we go again..

but simpler (safer?) this time.

The ride that will follow over the next 2 weeks or so will be on road, not off. I'll take the trusty and proven Yamaha (the one from the NJ to Florida trip documented way back somewhere here). Won't be dealing with snow on this trip, though. The goal is to hit a couple of the major National Parks on the East Coast as I meander up the Appalachian chain from Florida to the northern reaches of Maine. Hopefully I'll do some hiking. And I plan to camp almost exclusively. Here is what the route should look like.

(That little gap between North Carolina and Virginia will actually be the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's not showing up but I'll probably find it after a couple of wrong turns).

The biggest dangers to life and limb on this trip will be bears, sunburn, heat exhaustion, wrong turns (count on it), bad food, mosquitoes (lots of 'em up north), etc.

Highlights should be: Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, Alleghenies, Adirondacks, White Mountains (Mount Washington?), Baxter State Park (Katadhin?), Acadia.

So if you're sufficiently bored you can check back here from time to time and see what trouble I've managed to get myself in to.

I will have both the location tracker on this site, as well as my spot tracker following my every move. Here's a link to the spot page Dirk's spot page

Some of you may wonder what happened to the mule.

Sadly, the mule sprang a leak in the rear shock. I only discovered it last weekend when I was swapping tires and have not had the time to get it repaired. For those who are interested in these kinds of details, I have decided not to just replace the shock with the same one, but to go ahead and upgrade the entire suspension. I'll put an Ohlins shock in the back and race tech forks in the front. In the process, I'll  raise the bike off the ground a couple of inches. All of which should make it much more capable off road. If all goes according to plan, I should do much of this same route off road later in the year when I get the mule patched up and can wrangle more time off from work.

So, here we go again!