Trans America Trail TN to UT, an adventure in the making!

Welcome to my adventure! Big picture, I'm heading south from Nashville to where the TAT crosses I-65, I'm turning right and riding the TAT to where it crosses I-15 in Utah, then turning left, then taking the slab back to San Diego  . I'm riding this solo, but look forward to meeting people and seeing the country from my bike. I will be departing TN on Monday 29, July. I really have no idea how this will turn out, but that's the whole point of an adventure.

If anyone lives near the trail, might be near the trail, or just wants to come out let me know. I'd love to meet up with anyone, maybe have lunch, or if you're really feeling lucky ride together for a bit  

My goal is to make this an ongoing post with daily updates from the road   I'll add my spot tracker link shortly, and some good pics once I get moving.

Feel free to hit me up with any questions and snide comments.

Cool! What kinds of things have you done to your bike to prepare for the trip?

Nothing too crazy.

Luggage: From front to rear I have an O'neal tube bag on the front fender, a wolfman tankbag, a small camelback on my back and a coyote giantloop bag on the rear. I'll be strapping a small mountain hardware backpack to the giantloop for just a little extra capacity. I have an fmf exhaust and it needed two heat shields to protect the giant loop (which comes with one) so a friend fabbed up a simple heat shield for me. I also modded the factory header heat shield for the fmf header (that dang thing gets like "catch pants on fire" hot!)

Fuel: Factory tank, there's only a couple legs that I need extra fuel. I'm rocking gatoraide bottle for the legs that I need a little extra mileage. There is one 160 mile leg that I'm going to use a combination of gatoraide bottles and a starbucks coffee bladder (I've read several people using it for fuel, it gives about a gallon and I haven't heard of any failures), I'll have find out the hard way if this is a bad idea  

Navigation/electrical power: I have an etrex and my iPhone 4s. I'm using motion-x terrain app on my iPhone, and that is my primary navigation. Everyone swears to never use an iPhone for primary nav, but with the motion-x app I believe it can be used. You can   pre-download the maps, and it's really easy to use. So I'm going to do a public service and verify wether or not the iPhone can be used as primary nav. I have the lifeproof waterproof case/handlebar mount. If she fails me I'll fall back on my etrex. For power I have a 12 volt to usb thingie on the handlebars, and a 12 volt cigarette lighter style power source ran under my rear fender. I'm going to try to run a power inverter and charge all my other electronic toys in the bag while driving (camera, go-pro, macbook etc..) I also have a goal zero solar charger to charge a battery pack that I can then use to charge toys at night in the tent.

That's the big picture of my setup, sorry for lack of pics, I promise to correct that soon. My bike is setup waiting on me in my cousin's garage, and I'm visiting my parents right now before I start out. It's like I'm 17 again, not 31. I keep forgetting to get pics of her all bagged out.

Nice. I'd like to see some pics of your loaded beast. If you can, some posts during your trip too!

30 miles in my trip, not even to dirt yet and the bike blew up. Lost power while doing 75 on the highway, looked in the rear view mirror and she's blowing smoke. Pull over, she's dead! My parents came to pick me and the bike up, now I'm stuck with a dead bike 3000 miles from home. I have no idea what to do now.

Oh crap! Damn that sucks. Hope you're able to figure it out quickly.

Reminds me when I was headed cross country to CO for a monster 3 week ski adventure and the tranny on my old truck blew 40 miles out. I sold the truck to the repair shop that towed me, hitched a ride to the airport and grabbed a flight to CO. That's what credit cards are for.

Chin up.

Potentate wrote:

30 miles in my trip, not even to dirt yet and the bike blew up. Lost power while doing 75 on the highway, looked in the rear view mirror and she's blowing smoke. Pull over, she's dead! My parents came to pick me and the bike up, now I'm stuck with a dead bike 3000 miles from home. I have no idea what to do now.

Man, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm new here but I had read through your threads about your problems earlier this year. What do you think happened? Do you think there was still some sand hiding somewhere that got sucked into the engine?

Blows! I was looking forward to reading your report as it unfolded. Updates?