Scooter Cannonball.

[G19Tony]

I was what they referred to on the Scooter Cannonball, as a tourist. That label is correct. I collected the Control Points and Bonus Points, because that was part of the fun. But my main reason for doing the SCB, was to see my country at 40mph on my Honda CT125.

I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without the help of my friend, Larry. He drove my truck for support, and had my back on the faster roads, where he told me saw unique hand gestures from motorists not accustomed to going 35 in a 65. Fortunately, we only had to do that a few times.


The days were long, with 12-15 hours in the seat each day. It was ride, eat, sleep for 8 days. Since I was on one of the slowest bikes in the field, I thought we should start at 4am. Sometimes, I didn’t start getting passed by other bikes until 6 or 7. We would get to the next day’s hotel around 8 or so, go to Denny’s, and go to sleep for 3 or 4 hours, and start again.

The trip started off a bit rainy and a bit foggy as we set off from San Clemente. After the group photo, everyone started drifting out toward the route. After a couple hours of twisting through the mountains, the sun came out and the scenery came out with it. My best memory of that first day was coming out of the mountains and descending into the Coachella Valley. The view was like from an airplane. It was my first trip through Joshua Tree National Park. Great view, and hot. My bike started losing power at the bottom of the park. As we climbed into the park and the temp went down a degree or two. The bike was back to normal. Too hot for the fuel, was our only guess. The funniest part of the park was when we got to the end. I pulled up to the booth and was ready to was ready to whip out my Military Park Pass, and the Ranger just waved me through and told me not to worry about it, as she saw motorcyclists fall over, trying to get their pass out or pay the fee.

Other than a couple of Burros in the road, and a giant truck turning left in front of me, the rest of the trip into Lake Havasu was uneventful.

San Clemente-Lake Havasu 372 miles.



Larry and I at the Lost Winds taproom before the start. I'm on the left.


Descending into the Coachella Valley.

 

[G19Tony]

0300 arrived earlier than I had hoped for in Lake Havasu as I tried to be quiet so Larry could sleep a bit. I got all the gear together and headed for the bike and the truck. By the time I fueled the bike at the 76-station next door, Larry had come down, and we shoved off for Winslow at 0400.

It was pleasantly cool on the bike. I enjoyed watching the sky start to get lighter in the East as we slowly made our way on various AZ country roads. We did end up on Hwy 95 and I40 for a bit, then jumped off in Laughlin and took the back roads to Oatman. I guess it was too early for the Donkeys, as I did not see a one.

The next place of note was Jerome, AZ. A former mining town at over 5000 feet, it was a bit of a struggle for the CT125 and I. As all the mountainous areas were. We had some long, second and third gear climbs, the bike and me. I just tried to keep it out of the rev limiter in 2nd, and keep the bike from lugging, in 3rd. Jerome was a neat place, that I would like to travel back to.

As we started the long descent into Sedona, I was always in my mirrors watching the line of cars and fellow riders queuing up behind the truck. I tried to stay cognizant of this and would find a safe spot for Larry and I to pull over and let the train go by on every climb or descent on this trip. I always hoped the train could see Larry was protecting my six, and directed their ire at me, instead of him.

We made it down to Sedona in good shape, and the scenery made it worth it. It’s always tourist time there, so it was pretty crowded, and we had to be careful we didn’t schwack a tourist.

Safely out of Sedona, we pressed toward Winslow. There was 33 miles of known dirt on this route. In what turned out to be a poor decision, I took the first dirt track of the route. 15 miles to Winslow. I’m not good in the dirt, and the CT didn’t really have the tires for it, but what the heck. It was slow going and things were going well until… Sand. I hate trying to ride in sand. The only way I can get through a stretch of sand, is with a hovercraft. Fortunately, I had almost ground to a halt when I fell. I heard other riders had bigger, more spectacular spills.

We finally made it to Winslow, put the bike to bed, hit the Denny’s, then back to the hotel for another 4 hours sleep.

Lake Havasu City, AZ – Winslow, AZ. 408 miles

 

[Shoot870p]

thanks Tony!

 

[dmonkey]

Thanks for sharing the details, I very much enjoy reading them. Last time I rode through Oatman, September 2022, I passed a couple riding CT125s the opposite direction as me. That Arizona Sidewinder on Route 66 just seemed like the perfect pace of twisty road for the CT. Fantastic that you got to experience it.

For anyone reading along that isn't familiar with it, I believe it's 191 curves over 9 miles. Lots of hairpin corners, fantastic scenic views of the desert, two lane blacktop that isn't well manicured, no shoulder, and a cliff's edge to one side for many of the corners. A real thrill!

Glad your spill was only at low speed. Other than dumping in the sand, how did the Michelin tire selection work out?

 

[G19Tony]

Thanks for sharing the details, I very much enjoy reading them. Last time I rode through Oatman, September 2022, I passed a couple riding CT125s the opposite direction as me. That Arizona Sidewinder on Route 66 just seemed like the perfect pace of twisty road for the CT. Fantastic that you got to experience it.

For anyone reading along that isn't familiar with it, I believe it's 191 curves over 9 miles. Lots of hairpin corners, fantastic scenic views of the desert, two lane blacktop that isn't well manicured, no shoulder, and a cliff's edge to one side for many of the corners. A real thrill!

Glad your spill was only at low speed. Other than dumping in the sand, how did the Michelin tire selection work out?

The tires worked out well. I'm going to keep them on the bike for the time being.

 

[G19Tony]

We departed for Los Alamos at 0400. The weather has been good to us so far and will continue to be good for the balance of the trip. When we crossed into the Navajo Reservation, it seemed, at least for me, that the sky got bigger, and the color a brighter blue. It does that when I go to Tucson, also. This was one of our seemingly shorter days.



The SCB is loose on how you get to the checkpoints. There is an official route, but you can do anything you want. I used a product called, Trick Tracks. This was made by a participant in the Rally, who is a software guy. It’s slick, just a magenta line leading to the CP or BP. When you get close, there are three concentric rings, and when you get to the middle of the smallest ring, you are at your point. Trick Tracks gives you no detail on when to turn, but it does show the turns. I tried to find a street name on the Garmin for help. The turns come up fast, so you must include the GPS in your scan. I still missed plenty of turn points, but I knew right away. So, it was a quick 180 and back on the route. One couple we talked to, on a pair of Vespas, had Trick Tracks on a GPS, and the coordinates to the CP or BP on their iPhone, and would just go on the route that was shorter.

Arriving in Los Alamos, we got to the hotel at a reasonable time, only to find that our reservation had been cancelled. Some BS about not being able to get ahold of me to verify my card. I was not the only person this happened to. We ended up in a real dump, about 20 minutes outside of town. I left the bike at the Official hotel, and we went to our dump. Had dinner at Denny’s and went to sleep.

I was trying to get stickers from places we went to put on the windshield. It would have made the whole trip for me, to get a sticker that said, Los Alamos is the bomb! That still cracks me up. But we got in so late wherever we went, that most places were closed.

Winslow, AZ – Los Alamos, NM 348 miles.

 

[SneakyDingo]

Arriving in Los Alamos, we got to the hotel at a reasonable time, only to find that our reservation had been cancelled. Some BS about not being able to get ahold of me to verify my card.

Ouch. This is part of why I use a Google Voice number for all my verification nowadays. It's like the iPhone "call on every device" feature but way better, and it also filters out spam really well. It allows me to give my number to a support team member, for example - if you call my phone, it'll just ring my phone, but if you call my google voice, I can actually pick that call up from my television if I want to. The biggest downside was when my data connection died due to running out of data (thanks RideWithGPS app), it also killed my Google voice number to my phone until I could get on WiFi.

I know that Trick Tracks was used by another youtuber and it looks pretty cool. Can't remember if it was QuasiMotard, DaBinChe or who, but they were also using it for the Cannonball. I kinda wish that regular GPS worked that way.

 

[G19Tony]

We had to leave earlier from our dump outside of Los Alamos, to get back to the bike at the Official hotel and get back on the road. We rode back past our dump and started the climb up the mountains East of Los Alamos. It was another cold, but beautiful slow climb. Again, the sun was up, but I would not start getting warm for a couple more hours.

The climb took us to around 9500ft above sea level. I’m bummed that I missed the elevation sign. That would have made for a cool picture. On the way down the mountain, aiming towards the plains of Oklahoma and our destination of Guymon, we went through an excellent State Park. We took a break there for a few minutes and made a few photos.

It seemed like as soon as we crossed into Oklahoma, we were met with a 20-mph headwind. This really slowed me down on an already slow bike. I had the patience to handle it though. 20 years of waiting around in the AF for something to happen, really helped.

We coasted into Guymon under a tornado watch. Storms on the plains are cool to watch. I’m glad we didn’t have to deal with any of them. Our hotel was nice, with an eating establishment across the street that was open. I changed the oil on the bike, we had a nice supper and called it a day.

Los Alamos, NM – Guymon, OK 372 miles

 

[G19Tony]

Today we scooted across the panhandle of Oklahoma with the town of Miami as our target for today. As usual, we left at 0400 racing across the plains at the ludicrous speed of 35mph. I could see light on the Eastern horizon that I figured was the sun, but as we inched closer, it turned out to be the twin flames of an oil refinery. The real sun started coming up a few more degrees to the right.

I think it was this day, that I lost my throttle lock. I couldn’t get it to work, and my only option was to hold the throttle all day. It turned out that I would do this for the rest of the trip. Not the optimum situation for a bike that had to be ran wide open, just to get anywhere. That’s what makes it an adventure. When the going got tough, I would call on my spirit guide for help.

We did hit all the Control and Bonus points today, took many breaks. Today was also the first time I ran the bike out of fuel. I stopped at the first sign of sputtering and refilled from the 2-gallon Rotopax I had on the back. I would flame the bike out 2 more times on this trip. The last time, just before we got to Hilton Head. I didn’t think about keeping track of MPG or anything like that. Larry did figure MPG for one leg, and it turned out to be 77 MPG. That’s running WFO all the time.

Our route took us through many wind farms. I hadn’t been that close before and it was interesting. One of the many weird thoughts I had on the bike, was that a wind farm was a widely spaced forest, with spinny trees. Lol, the things that come to mind on a long journey.

We pulled into Miami at 7pm, after a 12+45 day on the bike.

Guymon, OK – Miami, OK 468 miles

I have included a picture of my spirit guide.

 

[Shoot870p]

I like the spirit guide!

 

[Little_Thumper_Boy]

Love it! Remind us, what are you using for a seat on the CT125?

 

[G19Tony]

Love it! Remind us, what are you using for a seat on the CT125?

Corbin. If I would have had an OEM seat, I would have quit after the first hour. I had no ass issues with the Corbin. Worth every penny.

 

[G19Tony]

Another early start for day 6 finds us getting to the first Bonus Point in good order, but not finding the point, even though it was the giant building right behind us. Lol. Some days are like that, I guess. As we crossed the border into Arkansas and started angling towards Blytheville the roads started getting tree lined in spots. I love riding or driving in a tree tunnel.

I believe this was the day I had my first deer encounter. This one was an adult doe, standing by the side of the road. I saw her, and while I was scrubbing off speed, I was mentally telling her, “Don’t do it.” Larry was behind, and saw me move my visor, and he thinks the deer saw the sudden movement and was spooked. I’m glad, because we had heard earlier that a fellow rider hit a deer and was in hospital. I just read on the forum today, that he is going home to Iowa soon. We saw his Vespa later, as it was parked for the night next to my bike. Still had fur in it.

A couple days earlier, Larry started keeping track on his scorebook of how long it took us to get to each checkpoint. It is interesting to see the progress, and how long these days were.

This was an uneventful ride day that found me in the seat for another 12-hour day. Larry did mention that following me at my high speed of 35mph, my Maverick was showing 40mpg. Ha!

Nothing about this day’s ride, foreshadowed how bad tomorrow was going to be. So, we got to the hotel, ate and went to sleep blissfully unaware of the trouble that was going to befall us on Day 7.

Miami, OK - Blytheville, AR 388 Miles

 

[G19Tony]

First out of the hotel again, at 0400. I’ve almost made it a game to see how far I can get before I start getting passed by everyone who rolls out at a leisurely 6 or 7. It’s usually not that far. We got to our turn point quickly, only to find it’s a gravel road behind a locked gate. This would have led us to a road, that would connect to a bridge across the Mississippi River. This also was the beginning of our navigational misadventure.



Consulting the Garmin and Google, we found a crossing. It took over an hour to get there, where we discovered it was a ferry crossing, with no ferry and no way to summon one. We consult the maps again, and another 1.5 hours later we cross the Mississippi and 1 90 degree turn later, we crossed the Ohio. That left us about 1.5 hours to the first Bonus Point. We are already 6 hours into our day, and we haven’t even made it to the first point. We made it to 3 points, and with frustration levels getting high, I decided to call it a day, put the bike on the truck and drive the 3 hours to Rome, GA. Our target for today. Had we continued collecting points, we would have arrived at the hotel about 0300, with no alternative but to take the arrival and departure photos and press on for Hilton Head. That would have been a bad idea, so we got to the hotel in Rome at the usual time of 8pm, ate and went to sleep.



The scorers were still up, so I was able to do the scoring for the day. She asked why we didn’t hit all the points, and I told her our tale. She agreed that coming in was the safe thing to do. What a day.

Blytheville, AR -Rome, GA 415 miles

 

[bryanchurch06]

I understand completely, sometimes you gotta do the smart thing, its just a ride after all. At the end of the day making it home in 1 peice is the goal and having the maturity to make smart decisions instead of ego driven one's make the difference, I am really enjoying your posts and can emphasize with you on the difficulty of making miles every day. I do envy your use of a chase driver as it makes a huge difference physically and mentally. I'm planning another ride in the future with my wife following in a support vehicle hopefully. Congratulations on your ride and best wishes. Bryan Church.

 

[G19Tony]

We left Rome at 0345, hit escape velocity and were on our way to the final destination of Hilton Head, SC. The first Bonus Point was at the end of a very twisty totally dark road with a 400 ft elevation change. It was a slow climb, and I took my time with it, because the headlight isn’t that great on the CT-125 and it was completely dark. I couldn’t even see the sides of the road. I don’t particularly care for riding at night. I’m a day VFR only rider. We get to the point in 1+42, and I think, Yay! I’m at the first point and that road will slow them down some. As soon as I pulled in to take the photo, another cat pulled in from the opposite direction got his picture and sped off. Rats. Lol.

The sun started coming up, and I felt comfortable going faster, we hit our checkpoints in a little better time. That first road was the only climb of the day. It was all downhill from there. I hesitated about writing this next part, as it makes me look like a knucklehead, (which I was). But there is a lesson to be learned. On our departure out of Rome, I didn’t check the oil. I changed it a couple days before and didn’t seem to be burning any. We just started across North Atlanta, before the Speedway, and I caught a whiff of gearbox and immediately pulled into a CVS parking lot, with Larry right behind.

I jumped off and checked the dipstick, and there was nothing on it. I had run the gearbox dry. Although I do think there is still some at the bottom of the case. While I was mad at myself, I wasn’t too worried about the bike. I refilled the gearbox, and we were on our way in about 10 minutes. The bike has run fine since.

After Atlanta, the roads started getting nice. Big, sweeping turns with tree lined roads and cows sitting contentedly in the shade under giant Oaks, I think they were. I came out of one turn to a scene of a white horse grazing in beautiful field of grass, with trees in the background. I thought, “that’s a painting, right there.” I was hit with scenes like that for the rest of our time in Georgia. I think these were the best roads of the trip.

The rest of the trip into Hilton Head was anti climatic, except for the last couple miles where we were dueling with tourist traffic on the way to the resort. Which was the most dangerous part of the whole 8-day trip. I was on my last fuel bar, and it was blinking, so I pulled over and filled up the bike from the Rotopax, and we put the remainder into the truck. It wouldn’t do to flameout just as I was pulling into the resort.

I hit the scoring tent, collected the hardware and checked into our room. The after party was enjoyable, but after a couple beers each, Larry and I were both done. We had loaded the bike on the truck on arrival and had a 29-hour run back to Tucson ahead of us, which we began bright and early the next day. Larry had cows to tend to and drinkers to fix. I wanted to get home too.

I’m glad I did the SCB. It was fun to do it on a totally inappropriate bike. I accomplished my goal of seeing my country at 40mph. My actual average speed was 33mph. I didn’t keep track of the gallons it took, but it cost $105 worth of fuel to travel 3170 miles. The one leg Larry did an MPG for, was 77MPG. I was wide open throttle the whole 8 days. I never missed a chance to fuel up.

I’m planning to do the SCB again in 2025, but on a proper scooter. I’m thinking a Honda ADV160. The next run will go East to West. I will also take more photos. It was all I could do, to just get to each point. As the kids say, 10/10 would do again!

Rome, GA – Hilton Head Island, SC 399 miles
San Clemente, CA – Hilton Head Island, SC 3170 miles

 

[bryanchurch06]

G19tony this may seem like a strange question but now that you've had a few days off the bike, how clear are your memories of each day? And what do you miss about the trip? I was amazed at how quickly small details started to blur for me when it was over.

 

[G19Tony]

G19tony this may seem like a strange question but now that you've had a few days off the bike, how clear are your memories of each day? And what do you miss about the trip? I was amazed at how quickly small details started to blur for me when it was over.

That's why I did all this. It's rapidly slipping away.

Since it was my first time on the SCB, I really don't miss it, as I didn't have a lot of time to make friends or even talk to anyone. I left so early and got in so late, there wasn't much opportunity for socializing. What bike were you on?

 

[bryanchurch06]

That's why I did all this. It's rapidly slipping away.

Since it was my first time on the SCB, I really don't miss it, as I didn't have a lot of time to make friends or even talk to anyone. I left so early and got in so late, there wasn't much opportunity for socializing. What bike were you on?

Thanks, my ride was the cdt, didn't do the cannonball this year, I want to next yr though. I wish I had taken a slower approach and enjoyed it more, at some point finishing was the main focus instead of just enjoying each day. The next trip I do will definitely be planned and executed better with the focus on making each day memorable I hope. My trip turned into a grit your teeth and just finish it by the last couple days.