I just rolled back into Ocala, shutting off my 1997 Honda ST1100 after 9 days and exactly 4,313 miles of pavement. This trip was originally blueprinted as a straightforward logistics loop—run west to Texas to secure a parts bike, swing northeast to Ohio and Pennsylvania for upgrades, and get back to camp. But when you are piloting a 700-pound, carbureted V4 sport-touring machine solo across state lines, the road has a habit of rewriting your script.
If you’ve got a few minutes, grab a coffee. Here is the reality of chasing a 24-hour certification, dodging state troopers, fighting extreme budget constraints, and finding out what the Honda community is actually made of.
Chapter 1: Outbound Launch, The Speeding Tax, & The Zero-Sleep Extraction
The mission started with a disciplined, high-speed pace straight out of Silver Springs, FL on Monday, June 8. Day 1 was all about front-loading the mileage target required for the 24-hour certification, launching a SaddleSore 1000 attempt right out of the gate. The ST1100 is an absolute couch at speed, but when you are trying to maintain a high moving average across the deep South, you inevitably attract the wrong kind of attention. Slicing west across Louisiana, I got hit with a heavy speeding ticket—a costly cross-country tax that put an immediate, brutal dent in an already razor-thin budget.
But you don’t stop. You manage the clock and keep rolling. Pulling into McKinney, Texas on Day 2 officially locked in the SaddleSore 1000 success, securing 1,127 miles within that critical 24-hour window.
But there was no hotel waiting. There was no recovery sleep.
Literally the exact second I checked the box on 23+ brutal hours of continuous road time, completely drained and running on pure adrenaline, the trip instantly mutated into a high-stakes salvage operation. On Day 3, with zero sleep in the tank, I had to immediately pivot to extracting a near-complete 2002 non-ABS ST1100 parts bike out of a storage shed at Greg’s pop's place. The best part? The entire bike, along with an absolute treasure trove of related gear and components, was completely FREE—excluding my own time, sweat, and logistics. The bike itself had clear signs of a potential deer strike, having gone down hard on its left side. It mostly needs plastics, a compression test, and some bearing checks to see what engine repairs are required, but it came with a clean title and 75k on the clock. It's easily a $3k–$4k+ asset once revived, and that's on top of the estimated $1,200 in clean extra parts included in the lot to catalog and flip.
Getting it out of the shed and onto a U-Haul motorcycle trailer was simple enough, but the actual nightmare began at the storage unit. The unit sat on a sharp incline, and the driveway between the storage buildings had an aggressive V-slope inward from both sides to handle water drainage. Try imagining maneuvering a truck and trailer layout to back down and keep a bike parallel alongside a building under those conditions. You ain't pushing a dead, 700-pound ST up an incline like that alone, let alone doing it right after an Iron Butt run.
Once it was safely locked up, I gave my '97 V4 a much-needed bike wash to blast off the Texas grime before hitting the road again. By the time I finally finished the solo load-in, dealt with some frustrating U-Haul account flags, and technically "returned" the truck, I was completely empty. I didn't have the energy left to hunt down a rest area or find a safe spot to pitch a cot. I just climbed into the back of the cargo bay of the U-Haul, pulled the rolling rear gate down partially to block out the ambient lot light, and caught a few brief winks right there on the floorboards.
Chapter 2: Outrunning the News & Seeing Fred’s Feet
On Day 4 (Thursday, June 11), I turned back East, blasting across Arkansas and clearing Memphis onto the I-40 corridor. Right around 1500 that afternoon, a text came through from Chris Stedronsky that completely stopped my world. His dad—the legendary ST1100 innovator Ray Stedronsky—had passed away. For anyone who knows the ST community, Ray was an absolute pillar of mechanical innovation. He and Chris even built an awesome, legendary OG Africa Twin together.
I was in shock. I immediately put down heavy miles, twisting the throttle to try and outrun the weight of the news, using the asphalt as a distraction. But the emotional funk caught up to me hard later that evening when I pulled into a gas station to update my friends and family on the situation. I sat by the pumps completely checked out, staring at the concrete in a dark, heavy headspace.
I was staring down at the concrete when I saw a pair of feet stop directly in front of me. I remember thinking to myself, I really don’t have the energy for a random "nice bike" meetup right now.
I was wrong. It was exactly what I needed.
It was a fellow ST rider named Fred. He wasn't on his bike that day—he and his wife were actually caging it on a road trip heading south—but he saw my 1100 sitting there while walking into the store and decided to come say hello. He turned out to be an incredibly nice fellow, the absolute epitome of the average Honda rider. We shared that silent, unprompted V4 brotherhood connection, and that simple conversation completely pulled me out of the dark. Thanks, Fred. I'll definitely have to connect with him here on the ST Owners forums down the line.
As I threw a leg back over the seat to keep pushing, I remembered a piece of advice Ray had texted me once about riding the ST: "Keep on swimming." So that's exactly what I did. I kept swimming through the dark miles.
Chapter 3: The Sight Glass Hack & $10-a-Day Rations
To keep moving and maximize daylight, I was running this entire trip on an extremely tight budget—targeting about $10 a day for food. Being strictly gluten-free on the road already turns food into a massive logistics puzzle, and the budget was a constant tightrope walk. My daily fuel routine quickly devolved into a hyper-specific regimen: hunting down the occasional Walmart rotisserie chicken for clean, affordable protein, keeping a constant supply of Monster Juice on deck to keep the brain firing, and keeping a jar of peanut butter paired with a loaf of gluten-free bread strapped to the bike. Peanut butter is a lifesaver out here—high protein, high calorie, and it doesn't spoil, though you still have to huff down the bread before the road moisture gets to it.
My camping strategy for the trip was strictly stealth: no tents, no tarps, nothing to attract attention. I kept a completely low profile, claiming real estate on rest area benches or picnic tables, all while managing daily responsibilities back home in Florida over my phone during fuel stops.
Coming into a stop after one of these brutal runs, I was too physically exhausted to fight a 700-pound motorcycle onto its center stand on uneven ground just to check my levels. Instead of risking a tip-over, I used a field shortcut: I sat squarely in the saddle, balanced the bike level, and held my phone camera down low to snap a photo of the sight glass. Dirty oil, but verified safely above the low line. It’s a trick that saved my back and my bike when I was too cooked to do it "by the book."
Chapter 4: The Lorain Connection, The 3k Mark, & The 0400 Headlights
By Day 5 (Friday, June 12), I had pushed up into Ohio, officially crossing the 3,000-mile mark of the total loop. I had a scheduled meet in Lorain with a seller named Ryan I’d met on Facebook. I originally went there just to buy an ST luggage rack, but Ryan had a complete, tinted Laminar Lip windshield sitting there. He offered it for $20. On an ST1100, you don't pass on a tinted Lip for twenty bucks.
Ryan was riding a beautiful black, non-ABS ST1100. He told me he’d recently come back to riding after a multi-year hiatus—a story I can certainly relate to. He still has his dad’s old Harley in the garage, but like many of us, he’s come to deeply appreciate the sheer engineering and precision of the Honda platform. Seeing that cross-generational mechanical respect made the stop a major highlight.
After securing the gear, I pushed east across the state line to camp at a highway rest area in Brookville, PA. Sleep was short-lived. At 0400 on Saturday, June 13, I woke up to headlights glaring directly at my picnic table "camp." I just needed a quick juice break anyway, so instead of trying to fight it, I packed up the gear and got rolling extra early into the dark Pennsylvania morning.
Chapter 5: The 6-Hour Breakdown, The Left-Side Drop, & Reshaping Rubber
Saturday morning brought the trip's biggest operational bottleneck in Denver, Pennsylvania, and the absolute low point of my logistics planning. I pulled in to collect what were supposed to be ABS upgrade parts, only to realize they were completely wrong. I ended up stuck in a parking lot for over six hours, waiting for the seller to return so I could get a refund.
That six-hour wait actively cost me my schedule's highly anticipated stop at the Smokey Mountain Small Bore Rally in Maryville, TN. As the hours ticked away in that PA parking lot, I watched my extra ride time completely evaporate. I had to make the hard choice to scrub the rally from the itinerary entirely, meaning I'll have to wait yet another year to make it out there. I was completely bummed.
Instead of pacing around furious, I channeled that frustration into the pavement and knocked out a critical mid-trip oil change right there, dumping the sheared-down highway oil before hitting the mountains.
Somewhere down the road after that absolute fiasco, the mental fatigue caught up with me during a quick snack and bathroom stop. I pulled into a rest area to spin a tight, low-speed U-turn into a parking space, using about two or three empty spots for the arc. I was only crawling at about 2 mph, but I gave it just a little too much turn for the speed, and the weight took over, putting the ST gently down on its left side. Knowing Honda engineered heavy-duty, built-in tip-over bars into the frame for this exact reason, I didn’t even fret. Instead of getting mad, I jumped off the bike and immediately celebrated—hurling a sarcastic "woot!" into the air and throwing double fist-pumps above my head to lean into the sheer ridiculousness of the moment. A kind fellow saw the show, jumped out of his truck, and helped me swing the 700lb beast back on its wheels.
Once I finally cleared the Denver area, I hit the central Pennsylvania mountain gaps hard for a heavy morning run to reshape my rubber. After thousands of miles of flat highway, my Dunlop Roadsmart III (RS3) tires were starting to square off. I spent that morning aggressively diving into deep transitions, leaning the ST into the twisties to scrub the flat center profile off the shoulders and peel back fresh compound through high-load curves. The telemetry was high-intensity: 83 mph across Black Moshannon Creek and 82 mph on US-222 North to make up for the lost time.
Chapter 6: Heading South, The NC Crew, & The Push Start
By Sunday, June 14, I was pushing south through Virginia and into North Carolina. Stopping down at the North Carolina welcome center rest stop, the road-level camaraderie kept hitting right when I needed a lift. I ran into two employees, Cory and James. Absolute legends. Cory and I ended up standing out there chatting for a solid 20 minutes just talking shop about these older bikes. When you're solo for days, processing a dropped rally and heavy miles, those genuine interactions keep you grounded.
I decided to camp at the NC welcome center that night, but the following morning (Monday, June 15) was easily the most unglamorous, brutal sequence of the entire loop.
I walked out to the bike with a heavy load of gear and immediately stepped right into a massive pile of dog *****. While furiously scrubbing my right boot in the grass to clean off the biohazard—already furious at whatever lazy human didn't pick up after their pet—things took a tragic turn. Right in the patch of grass where I was scrubbing, I accidentally crushed a tiny baby mouse. I felt absolutely terrible, and honestly, I still do. Taking a life completely by accident just because I was losing my temper over a careless dog owner was a massive gut punch to start the day.
To top it off, I realized a catastrophic rookie mistake: my portable USB battery bank had stayed plugged into the bike's system and completely drained the ST battery overnight. So there I was, fully loaded down, running on a week's worth of 3,000+ solo highway miles, physically wrestling and push-starting a 700+ pound motorcycle by myself on the rest stop pavement.
When that V4 finally fired, I threw a leg over and spent the day burning miles south. Thanks to the absolute massive aerodynamic air pocket the ST fairings create at highway speeds, that low-pressure zone pulled the residual scent forward—meaning I literally smelled that dog ***** all day long inside my helmet bubble.
Pushing down into the final stretch towards Jacksonville, the sky completely unzipped. I spent a solid two hours fighting my way through a heavy, blinding downpour mixed with chaotic rush-hour slab traffic, forcing total concentration to keep the heavy sport-tourer stable on the slick asphalt.
That evening, after surviving the rain and the morning's battery disaster, things got a little interesting while setting up my next low-profile rest spot. The local police ended up showing up at the stop after a call came in about a suspicious truck parked in the vicinity. The officer rolled up to check the area out, saw me just low-profile "camping" out in the open near the bike, and was completely unphased. He let me be, and I finally got some rest.
The Midnight Nap & The Ride Home
The final stretch back into Florida on Tuesday, June 16, was a marathon. I cut into Jacksonville late that night to stop by my brother's place and pick up a few personal belongings. From there, I dropped my pace right down to the baseline, entering defensive stealth mode as I cruised into Clay County. Knowing how notoriously gung-ho and ticket-happy the law enforcement officers are through that stretch of North Florida, I kept my hand steady, trailing just a tick under the speed limit to glide through their territory completely invisible.
By midnight, I pulled into Boathouse Riverfront Park in Palatka. The map always shows the Blue Crab Festival at those coordinates, but the park was dead quiet—no festival happening. Running on pure physical exhaustion with 40+ miles left to reach camp, I knew better than to risk the final dark highway leg while completely compromised. The pavilion benches were soaking wet from the heavy night air, so I didn't even bother trying to lie down. I just leaned my back squarely against a dry concrete pillar under the pavilion shelter, kept my helmet and gloves resting right on my lap, and caught a brief, much-needed midnight nap to recharge.
By 0300, long before the sun even thought about coming up, I woke up, shook off the stiffness, and got back in the saddle. I spent the final pre-dawn hours just cruising along through the cool morning air, finishing up the remaining miles back to the home stable in Ocala.
But the final day brought a different kind of hit. I learned that Oliver Tree passed away in a helicopter collision. It left a heavy mark on the final miles of the ride. He was actually one of the biggest influences for me starting my own musical journey. I always figured if a guy could look that completely strange—completely intentionally, of course—and still become a massively successful, uncompromising artist, then a mechanic like me could build something unique too. As his track goes, "I get tired of explaining as these seasons keep on changing... life goes on and on and on and on." RIP to an innovator.
The V4 is finally tucked in, the parts are sorted, and the odometer is resting. It wasn't the smoothest loop, and the budget is shot, but it proved exactly why we buy these bikes for life. I took a chill ride on the ST over to the car wash yesterday to give it the attention it deserves after being an absolute tank the last 9 days—no cargo, no trailer layout calculations, no timeline—just a slow cruise to completely clear my head after dealing with the absolute madness of the trip.
RideOrTieDye.
If you’ve got a few minutes, grab a coffee. Here is the reality of chasing a 24-hour certification, dodging state troopers, fighting extreme budget constraints, and finding out what the Honda community is actually made of.
=========================================
Chapter 1: Outbound Launch, The Speeding Tax, & The Zero-Sleep Extraction
The mission started with a disciplined, high-speed pace straight out of Silver Springs, FL on Monday, June 8. Day 1 was all about front-loading the mileage target required for the 24-hour certification, launching a SaddleSore 1000 attempt right out of the gate. The ST1100 is an absolute couch at speed, but when you are trying to maintain a high moving average across the deep South, you inevitably attract the wrong kind of attention. Slicing west across Louisiana, I got hit with a heavy speeding ticket—a costly cross-country tax that put an immediate, brutal dent in an already razor-thin budget.
But you don’t stop. You manage the clock and keep rolling. Pulling into McKinney, Texas on Day 2 officially locked in the SaddleSore 1000 success, securing 1,127 miles within that critical 24-hour window.
But there was no hotel waiting. There was no recovery sleep.
Literally the exact second I checked the box on 23+ brutal hours of continuous road time, completely drained and running on pure adrenaline, the trip instantly mutated into a high-stakes salvage operation. On Day 3, with zero sleep in the tank, I had to immediately pivot to extracting a near-complete 2002 non-ABS ST1100 parts bike out of a storage shed at Greg’s pop's place. The best part? The entire bike, along with an absolute treasure trove of related gear and components, was completely FREE—excluding my own time, sweat, and logistics. The bike itself had clear signs of a potential deer strike, having gone down hard on its left side. It mostly needs plastics, a compression test, and some bearing checks to see what engine repairs are required, but it came with a clean title and 75k on the clock. It's easily a $3k–$4k+ asset once revived, and that's on top of the estimated $1,200 in clean extra parts included in the lot to catalog and flip.
Getting it out of the shed and onto a U-Haul motorcycle trailer was simple enough, but the actual nightmare began at the storage unit. The unit sat on a sharp incline, and the driveway between the storage buildings had an aggressive V-slope inward from both sides to handle water drainage. Try imagining maneuvering a truck and trailer layout to back down and keep a bike parallel alongside a building under those conditions. You ain't pushing a dead, 700-pound ST up an incline like that alone, let alone doing it right after an Iron Butt run.
Once it was safely locked up, I gave my '97 V4 a much-needed bike wash to blast off the Texas grime before hitting the road again. By the time I finally finished the solo load-in, dealt with some frustrating U-Haul account flags, and technically "returned" the truck, I was completely empty. I didn't have the energy left to hunt down a rest area or find a safe spot to pitch a cot. I just climbed into the back of the cargo bay of the U-Haul, pulled the rolling rear gate down partially to block out the ambient lot light, and caught a few brief winks right there on the floorboards.
=========================================
Chapter 2: Outrunning the News & Seeing Fred’s Feet
On Day 4 (Thursday, June 11), I turned back East, blasting across Arkansas and clearing Memphis onto the I-40 corridor. Right around 1500 that afternoon, a text came through from Chris Stedronsky that completely stopped my world. His dad—the legendary ST1100 innovator Ray Stedronsky—had passed away. For anyone who knows the ST community, Ray was an absolute pillar of mechanical innovation. He and Chris even built an awesome, legendary OG Africa Twin together.
I was in shock. I immediately put down heavy miles, twisting the throttle to try and outrun the weight of the news, using the asphalt as a distraction. But the emotional funk caught up to me hard later that evening when I pulled into a gas station to update my friends and family on the situation. I sat by the pumps completely checked out, staring at the concrete in a dark, heavy headspace.
I was staring down at the concrete when I saw a pair of feet stop directly in front of me. I remember thinking to myself, I really don’t have the energy for a random "nice bike" meetup right now.
I was wrong. It was exactly what I needed.
It was a fellow ST rider named Fred. He wasn't on his bike that day—he and his wife were actually caging it on a road trip heading south—but he saw my 1100 sitting there while walking into the store and decided to come say hello. He turned out to be an incredibly nice fellow, the absolute epitome of the average Honda rider. We shared that silent, unprompted V4 brotherhood connection, and that simple conversation completely pulled me out of the dark. Thanks, Fred. I'll definitely have to connect with him here on the ST Owners forums down the line.
As I threw a leg back over the seat to keep pushing, I remembered a piece of advice Ray had texted me once about riding the ST: "Keep on swimming." So that's exactly what I did. I kept swimming through the dark miles.
=========================================
Chapter 3: The Sight Glass Hack & $10-a-Day Rations
To keep moving and maximize daylight, I was running this entire trip on an extremely tight budget—targeting about $10 a day for food. Being strictly gluten-free on the road already turns food into a massive logistics puzzle, and the budget was a constant tightrope walk. My daily fuel routine quickly devolved into a hyper-specific regimen: hunting down the occasional Walmart rotisserie chicken for clean, affordable protein, keeping a constant supply of Monster Juice on deck to keep the brain firing, and keeping a jar of peanut butter paired with a loaf of gluten-free bread strapped to the bike. Peanut butter is a lifesaver out here—high protein, high calorie, and it doesn't spoil, though you still have to huff down the bread before the road moisture gets to it.
My camping strategy for the trip was strictly stealth: no tents, no tarps, nothing to attract attention. I kept a completely low profile, claiming real estate on rest area benches or picnic tables, all while managing daily responsibilities back home in Florida over my phone during fuel stops.
Coming into a stop after one of these brutal runs, I was too physically exhausted to fight a 700-pound motorcycle onto its center stand on uneven ground just to check my levels. Instead of risking a tip-over, I used a field shortcut: I sat squarely in the saddle, balanced the bike level, and held my phone camera down low to snap a photo of the sight glass. Dirty oil, but verified safely above the low line. It’s a trick that saved my back and my bike when I was too cooked to do it "by the book."
=========================================
Chapter 4: The Lorain Connection, The 3k Mark, & The 0400 Headlights
By Day 5 (Friday, June 12), I had pushed up into Ohio, officially crossing the 3,000-mile mark of the total loop. I had a scheduled meet in Lorain with a seller named Ryan I’d met on Facebook. I originally went there just to buy an ST luggage rack, but Ryan had a complete, tinted Laminar Lip windshield sitting there. He offered it for $20. On an ST1100, you don't pass on a tinted Lip for twenty bucks.
Ryan was riding a beautiful black, non-ABS ST1100. He told me he’d recently come back to riding after a multi-year hiatus—a story I can certainly relate to. He still has his dad’s old Harley in the garage, but like many of us, he’s come to deeply appreciate the sheer engineering and precision of the Honda platform. Seeing that cross-generational mechanical respect made the stop a major highlight.
After securing the gear, I pushed east across the state line to camp at a highway rest area in Brookville, PA. Sleep was short-lived. At 0400 on Saturday, June 13, I woke up to headlights glaring directly at my picnic table "camp." I just needed a quick juice break anyway, so instead of trying to fight it, I packed up the gear and got rolling extra early into the dark Pennsylvania morning.
=========================================
Chapter 5: The 6-Hour Breakdown, The Left-Side Drop, & Reshaping Rubber
Saturday morning brought the trip's biggest operational bottleneck in Denver, Pennsylvania, and the absolute low point of my logistics planning. I pulled in to collect what were supposed to be ABS upgrade parts, only to realize they were completely wrong. I ended up stuck in a parking lot for over six hours, waiting for the seller to return so I could get a refund.
That six-hour wait actively cost me my schedule's highly anticipated stop at the Smokey Mountain Small Bore Rally in Maryville, TN. As the hours ticked away in that PA parking lot, I watched my extra ride time completely evaporate. I had to make the hard choice to scrub the rally from the itinerary entirely, meaning I'll have to wait yet another year to make it out there. I was completely bummed.
Instead of pacing around furious, I channeled that frustration into the pavement and knocked out a critical mid-trip oil change right there, dumping the sheared-down highway oil before hitting the mountains.
Somewhere down the road after that absolute fiasco, the mental fatigue caught up with me during a quick snack and bathroom stop. I pulled into a rest area to spin a tight, low-speed U-turn into a parking space, using about two or three empty spots for the arc. I was only crawling at about 2 mph, but I gave it just a little too much turn for the speed, and the weight took over, putting the ST gently down on its left side. Knowing Honda engineered heavy-duty, built-in tip-over bars into the frame for this exact reason, I didn’t even fret. Instead of getting mad, I jumped off the bike and immediately celebrated—hurling a sarcastic "woot!" into the air and throwing double fist-pumps above my head to lean into the sheer ridiculousness of the moment. A kind fellow saw the show, jumped out of his truck, and helped me swing the 700lb beast back on its wheels.
Once I finally cleared the Denver area, I hit the central Pennsylvania mountain gaps hard for a heavy morning run to reshape my rubber. After thousands of miles of flat highway, my Dunlop Roadsmart III (RS3) tires were starting to square off. I spent that morning aggressively diving into deep transitions, leaning the ST into the twisties to scrub the flat center profile off the shoulders and peel back fresh compound through high-load curves. The telemetry was high-intensity: 83 mph across Black Moshannon Creek and 82 mph on US-222 North to make up for the lost time.
=========================================
Chapter 6: Heading South, The NC Crew, & The Push Start
By Sunday, June 14, I was pushing south through Virginia and into North Carolina. Stopping down at the North Carolina welcome center rest stop, the road-level camaraderie kept hitting right when I needed a lift. I ran into two employees, Cory and James. Absolute legends. Cory and I ended up standing out there chatting for a solid 20 minutes just talking shop about these older bikes. When you're solo for days, processing a dropped rally and heavy miles, those genuine interactions keep you grounded.
I decided to camp at the NC welcome center that night, but the following morning (Monday, June 15) was easily the most unglamorous, brutal sequence of the entire loop.
I walked out to the bike with a heavy load of gear and immediately stepped right into a massive pile of dog *****. While furiously scrubbing my right boot in the grass to clean off the biohazard—already furious at whatever lazy human didn't pick up after their pet—things took a tragic turn. Right in the patch of grass where I was scrubbing, I accidentally crushed a tiny baby mouse. I felt absolutely terrible, and honestly, I still do. Taking a life completely by accident just because I was losing my temper over a careless dog owner was a massive gut punch to start the day.
To top it off, I realized a catastrophic rookie mistake: my portable USB battery bank had stayed plugged into the bike's system and completely drained the ST battery overnight. So there I was, fully loaded down, running on a week's worth of 3,000+ solo highway miles, physically wrestling and push-starting a 700+ pound motorcycle by myself on the rest stop pavement.
When that V4 finally fired, I threw a leg over and spent the day burning miles south. Thanks to the absolute massive aerodynamic air pocket the ST fairings create at highway speeds, that low-pressure zone pulled the residual scent forward—meaning I literally smelled that dog ***** all day long inside my helmet bubble.
Pushing down into the final stretch towards Jacksonville, the sky completely unzipped. I spent a solid two hours fighting my way through a heavy, blinding downpour mixed with chaotic rush-hour slab traffic, forcing total concentration to keep the heavy sport-tourer stable on the slick asphalt.
That evening, after surviving the rain and the morning's battery disaster, things got a little interesting while setting up my next low-profile rest spot. The local police ended up showing up at the stop after a call came in about a suspicious truck parked in the vicinity. The officer rolled up to check the area out, saw me just low-profile "camping" out in the open near the bike, and was completely unphased. He let me be, and I finally got some rest.
=========================================
The Midnight Nap & The Ride Home
The final stretch back into Florida on Tuesday, June 16, was a marathon. I cut into Jacksonville late that night to stop by my brother's place and pick up a few personal belongings. From there, I dropped my pace right down to the baseline, entering defensive stealth mode as I cruised into Clay County. Knowing how notoriously gung-ho and ticket-happy the law enforcement officers are through that stretch of North Florida, I kept my hand steady, trailing just a tick under the speed limit to glide through their territory completely invisible.
By midnight, I pulled into Boathouse Riverfront Park in Palatka. The map always shows the Blue Crab Festival at those coordinates, but the park was dead quiet—no festival happening. Running on pure physical exhaustion with 40+ miles left to reach camp, I knew better than to risk the final dark highway leg while completely compromised. The pavilion benches were soaking wet from the heavy night air, so I didn't even bother trying to lie down. I just leaned my back squarely against a dry concrete pillar under the pavilion shelter, kept my helmet and gloves resting right on my lap, and caught a brief, much-needed midnight nap to recharge.
By 0300, long before the sun even thought about coming up, I woke up, shook off the stiffness, and got back in the saddle. I spent the final pre-dawn hours just cruising along through the cool morning air, finishing up the remaining miles back to the home stable in Ocala.
But the final day brought a different kind of hit. I learned that Oliver Tree passed away in a helicopter collision. It left a heavy mark on the final miles of the ride. He was actually one of the biggest influences for me starting my own musical journey. I always figured if a guy could look that completely strange—completely intentionally, of course—and still become a massively successful, uncompromising artist, then a mechanic like me could build something unique too. As his track goes, "I get tired of explaining as these seasons keep on changing... life goes on and on and on and on." RIP to an innovator.
The V4 is finally tucked in, the parts are sorted, and the odometer is resting. It wasn't the smoothest loop, and the budget is shot, but it proved exactly why we buy these bikes for life. I took a chill ride on the ST over to the car wash yesterday to give it the attention it deserves after being an absolute tank the last 9 days—no cargo, no trailer layout calculations, no timeline—just a slow cruise to completely clear my head after dealing with the absolute madness of the trip.
RideOrTieDye.
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