Gettting ready to leave Iowa City

4 years ago I decided to leave Iowa City but never got around to it. Now I'm looking at departing with a friend I met this year in my math class. We both ride motorcycles and want to leave this dumb-ass state. He has a truck and a trailer so we'll haul the bikes out instead of going with my original plan of taking two weeks to take the slowest route to Oregon. Hey, it's December so riding out there wouldn't be the most fun thing to do. We're going to stay in Salem until we decide to otherwise. There's no plan but I do have ideas for what I'd like to do.

1. Get a job.
2. Find a cheap as shit place to live.
3. Go to school.

Those are the main priorities I tell my family I have but the amazing roads and trails of the Pacific Northwest are the biggest reason I want to go. What the fuck am I talking about? I'm going to ride, hike, camp, explore, meet some weirdos and experience life on the coast until I run out of money or get more. If I run out of money I will ride back towards Iowa on my KLR650. I say "towards" because if I find anything worthwhile on the way back I will stay there.

Q. Why Oregon?
A. Good friends insist that I would love it and the pictures I've seen are very amazing. There are more things to do that I'm interested in doing. What can a guy do in Iowa that's really exciting? Nothing legal.

The difficult part of saving money out there will be resisting the urge to eat nothing but the delicious cheeses produced in that area. Yeah, I'm looking at Rogue River Blue specifically. http://www.roguecreamery.com/product.asp?specific=250

Here's what I'm sleeping on until I leave.



See this monkey? That's my new travel pillow. The other one is too big to pack into my luggage and more importantly, it doesn't look like a monkey. Ya'll know I like monkeys, right?



There are a few things left to get rid of. If it doesn't fit in that hiking bag then it's not going. I just need to decide which of the four little laptops I have is the best. Thinking about the Asus 701 but I may take a Fujitsu Lifebook because it has a rotating touch screen and would work really well in my tank bag for displaying maps or PDF's so I can read and ride at the same time.



My bed previous to being a wool blanket and sleeping bag was a very soft, large, pillow-topped bed I was borrowing.

Last night I returned the bed and stayed for dinner and a few drinks. The best part of the night was getting to see my favorite living creature. Her name is Pico and she is a long-haired Chihuahua. She hung out with me all night and behaved really well while I ate some pizza.













You think I lie about having pizza?


We drank this German wine that came with instructions to serve "very warm". Attempts to drink it out of little chocolate shot glasses made for good time and flavor. It gives me a great idea for a prank that would result in a chocolate and wine stained wedding dress.



Next Friday is my last day of work then I assume I'll be leaving sometime shortly after that depending on the schedule of my travel buddy. It will be nice not to be working for a little while but I look forward to getting a new job doing tech support. I have such a good time doing what I love.