County Count Up

Now that we've been home for a week, I've had time to update the counties list. This is total counties we've traveled so far on motorcycles since I got a motorcycle in August of 2009.

Here is a video illustration depicting the April trip on the U.S. Map. This shows counties we crossed over each day we traveled.

We added 181 counties to our total count on this trip. Our total count so far is 385. So we are just over a tenth of the way to achieving our goal of riding through every county (3,033 counties).

Here are some other statistics about our trip.

19 days
19 States
6,565 miles

Longest day: 1040 miles (Anna, Ill. to Parker, Colo.)
Shortest day: 175 miles (day trip through Santa Fe)

Four of 19 days were non-traveling days.

We didn't keep all the gas receipts, but the average cost was $4/gallon, so at about 40 mpg per bike and each bike traveling 6,565 miles, that's about $1,300 we spent on gas.

It rained on us for about 100 miles out of 6,565, almost all of that rain was on our Iron Butt day. We had a few sprinkles on two other occasions. We had unbelievably great weather, we stayed between storms somehow. We followed tornadoes into Texas about two days later, and 25 inches of snow dumped in Mammoth two days after we left.

We had wind gusts up to 70 mpg in New Mexico. I will never look at the wind report the same now when considering whether to ride my bike. 30 mpg just doesn't seem so menacing now.

Highest elevation with the bikes was at 11,158 feet (Eisenhower Tunnel, I-70. Colorado) and the lowest was 214 feet below sea level (Death Valley). 

We stayed with family or friends 12 of 18 nights. Three of those nights was with Steve's brother in California, but we rented the condo there, so that's nine nights of paid lodging, but all of it was less than $100 a night, in some cases, well less. We didn't end up camping at all.

The Iron Butt Association has already notified us that we have been approved for membership in their prestigious organization.

We needed no bike maintenance on the trip, but I had one headlight bulb go out two days before getting home. And my bike is now in the shop for its 12,000-mile service (It has 15,530 miles on it right now) and a new rear tire. Steve's bike just had the major service done before the trip, so he's going to do his own oil change.

I had 985 emails in my work email when I got back on Monday.