Wow. It’s over. No more riding. It is incredibly hard to believe that Mike and I rode over 4500 miles and saw as much as we did. It took over two years of planning and that’s it. All done. Go home. Get back to work and the real world. Sad? A little. But even more so, we are both happy as anything that we had the opportunity to do something that we have both dreamed about for years. And according to the hundreds of emails that we have received from folks reading our site, many of you have dreamed of such a ride as well!

If you are the type of person that goes to the end of the story before you read the front of the book, I recommend that you stop here and go back to “The Story” and then read “The Ride” day by day.

There were so many great people we had the privilege to meet, places that we saw and things that we did, where do we start?

First, by saying Thank You!

Thanks to Charlie Keller, Bill Savino, Walt Miller and Tiffiny Tong from the Honda Riders Club of America for all of their help and assistance.

George Richardson and Rick Mitchell from Honda’s Parts Division helped us with our Shoei helmets, Pro Honda Oil and chemicals as well as most of our giveaways that we handed out during visits at the dealers.

Jackie Taylor from Federal Allied was instrumental in helping us to get Mikes bike to California and both of our bikes back home after the completion of the ride.

Thanks to Tom Monroe from Intersport Fashions West  for setting us up with jackets, rain gear and gloves.

And of course, our wives deserve the most thanks for this ride as they first off let us go Of course, as Brenda said to me as we were about to board the plane after the ride, “He would have gone no matter what Ed, just like you! Well that may be so, but both Brenda and Carin stood behind us throughout the ride.

We used Cortech brand saddlebags, tail packs and tankbags with great success.

The stats of the ride are as follows.

·        We rode 4420 miles starting from Torrance California and stopping in Knoxville Tennessee. We did not include the Cycle World Concours ride in this mileage total (that takes to 4590 miles).

·        The total “in the seat” running time was 90 hours and 5 min

·        Our average speed for the trip was 49.08 mph

·        We estimated that the average engine speed during that 90 + hours was 5000 RPM which makes for 27,025,000 revolutions of the crankshaft.

·        Each piston traveled up and down 54,050,000 times (yes, that’s 54 MILLION times!).

·        Each camshaft rotated 13,512,500 times.

We did not experience a single mechanical failure!

I cracked a muffler but thanks to Jim Wagnon from Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Phoenix Arizona, we continued with no further problems.

We wore out one rear tire each, mainly due to the extreme heat we encountered during the 1^st five days of the ride with temperatures approaching at least 105 degrees each day. 

We also replaced a drive chain on each bike, which was not expected but not a real issue.

Not bad for a couple of 40 year motorcycles huh?  

We met so many great people that there is no way to mention them all but I have to mention Bud Osmond who took time to ride with us from Litchfield Illinois to Indianapolis Indiana. Bud shared memories with us from the 1960’s when he owned his first CB77 Superhawk.

Also, Steve “The Rainman” McMinn, a fellow associate of mine that joined in at the AMA museum in Pickerington Ohio and rode with us to Knoxville Tennessee. Steve racked up about 2400 miles of his own and without him, we would not have some of the memories that we now have.

Common comments and questions and our responses during the trip:

1.      They seemed to be so much bigger back then. – “It was the biggest bike Honda made back then!”

2.      Do you think they’ll make it that far? – This was answered almost every time by other by-standers – “Of course they will, they’re Honda’s!”

3.      Is that a Dream? – No, it is a SuperHawk!

4.      I had a Honda 90, just like that! – “You may have had a 90, but these are 305’s!” This almost always had a comeback response with question  #1! 

5.      Where is your support team? - For this, all it took was mike and I pointing to each other. We had no support team other than each other for this trip

6.      How’s your butt? “Quite well, thank you very much! We have to credit our Air Hawk seat pads for this though, without them, we would be…. Well, lets just say, very sore.”

7.      Did you guys eat all that pizza? “Almost!”

8.      What are you going to do next to beat this ride? - Like most second attempts to the movies, it would be hard to top this ride. Our suggestion is to have everyone out there try something like this on your own! We have proved that the bikes can take it. It just takes good planning and preparation. Go ahead, many of you have told us that you’ve been wanting to do it for years, now go ahead and follow through with your dreams, just like we did! For us, well this ride was to celebrate Honda’s 45^th anniversary of selling products here in the United States. We know that our wives wont question us if we start to talk as the Honda 50^th anniversary comes along!

9.      How did you keep up the website? - This was (by far) the hardest part of the trip but also the most rewarding! By updating the site daily, we have assured ourselves that we will not forget any of the wonderful moments that we had! We have loaded over 700 pictures on the site!

10. You guys should write a book! - We are considering the idea very seriously!

Thanks to everyone that took the time to look at our site!

Keep on riding!

Ed Abdo and Mike Krzemien