This is James 4 and he does his documentation and wearily takes a seat in the shade of the store. Then a third rider on a loaded scooter appears at the pumps and we say hello. They’re moving fast and steady, riding much more efficiently than me. Other riders arrive, fuel up and leave, including Charles Beck 2 from South Carolina and Steve Putnam 3 from Florida. “Steve, visit the restroom even if you don’t have to pee,” I say. Then we hit the store for drinks and the restroom, which is unexpectedly elegant in an Algonquin-of-the-West sort of way. We fuel up and do the Cannonball documentation with our smartphones, sending photos and GPS coordinates to event organizers to prove we are here. We exchange greetings and commiserate over the heat it’s good to see them again, to know they’re okay. Motorcyclists and scooterists tend to find their own pace and often encounter those traveling at similar speeds. We’ve come about 257 miles today and have been hopscotching with fellow Cannonballers Stephen Terrien from New Hampshire and a few others. The hot, dry air is sucking the life out of us, and despite the cool water in my Camelbak I’m dying for a cold bottle of Gatorade. This is the Torreon Store and Gas Station in Cuba, New Mexico, a mandatory checkpoint 1 worth 95 points, but we’d be stopping here even if we didn’t have to. The temperature hovers in the low 90s as I arrive with Virginia Cherry, a riding partner. I rode very slowly and carefully and finished almost dead last.ĭay 03 | Tuesday, June 20: Checkpoint 3 is a lonely three-pump fuel station selling only low 86 octane and diesel on a desolate stretch of New Mexico 197. She has about 22 hp and I named her after one of the two ships of the 1839 James Clark Ross Antarctic expedition. I piloted “HMS Terror,” #61, a 2016 Vespa 300cc GTS Super Sport (rounded up from its actual 278 by Piaggio marketing). Cannonball events are held every two years and are limited to scooters of 278ccs or less. It started June 18 th and ended June 25 th. from San Clemente, California, to Hilton Head, South Carolina. Note from the mission historian: The 2023 Scooter Cannonball was an eight-day, 3,170 mile checkpointed ride across the U.S.
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