Posts

Showing posts with the label cross country motorcycle trip

The Road Ahead

View Larger Map

BMW R 1200 R

Image
Today I got my dream bike, a BMW R 1200 R. My Honda VTX 1300 R is a great bike. In the year I owned it I got a sense of what I am looking for in a motorcycle. It's great for cruising and it looks really good plus it is solid as a rock as far as reliability goes. The BMW is sportier, safer, more efficient, lighter and it's just more suited to the kind of riding I do. I bought it off Craigslist from a lawyer in Maryland. He really took care of it and rigged it for touring even though he mainly used it as a commuter. He added a lot of aftermarket accessories to make his commute easier which will benefit me greatly on my cross country trip. The additions include. hard saddle bags (lockable) trunk bag big enough to hold my helmet. extra lighting up front and in the rear blinking brake lights red LED brake lights around the license plate highway bars which will be invaluable to me after many long miles on the road. heated grips onboard computer power plug for chargin...

Gear Load-out

Image
On the advice of a friend I stopped by REI yesterday to get some gear for my cross country motorcycle trip this July. Motorcycle camping is a lot like back country camping; you need to pack light and small. REI has a heavily promoted annual sale. Don't expect to save a ton of money over online retailers but you will get the benefit of seeing, touching, feeling before dropping a C note on a sleeping bag. Case in point, I walked into REI with the goal of purchasing the cheapest best sleeping bag I could find that would allow me to sleep through the night in Glacier National Park in July. After consulting with the shaved headed goatee'd salesman I bought the North Face Cat's Meow sleeping bag for $121. That's a pretty decent price but not cheaper than you can find online. I'm not complaining though, the price was good and the sales guy helped me out a lot. As I will be camping most nights of my 3+ week journey I thought I'd go ahead and get ever...

Badlands National Park Made the Cut

I definitely have to travel through Badlands on my cross country motorcycle trip this summer. http://www.flickr.com/photos/livingwilderness/294680370/sizes/o/

The Road

View Larger Map This summer I’m going on a solo motorcycle road trip from one side of America to the other and back again. I’m starting in our nation's capitol and heading due west to San Francisco. From there I turn right to Seattle then hang another right bound for DC. My guidelines are: sleep under the stars as much as possible. stay off the major interstates as much as possible. take the picture whenever it presents itself. capture and post as much of this adventure as possible via pictures, twitter, gps position. Take it all in. I want to make the most of this trip. For the 4th bullet I’m going to build a website where I can post pictures and video from the road so everyone can see what I see. I’ll also post my geo-position in real-time or near real time as well as my twitter updates. Should I get an iPhone and use Google Latitudes for the positioning? Do I need to schlub a laptop with me? What’s the best one-man tent for this? For the last guideline bullet, what are the m...