6 months until the start

It is now 6 months today until I start my tour.

The preparations are on track; the route is set, shipping of the bike is being sorted, dates all known, packing lists being developed, the hotel for Sturgis is booked.

There is snow here at home in London and my bikes are put away for winter. The tour seems a long way away, but the 6 months will go by fast.

To Cover or Not to Cover?

I am not sure about whether I should take a bike cover with me. Opinion seems to be divided on this with security of your bike being compared to the amount of space a bike cover takes to carry when touring.

Essentially it comes down to this – where are you going to park your precious and maybe beloved bike overnight when on the road? Will it be safe where you leave it? If you think it will be safe, then go without the cover. However, my guess is that you will never really know if your bike will be ok – even parking in what seems like a very safe area doesn’t mean the bad guys don’t go there.

I have bought a lightweight bike cover for my tour (http://eztouring.com/). As can be seen from the photo below, it does a great job of covering the bike. This cover is made of the same material they make parachutes from – it seemed to me that parachutes get packed really tightly so a cover made from the same material should roll and pack into a similarly small space. The first photo below shows the cover packed ready for carrying on the bike – hmmm, this is small, but even this takes quite a lot of space, so I am not sure if I will have room for it. I guess I will make my mind up when I have packed everything else and see what room I have left.
















This photo shows the cover on the bike.

Which Sat Nav?

Using a Sat Nav on a bike has benefits and disadvantages. Some say it takes away some of the freedom of the road that we all adore so much. Some say it simply helps us from getting lost! I am somewhere in the middle – I use one when I really need to, but leave it off the bike most of the time.


When I do use one is normally when I am on a long trip to somewhere I have never been before. For a few years I have been using a Tom Tom Rider and I have found it OK, but only just. Sure, it is clear with a good screen, the route it finds are normally very good, the speed camera warnings are excellent and it is very easy to use. It is only let down by the longer route planning with many waypoints (places you want to go via on the way). In short, I don’t like its longer route planning capabilities and there is no way to save anything but your currently planned journey. Also, I have never really been happy with the way you connect the unit to speakers / earpieces so you can hear the verbal directions.


For my 13,500 mile tour of the USA I definitely needed a Sat Nav, but I wanted something better than the Tom Tom.


I did some research, checked out what each could do, asked a few buddies (thanks Derek), compared features and prices and decided to go for the Garmin Zumo 660.






















Christmas is coming and guess what is going on my list...... Jackie....... ?

Assuming my wife takes the hint, I will let you know how I get on with it during the tour preparations.

HOG Assistance in the USA

Many of us Harley-Davidson riders in the UK have taken out a bike recovery insurance policy called HOG assistance. In the event of a breakdown, this covers transporting your bike to the nearest H-D dealer, transport costs, overnight accommodation etc.

I have enquired if the UK cover is applicable if you take your Harley to the States, and the simple answer is yes. The UK and USA organisations have reciprocal arrangements whereby each is covered in the others country. There are two things you should do however – notify HOG assistance in the UK before you go to check exactly what cover you will have in the USA and secondly, get from the UK people the breakdown telephone numbers for use in the USA.

USA Times Zones

One of the things I will have to think about on the tour is the different time zones across the USA. On the main (contiguous) States, there are 4 times zones which are (from west to east) Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern. These range between 8 and 5 hours behind the UK. The map below shows approximately what time zones are where. Don’t get caught out by the boundaries – they don’t necessarily follow the State boundaries as you might expect!

The USA changes its clocks for summertime normally at the same time as the UK, but sometimes not.

Top Road Trip Songs

When on the tour, I want to listen to the most relevant music that I can. Therefore I am putting together a list of my Top Road Trip Songs. I have my own ideas about what to include, but I’d like some suggestions, so why not suggest a song or two using the comments link below this post and maybe add your suggestion to my list.

USA Helmet Laws

Being somewhat confusing for riders from outside of the USA, each State has its own helmet laws that say whether you must wear a helmet, you can choose to wear one if you are over a certain age, or there are some States that do not have a helmet law. The map below shows what the current situation is with each State.
Red means you don't have to wear a helmet.
Blue normally means you dont have to wear a helmet if you are over a certain age (check on the link below)
Green means you must wear a helmet
(Click on the map for greater detail)
















For further information see http://www.iihs.org/laws/HelmetUseCurrent.aspx

Now I am definitely not saying that you should or should not wear a helmet if you are riding in the States – that is up to you. But, you should know what the laws are, so as well as looking at whether you have a choice to wear a helmet or not, there are other laws that you should consider like;

· Do you have to wear eye protection?
· Must you have a headlight on?
· Can you wear headphones?
· Is lane sharing / splitting allowed?

For the answers to these questions in any of the States you might be considering visiting, see
http://motorcycleinfo.calsci.com/PrintLaws.html

Pannier / Saddlebag Liners

I forgot to mention something very useful that we used on our motorcycle trip to California – Pannier or Saddlebag liners. We purchased these in the UK before we left and took them with us. As we were renting bikes, we wanted to be able to put our belongings in a bag that we could lift out when we arrived at the hotel for the night. We each had 3 and everything we took went in these.

I have to say they were excellent – waterproof with a top that sealed and this formed a carrying strap. I would definitely recommend these for anybody going touring and renting a bike.

They are called Exped Shrink Bags, come in different sizes and are available in the UK from http://www.gearpac.com

Who might join me?

Over the past few days, I have contacted a small number of friends to ask if they want to join me on part of the tour and a few have already expressed a wish to join me. I am not sure how many will eventually come on part of the tour, but a few seem very interested.

I think it will take some time to finaise who will come with me, but there is no rush!

19th September - Detailed Route Planning Completed!

Over the past few days, I have been doing the detailed planning of the tour route through the States of Utah, Arizona and California. They are the last three States and the total distance that I now intend to travel is 13,409 miles in 121 days.

My intended route is shown right at the bottom of this page. It strikes me that the route reflects areas of particular interest to me. The route is very twisty in the States of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. The reason for this is this is the area of the Rocky Mountains – I had planned many routes over this mountain range and the twisty route reflects this.

My route that takes in several passes (roads over mountains) that are at high elevations – this would take some thinking about in advance due to the potential for poor weather at these heights and even altitude sickness. I would need to look into these further in the future.

Having now determined the detailed route, I needed to fix the dates that the tour would take place. In thinking about dates, I only had two considerations to bear in mind. I didn’t want to be in the northern States when the weather was cold, nor in the southern States when the weather was too hot.

Also, I had wanted to go to the motorcycle rally Sturgis in South Dakota and in 2010, the rally takes place between 9th and 15th August and this meant I would need to start the tour on or about 24th June 2010 in Maine in the north east of the USA. This works well as it means I would be in the colder northern States in the summer. It also meant I would get to Death Valley (probably the hottest area in the south in October which is also okay as that misses the really hot months of July and August.

The dates of the tour were therefore fixed to starting on 24th June and finishing at the end of October. Perfect timing.

4th September – Contacted the Harley Owners Group

It had been about a month since I attended the SOFER Rally and met Marjorie Rae from HOG where we had briefly discussed my intended tour.

Since then I had started this blog and it had developed well enough for me to contact Marjorie again. I did that yesterday to ask her opinion about how the blog could be promoted – after all, if I am spending time writing this, I want people to read it!

Marjorie wrote back almost straight away and suggested that the blog could be mentioned in the UK HOG e-zine which goes out to all HOG members in the UK and Ireland. That would give it just the promotion I was thinking of, so thank you HOG!

1st September - Detailed Planning Part 6

I spent yesterday planning the tour through Colorado. This sounds like it will be one of my favourite States. The mountains, passes and rivers will mean this could be a stunning State to ride in.

When I did the planning for Colorado I used an excellent site which is full of helpful information to people planning to ride here. This is called Passes & Canyons – Motorcycle Touring in Colorado.

Today, I started to look at the States of Utah and Arizona. Monument Valley looks fantastic.

31st August 2009 - Saddlebag Locks for my Road King Classic

Having done a few long trips through Europe on my Harley-Davidson Road King Classic, I had learnt that not having locks on the standard leather panniers is a real pain. This means that I could not leave anything of value in the saddlebags.

I had heard that you could buy locks for these saddlebags and I had previously set out to find some on the web. I found they were available in the USA and had bought a set from the Lock It company (http://www.lockitt.com/). Today, I fitted them. It took a couple of hours and was relatively straightforward. They were quite expensive ($180), but in the long run, I suspect they will be more than worth the money.

24th August 2009 – Do the tour solo or with others?

The time I spent reflecting about the tour the previous day had also given me the time to think some more about if I wanted to do this tour on my own, or with others. I had given this some thought previously and I had even spoken to a few friends about this.

I was in two minds. Both doing the trip on my own has its advantages, as does doing it with others. Doing it on my own meant I could start each day at whatever time I was ready, I could go at my pace, I could stop when I wanted and for as long as I liked. I could carry on riding if I felt like it. I could eat, sleep or ride when I wanted to.

On the other hand, it would be a fairly lonely 13,000 miles if I was to do this on my own. I was in the lucky position that I was able to take the time to do this and it was obvious that it was very unlikely that any person would be able to join me for the whole trip. I decided that I would therefore do some of both – some of the tour on my own and some of it with others. A few of the people I had mentioned the tour to had said that they would like to come and do a week, or a couple of weeks, with me. That seems to suit me fine as this would be the best of both worlds.

I decided I would invite a few people to join me. This however does put more pressure on me to know where I will be at any time, within a day or two. This is because if somebody is coming to join me, they are going to need to know roughly where I will be so they can see where they might be travelling from and to. This is so people can choose what part of the tour they might want to do and to enable this to happen they will need to know when as well as where.

I would contact some people about the tour when the planning stage was nearing completion.

24th August 2009 – The different types of roads in the USA

What is an Interstate? What is a highway? A turnpike? Is a freeway free?

I was certainly confused by the different types of road in the US, so I did a little researching.

Here is my quick guide (with thanks to far too many websites to mention).

Interstate. This is a country wide system of limited access major roads very similar to the motorway system in the UK. The Interstate system serves nearly all major U.S. cities and comprises about 47,000 miles of major roads. As the name implies, Interstates cross state boundaries.

These are white numbers on a blue background and the numbering system of Interstates is as follows.








US Highway. This is an integrated system of roads and highways numbered within a nationwide grid. North to south highways are odd-numbered, with lowest numbers in the east and highest numbers in the west. Similarly, west to east highways are even-numbered, with the lowest numbers in the north and highest numbers in the south.

US Highway signs are generally black numbers on a white shield shaped background as below.








State Highways. These are the main roads within a state The signs for these are generally black text on a white background in a variety of shapes. Here is one for Florida.







Freeway. Is a general term for a type of road designed for safer high-speed operation of motor vehicles through the elimination of at-grade intersections, with no cross traffic junctions. Such highways are usually divided with at least two lanes in each direction. This can be an interstate, a US highway or a state highway.

Turnpike. This is a toll road.

23rd August – Detailed Route Planning Part 5 – Time for Reflection

I spent a few hours today planning the detailed route for Utah. What a stunning State this will be!

I did take time to reflect and take stock about the journey I was planning.

Including Utah, I had now done the detailed planning for about 7500 miles to be done in what I calculated up to that point, including a few rest days, to be about 63 days. That is an average of just 119 miles per day and I was beginning to wonder if I had judged this correctly. I wanted to make sure I had the right balance between estimating too many miles a day and too few. Did I have enough time to visit the places I wanted to see, or was I estimating too much time for this and I should be planning to do more miles each day?

The answer was simple. I didn’t know! It felt about right, but did I need to change what I had already planned? I decided that I couldn’t decide, so I needed a compromise. I would continue to estimate how far I planned to travel each day on particular roads – 75 to 125 miles per day on roads that were twisty or with many places that I wanted to stop at, or 150 to 250 miles per day where I had no choice but to use main US Highways or even worse, the Interstates. More on the different types of roads in the USA in the next post.

To maximise the flexibility I felt I needed, I decided that while I would have a good idea how far I would travel each day, I wouldn’t pre-book any accommodation, except for in really busy areas. I would only try to find accommodation each day and this would entirely depend on how far I would travel that day. I might do this on the web (I will be taking my laptop) or simply risk it and try to find somewhere by just riding around the area I arrive at that day.

On the whole, my reflection told me I was doing this planning in the right way for the sort of tour I wanted and I should carry on.

16th / 20th August 2009 – Detailed Planning Part 4

I had a few days to spare, so it was back to the detailed route planning. So far I had planned two of the major parts of the tour (the Atlantic Coast and the Central States) but for me, I was now about to start the most interesting part – travelling south down the Rocky Mountains.

The mountains themselves, the lakes, rivers and of course the twisty, winding roads that result from such geography will make this the most interesting part of the trip.

I spent these few days doing the detailed route planning through two of the States in this region, South Dakota and Wyoming. Just thinking about the places I would visit in these two States evoke strong memories of watching films set in these places when I was a boy – Custer, Crazy Horse Memorial, Boot Hill Cemetery, Sundance and other cowboy related towns. Combine those with Mount Rushmore, the Devils Tower (where they filmed the alien landing scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Yellowstone Park and the Teton Mountains, and this stacks up to be one of the parts of the forthcoming tour that I am most looking forward to.

Total miles planned so far = 6950

I should mention one website that I found to be incredibly useful in this detailed planning stage and that is Mapquest (www.mapquest.com). This is both an electronic map site, but even more useful is its “Directions” section. This allows you to type in the names of two towns or cities and the website then calculates and displays a route between those two places, giving mileages, times, road names etc. There are a number of websites that do this but Mapquest has one feature that is incredibly useful. This is the ability to drag the route shown with your mouse to a different road, say one that you want to use. The software then instantly re-calculates the distances and time. This is excellent when route planning.

8th / 9th August 2009 – The SOFER Rally

This was the weekend of SOFER, the South of England Rally, a multi-chapter Harley Owners Group (HOG) event held at Bisley in Surrey. This was a 3 day long event and my eldest son and I decided to camp. I hadn’t actually slept in a tent for years and I now know why! This weekend made me decided that camping on the USA tour was definitely not for me! I woke in the morning after a very uncomfortable night eased only by the amount of beer that I had to drink the night before. Camping whilst touring on a motorbike is certainly possible and many people do this, but carrying all the equipment needed if camping cannot be easy.

The rally itself was great fun. This is organised by five HOG Chapters (1066, Invicta, Oxford UK, Hogsback, and Thames Valley) and is probably one of the bigger HOG events with bands, retailers, games, a custom bike show (I won best radical custom for my red bike) and lots more.

Over the weekend I met Marjorie Rae, the Manager of HOG for UK and Ireland when she presented me with my custom bike prize, so I took the opportunity to discuss with Marjorie the USA Tour I was planning and it was suggested that I might write a blog about the tour. Hence that is the reason this blog came to fruition!

18th / 31st July – Detailed Route Planning, Part 3

My wife Jackie is American and each year we try to take a family holiday somewhere near Seattle in Washington State. Seattle is where most of Jackie’s family live so it is an obvious location for us to holiday to. This year, 2009, we rented a house at Lake Whatcom, near Bellingham and this gave me an ideal opportunity to do the detailed route planning for a considerable number of States. Being an early riser, I had a good few hours each day on my own, so at about 5.30am each morning, the maps came out for some planning!

One great benefit of doing the planning in the early mornings in the house overlooking the lake was the peace, quiet and sheer tranquillity of the setting. The picture below shows the view from the house we rented.















The only problem was, in order to do the detailed route planning I needed access to the Internet and there was a problem with the Internet service to the house we had rented. This was fixed after a couple of days but to make up for this, the owner of the house took a couple of us for a quick trip in his – wait for it – private plane! Wow, that was fantastic and we flew over the San Juan Islands and landed on a grass strip on one of those islands and took a walk around.

In the house at Lake Whatcom, I was able to do the detailed planning for the States of Connecticut, New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa. Each State took the equivalent of about a full morning to plan and type up on my spreadsheet. The total amount of miles planned so far is now 4720.

27th / 28th June 2009 – Detailed Route Planning Part 2

From this point on for about 3 months, I periodically got out my State maps, books and spreadsheet and I worked my way through each State that I would be visiting.

This weekend I did the detailed route planning for the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and one of the smallest States, Rhode Island.

My tour was to start in the top right hand corner of the USA and work down to the bottom left. For me this meant the tour would actually start in the small town of Calais on the Atlantic Coast where the USA meets Canada.

From what I had read and researched on the internet, I decided to ride down the coast of these 4 States, hugging the Atlantic wherever I could. Comprising a rugged coastline with many old fishing villages, this would be a perfect start to the tour comprising some 1500 miles.

There would be much to see, stop and do along this coast, so I decided not to plan too many miles each day. I based this part of the tour on an average of 125 miles per day, so this part would take about 12 days.

What I wasn’t doing yet was researching and deciding where I would stay each night – that would come later.