Best Bike Touring Item?

I was just writing something about packing for a motorcycle tour and it got me thinking about what was the most useful items us touring motorcyclists take on our trips. I would like to know from you what your most useful items are on a motorcycle tour. I will start the ball rolling and say that I enjoy listening to music not just on my bike but also in the places I stop at overnight. I have been trying for years to find a good sounding but small speaker system that I can plug my iPod into for when I am in motel or wherever I am staying that night. I have tried a few over the years, but they either don't sound good or are to bulky for carrying on a bike.

Then out-of-the-blue, I found myself on Christmas day opening tiny present that my darling wife had just given to me. It was a speaker by Lifetrons and it is fantastic! It is very small sounds just great. It has about a nine hour battery life and is recharged via a USB so it is perfect if you are taking a laptop or netbook, meaning you dont need to take a bulky charger for it. Here is a link to the Lifetrons Website. I have to say that this tiny speaker is stunningly good to take on a bike tour.

What I would like to hear from you is what item do you find most useful on a bike trip. I dont mean common items like cameras or cell phones that we all take, but other things that are maybe more unusual.......?

4 months to go

A short while ago it did seem like my preparations for the tour were well ahead of where they needed to be. But now, as is illustrated in the picture, time seems to be just melting away.

Today it is 4 months until the start of my tour of the USA. Maybe I just imagining it, but I seem to have accomplished little over the past few weeks in getting things ready. I guess it is just a guy thing – give us one or two things to think about and we can cope very well. Give us a lot of things to do and we seem to drift from one to another, without really getting much finished. I think I have to many things to do at the moment, so I am going to revert to type and do what I always do in these circumstances – start writing a list of what needs to be done, then get satisfaction as I strike each one off as being completed!

Improve my Photography

Now that I have retired (it still sounds very odd when I say that), one of the things I want to spend some time doing is to improve my photography. I think my photography is ok, but I don’t really understand the technical side of what I am trying to do. So, being in Spain for the past week or so, I decided to bring my Camera and see what I could do.

I have had my Nikon D200 for about a year and a half and the beauty of the camera is you can change the settings to “Program” and it becomes a simple point-and-shoot camera where you don’t need to really understand anything except composition. However, having had some time to read the manual , or more accurately, skim through it, I am slowly understanding the other things that the D200 can do. All I can say at the moment is that I am glad I am retired, because I think I might need quite a lot of time to get to the bottom of all of this technical stuff.

Photographically, I want to be able to capture my upcoming tour of the USA in the best way possible and so I need to learn more and practice over the next 4 months. I have included below some of the photos I have taken this week, so I will use these to compare to where I have reached before I start the tour.


Earlier in the week, despite the rain, I was determined to get my camera out – here is a close up of the rainwater sitting on the decking at our house in Spain....





















Another shot of a palm tree reflecting on the very wet decking....




















I tried a few shots at very fast shutter speeds. Here is one of my sons jumping off a log. I think this was taken at 1000th of a second....






















Another shot of my son, who soon regretted his decision to do a flip. He thought the sand, actually small stones, was softer than it really was. He landed on his head and shoulders with quite a thump!.....






















As the weather has been so poor, I tried to capture the high wind we were having ....
















As I was shooting directly into the sun, it was difficult to get the aperture right on this shot, so using my new found knowledge, I used bracketing to get different exposures of the same shot. This was the best....





















I wanted to get a large depth of field on this shot and I think it worked. The whole picture from front to back is in focus......






















I was pleased with the composition of this shot.... The rock of Gibraltar is in the background....





















Another shot of Gibraltar. In the foreground is where a river meets the Mediterranean Ocean and causes some interesting water effects....






















It makes for a bizzare picture, but these are oranges that for whatever reason got swepted down a river, into the Med then washed up on the beached during a storm....






















Jeremy throwing a stone in the Med....






























A view of the mountains with a motorway in the forground....

Paranoid? Who me?

Ok, so like many we had a bad winter. Lots of snow. Cold. Miserable.

Not to worry, my wife and I agreed to go the south of Spain where the weather will be much better.... blue skies.... walks on the beach..... heaven.

That was the aim. We arrived last Wednesday. 6 days ago. Guess what. It has rained every day. I don't mean just a little light rain, but it has chucked it down. Cats and dogs type rain, plus a few cows thrown in as well.. Torrential. Today the wind came up as well. Forget the walks on the beach! Standing upright was challenging enough.


Not only has the bad weather followed us here, but it is not content with just staying outside the house. It has forced its way in. It is in the house! I swear it is after me....... the picture is a bucket in one of the bedrooms to catch the rain that is trying to get to me. The rain was so heavy it has created a leak in the roof. I swear it is coming after me......

I just looked at the medium range forecast for the next 7 days. It is going to rain every day!!!! I give up. I will try to take some pictures of the weather tomorrow. Until then, you just get a bucket.

10,000 Bikes!!

There is a small town in the west of the UK called Wootton Bassett that has become an un-official centre of respecting the UK war dead from the current conflict in Afghanistan. The town is near a military airbase where soldiers killed in the conflict are repatriated and the town is on the route for the hearses carrying the bodies of the dead from RAF Lyneham.

The mother of a soldier who died in an explosion in Afghanistan had the idea to set up a charity to provide support for those directly involved in the conflict. “Afghan Heroes” has been launched by a group of mothers with the aim of helping our service personnel directly on the front line. People have been holding fund-raising events and sending the proceeds to the Afghan Heroes organisation and one such event has caught the imagination of the biking community in the UK.

On Sunday 14th March, which is Mothers Day in the UK, there is a planned motorcycle ride through the town of Wootton Bassett to RAF Lyneham to show support for our troops fighting in Afghanistan. A special website was set up for bikers wishing to attend to register for the event and in just a few days, registrations reached 14,000 people on 10,000 bikes. I was one of those people that registered.

Due to the overwhelming support for this and in the knowledge that the town is very small, the organisers have had to suspend the registrations, but have said the event will go-ahead. I am trying to imagine what 10,000 bikes might look like – if the event goes ahead, I will take photos and let you know!

New Paint for my Road King

A little while ago I was trying to decide whether to repaint my Road King. Well, the decision has been made and yes, I am going to do it. The bike has been stripped down and the tank, two fenders and two side panels have been delivered this morning to Tony Evans in Wolverhampton who is going to do the paintwork. I met with Tony a couple of weeks ago and we discussed some ideas about what we might do. This morning we met again and finalised those plans and Tony starts on the paint job this week!

No. I am not going to say what he is going to do, but you can look forward to seeing the completed paint work in a few weeks time.

You can see Tony’s work on his website.

The picture above is an example of Tony’s airbrushing skills. I hope he doesn’t mind that I lifted it from his website......

US Visa

Happy days!

My passport was delivered back today after being at the US Embassy in London for a week. It now contains a shiny new 10 year visa for the USA. That is the last big item on my "must do" list. The countdown is well and truly on now!

London Motorcycle Show

I went to the London Motorcycle Show on Friday and I must admit I was a tad disappointed. Considering London is a major global City, the show was quite small and whilst most of the major bike manufacturers were there, there were some missing. KTM for example. However, after not being at the other major bike show in the UK at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham at the end of last year, it was good to see both Harley-Davidson and Ducati at the London show. Overall though, it was just a bit small and I wondered if this was just a sign of the financial crisis but then I remembered I had been to the same exhibition centre about three weeks ago for the London Boat Show and compared to that the bike show was less than half the size of the boat show. There were just less stands and vendors at the bike show than I had expected.

I did see some interesting bikes, some neat bike accessories for sale, and some friends. I even bought a new helmet for my tour of the USA – something subtle and understated.

Here are some pictures from the show........



The new crash helmet I bought especially for my US tour!!....













A Moto Guzzi concept bike....














A really nice restored Triton....














A low custom bike that I liked the look of....














The engine of a beautiful trike by Destiny Cycles....














Another stunning bike by Destiny Cycles....



















The new Norton Commando....














A wicked looking drag bike....
















Not my thing, but these Ducati's looked fantastic....
















A Victory that had been given the Cory Ness treatment....














Sunglasses feeling unloved, waiting patiently for somebody to buy them....

















Friends Ron and Caroline Brett who run Brett Tours – a European wide motorcycle touring company....



















I did take a few pictures of the new Harley-Davidson 48 Sportster – probably my favourite new stock bike at the show, but the pictures were all out of focus (so I lifted this one from a H-D site).....

Busy, Busy, Busy ! ! !

Oh my, it has been a busy few days. Here is my week so far.....

Monday - attended my Visa interview at the US Embassy in London. (Application approved).

Tuesday - found a more experienced shipper for transporting my bike from London to New York.

Wednesday - my sons (Jeremy’s) 21st Birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEM).

Wednesday - decided I would go ahead with the new paint scheme for the bike.

Wednesday - went over the 1000 hits mark on my blog. Thank you, dear readers :-)

Thursday - rode the bike. Yeah. First time this year!

Thursday - took the bike to Warrs (H-D dealer) to strip it down ready for painting .

Thursday - started looking for 40’s and 50’s movies actresses portraits for the bike

Friday (tomorrow) - going to the London Motorcycle Show.

Phew!

Like a Virgin.....

Sometimes, we do something that gives us a great deal of satisfaction. It can be something momentous, or it can be something small, but all the same it is significant enough to make us feel good. Over the weekend, I did something that was just like that – I booked my flights with Virgin Atlantic to the USA for my bike tour!!! 22nd June I fly to New York...... Yeah!!!!

Sat Nav Bad. Sat Nav Good.

Way back in 1979, the Boomtown Rats recorded a song called “I don’t like Mondays”. I would like to extend that to “I don’t like Januarys”. It is still depressingly cold here. And wet. The sort of wet that gets right through to your bones. What are you meant to do if getting on your motorbike means becoming wetter than a fish taking a bath and colder than one of Ben and Jerry’s specials?

Clean the bike? Done that.

Take the dog for a walk? Done that – got wet.

Buy a wake board? Done that, but it is too cold to use it.

OK, so a week ago I thought I needed something new to look at. You might have read my post back in December hinting to my dearly beloved that I might need a new Sat Nav for Christmas for my tour of the USA. Well, it worked :) and I sat there on Christmas day surrounded by discarded wrapping paper and with a big smile on my face, holding a box marked Garmin Zumo.

About a week ago, having seen it was raining AGAIN, I opened the box to give it a try. My initial impressions after a couple of hours were “why did I bother - this is a pile of poo”.

However having got over the teething troubles, I soon realised this was just what I needed. The next few days showed to me this would be very good indeed.

OK, before telling you, dear reader, why I like the Garmin so much, here is the scoop on the teething troubles. I opened the box to see there is no manual, which is strange, so I checked the packing list. Guess what? There isn’t meant to be a manual packed in the box! You have to go online to get one. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all for saving the planet and not printing stuff unnecessarily (like in 6 languages) but this is pretty silly. They don’t tell you where to find the manual online, you just have to go find it for yourself, then if you are like me and do want a paper copy, you have to print it out yourself. Not a great start.

One of the things that attracted me to the Garmin was the ability to plot routes on your computer in detail and then transfer them to the Sat Nav unit. This means having to load the mapping software onto your computer. OK so far – loading it was a piece of cake. Then you have to unlock the maps. Garmin please listen to this – it was a TOTAL NIGHTMARE to do this. Two calls to their support department (actually very helpful) soon sorted this though, but why make it so difficult in the first place? I understand the need to do this, but why make it so that only people at Garmin can understand how to do this? Dumb, vey dumb.

The next thing to go wrong was in addition to the maps (Europe) that came on the CD in the box, my wife purchased one of the map sets (the USA) on a memory card that you place into the Sat Nav unit, which I did. However, there is no way to transfer those maps back to your computer to make the route planning easier. OK, so I need to exchange this memory card for a CD, so I contacted Amazon which is where my wife purchased the memory card. What came next was a bummer – to prevent people copying software, Amazon and their suppliers do not take back software, so even though I couldn’t copy it, I had to buy the same USA maps on a CD! I now have all of the USA maps twice. Not happy.

So, this all took a few days to resolve and of course when the new CD arrived I had to go through the stupid un-locking process again. Arrrrggghhhhh!

Anyway, now to the good stuff. Planning a route on your computer is so much better than doing it on a sat nav unit. It is so easy – you can see a proper map and enter waypoints with the click of your mouse, join them up to form a route and save them. So easy! This turned me back into a happy little boy. You can even then view your map in Google Earth to see what other highlights there are along your route that you might want to stop and see. I don’t want to sound too gushy over this, but having used this for the past few days, I am a convert. The TomTom system I have is now consigned to a cupboard and the Garmin will rule supreme I am sure.

Having planned a few test routes I went out and tried them on the road. Ok, it was in my car because it was STILL RAINING, but I am sure you will forgive me for that. The unit performed very well on the road – up to the high standard of the TomTom. The Garmin Zumo has a bigger screen, but a comparison of the two sat navs shows them to be about the same on the road.

I have yet to try the Garmin on a motorbike, but I am pretty sure it will be as good as in the car. I have already wired it in to the bikes power source, which was straightforward. I will rig up the very neat Garmin speakers (extra cost) inside my helmet soon and take it out for a test ride.

That is if it stops raining.

New Paint Job for the Road King?

You know how your mind turns if you have a difficult decision to made? I am trying to decide if I should get a new paint job done on my 2006 Harley-Davidson Road King. This is the bike I will be using for the tour of the USA. I have been thinking for a while that I might get it done before shipping the bike to New York, but I am not sure. Trouble is, I rather like the sort of classic retro style of the Road King and it seems a shame to do anything that will really detract from it.















But I also like having a bike that stands out a little. Duh, I mean a lot. My custom bike doesn’t exactly blend in to the background!


Then a few weeks ago I saw a picture that a guy called Tony Evans has painted. This was painted onto a piece of flat sheet metal as a sample and I adore the picture which is of Audrey Hepburn. Yes, the picture on the left is really an airbrush painting! Now, it just so happens that I am a bit of an Audrey Hepburn fan and so is my wife. I just love the way she looks in some of her old movies. I even had a picture painted of Audrey for one of the bedrooms in our house in Spain.

So the big question for me is should I have this image, and others like it painted onto my Road King in a sort of homage to B&W movie screen legends? I am going to see Tony later today to see some of his work. I will let you know what I decide, but that may take some time......

Tony's work can be seen at Tony's Custom Paint Shop

Motorcycle Lodge

I was cruising the web earlier today and I looked at a blog that I like – it is called Thunder Road. Essentially a guy (Radar) in Texas who loves motorcycle touring is considering setting up a lodge (or lodges) to specifically cater for touring bikers. He is gathering information on what bikers might want out of such a lodge and he wants people to visit his blog to vote on this. I have voted and it struck me that I could help by publicising the need for as many bikers to visit his blog and vote.

If you want to vote and help determine what his lodges should contain, or if you want to publicise this on your own blog if you have one, then visit The Thunder Road Blog

Visa For The USA

Having visited the USA on many occasions over the past 38 years I thought I knew everything I needed to know about visa requirements when entering the US. It turns out I was wrong.

As I am from the UK I knew that the USA and the UK have a reciprocal visa waiver program. Put simply this means that each country relaxes its normal visa requirements for visitors from the other country – as a UK citizen visiting the USA, I don’t need a visa and vice-versa.

WRONG! I found out today that this is time limited. The waiver program only applies in certain conditions and one of the exceptions is you need a visa if your visit is for more than 90 days. My planned tour is more than 90 days, so I need a visa. No problem, as it will not take very long, but one of the requirements is that all applicants need to have an interview with a consular official following the completion of a comprehensive application form. There are very strict rules to follow when applying for a US visa.

You can find out about the visa requirements by looking at the U.S. Department Of State website

The website stresses the importance of applying in plenty of time before your visit, so I will get onto this very soon.

Snow Business

We don't get much snow in the South of England, but yesterday was one of those rare occasions. As such, I had to take a few photos near where I live......

Riding Suspended Due To Cold

Brrrr. Winter has hit the UK with a vengeance. This has stopped any thought of riding and my bikes are well and truly put away until the weather warms up. I heard on the tv last night that we had one of the coldest Decembers for so many years and that the UK will probably have more snow today than any time in the last 30 years. I just looked outside and the snow has started here.

Yesterday I went for a walk near to where I live and took a few photos. The pictures below are not snow – they are ice covering the fields and roads. Pretty, but not exactly motorcycling weather!