Yesterday was my last day on the bike. I got out for a nice ride, about 49 miles of the usual hills and such, which I did with only a couple of breaks. The various and sundry joints, parts and bits felt good. I think I'm ready to start my tour. I might have done another ride or two, but the bike shop that is packing and shipping for me needed a some lead time to get it out by the 31st, which I figured would give me a safe margin of error. FedEx and UPS both estimated about five days. I'll give them a few more to play with.
So I loaded Mojo (yes, the Street Machine has been christened) on to the back of our Subaru wagon and dragged her down to the shop. This was another very concrete act on the path to my journey. Getting on the plane will be the real threshold crossing, for sure, but this has a certain heft to it as well. I talked at length with Ed at Action Sports about packing the bike and my proposed tour. Then I walked out into the afternoon furnace that is Bakersfield in late July. Aloha, my friend!
Now, over the next few days, I have to get my other gear together and packed. I'll post some pictures of the mess as it develops and say a few things about some of the gear. My plan is to ship most of my camping kit out the Maine as well. No point in giving the airlines a chance to lose my stuff. I'm going with only carry-on luggage.
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7 comments:
Scott...
Good luck on this adventure! Certainly all will be in place and feel absolutely wonderful at the first turn of your front wheel. I have done several big adventures in my life and they are always very exciting and at times intimidating. Certainly I am preaching to the choir as I know that this is not your first BarB-Que! So keep us posted along the way. Certainly you will wet my appetite to start planning something for the very near future now that I have my StreetMachine GTe!
Thanks, William. It's nice to have folks "pulling" for me, so to speak.
Best of luck.
Will you have any way to post during the ride - or only when you get back to CA? Updates would certainly be interesting to see - but I am not sure I would be willing to A) carry the weight of a laptop all the time, B) constantly worry about something as valuable and easy to lose (to theft, misplacement or accident) as a laptop, and C) figure out where to find internet access on a X-country trip - so I certainly can wait for a summation at the end.
Hi, Don: I'll be posting from the road using libraries and internet cafes. Simple!
Cheers,
Scott
Scott, I will follow your trip from the road. Good idea on posting from libraries and internet cafes.
Do you have a blog post that details (roughly) where you will be and when?
-Mike
Yo, Mike: My route is explained in my map entry, but I'm going as I go--no set itinerary or conclusion date. This is, essentially, an open-ended journey.
Cheers,
Scott
Scott, thats cool. I love the openess of not having it too planned out.
On our trip we are basically heading north from socal up through oregon, until we turn in seatle eastward. We will cross the middle of america all the way to maine and then down the east coast through the south and then back up to colorado where should stay for at least 2 weeks as we have a ton of free places to stay there.
Thanks again for all the awesome travel tips that you offer. Coming from a serious journeyer as yourself the advice is much appreciated.
-Mike
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