Is Tour Route Planning As Good As The Real Thing?

So the motorbikes are put away, and many of us are sitting here in the depths of winter.  In some places it is cold outside and in others it is very wet.  People from more southerly areas are still able to ride, but for most, winter is a time for staying off the bike.So, what to do?  If...

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Guide to Planning a Motorcycle Road Trip in the USA

Planning to a motorcycle road trip in the US? Then you might want to read this guide.As a Englishman who planned and then rode 21,000 miles in America on a road trip, I learnt a lot about what to consider if planning a motorcycle road trip in the US for the first time. Thinking it would be useful...

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Is winter a problem for bikers? I love it.

For those of us in more northerly places, the onset of winter normally brings the blues. The weather we have enjoyed in the summer and autumn slips away and the rain, cold and even snow and frost appear. 　Once the clocks go back and darkness falls ridiculously early, we tend to put our bikes away until the spring. 　We tend to miss our motorcycling passion and a mild form of depression normally sets...

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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...

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Another Good Book for Trip Planning

I have been doing some more research over the past few days about travelling in Arizona, including the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Sedona, Monument Valley and Route 66.When I was recently working in Chicago, I stopped by a bookshop and picked up a book called “Arizona, New Mexico & the Grand Canyon...

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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....

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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,...

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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...

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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,...

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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...

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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...

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20th / 21st June 2009 – Detailed Route Planning, Part 1

I had decided back in April that I would need to do some detailed route planning to determine which roads I would use to go through each State, rather than just deciding n the route as I went along. I had bought maps of each State and I had started to mark on those maps in pencil which roads I would take. To help do this, I used the two books “The Most Scenic Drives In America” and the “Guide to Scenic...

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April 2009 – Detailed Planning Begins

Having now got an overall very rough route worked out, it was time to start the detailed planning stage for the tour. I had stuck pins into my big map of the USA which showed the places I definitely wanted to go to. I had previously marked onto the map the rough position of the roads from the “Most...

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January 2009 – What sort of tour did I want?

The beginning of 2009 saw a change in my own personal circumstances which meant I would have more free time. I was very lucky that my plans to retire were coming to fruition and I was able to semi-retire at the end of that 2008. I was now only working about half of my time and the New Year saw me itching...

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January to March 2008 – Overall Route Planning

Where to go, for how long, what mileages and what type of touring?These are, without a doubt, the biggest and most important questions I needed to ask myself, for they help shape everything about the tour.Did I want to do as many miles as possible each day thereby covering as many miles as I could in...

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