Thursday, 24 September 2009

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...

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...

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...

12th June 2009 – Importing a motorbike into the USA

Chris, the really helpful guy at Dynamic International proved to be a fountain of useful information and (especially) contacts. Without being asked, he contacted somebody he knew in the business who then sent to me a link to the website of a very informative Government Agency called CBP (Customs and...

9th June 2009 – Should I use my own bike, or rent one?

This turned out to be a really easy decision, based mainly on the cost of renting versus the cost of shipping my own bike to the USA.I used the Internet to find a company that ships motorbikes to / from the USA and I found Dynamic International (www.dontpanic-calldynamic.com). I spoke to Chris Merson...

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Second half of May 2009 – California warm up trip

The 14th May saw the seven of us doing the tour of California gather at Heathrow for the long flight to San Francisco. Without writing a long piece about what happened on this trip, here is a list setting out some tips and hints about the California trip that I found to be useful and I will certainly...

Saturday, 19 September 2009

First part of May 2009 – Preparing for California

Back in November the previous year, I had agreed to join a bunch of guys (that I didn’t know) on a two week tour of California on rented motorbikes. I was now preparing for that trip and I was struggling with the decisions about what to take. Everything had to fit in the two panniers (or are they called saddlebags?) on the bike and a specialist piece of motorcycle luggage made by Nelson-Riggs.One...