Among my least favorite planning and packing chores is riding gear cleaning. Motorcycle riding gear has armored padding that must be removed before the rest of the garment can be cleaned (and made more water resistant).
Removing this armored padding is a time-consuming nuisance, wrangling the padding and lots of hook-and-loop fasteners, all while having your arms in the legs and arms of the riding gear.
I'm happy to report that I've completed that tedious chore in advance of this next ride!
My uncle Don (Wilson) was an avid backpacker. He loved to hike the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. In June and July 1973, we hiked across Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, summiting Mount Whitney, arriving in Lone Pine on 4 July 1973. It was great to see fireworks below us, as we traveled down the road from Whitney Portal to Lone Pine!
One of the things he taught me, on that long hike, was the notion of "hiking light". Of course I had no idea at the time just how useful the notion of "hiking light" would become. More than a few times I've stretched the notion of "daylight" with regard to endurance motorcycling bonus hunting, learning to rely on photographing objects against a lighted sky to prove I was there in "daylight"!
As of today, 23 May 2021, I've found and logged a geocache in each of 775 counties (parishes, boroughs, census areas) in the United States. All the way from Washington County in Maine (GC943D, For Whom the Bell Tolls) to the Aleutians West borough in Alaska (GCJ5C4, Shemya Island - The Rock at the Edge of the Earth).
There are 3143 counties (parishes, boroughs) in the U.S., so I have a few more to work on. The Cape Girardeau trip in April and May 2021 got us quite a few new counties, filling in along the Ohio River (except in a few places where we got "rained out") -- we'll go back to fill those in later.
One of the goals of the 2021 Pacific Northwest trip is to fill in a few missing counties; I'd like to have a contiguous path from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean by the end of summer.
Ride preparations are usually tedious -- there are a lot of small chores and maintenance items that have to be completed. Tire replacement is coming up this Tuesday. That's the last major item on the bike (that I know of) that needs work before departure. The sketchy rear tire pressure sensor hadn't completely failed during the last long ride, so it will likely wait until our return to be replaced. Not ideal.
Our helmet visors and Pinlocks took a lot of abuse over the last couple of years; mine, especially. The gravel and dust in 2020 put the whammy on my visor, and blew a lot of dust up under the Pinlock that I'm sure I could get completely removed. Both visors and Pinlocks were replaced today, along with a little cleaning and lubrication of the hinges. That parts replacement should get us through a few more years.
I bought a new air compressor to replace the last one I'd purchased years ago. I've gone with the Dynaplug Micro Pro, which is getting good reviews these days. I don't plan on using it, but if I need a compressor, I'll have one with me (along with the plugging kit).
The Google Pixel 5 that I had to buy on the Cape Girardeau trip has turned out to be fantastic. I've been able to catch up with six years of technology development -- the extra processing power, more storage, and 5G (where it's available) have combined to give me so much more capability than I had on the last ride. I've put a new SlipGrip mount on the bike, along with wiring up a charging capability for when I need it.
In the "it's almost never too early to think about the next trip (or in this case, the trip after that)" category, the early favorite is a long trip to New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Getting out there just after the snow clears at the upper elevations will keep the temperatures down, and might help with crowd control as well.
