Pre-flight

 Since I'm trying to get out of town early tomorrow, I did the pre-flight today. The bike is ready to go.

The temperatures here in the National Capital Region tomorrow will be 39 deg F, with a low of 22 deg F. Ugh. It'll be warmer as I head south, but not by a whole lot. It's definitely time to break out the heated gear. 

What a change from the temperatures last summer (118.5 deg F in Pendleton)! It'll be warm enough soon, though, and I'll have fond thoughts of the heated gear, but not of the cold driving up from the bottom of my helmet.

One of my stops this week will be to see if I want to buy a lighthouse stamp book. I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle of bringing along the book. I don't use the book for U.S. National Parks because they fill up pretty fast; I collect the passport stamps using adhesive labels.

2019 Summer Adventure

Many of my friends are headed to the 2019 Iron Butt Rally in less that two weeks; Donna and I are off to our big summer adventure ride on the same day as the IBR start. I've fussed around with our route, adding and dropping locations to get each day's ride to close (we have a large number of time-limited [bonus] locations, all of which are associated with the National Park Service in one way or another.

Because we're doing the Tour of Honor National Parks Tour (and, by extension, the Iron Butt Associated National Parks Tour), we have a lot of passport cancellation stamps and photographs to collect. Because the stamps must be collected during the business hours of whatever location we're visiting, we have a set of time constraints within which we must fit. It's a little like the IBR, but without the miles / day required by that rally.

We're also doing the Team Strange grand tour again this year, so there are a few of those stops thrown in for good measure.

The bike is nearly ready to go; it'll get tires and oil before we leave, but otherwise we're all set. We have a good packing routine built up from lots of practice, so that'll go smoothly.

Team Strange Love & Merci Grand Tour

I've had a lot of fun doing Team Strange Grand Tours over the years. This year's involves a search for Merci Train boxcars and spelling the word LOVE (up to ten times) using the first letter of city/town names. Sounds like fun!