2021 Pacific Northwest trip preps

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!

County Chasing

 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

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.

2023 American Rockies and the American West

 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.

Alaska 2022

Under the theory that it's never (really) too early to plan complex trips, I restarted the planning for the Alaska 2022 trip this past weekend. This trip has some tricky reservations, and I'm assuming that the demand for Alaska trips will be very heavy in 2022 (given the scarcity of supply in 2020 and 2021). High demand places like Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Denali National Park all require reservations a year in advance. Some other remote locations also demand early attention.

So, to get working on the trip details early, I sketched out the route out and back, and are more-or-less ready to go with reservations when June rolls around. I'll be executing one trip while planning the next. Nothing like a little concurrency!

20200112 Big Money Rally

The weather forecast was for really good weather (meaning: temperatures in the 60's, and at least partial sun) on Sunday, 12 January 2020, so we headed out to Prince Georges, Anne Arundel, Calvert, and St. Mary's counties for bonus hunting and geocaching. The day turned out to be gorgeous -- up to 70 degrees F and full sun. If only every riding day could be that nice! We got a whole lot of creeks and churches, one airport, and a few geocaches to help Donna's totals (adding three new counties and two virtual geocaches).

Ride maintenance

I took the bike in for service on Saturday, 11 January 2020 -- it was time for an oil change, and I'd gone a little past the recommended 36,000 biannual service mileage. Showing up for Saturday service in January is certainly different than showing up in June! I was first in line at about 0708, and was back on the road before noon. Pretty good. Very expensive, but pretty good. That'll get the bike to the pre-ride check in May or June.

2020: First ride of the year

The weather forecast was for "mostly sunny" and mid-40's today, so off we went for a short ride. There were Big Money Rally bonuses to hunt, along with a couple of virtual geocaches. The temperature held to between 39 degrees F and 43 degrees F for the whole ride, and the "mostly sunny" turned out to be "very occasionally sunny". But, it was a nice opportunity to shake out the kinks and get a little well-needed practice riding in. Bonus hunting is a specialized form of riding -- road riding, combined with slow speeds, negotiating turns, and watching for the "right" parking place adjacent to the target. Practice is important.

2020 Alaska Adventure -- reservations

Given the decision to decouple the trip from the Alaska Marine Highway System, it was time yesterday to start getting reservations. I'd been worried about getting places to stay around Denali National Park and Glacier National Park, so didn't want to wait too much longer. I got what I think are the tough locations locked in last night.

2021 Summer Adventure planning update

I've begun to frame up the 2021 Summer adventure candidate. As usual, the original plan was far too ambitious (yes, 300 miles / day is trivial compared to any decent long distance rider's plan, but I'm reminded often that these are vacations, not endurance rallies). and would have required more riding that the vacation merits. So, the candidate now has far fewer miles / day, and many more hours for scouting locales. 

The latest focus is Washington and Oregon, with the other western states left for later trips. I'd like to snag Vancouver and Vancouver Island on this trip; I'll see if I can fit that in.

Summer 2020 planning

I spent the weekend puttering around with details for next summer's trip. I realized, yesterday, that some of our stops are very popular, and that reservations are going to be difficult / impossible to obtain.

I started by researching what may be the worst: one of the lodges at Glacier National Park. Our trip has two complicating factors; the first is that because Glacier National Park is on the return end of the trip (the Going to the Sun Road will most probably be closed when we come through Montana heading north), and the second is that our itinerary headed south is driven by the Alaska Marine Highway System schedule (which won't be published for several more months). So, finding a decent place around Glacier National Park will be a trick.

Since I spent a lot of time fussing with that, I thought about other tough locations, such as McCarthy, Alaska, and the area around Denali National Park. McCarthy has very limited lodging options, and Denali has a lot of tourists. The cruise ships provide their own hotels, but everyone else is staying somewhere between Healy and Cantwell. The combination of prices and reviews isn't good. I'll start to fuss with this again when the ferry schedule is published, and I can commit to specific dates.

First [real] ride

The run-in period for BMW motorcycles is about 600 miles (100 km). It's +/- 50 miles to Bob's BMW, so I need to get about 500 miles under the saddle before the initial check. The weather for the weekend is predicted to be spotty, so it was important to get some riding in today, to get ready for the 10 November run-in check.

I laid out a quick 250 mile run, then added a few spots for geocaches (to sweeten the pot). The run-in needs to be done at varying speeds and loads, so I headed west. I ran out to Sperryville, VA to ride U.S. 211 over Shenandoah National Park, then headed to Harrisonburg, VA, with a brief lunch stop at Luray, VA.

From Harrisonburg, I headed east to Orange, VA then north on U.S. 29 to pick up I-66.

The ride was very good. Because I still don't have the side cases (BMW Motorrad stop-sale on the side cases for a reflector-positioning issue), I removed the top case as well. The GSA is remarkably nimble (at least at this weight), and the increased low-end torque is a noticeable difference from the 2010 R1200RT.

I have another short ride this weekend to finish off the run-in period.

Bike maintenance

I took the R1200RT in for needed maintenance today. I've put about 18000 miles on since the last long-interval maintenance -- that included the 2017 IBR, the Void Rally, and a couple of long weekends.

The aft speed / rotation sensor was failing intermittently, so it was on the list.

It turns out that the breather on the final drive was allowing some moisture in -- perhaps during all of that rain on Leg 2 of the 2017 IBR. The final drive oil appeared to be somewhat emulsified. Ugh.
I took a few breaks during the day to look at the R1200GSA -- quite possibly my next bike. The 2018's have a few new feature, and will [hopefully] continue to work out some of the kinks that have turned up in the water-cooled bikes.