Well. I'm back. So much for sharing updates as I went along.
What you quickly learn is that you don't exactly have a ton of downtime on trip like this.
I'm pleased to report that we had zero problems. No one got hurt or sick, and no one had a bike act up. It was tremendous fun and I had some of the best days on a motorcycle ever.
Highlights:
- Upstate NY believe it or not, some great roads.
- Yellowstone. Incomparable.
- Cody Wyoming is a great town, we had a blast there.
- Idaho and Montana were the best
- I loved Nebraska.. the Great Plains are very nice.
- Black Hills / Mt Rushmore were great takes, good riding too.
- People are so nice everywhere we went.
Low lights
- Iowa. Jesus Christ it's corn to the horizon in every direction. And I crossed it twice.
- The heat on certain days. We're pretty good to 90-92. When it gets to or past 100, which it did on occasion, it's not fun, although we were prepared for it. In fact our longest days were two of the hottest, 450 plus miles in that crap. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. When you drink a gallon of water in a few hours and don't pee.. it is f-ing hot.
I wasn't sure how I or we would do physically. I packed a family size box of Aleve, AKA biker candy, anticipating aches and pains galore. I never touched them, and never got sore, my arse was as comfy as could be. I spent a lot of effort on the bike and making sure I addressed any ergonomics.. i.e. a custom seat, adjust pegs and bars as needed, wind protection good, and good gear... a cooling vest was key for the heat. Suffice to say I was pleased to be able to maintain a 350-450 mile pace for days and days. Not bad for a fossil in his 60's. Total mileage was just a hair under 7000.
Headcase commented about the Gold Wing with the lights.. yep that's mine. And they are bright as hell!
My pics need to be edited to fit file size issues here but I will try to add some of the good ones. I can't post MOV videos either.. I had a camera mounted on the bike taking videos at times.