Lucky_Devil
07-15-2006, 12:33 AM
It looks like it’s gotten pretty slow in here, so I guess I’ll regale everyone with my latest and greatest motorcycle excursion. A few weeks ago I took my first official motorcycle vacation... 7 glorious days of riding. It was really a dream come true for me. I’ve always wanted to do it, but I’ve also always had this fear of traveling alone on my motorcycle (not sure why really, in retrospect)… so I was finally able to convince a friend of mine to go with me.
One of the first things I learned was the need to pack light. My Givi bags have a ton of room, but they state a max weight of 22 pounds each. I quickly realized how little I could actually take with me. It didn’t seem to take much to reach the 22 pound limit in each bag. Then there was the shuffling of stuff back and forth between the bags to make sure they each weighed the same… good times. The fact that I was wearing my leathers everyday helped save space, but I also ended up taking a little bottle of Woolite and hand washing some stuff along the way so I could wear it multiple times. Not very glamorous, but was very necessary. I must admit I was a tad bitter about having to do laundry on vacation :lol
Our plan was to ride from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, and then have Vegas be our home base for other rides in the vicinity… like Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Red Rocks, Zion National Park, etc… then we could come back to Vegas and have fun stuff to do at night. Of course this all sounded really great while planning the trip, but in hindsight was a bit foolish. It was so incredibly hot during the day that by the time we got back to our hotel after a long day of riding, we were completely and utterly drained and never really felt like leaving our room (or the air conditioning).
If I had the trip to do over again I would have either planned the trip to where we stayed in a new hotel every night and kept traveling, or would have stayed in a hotel as far away from the Vegas strip as possible. The heat doesn’t really get to you until you slow down and/or stop. Traffic was the major killer on this trip for sure, and the traffic gets worse and worse the closer you get to the strip. But I was a trooper and never once rode without wearing ALL of my leather gear… no matter how tempted, or hot, I was (people looked at me like I was crazy… and at times I felt CRAZY!:tongue). My two most valuable accessories on this trip were my Camelbak water bladder, and my Aerostich “Evapodana.” I would have never have made it without them.
So, if I haven’t already bored everyone to tears yet… here’s some pics and stuff from the trip (I’ll apologize in advance since I’m not the best photographer… for sure).
One of the first things I learned was the need to pack light. My Givi bags have a ton of room, but they state a max weight of 22 pounds each. I quickly realized how little I could actually take with me. It didn’t seem to take much to reach the 22 pound limit in each bag. Then there was the shuffling of stuff back and forth between the bags to make sure they each weighed the same… good times. The fact that I was wearing my leathers everyday helped save space, but I also ended up taking a little bottle of Woolite and hand washing some stuff along the way so I could wear it multiple times. Not very glamorous, but was very necessary. I must admit I was a tad bitter about having to do laundry on vacation :lol
Our plan was to ride from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, and then have Vegas be our home base for other rides in the vicinity… like Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Red Rocks, Zion National Park, etc… then we could come back to Vegas and have fun stuff to do at night. Of course this all sounded really great while planning the trip, but in hindsight was a bit foolish. It was so incredibly hot during the day that by the time we got back to our hotel after a long day of riding, we were completely and utterly drained and never really felt like leaving our room (or the air conditioning).
If I had the trip to do over again I would have either planned the trip to where we stayed in a new hotel every night and kept traveling, or would have stayed in a hotel as far away from the Vegas strip as possible. The heat doesn’t really get to you until you slow down and/or stop. Traffic was the major killer on this trip for sure, and the traffic gets worse and worse the closer you get to the strip. But I was a trooper and never once rode without wearing ALL of my leather gear… no matter how tempted, or hot, I was (people looked at me like I was crazy… and at times I felt CRAZY!:tongue). My two most valuable accessories on this trip were my Camelbak water bladder, and my Aerostich “Evapodana.” I would have never have made it without them.
So, if I haven’t already bored everyone to tears yet… here’s some pics and stuff from the trip (I’ll apologize in advance since I’m not the best photographer… for sure).