Archive for category Planning
The Ride to Sturgis … By Harley Davidson
So then: a change of plan. The cost of shipping Blue Rex to and from the States was working out to be too expensive and too complicated to arrange.
Then a friend of mine announced he’d bought himself a Harley Davidson Street Bob. As I didn’t know which model that was, I went over to the Harley Davidson UK website to have a look and saw their link to their authorised tours. One happened to sit perfectly in terms of dates when London will be at a standstill for the Olympics and it also ticked other boxes: luxury, because I like a bit of that; and Sturgis.
Now since I was a young hooligan biker, I’d always wanted to go to the Sturgis Rally so this seemed too good an option to miss out on. Deposit was paid and arrangements made for “The Ride to Sturgis” with Global Enduro.
Today, I’ve had a phone call to confirm my choice of ride and I’ve gone for the Harley Davidson Road King Classic. This should hit all the right bases: a screen to stop the bugs and any rain; not too visually heavy so I can still see everything around me rather than just a load of fibreglass; some storage capacity for waterproofs and my cameras; light enough to handle reasonably; and not a ridiculous riding position or tank range.
Harley Davidson Road King Classic
What’s it all about?
Welcome to Blue’s Big Trip: it’s a blog set up for my trip across the USA in the summer of 2012.
I intend to take my 2002 Kawasaki ZRX1200R from the UK by airfreight to Anchorage, Alaska and then from there ride down via Seattle – where I have family – to Los Angeles and then via Las Vegas and New Orleans over to New York, from where I’ll airfreight the bike back to my home in London. Along the way, I hope to take in a bit of sightseeing like the Grand Canyon and some bike-specific ones like Deal’s Gap in South Carolina.
Well that’s the plan anyway!
By the summer of 2012, I will have reached the grand old age of 50 and London will be a hellish place to be with the London 2012 Olympics taking place. I’ve always wanted to do a big trip and so then will be as good a time as ever, I reckon. I’m aiming to take 2 or 3 weeks to do this trip which should be very do-able: I’ve done 900 miles in a day in 1981 on a Triumph T140V Bonneville, a few more trips every year like that to the Bol d’Or at the Circuit Paul Ricard in the late 80s and early 90s on a Yamaha FZR1000, and more recently 1,000 in less than 24 hours on the ZRX1200R and my Honda Fireblade.
Feel free to join in and give me some suggestions for routes, places to stay, etc