Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Project Begins

The idea sort of spontaneously occurred to us just now as we were doing the usual minor weekend chores around the house -- cleaning, straightening, organizing, putting things away. I was washing the dishes and Trish was doing the laundry. The latest issue of Road Runner magazine had just arrived and we were taking turns skimming through it, glancing at the pictures, showing each other interesting articles, saying, "hey, look at THIS!"

"So where shall we go," I asked, looking at photographs of trips through the jungles of Brazil, the hills of West Virginia, the rugged canyons of the Arizona desert and the winding Pacific Coast Highway.


"EVERYWHERE," she responded immediately with a grin.

I poured us each a glass of Malbec and we toasted: "to going everywhere."

ABOUT US:

Trish is an enthusiastic and experienced world traveler, although she is relatively new to motorcycling. She earned her motorcycle endorsement in Indiana in 2008. She rides a black 2004 Honda CMX250C Rebel, "Y.T." (a reference to a character in a Neal Stephenson novel).

My own traveling background is mostly limited to road tripping within the United States, but I have done a substantial amount of that over the years. I ride a silver 2002 Suzuki GSF1200 Bandit, "Pancho." I bought Pancho new; I now have over 126,000 miles on the odometer.

I'm in the middle of an ongoing endeavor to ride it to all 48 contiguous states -- I've hit 21 so far.

Three of the many things we have in common are:
  1. Wanderlust -- a never-ending desire to Just. Go.
  2. The ability to travel very light and endure minor hardships for the sake of adventure.
  3. A sense of humor about the inevitable adversities of being Out There -- one should never be too wound up about trying to stick to a certain plan. Stuff happens; roll with it.


ABOUT THE PROJECT:

We have resolved to embark on a major motorcycle road trip in the Fall of 2012, when Trish finishes school. The primary purpose of this blog will be to document the planning process.

Rough Parameters:
  1. The trip will be no shorter than two weeks, no longer than a month.
  2. It will be 100% on our bikes -- no trailering.
  3. Although we will not rule out crossing into Mexico or Canada at some point, this will be mainly a U.S. trip.
  4. We will want to see unusual stuff, stop at unusual places, do unusual things and meet unusual people.
  5. Finally, these are street bikes, so there will be little or no off-road action. Maybe the occasional dirt or gravel side-track to get somewhere well off the beaten path, but that's it.

During the intervening time we will be soliciting suggestions and input. Have you done a trip like this? Do you know of a place we should definitely visit? Do you want to offer us a place to sack out for a night? If so, we'd like to hear from you!

1 comment:

  1. I recommend Flagstaff Arizona for meeting unusualy people. Kiyoko and I road tripped through there and the guy who won the prize was the one who walked into the laundrymat with a jar of pee and emptied it into their toilet. He was followed very closely by the guy with the baby tethered to his bicycle handlebars shouting at us for not running the traffic light.

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