Part 2: I ALWAYS pack light. When I travel for work, my week-long bag fits under the seat in front of me on the plane. I abhor lugging a ton of crap with me while travel especially when I’m travel to a location that I can pick up necessities close by. So for this trip, it was unusual to have two saddlebags, a tail bag, and a tank bag to fill up with all my stuff. I decided to make a list a couple days out from departure date so I could check things off of it as I acquired or packed them. The list looked like this:
MotoGear:
-Jacket
-AStars Gloves
-Possible waterproof Gloves?
-Boots
-Helmet
-Helmet Visors: clear and Smoke
-Tank Bag
-Tail Bag
-Saddle Bag
-Ram Mount
-Waterproof Box
-Earplugs
-Rain Suit
Electronics:
-Phone
-External Battery
-Sena SMH-10
-Drift
-Canon Camera
-Sony Mic
-Headphones
-Phone Charger
-Phone Cable
Clothes:
+1 Jeans
+1 Shorts
+6 Daily items(socks, boxers, etc)
Misc:
-GP Tickets
-Sunglasses
-ZipTies
-Leatherman Tool
-Mini Compressor
-Chain wax
-Chain cleaner
-Bug cleaner
-Microfiber
-Printed Directions
-Cash
-Gorilla Tape
-Huggies baby wipes
-Paracord?
-Bungie net
-Air/Pressure Gauge
-Kickstand Puck
As you can tell its a fairly good starting point for any long trip on a motorcycle. If I were to fault this list at all, it would be on the lack of true maintenance items, such as extra wrenches and flashlights, but all in all, my list worked out well for me. Feel free to leave a comment below about how you would alter my list.
I didn’t pre-pack all of the items into my bags like I should have. Instead, I tossed everything, included the bags, into the back seat of my truck and took off for Indianapolis. After buying the last minute items I mentioned in my previous post, I feared I had too much stuff to fit into my bags – quite the opposite. I was able to fit all of the listed items in the bags without using any of the optional expanding zippers. I figured out how to strap the tail bag and saddle bags to the rear pegs, attached the magnetic tank bag to the bike and started it up.
Just as we started warming the bikes up, we received a light drizzle as a sign of things to come. The maintenance staff from the apartment building I was leaving chatted with us a bit. He was shocked that we were out riding in the rain, but even more interested that our final destination was 1100 miles away in less than optimal weather. Any with a simply, “Good Luck guys!” we were off!
To say day one of the trip was boring would be an understatement. We had clear skies for a fleeting second as we rounded Bloomington, IN with an open stretch of the newly opened Highway 69. We made some excellent time as we headed south for Evansville, IN – our destination for lunch. After our pit stop for some food and gas, we were in our second state, Kentucky. It was in Kentucky that I realized two things; 1. This was going to be a long ride having to stop every ~110 miles for gas in my bike and 2. Kentucky drivers still suck. Getting off the bridge at the beginning of Kentucky, a driver in the right lane decided to stop on the highway (reduced speed to 50 mph) and make a u-turn across the 3 other lanes. A quick and decisive action later and we were in the clear, but this was not how I wanted to start our mid-afternoon stretch of the trip. Thankfully, it was pretty smooth sailing from there on out.
We made our way through Tennessee fairly quickly and jumped into Arkansas to make our way around Memphis. Day one was ending with around 550 miles on the clock in the small city of Forrest City, AR. We grabbed a hotel room, ordered pizza and unloaded the bikes. A group of three to four Harley’s were out front of the hotel and chatted with F4iGuy about their three weeks of travel across the Midwest. They were averaging 200-300 miles per day and planned to be out on the road for the better part of a month seeing the great USA. After waiting for our Pizza for over an hour, calling the store to figure out they just didn’t make our pizza nor care to make our pizza (thanks Pizza-hut!), we grabbed some food in the hotel convenience store and called it a day.
c90ftw 