Final Thoughts

I loved the trip and 24 days was a great length.  I felt I saw a lot, but I was just about ready to be done by the end of it.

I thought I would share some final thoughts about the trip and lessons learned if anyone reading this considers doing something like I did for the first time.  These are just random things I've thought about, in no particular order.


1. If you want to do it, then plan to do it. 


I had several emails from people before and during my trip expressing encouragement and sometimes jealousy about my journey like I had won the bike trip lottery or something.


I think it was JFK who said about travelling to the moon something like, "We just decided to go".  My trip was somewhat the same.  I decided I wanted to do it about 18 months ago, and the rest was just planning for it, in all aspects - time from work, costs, route, bike shipping etc.  But it was all planned around specific dates on the calendar.  Without a specific starting date chosen, it just becomes "someday" and it never happens.  Picking the date is the starting point and is critical to making it happen.




2. Camping

I chose to camp, primarily as a cost control measure, but I also had some sort of romantic notion about a motorbike trip around Canada and the US camping, and really seeing it better somehow.

I would suggest you plan to camp, only if you love to camp in the first place and specifically want to incorporate camping as an activity in your holiday.  i.e. you should probably already do camping holidays because you love to do it anyway.


In the end, I don't think I saved that much money, given the upfront cost of the camping gear I bought.  I found that there are plenty of really cheap motels available, not much more than the cost of a KOA campsite.


The main issue with camping that I failed to recognize in advance, was the additional time requirement to setup and take down camp everyday.  I'd say it probably took me an hour to setup camp and an hour to take it down and pack the bike.


Motels offer a bed, towels and temperature controlled dry shelter.  If I was to do it all over again, I would just save the initial cost of the camping gear and just go with cheap motels.




3. Motorcycle Choice (and yes I am biased towards Harleys)


I ride a Harley Davidson Road King, which is part of their touring line of bikes.  The trip ran for 11,293 km from my Calgary starting point to Burlington and all stops between.  The bike gave me no trouble whatsoever, and was completely reliable and comfortable.


I found Harleys are by far the most popular choice of bike for touring, particularly in the United States.  The US is loaded with dealerships everywhere in the event you have a breakdown.  Also, riding a Harley seems to invite conversations during your rest stops, which is particularly nice if you are travelling by yourself.


If I was buying a bike specifically for a trip like this, I think one of the Electra Glide models would actually be the ideal choice with factory audio, locking baggage, electronic cruise control and more.


But then again, you may remember I met Joe on his 1994 Honda VFR doing a similar trip and he was enjoying himself just fine.  (But I would also guess he was about 21 years old...)

4. Ride Length

I was happy with 400-500 km/day; not too short and not a marathon.  I did several days crossing the southern states of 600-800km.  No fun.  If I was planning another multi-week trip again, I think I would also plan a to park the bike in a cool place once a week and be a tourist.  I really enjoyed doing that in San Francisco.  Memphis would have been a good place to do that too and exercise my liver on Beale Street, but I didn't have the time.

5. Riding Alone



It's great to have a buddy to ride with but I found it's difficult to find others to truly commit to a trip of this length.  I had two of my friends join me for part of the trip but I decided I would go ahead and ride the first 14 days alone.


I guess it depends on your personality but I actually enjoyed my riding time alone.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the ride time with my buddies, but alone you have the luxury of freely exploring, turning around for something, sleeping until you want and stopping riding when you want.


My advice, if you really want to do an epic ride, don't be afraid of doing it by yourself.




6. Get a lanyard for your camera
Get a lanyard for a small camera and wear it around your neck all the time.  I met others that used a Go-Pro but it has limitations too.  The lanyard option worked well for me.  The point is you want to be able to take pictures within a few seconds of seeing something interesting before you blow past it.  I probably shot an average of 100 pictures a day and typically about 25 ended up in the blog.




7. Bring a Laptop
It was great to have a laptop with me.  Obviously I used it for blogging, but it was also great to have for other things too.
- Daily Route Planning, and downloading to the GPS (I used a simple and cheap Garmin eTrex)
- Searching local attractions on the route
- weather forecasts
- Sorting photos as I went
- Skype to call home
- DVD watching in the tent!




8. Blogging
I've had several people ask me about blogging, and how hard it is to do.


I had never done it before and through google searching I set it up through blogger.com.  The tool is very easy to use and is more or less intuitive.  Plus it's free (I still fail to understand how the internet works and how it makes money).


The real challenge of blogging the trip is finding the time to do it every night.  It might not look like a lot of work, but each entry probably took one to two hours to pull together from the time I would take the photos off the camera, figure out which ones were suitable to use, generate lower resolution files, upload them to the blog, add photo comments, write the story, and proofread/edit for a while.


When I was travelling by myself it wasn't too difficult to do, but once I was travelling with buddies, it was certainly more difficult to get done nightly.


In the end I am really glad I did the blog for myself, just to keep a record of the trip.  It was originally intended for myself, family and a few close friends to keep up to date but amazingly I was getting 100-150 visits to the blog every day and I learned it was becoming part of people's daily reading routines!  (Certainly motivation to keep the blog going!)




Thanks for reading everybody - I had a blast!

The Home Stretch

June 24.


The last day of the ride had arrived.


On one hand, I could hardly believe I was almost at the end of my epic trip.  On the other hand, I had seen so much over the last twenty three days and it seemed ages ago that I was riding in places like Banff, Washington and Oregon.


I packed up the bike one last time, and we set off for a days ride on the back roads of Pennsylvania and New York.

Packing up one last time, in Wellsboro PA.

More scenic PA backroads.

Who knew there was a Lumber Museum??
(or a need for one?)

We had set off this morning on empty stomachs, as we knew a stop was in order in Coudersport, PA.  We stopped for breakfast last summer here, and we definitely wanted to stop again at this great diner.

The Maple Tree restaurant in Coudersport is worth a stop.

I had no idea we were so close to Snookie,
Pauly D and Mike "the Situation"...

 Perhaps an hour after breakfast we crossed into NY State.

The roads passed through many small towns.

Some places were lovely...

... and some were not.

 It's actually quite alarming the number of homes you see in rural NY and PA that are in a serious state of disrepair.  You can imagine what these small towns would have looked like in the 1950's (think Marty McFly's home town in Back to the Future) but today seem to struggle to make ends meet.

Some nice recreational areas

Just before entering Buffalo NY, we pulled over for one last fill-up of American gas.  In Buffalo it works out to about 98¢/L.  (In Oklahoma is was as cheap as 80.2¢/L when you do the math.)

You know you're almost home when you see the Timmy's

Peace Bridge Border Crossing

After crossing the border it was all I could do to keep the speed down to a level that the cops wouldn't impound my bike if I was pulled over.  The trip was fantastic, but so happy to be getting home.


Pulled into the driveway at 2:30, greeted by a smiling wife and children.  Heaven!


Tomorrow: nothing!

Mother of all Harley Stores

June 23.

After a great night's sleep in a proper bed, I was up reasonably early this morning.  We wanted to get going as we were headed into Pennsylvania today.

Two things I was looking forward to today:

Firstly the roads in Pennsylvania are well suited to motorcycling.  I found this out last summer on the Milton HOG trip to Wellsboro and I was pleasantly surprised by the mountains and the windy roads that go along with them.  I was ready for a dose of that today after 700km of traffic and interstate to DC yesterday.

The second thing I was also looking forward to is a trip to the HD factory in York PA, where my Road King was born (as well as Scott's Ultra Classic Electra Glide).  In general they run tours every day except Sunday.

Back where it all started for my Road King.

The tour is free, but no pictures can be taken once you enter the factory floor.  All these pictures are from the visitor centre.

All the Touring models, Softail models and CVO models are built in York.  (Dynas, V-Rods and Sportsters are built in Kansas City.)  Ironically, no Harley motorcycles are built in Milwaukee as everyone generally thinks.  Their headquarters is still there and they manufacture all the motors and transmissions there.

The tour was quite good and I'd recommend it to any Harley fan.  Tons of robotics and automation in the plant.  You can tell they have good employee relations and a very strong focus on quality with operating metric boards everywhere throughout the plant.

If you are planning to visit in the summer it's a good idea to call ahead.  We learned that they shut down major parts of the tour when they start doing anything associated with the production of the following years bikes, when the information about them hasn't been made public yet. i.e. we understand they'll be starting some things in about two weeks for the 2013 models.

Of course they have a gift shop, with lots of cool stuff unique to the manufacturing plant that you don't see anywhere else.

I tried on this nylon tattoo sleeve to see what I would
look like as a real badass.  I don't think it's me.

After the tour and shopping were all wrapped up, we rode another hour or so, until it was time to feed the bikes and ourselves.  We came across this old school diner in New Buffalo, and naturally it called our names.

With a counter and stools like this,
of course we had to sit at the counter!

After lunch we carried on back road bombing and enjoyed what Pennsylvania offers motorcyclists.  To cap it off the weather was absolutely perfect today. Sunny and not overly hot.  Juuust right.

Just about arrived in Wellsboro

We arrived late afternoon in Wellsboro, where we came last summer.  A nice little town surrounded by great roads.  Today was a nice comfortable 400km for a change.

I had a great time today!

Day 24 and home tomorrow!

Catch-Up Penance

June 22.

We awoke this morning in Jefferson NC, and we all agreed this may have been the crappiest Best Western we've ever seen.  A decent family restaurant but these motel style rooms were small and tired.  It was my turn to sleep on the fold-out, except there wasn't one.  They rolled in a cot instead.

This cot had the typical bar sticking in your back all night but was also equipped with a rubberized mattress. I know this because none of the sheets stayed on the bed, and I ended up sleeping on a rubber mattress with a lump of sheets here and there, and air con blowing directly on me all night.  Awesome.  This is the kind of experience that is really starting to have me looking forward to getting home.

It was a sad morning because Mike would be leaving us and we'd had a great time since Phoenix.  He would be heading back south to Myrtle Beach, where he needed to return his motorcycle rental.

Our last look at Mike, the "greasy biker", on his way to Myrtle Beach.

Scott and I would be headed today to the Washington DC area.  Unfortunately since we "took our time" during the day at Deals Gap, we were a little behind schedule, and needed to catch up.  We decided that today we would make our way over to I-81 and run it up to DC.  Then on Saturday and Sunday, we would be able to enjoy some more back road bombing in Pennsylvania and Western New York before getting home.

The roads that led us to the Interstate first thing in the morning were quite nice and a pleasant start to the day.

The road brought us into Virginia, and the small town of "Independence".

Independence: Small town Main Street USA

This picture is for my wife and daughter -
this school's team name is the Blue Devils!

We stopped for a break mid morning at a combo gas station / Burger King.  We went in, to get something to drink, and I could hardly believe my eyes with what I saw on the menu - The Bacon Sundae.  This is no joke; it's a real thing you can actually buy.

Don't get me wrong; I like ice cream sundaes and I like bacon.  But it's just so wrong to put them together!

While I was repulsed that this thing even existed, Scott was much more adventurous, and decided he should give it a go.  When in Rome, I suppose.

This is so wrong...

"It's salty and sweet... I think I actually like it"

With the bacon and ice cream swirling around in Scott's belly we hit the road again.  Our next stop was lunchtime and hit the Harley dealer afterward.  They were great and loaned me the tools I needed to remove my horn and drain about two ounces of water out of it.  It hadn't worked right since Mike and I went through the river of water across the road in Texas.  Seems to work ok now!

The interstate eventually brought us to the DC area, but it was Friday afternoon rush hour.  Traffic sucked everywhere.

Fortunately the GPS brought us through some very nice parts of Virginia and Washington.

The only trouble was, when the GPS said we had arrived we were nowhere near our intended destination.  It took us about another 10km to find it, and more pounding through city traffic in the heat.    You really begin to discover the downside to a Harley air-cooled motor in stop and go traffic, in 91F humid weather!

Aagghhh... I'm so hot.

The bridge to Alexandria.

We finally arrived at our intended destination, the George Washington Masonic Memorial.  My buddy Scott is a Freemason and he really wanted to see this.   I thought it was pretty cool too.

Scott is also a member of the "Widows Sons" masonic
motorcycle riding club.  Note his Widows Sons vest in
the photo with the Masons' square and compasses.

We snapped a few photos and got out of there as dark clouds loomed.  We got a few raindrops but managed to get into a hotel north of the city before the skies really opened up!

Tomorrow:  Pennsylvania!