Thursday, May 20, 2010

Leaving on a jet plane!

This is the last night at home for the next 17 days! We have been planning this trip for nearly a year and now we are less than 24 hours from catching the plane to SLC. I'm sure the trip will be over before we know it but planning it has been a load of fun as well.

Our bikes arrived in SLC this week with no issues and are waiting patiently for us to free them from their tie downs! Singh picked up his bike and has spent the last few days touring from Coeur D'Alene heading to SLC.





After some detailed route planning, it looks like our total mileage should be somewhere around 5,300 miles which will average about 330 miles a day. We plan on taking a little more time in southern Utah so the last few days through Canada might be rather long.

Eric and I will be finishing up a few last minute details tomorrow then catching the plane around 10pm. An all night, red eye flight and we will be at the dealership around 10am Saturday. We will unpack the bikes, get new tires installed then hit the road. Our goal is to get a decent amount of miles on Saturday afternoon before we make our first camp.

Eric has his SPOT beacon set up so it can be tracked online. You can follow our every move at this link - HouseofBeaver

Now, if I can make myself sleep! Excitement is taking over!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

5 days to liftoff!

Well, Gary is currently in SLC getting to know his new bike -



Singh leaves for Coeur D'Alene tonight around 0100 to pick up his bike and will meet us in SLC on the 22nd. Eric and I are (not so) patiently waiting for our flight this coming Friday. I have a feeling this is going to be a LONG week at work...

We have had a few "meetings" pouring over the maps trying to get a better idea of how many miles to do per day, where we need to be by when, and so on, but then we finally say phooey on it and are going to play it by ear. We do have a pretty detailed route mapped out though. I imagine we will do the major planning around the camp fire each night. I just don't want to have to do any 600 mile days to catch up...

More to come!...

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Getting close....

Well, Eric and I crated and shipped our bikes off last Monday. If they made the Tuesday sailing, they should reach Tacoma today (Saturday). They will then be trucked to Salt Lake City and be waiting for us to arrive on the 22nd!




We were able to pack the majority of our gear with the bikes in order to limit what we have to carry with us on the flight. Hopefully everything will survive the trip!

We now have three video cameras going and Eric has a SPOT locator which will track our positions and will post our tracks on an internet map for everyone to check on. I'll be sure to post the link when we get the system working properly.

Gary leaves next Friday (14th) for SLC, Singh leaves for Idaho on the 17th and will meet us in SLC after picking up his bike, and Eric and I leave the evening of the 21st to arrive in SLC on the morning of May 22nd.

The BMW dealership in Sandy, UT (BMW Motorcycles of Utah) has been great to work with! They are accepting our bikes from the shipper and storing them for us then will be putting on new tires right before we leave.

It is all coming together and I'm sure will come and go so fast we won't know what happened. Hopefully we will have a lot of video and photos to document the trip.