Archive: Ride planning
Table of contents
- Solstice and Equinox dates and times for 2010
- BBG Prep
- Decisions, decisions...
- WFO-8
- Audio note from the road...(21:42)
- Getting ready for Arkansas
- Planned route to CFR
- Signed up for Dam Tour 2009
- Southeastern British Columbia
- Garmin POI - Yamaha dealers in the U.S. and Canada
- Garmin POI - Yamaha dealers in the U.S. and Canada
- Links to free maps and/or guide books
- BBG route plan
- Trip checklists
- Ride cards
- Alaska
- IBA 49-State Route
Solstice and Equinox dates and times for 2010
Here are the solstice and equinox dates and times for 2010, in the Pacific time zone:
| Event | Date | Time | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vernal equinox | March 20 | 09:32 | ||
| Summer solstice | June 21 | 04:28 | ||
| Autumnal equinox | September 22 | 20:09 | ||
| Winter solstice | December 21 | 15:38 |
BBG Prep
Preparations for my upcoming Bun Burner Gold ride are progressing nicely.
Just before the LowCal 250, I asked Doug his opinion on the best day of the week to pass through Las Vegas late at night, and that started a series of e-mails with an expanding list of experienced riders, both in Southern California and Nevada. Based on their input, I made a few iterations, and between all of us we came up with an almost ideal route.
I have my rally book ready to go, with maps, log sheets, and a pouch to hold receipts. I still have some prep work to do on the bike -- an oil change, tire pressure check, that sort of thing. I'm deep into weaning myself off of caffeine, which is never fun, but I know it will pay dividends on the day of the ride. I entered the route into the GPS, and the mileage it shows is almost identical with Google Maps.
The only thing left to do is saddle up and hit the road on the day of the ride. I'm looking forward to a long, long, fun, exciting ride.
Decisions, decisions...
I have a couple of possibilities for rides in October. I can do one, but not both.
The Land of Enchantment (LOE) rally is in Albuquerque on October 2-4. I've been wanting to do a rally of some sort for a few years, and everyone says this is a great first rally. My friend Doug will be there, and has been encouraging me to go.
Before I do the LOE, I'd have to install my auxiliary lights. Now, this should be a 2-3 hour project, but the wiring under my fairing panels is too messy to take more stuff, so I'd have to clean it up before I could add the lights. I figure a couple of four hour days one weekend should do it.
If I do the LOE, I'd ride to Albuquerque on Thursday, October 1st - it's just not practical for me to ride there on Friday, then start the rally the next morning. A man's got to know his limitations, right?
My other possible October ride is the Dam Tour Awards, up in Portland. I've got 19 of the 20 dams so far, and have plans to ride up to Yosemite in the next week or two. Once I finish, I think I'll be the rider based the furthest from PDX to complete the whole set.
I've had a bunch of fun doing the Dam Tour this year. I've ridden on a lot of fantastic roads that I probably never would have found or considered otherwise, and I've met up with a bunch of great riders along the way.
PDX is about 1000 miles from home, so I could get away with two nights total in motels, making it pretty cost effective.
There's also the option of doing neither, but what fun is that?
I'm meeting up with Doug and Hal at IBR checkpoint 2. I think I'll get their input, and talk it over some more with Carole, and then decide. If I decide on the LOE, I need to get registered asap, but it can wait until after ckpt 2.
WFO-8
This year's WFO is being held in Moscow, ID, site of the very first WFO. WFO is a rally held for owners of Yamaha FJR1300 motorcycles who live in the Western United States.
I've got a route planned out that will get me there and back, and let me visit 12 of the 13 dams I have remaining on this year's Dam Tour. I'm going to revisit the North Scootenay Dike Dam, since I missed it by half a mile on the way back from CFR.
The Dam Tour is put on by a group in Portland every year, where you visit 20 dams in the Oregon/Washington area. At each dam, you take a picture of your motorcycle, a special id placard provided by the Tour organizers, with the dam in the background. I'm trying to visit all 20 dams on the list.
Carole and her friend Mandy are driving up in the 'Vette to visit our friend Cindy in Spokane, and Jeremy is flying up to meet them for a belated Mother's Day visit. Carole was in Spokane over Mother's Day weekend, and Jeremy planned to fly up to meet her then, but had to cancel when the other courier at his work got ill. I'll meet up with everyone over the weekend.
If all goes according to plan, the only dam I'll have left is O'Shaugnessy, which makes the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. The current plan is to do a one-day ride in late August as a BBG training ride.
Overnights are in Red Bluff, CA; Redmond, OR; Tumwater, WA; Moscow for three nights; Clarkston, WA (after a ride up to Spokane); and Winnemucca, NV.
Here's the full route plan, which just fits in Google Maps's 26 stop limit:
Audio note from the road...(21:42)
Getting ready for Arkansas
So, Justin came up with the crazy idea that we should ride our bikes to Arkansas during his vacation in mid-May. I thought about it for may 20 seconds, and said heck yeah. (The only possible hiccup is my boss okaying my vacation time, but I don't think it will be a problem.)
We're doing the normal pre-ride planning - figuring out a route, coming up with contingencies, etc. (Yesterday, an 80-mile section of I-80 in Colorado was closed due to snow, so we need to have alternate routes in mind, just in case.)
Justin got a nice tail bag from NewEnough that should hold almost all of his gear. I'm still trying to decide whether to go minimalist and only use my side bags, or go big and add my MotoFizz bag.
One thing I decided I really wanted as a bike-to-bike intercom. I like my current audio setup - the Zumo and the V-1 feed into my home-grown, custom built audio mixer, with my Shure e2c in-ear headphones handling the sound and blocking out (most) road noise.
And, I don't really need the whole StarCom setup, and don't want to pay big bucks for features I don't need.
The solution: BlueAnt Interphones. They mount on the helmets, with speakers and boom mikes. For bike-to-bike, they're full-duplex with a range of up to 150 meters (460 feet). On top of that, I can use mine to answer cell-phone calls using the Zumo as an intermediary.
Mounting is quick. A mounting bracket screws onto the side of the helmet, and the main unit clips into the bracket. A wire runs from the main unit under the helmet to the speaker and the boom mike. A single battery charge last about 10 hours.
We haven't been out on the road yet, but in our in-house testing the sound quality is excellent. Yes, we kinda felt like dorks walking around the house with our helmets on, but there you go.
I think I have everything else I need, with a couple of decisions still be made. I may get a bead seat, but I may not. And I may use my MotoFizz, but I may not. I would be nice to have the extra packing room, but it complicates things like eating lunch inside a sit-down restaurant. We'll see.
Planned route to CFR
Here's today's planned route to CFR, subject to change at any moment:
Overnight stops are at (B) in Winnemucca, (E) near Hell's Canyon, (F) south of Philipsburg, MT, and (I) in Crowsnest Pass.
Signed up for Dam Tour 2009
If things go as planned, I'll be making two separate trips to the Pacific Northwest this summer. I'm all set for CFR '09 in Nakusp, BC, and the early word is that WFO will be held somewhere in Idaho, with my friend Hal (kaitsdad) taking over from Tim as RM.
Last year, someone sent me a link to the DAM Tour site, and it looked like a lot of fun. The idea is to visit 8 dams in Oregon, 8 more in Washington, and 4 more in neighboring states, between March 1st and September 30th. It was too late for me to sign-up for last year's riding season, but the stars aligned this year, and I'm all signed up.
Someone posted an unofficial, preliminary list of the 20 dams, and I've been playing with a route to and from CFR that would bag me 12 or 13 of the 20. One of the dams is on the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, and I figure I can bag that almost any weekend. The rest are all near Portland and Seattle — if I wind up going to WFO, I can make a detour for these ones, and if not I can take a long weekend later in the summer.
I'm really looking forward to it!
Southeastern British Columbia
Here's a cool ride idea through southeastern British Columbia, based on a MotorSmart page:
467 miles, mostly away from the crowds. I can't wait to try it.
Starting from Creston, go north on BC-3A to Kootenay Bay, and cross the lake on the ferry. At Procter, go north on 3A to Kaslo, then north on BC-31 to BC-23 at the Shelter Bay ferry over the Columbia. At Nakusp, go south-east on BC-6 to Castlegar. Go west on BC-3 to Rock Creek, then north on BC-33 to Kelowna.
Garmin POI - Yamaha dealers in the U.S. and Canada
Most Garmin GPS units released in or after 2005 can use the Garmin POI Loader to load custom points-of-interest databases. (Click on the link to download this Windows application, and for details on which Garmin units are supported.)
The following Zip file contains GPX files with POI data for all Yamaha motorcycle dealers in the United States and Canada, as of July 2, 2007:
In addition, the following PDF files contain details on Yamaha dealers in the US and Canada suitable for printing:
Yamaha dealers - US (pdf)
Yamaha dealers - Canada (pdf)
Garmin POI - Yamaha dealers in the U.S. and Canada
Most Garmin GPS units released in or after 2005 can use the Garmin POI Loader to load custom points-of-interest databases. (Click on the link to download this Windows application, and for details on which Garmin units are supported.)
The following Zip file contains GPX files with POI data for all Yamaha motorcycle dealers in the United States and Canada:
Extract one or both of the GPX files into an empty folder. Run the Garmin POI Loader, and select the folder with the GPX file(s). These files contain no proximity or speed data, so Express Mode works well.
See the Garmin POI Loader site for complete details on using the POI Loader.
POI's are updated at the beginning of each quarter; the next update is scheduled for July 1, 2007. If you find any errors in the data, please send me an e-mail.
Details on each dealer include the dealer's name, address, and local phone number (in Zumo direct-dial format). The data is extracted from Yamaha's U.S. and Canadian web-based dealer locater sites, and is current as of the date of this posting. Latitude and longitude data is provided by Yamaha for U.S. dealer locations; Geocoder.ca is used to determine the latitude and longitude for Canadian dealers. Note that a small number of Canadian dealers have names ending with (Z). This indicates that Geocoder.ca did not recognize the street address of the dealer; the latitude and longitude are based on the postal code only.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Use it, change it, but don't sell it.
Links to free maps and/or guide books
| US state highway maps and/or tourist guides | ||
| Canadian provincial and/or territorial highway maps and/or tourist guides | ||
BBG route plan
Here's the most recent iteration of my planned route for an IBA BBG attempt in late March/early April. Earlier plans had a late night run from Tonopah through Beatty to Baker, which gave me deer concerns. This route has slightly less back road miles, but my late night run back home is all on interstates, and it avoids going back over the same roads on the out-and-back.
Subject to change without notice; your mileage may vary.
Trip checklists
Here's a Zip archive with ODT and PDF versions of my packing checklists, with sections for general trips, camping trips, etc.
Show all...
Ride cards
Here's a word document with my ride cards - my avatar and forum name on one side, and my contact and emergency info on the other side. I give these out to one or two other riders on group rides, in case we get separated.
Update: I added my real name to the front of the card.
Alaska
I've been playing around with a few ride plans involving Hyder, Alaska. I don't know when I might do such a ride, but it's fun to plan, anyway.
- Just Hyder is a seven-day scenic trip to Hyder, via US-97 in Oregon and Washington.
- Hyder and Yukon extends the trip to Hyder with a (relatively) short detour up to the Yukon Territory.
- Hyder, Yukon, NT goes one step further, and adds a 170 mile up-and-back to the Northwest Territories.
IBA 49-State Route
Someone over on the ST.N forum asked for a Streets & Trips map for an efficient IBA 48-in-10 route, and I always like to play with motorcycle route maps, so I dug in and spent a lunch hour putting one together, including stops in Washington, DC and Hyder, Alaska.
Download Zip file
I think this is relatively efficient, as these things go. It took some work to get stops in Florida, Nebraska, and Colorado, but otherwise I think it's in pretty good shape. 48-state mileage is 7,672 miles; add another 1,225 miles to get to Alaska.
The vast majority of the 48-state route is on Interstates or other limited-access routes, with these notable exceptions:
- Pine Bluff, AK to Tallulah, LA on US-65 - 160 miles
- Clinton, MS to Mobile, AL on US-49 and US-98 - 177 miles
- Greenville, SC to Bluefield, WV on various roads - 330 miles (to get NC, TN, KY, and WV)
- Manchester, NH to Troy, NY - 120 miles
- Worthington, MN to So. Sioux City, NE - 98 miles
- Casper, WY to Rawlins, WY - 117 miles
- I-80 to Colorado state line (and back) - 112 miles (to get CO)
- Wells, NV to Twin Falls, ID on US-93 - 121 miles
