Ten o'clock, Thursday night, September 9th. Tomorrow morning I'll be on the bike for a three hour jaunt up A1A to Jacksonville. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow in JAX and then I'll spend the night there and finally depart on this trip in earnest Saturday morning. Counting down hours now.
Took the bike out for a test ride this morning, Everything handled great, nothing out of balance. I also tested out the GoPros. The forward facing gets a lot of vibration, I don't think I can do anything with that though as I am very limited on where I can mount it. The only other option would be to hire a professional film crew to follow me and handle all of the audio visual stuff. I wonder if David Alexanian is available?
The XR is set for a test run tomorrow.; the luggage and saddle bags are packed and strapped down. I'm not overly happy with the way I have the tent affixed to my luggage just yet, may need to adjust that some. The weight seems fine, just sitting on the bike. Everything is sitting right along the center line so I don't think I'll have any issues. At least I get to shake everything down on Fridays ride up to Jax. I'll take A1A up there so that will be a nice short ride to see how the bike and equipment fare. I'll be running two Go Pro cameras, one mounted on the bars and facing back at me from the left and one forward facing, mounted just behind the windscreen recording in 170 degree wide angle. I'll also have the option of moving one to a chin bar mount on my helmet for POV recording if it seems it may add to the show. We'll see how the test shots look tomorrow and test out uploading some video to these pages as well.
Seven days! One full week! I am so looking forward to this trip now. All of the planning and putting things in place; we'll see if I did it right. Aside from the this trip being a stand alone journey with its own purpose, it is also meant to be an educational task to help me prepare for my 2022 trip, which may actually be amended in a major way soon. I'll be working on that while I ride next week and have plenty of time inside my helmet to think about it. And while I have seven days until departure, I really have to be completely packed and ready to go by Monday evening. Monday is Labor Day, so I have a three day weekend starting today. Three days to pack, test ride and finalize hotels, AirBNB's and campgrounds. And even after months of planning, mapping and writing lists, I'll probably get 250 miles in to the trip and realize I left my wallet at home.
Today I got my SPOT emergency locator activated again. I have the old Gen 2 model and don't use it much these days, I don't ride off road in Florida like I did back in Alabama. There's just way to much silt when you get off the pavement down here. I had to call SPOT tech support, they have amazing customer service. The company is based out of New Orleans and even a few days after hurricane Ida, I spoke to tech who was working from a lap top at a hotel, having been evacuated from the city and she still provided great service. Carrying the SPOT is not really a necessity for this trip maybe, but I'll be on a lot of mountainous back roads that don't see much traffic and I already own the ELT so, may as well bring it with.
It's been a week or so since my last entry. Multiple reasons for that. Several nights without available internet or too late to get on...
