****RIDE WITH THE VIKING****

....Now its pretty widely known that wifey and I take a lot of long trips on the scoot and we get asked questions about it all the time, so I figured I would try to answer some of them here. Alot of times we are asked about secutiry on the trip like how do we protect the bike in areas we dont know, what do we take with us, how do we plan our trip, what time of day do we prefer to ride...etc. So I will try to give the best run down I can on what we do. Will this be the all inclusive bible? Hell no. Different systems work better from different people, like I said, this is just what we do.

*****THE ROUTE: These are never concrete. weather, construction, whatever, sometimes things just happen to screw up your perfect route. So I plan routes with contingancies. I like to use Google Maps for several different reasons. Google lets you get street level views and zoom in on things which is cool when planning a route cuz you can pinpoint gas stops which in pretty damn useful when you are rolling thru places like New Mexico and Texas at 3am. Dont wanna run outta gas on some wrongturn backroad in the pitch black. Check it out. Its worth the time. And get yourself a good mapbook. I got one from Mapquest thats good. Shows side roads and all kindsa shit. Don't be a cheap ass, get a good book.

*****BIKE PREP: Never do anything to your bike a day or two before you plan to leave. If you do an oil change, do it a week before this way if there should be a leak or something goofy go on you won't be in the middle of nowhere wondering why there is oil gushing outta yer filter or some shit. Same with tires. If you put some new skins on for your trip make sure you have enough time to put a few hundred miles on them before you load up and leave the comfort of home. That way you are sure there are no issues with the balance or leaks or a bad bead AND you will wear the tread in a little bit. Anybody who has ridden more that a day should know just how slick a new tire can be. I always clean the bike really well a week or so before we saddle up. A few coats of polish on the chrome ( I am fond of the basic Turtle Wax polish in the can) and I will wax the paint twice ( I like the DuPont carnuba/teflon based wax). This helps maintain a purdy bike on the road and will help protect it from the elements you are gonna run into. Tar, bugs, birdshit whatever. Some of the bug guts down south will actually fuck up yer chrome and paint. How about some road tar on that paint? Protect it. I keep a can of Plexus and a mircofiber cloth with me on the trip to wipe things down and keep my windshield clean. So before I bail I check my tires, oil, drive belt, brakes and brake fluid, battery and sparkplugs. Cut corners on your bike prep and you could really be up a creek if something goes sideways on ya....and it will be your fault.

*****TOOLS: Just the basics. Go thru yer bike and see what you need. Look at what could go wrong and be fixed on the roadside. Dont take enough shit to rebuild yer motor. You aint gonna need it...if you did a good bike prep. But things do loosen up. Take tools to tighten exhaust, mirrors, footpegs and floorboards and anything you see that might be and EZ fix. A few feet of wire, a small roll of electrical tape, something to cut with and some zip ties. That should be all you need. Maybe a tire plug kit and a tire pressue guage.

*****ODDS AND ENDS: Basic first aid kit (you can get a cool little one at Target for cheap, look by the bandaids), sunblock, flashlight, cellphone and charger. Of course wifey always makes sure to pack the digital camera. I also take a can of Seafoam and my Plexus and my bike cover ( we have gotten good at rolling it up real tight so that it takes up almost no room in the packs). Another cool little trick is to use one of them zippable freezer bags and chuck some ice and a bottle of water or tea in it. Put that in your saddlebags and its like a little mini cooler. Kinda nice to have a cold drink whenever ya want it.

*****CLOTHES: We just pack the bare minimum. A few days worth of clothes. Can always find a laundromat if ya have to. Wifey packs the clothes in a travel size Space Bag and smashes that air outta it. I was amazed how much room this saved. If you absolutely need more clothes becuse you are going to be at your destination for awhile I haved an EZ answer for that...Fed Ex or UPS. Got it? Ship your stuff to where you are going. Pack light for the trip. Take rain gear if you feel the need. Personally if it starts raining so bad that I need rain gear...Im getting a room. Fuck riding in shit weather. I have done that enough in my lifetime. I have earned the right to NOT have to do that.

*****DAY OR NIGHT?: When to travel. Do you ride at night when there is less traffic and less heat? Depends. Are you willing to make some of the trade offs that go with it? We all know that you cant see as well at night at high speed...but there is less to be on the lookout for. If you encounter a problem like a blow out or something, there are less people to stop and help if you really need it. BUT there are always truckers on the road. You get the picture. We chose to start our days at about 2am or 3am with the intent and preplanning of missing big city rushour traffic. Places like Atlanta, St. Louis, Nashville, Denver and Miami just to name a few, can be real motherfuckers in rush hour especially if you are unfamiliar with the exits and traffic patterns. We will ride from 2am till about 2 pm. 12 hours on the road makes for a pretty good day. Plus its a hell of a lot easier to get a motel room at 2pm than it is at 7pm. But 3 am gas stops bring a security risk...we will talk about that next.

*****SECURITY: This is one of the most asked questions, both personal securtiy and bike security. And there are many answers to these questions. Alot of it is personal preference and being smart. Lets start with personal security and safety. Nothing says "I have money" like a bike with an out of state plate and fully loaded at a lonely gas staion at 3am. But hopefully being a 6ft. 235 pound biker clad in leather, I dont present myself as an EZ target for a would be badguy, but ya never know. Now there is a difference in "safety" and "safeness" Safeness is rolling slowly into the gas station parking lot and looking for problems and problem areas. Dark corners that could hide a potential attacker. Looking for obsticals that might create an issue if you need to make a fast get away. Looking at the direction of the lighting and the shadows. Making a quick recon of the sound profile of where you are after you stop the bike. Extra stash of cash in your shoe or under your seat aint a bad idea. Dont place yourself in a bad situation. If your gut tells you "NO" then keep on rolling to the next place if you can. Safeness is taking safe actions to reduce or eliminate security issues. "Safety" is the action taken to protect yourself from an iminent threat. Now for legal reasons with will neither confirm or deny whether or not I am "packing" on my cross country adventures but I will tell you that, if said potential badguy approches wifey and myself and makes anything resembling a threating manuver he is gonna go down bleeding and in a hurry. You have to make the personal gutcheck to say what is worth fighting for. What is the acceptable risk for you. Sometimes it might just be best to haul ass. Maybe its just best to give up the cash? Personally I keep multiple sources of cash and credit card and a stash BUT if somebody poses a threat to my wife...use of deadly force in a self defense situation is .....well lets hope nothing ever goes that far. But in all my travels I have never had an encounter...chalk that up to "safeness". If you have a CCW I would check to see if other states will honor that before you go toting a Glock around the country.

Now lets talk about security with you bike in a strange place. The big one is motels. Another advantage of travelling at the times we do is that a thief is less likely to try anything stupid with your bike in broad daylight. They dont know you are sleeping at 6pm. and there are lots of people around. We always get a ground floor room where we can park right outside the door. If you have an alarm system, good for you. Use it. When we pack the bags and the tourpack we pack everthing we can into plastic bags. Helps keep things dry and it sure is easy to unload the bike at the end of the day. Leave nothing in the bike. We always pull in nose first and have a big ol lock for the fork lock besides using the ignition lock and leaving it in gear. Then we throw the cover over it and tie it down. Hopefully the combination of being early in the evening with lots of foot traffic and the bike all locked up and covered and throw in the fact that nobody knows if you are awake and just inside the door waiting to clobber someone tampering with your ride. By the time it starts to slow down outside and get quiet, about midnight or so, you are just getting up to start your day. And now you ARE awake when the badguys are starting to prowl around so you can make yourself visible and hopefully that deters them. Make sure your insurance is paid up LMAO. My bike is very heavily covered.

*****DISTANCE: How far should you or can you go in a days travel? Well thats up to the individual. Some people wanna brag about 400 mile days..and maybe for them thats good. You gotta know your limitations. Dont push it too hard or someone might be scraping you off the superslab with a squeege. That would totally fuck up your trip. We can easily pull 650-700 mile days but thats because of how we prepare and how we ride. Everybody does things different. Like I said, we roll out early in the morning. I dont mean early like 6 am either! By 6am we usually can have a few hundred mille behind us. Now stock seats can kinda suck dick as far as their ability to make distance riding fun. If ya got the bucks to dish out on an aftermarket seat...do it. BUT if you are poor white trailer trash, like me, you cant just go drop the $600+ on one sooooo what we did is got us a good seat pad and we alternate who uses it at every gas stop. This changes the pressure points of how you are sitting and helps keep that burning tailbone and sore back at bay. Overall seating position plays a monster roll in how far you can safely boogie in a day. People tell me all the time that they cant believe we make it so far with apehangers on the bike. Well the way I have set up my seating position, from the angle of the bars, the placement of the drivers backrest (which is a total life saver) and the addition of pilot pegs on the floorboards gives me the most comfortable position for me to ride and the ability to move around abit if needed. Same deal for wifey. Her little backseat throne is set up specifically for her. From the position of the backrest to the type of backrest pad to the position of her seat and the placement of her floorboards. These are all the little mods we have made that nobody sees. Nobody can tell that we have actually modified her seat mount to sit differently or that we have flipped her floorboard mounts to give her better comfort and blood circulation. This is all stuff you gotta figure out for yourself. Lotta trial and error goes into it. Ultimately the big deal is to know your limits. No lie....fatigue can and will kill you if you push to hard. Fatigue slows your reaction and judgement, not something you want at 80mph. If you havent done much distance riding, dont try to run an Iron Butt your first time out cuz you run the risk of an early dirtnap! Heat can also be a killer. We have run thru several places where the heat was just ungodly. More frequent stops and keeping hydrated are vital. Heat mixed with the drying effect of the wind from riding can turn your ass into popcorn quick as shit. If you wait too long to slam some water or whatever it could be too late. Heat exhaustion is a motherfucker. Same with the cold. If you wait too long to get off the bike and get away from the wind when you get too cold, it could be hours before you stop shivering. And for the ultimate distance ridng trick....get wifey an MP3 player loaded with her favorite tunes and tell her to shut the fuck up!

WOW...Went shopping at Wal*Mart today for the first time in a long ass time. Holy Shit! What a collection of sideshow freaks and retards. There shoulda been a big row of little yellow buses parked out front! Fat chicks looking like the just rolled (literally) out of bed. Hair all jacked up, clothes looking like they just pulled them out of the hamper, wearing flipflops and sweatpants dragging along some nastyass looking kids who hadn't seen a bathtub in months. I haven't heard so many fake southern accents in my life. It was like trailer park Hell. Holy God! Then ya got the fine selection of employees. Half asleep, window licking mouth breathers that seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they are actually out in public. The funny thing is watching their so called management team. These are the kings and queens of the assembled team of losers. They're all running around trying to keep these fuckheads in check. Like the blind leading the retarded. I just sat back watching and wondering. It was quite entertaining actually. I'm guessin' they have some pretty loose hiring guidelines. I would bet that even if ya didn't know which end of the pencil to write with, you could still score a job at WallyWorld. So if ya ever think your life sucks just go hang out at Wal*Mart for a few. You will see the biggest collection of losers and lowlifes all gathered up in one spot for ya. Be careful tho..if you look too retarded they might offer you a job.