How far and how much

The trip

In thinking over what I should say about the trip, I become overwhelmed.  There is so much including how far I went, how long I travelled, what it cost, the gear, if my time researching was wasted, what I felt through the whole thing, just a lot to think about.  I’ll try to put my thoughts here coherently and I hope you can follow along.  If not, hit me up and I will try to clarify.

Mileage

When I left on this trip, I figured it would be somewhere in the 9-10k mile range.  If you’ve been following along, you know I missed some places due to my incredible luck with the weather.  With everything I missed, I drove a total of 8,418 miles, hitting 35 states plus my home state of CA.  I rode for 27 days, but spent an additional 3 days with family in Michigan not riding for a total of 30 days on the road.  This makes my average daily mileage 311.8 miles if you count only my riding days or, 280.6 if you count my total days.

Time

I rode for an average of 6:10 a day, with 8:40 being my longest day.  That was the ride from Eureka, NV to Green River, UT, a total of 396 miles.  The shortest day I had was 3:30 and I only rode 178 miles from Grand Rapids, MN to Grand Forks, ND.

Days in each state

I was in Michigan the longest, as I spent 3 days there with family not riding at all.  If I’d kept riding and not stayed, I still would have been in Michigan the longest, as I spent 6 total days there, or three days of riding.  Michigan was much bigger than I thought it would be!  The states I spent the least amount of time in were, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming.  While I rode through most of these states, except a tiny corner of PA, they are small, and I just went through them.

Some states I hit more than once when borders were curvy, like in GA and WV, and some because I was in opposite ends, like NY and NH.  I only counted them once though.  As Canada’s borders were still closed, I didn’t make it there.  Those borders are still closed, even as I write this, nearly 3 weeks after the trip.

I didn’t get any speeding tickets, but I was very careful to closely follow local speed limits.  If you know me, you know what a challenge this was.  Thank goodness for Lucille’s cruise control.

The cost

I initially budgeted $6,500 for the trip.  I calculated the cost for everything I could think of, including hotels, camping fees, gas, tolls, food, souvenirs, motorcycle service, and miscellaneous expenses.

Lodging

I figured my largest expense would be lodging.  This turned out to be true.  I intended to stay with potentially 13 bunk a bikers, 6 hotels and 8 campgrounds.  I was really far off.  The good news is, my estimates on the costs of these were also far off.  I managed to stay with only 5 bunk a bikers.   I could have stayed with 2 more, but one was out of town.  He offered me his yard to camp in, but the thought of peeing in the yard of someone that was kind to me, didn’t make me feel good.  The other one got back to me late, and by the time they did, I’d already made a hotel reservation.  The rest of the bunk a bikers never got back to me.  This was disappointing, but, by the end, I’d had my fill of strangers!

I stayed in way more hotels than I thought due to the bunk a biker situation and the weather.  I stayed in 12 hotels that I budgeted $200 a night for, though the average price I paid was only $82.05.  My total hotel costs were $984.69.   The most expensive hotel I stayed in was in New Hampshire, the Lancaster Motel.  It wasn’t worth the price, but it was at the end of my most miserable night/day of the trip, so maybe it was. The cheapest was in Dodge City, Kansas, the Windsor Inn and Suites.  Way nicer than the $58.33 I paid.

I camped 9 times and the total cost for that was $133.80.  I did pay for an extra night at Acadia because I wasn’t sure when I made my reservation on what day I would actually arrive.  By the time I figured it out, it was too late to cancel, so I paid for the night.  The average nightly cost for camping was $14.87.  The Van Riper was the most expensive, it was $8.00 for internet booking, $25.00 for the site, and $9.00 to get to the site.  If I would have known it was going to cost that much, I’d have probably looked elsewhere, but it’s always good to support our parks.

Gas

While I budgeted gas at only $4/gal (I AM from California!) for a total of $900, I calculated I’d be driving a bit further and not getting quite as good of mileage as I got.  Lucille got about 47mpg on the trip overall though I estimated she’d get about 40mpg.  My total gas cost was $605.41.  The pipeline interruption was still affecting the east cost and the cost of the premium gas Lucille needs was always over $3/gal but rarely, except in California got to $4.  Still, I didn’t spend nearly as much as I thought I would on gasoline.  Tolls cost me a fair bit though.  I spent a total of $41.56 on tolls.  Good thing I got that EZ-Pass!  Parking Lucille in the parking garage cost me $36, which I guess should have been added to the cost of the hotel that night.

I spent $537.11 to get Lucille serviced in New Hampshire.  I bought myself lunch at sandwich shops or Taco Bell and ate at a couple of restaurants, as well as purchased some snacks I bought along the way.  That plus the groceries I bought on the road came to $189.07.

I didn’t buy any souvenirs or have any extra expenses besides what I listed above.  The total cost for the trip was $2,802.61.  That is about $93.42 a day, or $103.80 if you only count riding days.  Not too bad.  Certainly I could have spent less if I’d been more careful with my camping.  I could either plan better or have a bike that I could ride on some dirt roads to stealth camp.  I’m not one for sleeping in rest stops and such.  I think I’m just too old for that.

My gear

I talked about the heavy amount of research I did for even the smallest items I would be taking, and I think that research paid off.  Of course, if you’ve been following along, you know that my old (really old) REI Quarter Dome tent was a failure.  If we had maintained the waterproofing, it likely would have been fine.  I’ve used this tent on countless backpacking trips here in sunny California and it’s never let me down.  Of course, it’s never rained on any of those trips.

I took a lot of pieces that could attach to my GoPro, but I didn’t use any of them.  Having a face for radio, I pretty much only recorded me riding on the bike.  Looking back at those videos, I probably should have stopped more and taken video of other things.  It turns out, I’m not much of a stop and look around type of girl.

The GoPro was the only other piece of equipment I brought that let me down.  Unpredictable lockups were my biggest problem with it.  It might have a new battery and plenty of room on the memory card, but when I pushed the power button, it would just freeze until I could pull the battery out.  Riding a big bike is not conducive to unattaching the GoPro from my chin, pulling the battery out, reassembling the thing and reattaching it to my helmet.  I found this super frustrating.  And, although I had tested it before I left, the GoPro would no longer speak to either my phone or tablet once I was on the road, so I couldn’t load the videos into the hard drive I’d brought with, or upload them to my Google Drive.  If anyone has anything better they think I should try, let me know.

The rest of my gear, including my chair, sleeping pad, and pillow that I bought for this trip was awesome.  It performed well, and I wouldn’t have had as good a trip without it.

I wore every article of clothing I brought, and didn’t really have extra.  I suppose I COULD have slept in the same base layer that I rode in on the cold days, but it felt so nice having a clean layer to put on at the end of the day, I don’t regret taking the extra.  Three pairs of underwear and 5 pairs of socks were the perfect amount.  My socks were often not dry in the mornings, so I needed the extra.  I probably could have done with only 3 shirts instead of 4, but I never knew if I’d want long or short sleeves and it the extra shirt didn’t take up that much room.

Food

I made WAY too much food.  I didn’t plan for the mornings when I either couldn’t eat or didn’t have time to eat or days when I really didn’t feel like actually making something for lunch.  If I could pick something up, I ate it, but unpacking to make something for lunch always felt daunting.  I’m not sure why it felt that way.  There’s really nothing to dumping some burrito mix into some water and cooking it, but I was usually at a gas station at lunch, and cooking lunch there just didn’t appeal to me.  On my next adventures I’ll bring snack food with that requires no preparation.  And, less breakfasts.

I did use one of the tools Glenn had me bring to adjust my highway peg twice.  Although her low oil light came on, Lucille didn’t let me down and I never needed the tools.  It turns out though, I was comforted by having them.  I also didn’t need my tire repair kit, though I did occasionally put more air in the tires with the air compressor.  The tire kit comes with anytime I ride though, so I’m not sure it counts  And my fancy new tire gage got used every day and it works a treat!

I also, thankfully, never needed my first aid kit, but it is also in Lucille any time I ride.  The navigator in Lucille got some use, but I never fully trusted it and it did try to take me down some 4-wheel drive roads that Lucille had no business being on.  I also discovered just how useful it is, in that it routes my phone through my helmet and interfaces with the bike, giving me valuable information, like that my oil is low.

Wrap up

I tried to give just a basic overview of things here.  If you’ve any questions about anything specific, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer.  I’ll write another post on my thoughts and lessons learned later.  Thanks so much for coming along.