Best 1st Motorcycle

Preparing For A Motorcycle Odyssey: A Shakedown Cruise

My year long motorcycle trip was a long time in the planning. About 3 years before the trip, I started saving. I mean really, really saving. Eating beans and rice was normal. Skipping lunch was normal. Bicycling to work was cheaper than either taking a motorcycle, car or streetcar. New clothes? No way. I had to save enough to I could leave for a year with no income at all. I had to make sure that I could buy gas, food, oil and have a few dollars left over for emergencies like a flat tire. I made arrangements with a local bank to wire money to me monthly. I would call them. They would wire the money to a local Western Union. So the month better not run out before the money did.

But let's test our preparations before we leave for good. Before embarking on a year long motorcycle odyssey, a maiden voyage is a good idea. Let's have a weekend in a state park about 4 hours away to see if we have the supplies and equipment we need, if it stays on the bike, how the bike handles and how we do driving, camping, cooking, sleeping, making a fire, striking the camp, and then driving home. We will make the trip no matter the weather. Our start date for our year on the road is June 1st. It's now March so we have plenty of time to adjust what needs to be adjusted or chicken out altogether.

So the weekend is set for Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, Alabama, about four hours from New Orleans.

Friday morning, the departure day, arrives on a beautiful New Orleans morning in March. The bike is packed, all equipment is stowed and bungee corded down. I drive around the block. The bike seems to handle well, so I head due East on Hwy. 90 toward Gulf Shores, AL. The whole idea of the trip is to stay off interstate highways and only ride the 'blue highways', so I might as well start that same way. I ride through the marshes and swamps of Eastern New Orleans on my way to Mississippi. On the way, I hit the string of small towns as I enter Mississippi: Waveland, Bay St. Louis, across the bay to Pass Christian, Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs and on to Mobile, Alabama. When I reach Mobile Bay, I have already been on the road almost 4 hours and have stopped to rest 3 or 4 times. I know that I must have more cushioning on the handle bars of the bike because my entire body is buzzing from the vibrations. I don't have to write that down in my notebook, I will certainly remember it. I have had to stop several times to restrap bungee cords. They stretch quickly. If you hear sleeping bag sacks flapping, you must strap the thing down better.

After crossing Mobile Bay, I take the state road 98 south all the way to Gulf Shores. I find the campground, register and start getting the campsite made into a two night home. The tent goes up without a hitch. I decided to stake it out just in case a wind comes up. I leave the fly off. The sleeping pad goes in, the sleeping bag on top of that and I am good to go to sleep that night. I bought a two person tent because the size and weight differences were slight and I wanted the extra room. Good thing because the two person tent is not very big. I would not want to have two people in it.

I now start looking for wood to start a fire for cooking dinner. I find that I must go to the campground store and buy wood. That's discouraging, so a peanut butter sandwich becomes dinner. That is the first peanut butter sandwich of hundreds that will be consumed when the real trip comes along. After a short search around the grounds, I find that plenty of folks have left firewood that they don't want, so I gather all I need for tomorrow. Whew.

My bike sits at the campsite. There is no car or truck in sight, so I attract much attention. Campers are friendly folk anyway, but a lone woman on a motorcycle attracts more than usual curiosity. A middle aged couple in an RV come by and say hello. He has his Ford cap on, telling me he is a snowbird from near Detroit, Michigan. When he speaks, I am sure of it. Only Michiganders sound like Michiganders. He wants to see the motor on my bike. Asks questions about how fast it will go, what is the gas mileage and how much oil it burns. He is a car maker, that's for sure. He and his wife are cordial, even invite me to their RV for dinner. I gotta admit, their dinner sounds better than my peanut butter sandwich, but I am determined to do this as if I were completely alone. We talk for a good while. After our chat, I walked around the campground just to get the kinks out from being on a bike for 5 hours and speak to a few other campers. The younger couples are usually in tents, the older ones in RV's, some well used and others brand new. I hear (and will hear hundreds of times over the next year), "I would love to do what you are doing. I wish I could. I envy you."

Cooking the following day goes as if I have done it thousands of times. Making a campfire is as easy as reading about it. Frying potatoes and eggs is easy and washing up is just as easy. And food tastes better outdoors. I strike the camp on Sunday morning early, get everything securely stowed and strapped and I put my helmet on and ride out of Gulf Shores confidently. I can do this motorcycle trip. I know I can. I take I-10 back to New Orleans just because work beckons on Monday. As far as I was concerned, I had passed the first test with flying colors.