Summary

Tom and Todd provide valuable insights into planning motorcycle trips, focusing on how to ensure comfort, safety, and enjoyment. It opens with a humorous take on internet advice, then delves into the inquiry that led to the podcast topic: optimizing bike modifications and trip planning for longer rides. Todd and his co-host discuss their experiences and share ten key tips, such as starting with short trips, detailed route planning, packing smart, staying hydrated, preparing for weather changes, and connecting with local riders. They emphasize documenting the journey for future memories, ensuring preparation, and the importance of flexibility during the trip.

Bottom Line

Document your trips. Not only will you treasure the memories, but you'll also have invaluable insights for future rides.

Mile Marker

How to Plan a Great Motorcycle Trip

Tom and Todd dive into the importance of thorough planning and how even the smallest details can make or break your ride. They discuss the significance of starting small and preparing meticulously to ensure comfort and safety on longer trips.

Toolkit

The hosts highlight crucial gear such as multi-tools and rain gear. They emphasize the importance of compact, high-quality rain gear that can be easily stored and accessed during your ride.

Timecodes

- 00:00 - Welcome to the Best Motorcycle Roads Podcast

- 00:17 - Mile Marker: How to plan a great motorcycle trip

- 00:53 - Planning your first trip

- 02:34 - Top 10 Tips for Planning a Motorcycle Trip

- 02:52 - Tip 10: Start Small

- 03:41 - Tip 9: Plan your route in detail

- 05:07 - Tip 8: Prepare your bike

- 06:00 - Tip 7: Pack Smart

- 07:15 - Tip 6: Gear up for Comfort

- 09:17 - Tip 5: Know your limits

- 10:05 - Tip 4: Plan for Fuel and Rest Stops

- 11:05 - Tip 3: Stay Flexible

- 12:21 - Tip 2: Connecting with Local Riders

- 14:50 - Tip 1: Document the Journey

- 16:31 - Toolkit Essentials: Gear and Tips

Social Links

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- Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/motorcycleroadsandtrips

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- Best Motorcycle Roads: https://bestmotorcycleroads.com/podcast/

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Sponsor Links

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Welcome to the Best Motorcycle Roads Podcast

Today's bottom line is this document your trips.

You'll thank yourself in the future.

Mile Marker - How to plan a great motorcycle trip

[00:00:27] todd: I was looking through a bunch of the motorcycle groups on Facebook and I belong to several of them.

And together we moderate one of them. And I saw someone post it. Just a simple question.

[00:00:40] todd: And of course, along with a simple question comes 50 stupid answers, ridiculous answers, but then there were some good ones. And I just thought, Let's tackle this one. Let's talk about it.

Yeah. So

[00:00:53] todd: question.

Planning your first trip

And they've gotten interested in maybe doing a longer trip, 500 miles or multi days, and so they really wanted to ask, they said, we're, I'm just writing a deuce right now. And what are some things that, I should think about adding to my motorcycle. And of course you've got all the stupid answers, just ride, or I wrote across the country on my, basic bike and

Whatever, dude

[00:01:32] tom: Yeah.

[00:01:37] tom: And that know, and that's one thing. It's just like sometimes I get it. We all wanna be the funniest guy on the internet, right? . But half the time when you do that, the context.

Correct, it's answer the question for the person I mean they like it's has enough. I have enough anxiety asking the question the first time Yeah, let alone to turn the flames on and tell him, I don't know It just those things drive me crazy. It

[00:02:00] tom: Yeah,

There were, a lot of great answers. And then, we have a lot of experience in writing multi D trips and, five to a thousand, over a thousand miles in a day. I haven't done that,

Yeah. That's the bottom line, right?

Top 10 Tips for Planning a Motorcycle Trip

[00:02:40] tom: We came up with 10, right? Yeah, we're gonna come up with 10 tips that we feel like You For you taking maybe your first or one that we should do very good.

Number 10: Start Small

Yep. That's an easy way to do it. Yeah. If you have any issues. At least you have, yeah,

Cause then you visualize everything too.

[00:03:37] tom: I'd say that. So the 10th one is start small.

Number 9: Plan your route in detial

[00:03:44] todd: plan your route, be very detailed.

Using like Google maps or any of those routing ones that are made for motorcycles. There's a reaver and there's a bunch of them.

And then that's an easy way, so you can see, I would say when you're planning those routes to avoid the four lanes in most times, once in a while, jump on there to bypass a city if that's the case. But, and you don't have to, like a lot of times.

We're mounting our phones on the handlebars and or GPS, but you can go The poor man version of that is really just to write down every next stop on a card and have it, and have it right there.

[00:04:39] tom: even just a magnetic, like map, if you have to, like those are 20 bucks.

Yeah, good point

[00:05:03] tom: Yeah,

Number 8: Prepare your bike

But Just bring some of the essentials you do want to have some tools with

[00:05:46] todd: Unfortunately, it's happened to us on several trips where we've lost a tire But if

Yeah. Yeah

Number 7: Pack Smart

[00:06:01] tom: seven,

[00:06:03] tom: Yeah.

[00:06:14] tom: You can't, I would not do that. I would not do it myself. But so that would be in a, I would say that if you're going to take a bike on a multi day trip. You're gonna have to have a way to attach the bag to the bike somehow. Usually, most bikes that you'll take will have a back seat. And I know on our first trip that we took, that was a three day, 1, 000 mile trip.

I literally used a June bag, and I just got one of those small cargo net cargo, the small cargo net looking one that just have six bungee cord straps on it. It was fine. Now if we'd have got into some heavy rain, everything would have definitely got wet, but but just to get by, it was good enough, and I think even just some of these, a couple of the straps, you basically just attaching it to your seat,

[00:07:13] tom: Getting for to know that, but.

Number 6: Gear up for Comfort

That's where I would start, and for me, I think the biggest pain is generally speaking, the seat. If it's not a tour style bike. Most of those seats are fairly uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can definitely get comfortable like making sure you have bar risers in the right spot. Adjusting the motorcycle, if you can, is the biggest thing to comfort as far as I know, but

[00:08:19] tom: an air Hawk, which is the name brand.

And then there's others. And I've got the generic version of the air Hawk.

So I've put the air seat on there and it helps.

But for me, I was just moving laterally, forward, back, laterally on the seat beads. And [00:09:00] that did help too. It depends, and I think this is where the Airhawk style, see it's when it gets the hotter, it gets the more moisture shows up in places you don't want it to.

And to me, that's when I start feeling the pain. But yeah. So that was number, was that number six?

Number 5: Know your limits

[00:09:18] todd: would really just be know your limits. Don't push yourself too far. In the beginning, of course, this person so they, they've done some one and 200 mile rides.

So maybe they know how they feel at the end of that. But I would say don't push it. You don't want to get yourself overly tired or, start cramping. That, that can be dangerous. So

Yeah. It's really hot. And I think just making sure I was doing some electrolytes. In the water and we stopped in that really I was surprised how well that helped you. So

[00:09:59] tom: [00:10:00] liquid I was just doing water and then I put a Electrolyte packet in it. Yeah, and then just usually drank that.

Number 4: Plan for Fuels and Rest Stops

[00:10:09] todd: Yeah, I would plan fuel stops and rest breaks Especially if you're going to be out in remote areas, right? No, you're going to be out in that country remote there might not be a fuel stop for 30 or 40 miles, so you can get yourself in trouble quickly on a motorcycle.

So I would plan those ahead.

[00:10:48] todd: Yeah, and that anxiety of running out of fuel and I have yeah, I've run out of fuel. Yep. Me too It's it sucks. And yeah, I mean you walk for a while then finally someone [00:11:00] picks you up You can get up to a gas station by a can and then figure out how to get back. Yeah

Number 3: Stay Flexible

[00:11:05] todd: number three?

Be ready to adjust and adapt. , be flexible because the weather will change, road conditions, depending on the time of the year, but I would say don't make your route so rigid. That you can't make changes to it. Make sure there's always a like kind, a plan B maybe.

It's hard to see. It's hard to control the vehicle sometimes based on how bad it is. Just pull over.

That way, if you do hit a heavy rainstorm, you can wait for a few hours. Yeah. Yeah. Wait three, four hours till some of it passes. And if you're planning

Number 2: Connecting with Local Riders

[00:12:35] tom: Does anyone know this area? They'll at least help you find roads. But sometimes it's like, Hey, I'll be there in that Saturday. I can, I'll ride with you, and we've done that before in the past. On the ADV Rider is a very popular, a very big forum, off Facebook forum, and they have regions, and people are so willing to ride with you, and just, they want to go ride, and [00:13:00] they're always looking for someone to ride with.

Man, I would definitely check that out, if you can find any local riders. Those people and then you're just following sometimes, let them lead and Sure. Or they'll let you know where the cool little, place with the best chicken salad sandwiches and I was osa. I was just

[00:13:25] tom: where this person did what Historic yeah. Yeah. Historic

Fantastic.

Recap 10 through 2

I know. And then, I don't

[00:13:53] tom: last trip that I took was a long trip. It was about 11 days and I did a really good job of [00:14:00] packing smart and man, it actually felt good to not have so much stuff. So yeah, that was number, was that? Yeah. Seven pack Smart.

No that was 1, 2, 3, 4. That's not four. Yeah, it was four. pack smart number five. Gear up for comfort. So just be comfort, be in comfort. Four, six. Know your limits. We're going backwards, Jack. It's ten start small, nine plan your route. I see what you're saying. Eight. Oh, you lived in David Letterman land for how many years did you do top ten lists?

[00:14:36] tom: All right, seven is pack smart. Six, gear up for comfort. Five, know your limits, four, plan for those fuel straps and rest breaks three, stay flexible to connect with local writers and our number one that you already heard.

Number 1: Document the Journey

In many ways, if you feel compelled to write it down in a Book, I tried to do that on the last one. It didn't do a great job. [00:15:00] One of the things on our next trip I'd really like to do is write down at the end of the day, just some thoughts about it because you just forget so much, we have cameras on our phones, we have all this stuff.

And if you can document the journey. How many times have we looked back? We've looked back a lot on the timeline because that has shown us where we were, the

[00:15:16] tom: but I'm, we really try to at least take some more pictures as we go on this next trip that we're taking, I'm going to really try to stop right before some of the roads that we're going to be on and just stop and record a quick something like here we are in, we're at the great river road in Iowa, starting here.

And just to try to be a little bit better about documenting But all of the videos and the things I've even looked back at videos that I forgot that I recorded And just pictures that pop up. I'm like, oh my gosh, that was awesome yeah, some of the really fun pictures and stuff is in the people we've met.

Oh gosh Yeah, and I don't know that we've taken pictures with all these people we met but we really need to do that Yeah, right selfies,

[00:15:59] tom: Yes. Yeah,

[00:16:03] tom: I did do that when we went on this last trip.

I've got an email of a guy We met at a rest stop in Iowa and then two guys that we met on a ferry One of them was a state police officer and Rose riding a motorcycle and the other one Rode his 150 cc scooter from the west coast to the dragon.

[00:16:23] tom: Somebody to reconnect with but yeah, so those are our top 10 But please document the journey because it's that's what it's all about.

Yeah, it really is.

Toolkit Essentials: Gear and Tips

If you have that one tool, grab that multi tool. But then rain gear, I know we've talked about this a lot, but people have a lot of questions about it, but, and you can pick up a pretty reasonably priced rain gear. Like I think you're running, is it Nelson rigs right now?

[00:17:00] tom: Yep. I think the two things that we've two or three things maybe that we've decided is one.

See if you can get the really compact, if you can see how tight, cause you're using rain gear, hopefully 10 to 15 percent of the time, but you need to have it on the bike a hundred percent of the time. So finding something that gets small. And I would say the only thing that stinks in is if you end up riding a day long in rain, you're going to get wet, but probably going to get wet anyway.

So that. probably a slightly more conducive. You getting wet. Yeah. But you really like, and I had it on the last one with the hood.

That way when you stop water, doesn't run down the back of your helmet into your jacket. Into your collar and then down your back. Absolutely. And into your underwear. Yeah I really like having it. Yeah,

Yeah. Maybe it's just because the Harley Davidson bags are so big. Yeah.

[00:18:14] tom: side bags, if I put my rain gear in there, it's like a third of the rain gear.

[00:18:22] tom: It's it looks like that rubbery. It's usually, it's a little not so good.

Yeah. Yeah. They can be bulky. Is yours

[00:18:37] tom: If you like the podcast today, please and subscribe, or sign up for our BMR rider alerts that you can find on our website. It's our way of keeping you in the loop, and we promise, no spam.

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