Guy Boutin's Motorcycle Touring and Travel Pages

Adventures in Sport Touring with the Honda ST 1100, 1300 and the BMW 1200RT

Exploring North America...One Road at a Time

                Planning a Long Tour

Long Riders come in all types, some meticulously plan their tours, down to where they'll eat lunch each day, while others choose to freelance.  They just ride west, and see what's out there.  I fall to the center right of that equation.  I like having a overall plan, but I don't go into the fine detail of each day.  I confine my details to the roads I'll ride, and where I'd like to sleep.

Knowing the ending point of each day works for me, but sometimes I stray from that format and ride past it.  Often I have to change the route due to weather, or construction, when I do, I try to get back on schedule soon as I can.  Having a strategy allows me to get the most out of my riding, and has permitted me to witness most of what North America has to offer.

The most important advice I can give is NOT to try to do too much.  When that happens, you lose your ability to absorb the unexpected, which can be anything from a flat tire, getting a little lost, or spending too much time in a beautiful place.

You have to have a lot time and a few coins to freelance.  I'm retired, but I still have a home and responsibilities, and life on the road takes money.  So that means I need to get back home before the money runs out, and restock the war chest for the next tour.

So I have a plan, and for the most part I stick with it, because it works for me.

I'm currently putting the finishing details on my West Coast tour for 2010, due early August (currently mid May) but now is the time to start getting serious.  A 3 week, 8,000 mile ride, can be a little daunting.  It has been my experience a tour is more complicated then just riding.  You don't have to plan much if you just want to be in San Francisco in 4 days, in fact you don't even need a atlas.  All I'd have to do is get on I-10 or I-40, and ride west till I arrive in California, then start looking for signs.

But a tour is different, because the goal is not the destination, the ride is, and that means an entirely different mindset.  You can ride and tour in the same vacation, which is the hardest to pull off, and takes the most planning of any style.  Why?  Because you are on a schedule, and if you have a setback, makes it hard to catch up.  When that happens you have to adapt by maybe skipping a attraction, or getting on the interstate to make up time.

So lets take a look at how I'm preparing for my upcoming West Coast Ride.

- First decide where you want to go, and what the final goal will be.  In my case it is California to see old friends, and to pick up a few National Parks not on my list along the way.

-How do I want to get there, and what do I want to see?  In this case I'm going to California by way of Seattle.  So I get out my atlas for the big picture, from here I can see the Parks I want to visit.  After doing that, I start connecting the sites and places with the roads I wish to ride.  Every tour I want to see new places and ride new roads. 

       Nothing beats a atlas for the big picture.

-I divided this particular tour into 3 legs.  The west bound ride to Seattle, then south to California, and finally the ride back east. 

-Using the atlas I plan my ride, creating the routes and designating the overnight stops.  I know the lay out of America, and how far I can ride in a day given the geography and the traffic.  Out west I can do 400 miles a day on backroads with little problem, and plan accordingly.

-To do what I want to do on this tour, the west bound leg to the Seattle area is going to take me 8 days.  I could certainly do it in half the time, but I have a lot I want to see and document.  I will be on backroads almost the entire ride, also in the mountains, those conditions will slow me.

Now I go to my desktop, open up Microsoft Outlook, and print the month of August off; several copies.  I mark the days I HAVE to be somewhere, for this tour I have to be at Don's house for a 3 night visit starting on the 13th.  He's planning on me being there, so I have to make that happen.  I pencil those days in, and work backwards to find my start date.  I'm also visiting a friend in the Bay Area the night before Don's, so I pencil VJ in on the August 12th.

I have 3 days to get from Seattle to VJ's, that will be the south bound jaunt.  I'll worry about the return east when I finish the west and south bound rides.

I know each of my overnight stops for the 11 days it will take me to arrive in the Bay Area, and use my atlas to figure out the routes.  I treat each day as a stand alone ride.  With that finished I go to the Mapsource software (Garmin) and work the fine details.  I create a route for each day to Don's house, and name it by day, and destination, and save to C drive to be dowloaded to the Zumo 550 later.

I find it best not to think about the calendar dates when creating a long tour.  After putting in my "must be here" days the rest falls in.  So calendar days are replaced with Day 1, Day 2, etc.  This way you say, "I'll be in the Sturgis area on Day 4", and the calendar date of the 5th becomes secondary.  Now you have a quick reference to the time frame.

After creating the day's ride to the destination in Mapsource, I pencil that day on my calendar.  Mapsource will give me the miles for the day, so I note that also.  Below is my actual calendar for my upcoming ride.  Might be a little hard to read, but you get the idea.

Now my tour is all layed out, and easy to see.  Each day is a separate ride in the Zumo, as I complete one, I delete it from the unit.  The tour is permanently archived in a folder on my desktop marked, "West Coast Tour 2010."

For example, I'll be in Billings, Montana on Day 5, after a 300 mile ride.  Day 10 I'm camped out under the Giant Redwoods near Eureka, California after a 335 mile ride in from Crater Lake, 200 miles of that ride will be on the twisty Klamath River Road.  The ride will take all day.

I took this format from my marathon training days.  I'd mark the day of the race on the calendar, and work back, planning long runs, track work and rest days, and where I finished, would be my start date.

This gives me a quick look at the entire tour.  I can spot trouble spots, like too many consecutive days of hard riding, conflicts with Holidays etc.  I know the Sturgis rally is August 9-16, so I made sure to be out of the area by August 5th.  Days 11, 12, and 13 are layover days at Don's house.  Rest days to regenerate, wash clothes and the bike, and rest up for the ride back east.

My own lingo is integrated into my calendar, for example on Day 18 I have "Rocky Mtn 370 miles," that means I'll be camping in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I can also quickly see which nights I'll be camping, with friends or in a motel.  This helps in budgeting and making sure I don't have too many of one in a row.  I shoot for a 4-1 camping to soft bed ratio, and my calendar makes that easy to chart.

Looking at my itinerary I can see Days, 15, 16, and 17 as the most difficult.  Each are 400+ mile rides in the searing heat of the desert in mid August. Those rides will most likely drain me.  My 3 day rest up will help me start the desert ride fresh and ready to go.  On the other side of the desert is a few days of easy riding in the cool mountains, before finishing the tour with several 500 mile days across the Plains and home.  You can see the pattern of hard-easy I like to use on a long tour by studying my calendar.

I could save a day and half by taking I-70 to St. Louis, but I really hate that highway.

It is not unusual for me to tweak the tour once I get to this point.  Now that I can see it on paper, it will sometimes need adjusting.

In all it will be a 21 day tour, that is planned for 24.  I have a few built in buffer days worked in.  Meaning if I need a extra day due to weather, breakdown or whatever reason, I have space at the end.