A trip to the US and Canada has been on the distant horizon for a while but it was going to follow a previously planned trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland. That trip hasn't come off yet but last year our youngest son became engaged to a girl from Mexico. That's a story that goes back a few years and she has been out here in Queensland for a few years now. To cut a long story short, they plan to marry in Guadalajara, Mexico in November this year.
Why not combine that with a USA trip? Sounds like a plan? So, planning has been underway for a few months. The above map is a rough plan of travel, around 17,000 klms. Doing it by motorcycle or car were the obvious choices but which one depended on a lot of factors. Hiring a bike for 7 - 8 weeks is too costly, that left buying and selling a bike over there or shipping our bike over. Shipping the Goldwing was too expensive to be viable so we decided on the VFR. Of course limited luggage space for 7 -8 weeks of travel, including a wedding, was a problem to be resolved, along with a couple of others, like getting insurance for the bike.
Many plans were made and modifications commenced to set the VFR up to meet our needs and ensure the bike was as prepared as possible to do the distance as comfortably as possible. It was never going to be as comfortable as the Goldwing but so be it. Then, Therese will tell you it was divine intervention, I happened to be at a mate's place going over a couple of things and setting up my computer to manage our Australian WIng Riders Association website in my role as Communication Officer. As part of the instruction, a file was opened just for training purposes and it turned out to be an old document that a fellow from Vancouver, Canada had distributed through an unknown source offering his Goldwing availability for overseas visitors. The document was old but with nothing to lose, I contacted him and we now have new friends to meet in Vancouver, a Goldwing to ride, and the problems of shipping and insuring the bike and storing surplus gear while travelling solved.
The Mexico portion of the trip will be after the riding tour and involves flying from LA to Guadalajara for a week for the wedding then back to LA and home.
As usual this story and associated pictures is primarily for the interest of family and friends but we welcome anyone who would like to travel with us from your lounge chair or just to keep a track of where we are. In addition to the story. This link will provided a real time GPS location track of our progress. To see all the GPS points, click on USA Tour> Adjustments> % Fill and select a percentage of points to display up to ALL, then click Update Map.
I hope you all enjoy the ride and that it's as entertaining for you as it was for us.
Read and enjoy the trip. If you want to contact us, click on the "Contact us" link on the menu.
Links to the daily progress updates are in the table below.......
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The synopsis can be found here......