Packed and Ready - I Think!

Driving across the causeway, which is a 3/4 mile long earthen bridge connecting the Pennsylvania shoreline to the Ohio shoreline on Pymatuning Lake, I am trying to maintain a straight line of travel against crosswinds that are gusting up to 4o mph. The bike is fully loaded with enough gear to take us on the Great Adventure and she is having no problem carrying us down the road. As the gusts peak, I notice that the bike is only slightly more top heavy than normal but definitely manageable. In fact, there seems to be little difference in the way she handles empty or loaded. The front end seems a little lighter, the required lean is a bit diminished and I am more attentive when coming to a stop, but other than that, it seems to be business as usual.

We are only running about 10psi in the rear shocks and will need to take them up to about 30psi for the big trip but will have to do little else! Well, add gas once in a while and perhaps, take more pictures, but truly, other than that we found that we have enough luggage space and can easily get all of our necessary gear onto the bike to make the trip!

Over the past week, Dawn was getting a bit concerned, so I thought it was time to load everything on and take the bike for a test ride. Every inch of saddle bag and trunk was taken although we found that the top bags (we have two of them) had a little more room for "stuff." You know what I am talking about, we all take stuff with us on trips finding every last nook or cranny that you can stuff stuff into! We once again, proved that we are very good at stuffing stuff!

Oh, I'm not gonna lie, it felt good to finally get all packed up and on the road. I had to resist the temptation to continue west - just to see what we might see, you know?! After all, that was the direction we were headed.

We did come back though (me kicking and screaming all the way!) and stopped in to see Steve and Rita. We wanted to pick their brains to see if we might have overlooked anything in our pack job. As it turns out, Steve was gone but Rita was more than happy to accommodate our request [which works out well since she really is the brains... well, I should just stop right there - haha]. She gave her expert approval of all that we had on board and said she was impressed with what we could fit on the bike - she even seemed to mean it!

Okay, so we got back home and unpacked everything and this is all the stuff we had on the bike! It doesn't seem as impressive in the picture, but I was really surprised at how much there really was!

[Now if only I could find a way to load up the bed, we could really travel in comfort!]