Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Packing and unpacking...
Now we have Wed evening. I have been at work until afternoon and after that I finally concentrated on the packing. I always have a bad habit of leaving my packing to the very last minute. This works OK on my regular business trips when I know exactly what I need along. This time it is different. I have been reading posts on LT-forum about packing and what to take along etc. I followed one advise and made myself a list - or actually 5 lists. One for toiletry -related things, one for miscellaneous stuff, one for clothing, one for bike related stuff and one for tools. I already skipped the tools list and decided to pack the regular set that I usually need when I dismantle the bike in my garage. I even have a 12 V soldering iron plus all kinds of stuff to (try to) fix electrical problems.
My packing is in pretty good shape considering that I still have Thursday and half Friday at my disposal. The trunk liner is almost full. The right saddlebag liner (the smaller one as I used to have the CD-changer) is packed.
At this stage few words about my riding gear:
All the locals warned us that it will be HOT in the Southern US in August. As Jouko and myself are the full-gear-all-the-time-guys, we purchased the BMW Venting Machine riding outfits. We have had exceptionally hot and dry summer in Finland as well so I have had very good possibility to test the suit. It is cool I have to admit. It is black in color, so it absorbs heat when standing in the traffic but as soon as you get to a speed of 20 -30 km/h the cooling effect starts.
But...it will not be 30 - 40 deg C ALL the time... I have tested the suit in 15 C weather and I noticed that the best thing to wear under it is Gerbing heated liner, at least on upper body. Long Johns are still OK for the pants at that temperature but if the weather gets any colder then I will wear the heated pants as well. So, I have Gerbing heated jacket and pants packed on the bottom of my right saddlebag. They now occupy about the same thickness of space as the CD-changer did.
I also found very nice and comfortable hot weather gloves called Sweep Fly. They are made by company Sweep Racing, but I could not find their website...
My helmet is Caberg Justissimo flip-up and it is OK. Some people claim it is noisy, maybe so. However, I always wear custom molded earplug speakers, so I don't know about it. What is nice about the helmet is that I can convert it to a 3/4 helmet in five minutes if the heat gets unbearable.
And finally the boots: I ordered myself BMW Air Flow 2 boots and WOW, those are really cool. When I rode yesterday morning at 16 C weather I had wear thick snowboarding socks in them! Otherwise my feet would have gotten really cold. So I trust that with these shoes I will not get tempted to ride with sandals even in the hottest temperature. OK, let's see then...
Oh well, getting late. Still have to go to work for tomorrow morning at least and get things sorted out there as I will be gone for a full month.
My packing is in pretty good shape considering that I still have Thursday and half Friday at my disposal. The trunk liner is almost full. The right saddlebag liner (the smaller one as I used to have the CD-changer) is packed.
At this stage few words about my riding gear:
All the locals warned us that it will be HOT in the Southern US in August. As Jouko and myself are the full-gear-all-the-time-guys, we purchased the BMW Venting Machine riding outfits. We have had exceptionally hot and dry summer in Finland as well so I have had very good possibility to test the suit. It is cool I have to admit. It is black in color, so it absorbs heat when standing in the traffic but as soon as you get to a speed of 20 -30 km/h the cooling effect starts.
But...it will not be 30 - 40 deg C ALL the time... I have tested the suit in 15 C weather and I noticed that the best thing to wear under it is Gerbing heated liner, at least on upper body. Long Johns are still OK for the pants at that temperature but if the weather gets any colder then I will wear the heated pants as well. So, I have Gerbing heated jacket and pants packed on the bottom of my right saddlebag. They now occupy about the same thickness of space as the CD-changer did.
I also found very nice and comfortable hot weather gloves called Sweep Fly. They are made by company Sweep Racing, but I could not find their website...
My helmet is Caberg Justissimo flip-up and it is OK. Some people claim it is noisy, maybe so. However, I always wear custom molded earplug speakers, so I don't know about it. What is nice about the helmet is that I can convert it to a 3/4 helmet in five minutes if the heat gets unbearable.
And finally the boots: I ordered myself BMW Air Flow 2 boots and WOW, those are really cool. When I rode yesterday morning at 16 C weather I had wear thick snowboarding socks in them! Otherwise my feet would have gotten really cold. So I trust that with these shoes I will not get tempted to ride with sandals even in the hottest temperature. OK, let's see then...
Oh well, getting late. Still have to go to work for tomorrow morning at least and get things sorted out there as I will be gone for a full month.
