Test Ride

So I'm here in Brandywine, WV at the Brandywine Motel, room 6. It's 8:50 pm. This is my first test ride for my trip to Alaska on May 29. I got a really late start today, and didn't leave Alexandria until 4pm. No big deal though, the whole point of this trip is to carry my gear and see how things go. My intention was to camp out tonight at the Brandywine campground, but when I got there, it was closed. Just as well, because it started pouring rain while I was eating dinner at Fat Boy's Pork Palace, enjoying an awesome meal of ramps, eggs, bacon, ham and potatoes. If I'd camped I would have eaten an MRE. So luckily this motel was nearby. $47.

The ride was good, I was on the bike about 3 hours. Of course that's nothing compared to the hours I'll be putting in on the Alaska trip, but this is just a test to see how the gear rides mostly. Since I got a late start, I just took I-81 down to Harrisonburg, then 33 West. Normally I would avoid the interstates. 33 had some awesome twisties through the mountains for a stretch.  The bike just came out of the shop last week, getting all tuned up, and it was running awesome.

Got a chance to test out my new deLorme inReach satellite tracking device. It worked well, and tracked me all the way here, transmitting my position every 10 minutes, and plotting it on a map on the web. It has 2-way messaging capability even when you're out of cell phone range, but I haven't played with that yet.

It was also a chance to test out my large MotoFizz camping bag, which straps to the passenger seat. Most of my camping gear goes in there. It attached to the bike nice and secure, and there was plenty of room for my gear.

I ran into some rain about 20 miles east of Front Royal, but it didn' last that long. It was colder than I expected. As a base layer I wore an Ice Breaker wool shirt, and then my motorcycle jacket, and that was it. I stopped at one point to put the rain liner into my jacket to add a little wind blockage, and in case I ran into more rain. It helped a little, but I was still kind of cold. I'm likely to run into similar weather up in Canada, so I'll have to add a few layers to my packing list.