Well, if you were wanting tales of adventure and spectacular pictures….. sorry to disappoint. It’s been a fairly boring day on the interstate. But I do promise it will get better. Covered 600 miles today and should be on mostly 2-lane roads in the Adirondacks tomorrow. I am always amazed at how rural and wild a lot of New York state is. Spectacular mountains, lakes, and rivers. Don and I rode a long stretch on I-86 and had much of the road entirely to ourselves.

On a funny note, I was setting the up the picture above in our motel parking lot when the owner walks by and said it was a good thing to shoot away from the motel cause it was so ugly it might break the camera. It is a bit of a dive, but clean and cheap.

Well, after about 6 months of planning, we are less than a week away. We have reservations for the two big ferries to get us to and from Newfoundland. We have a couple of critical hotel and campsites reserved and will just wing the rest. The bikes are ready to roll. And it’s time to start sorting out the packing. We hit the road next Saturday morning!

Just a couple of weeks before departure and time to prep the bike. Oil and filter change plus fresh tires. Don and I will be on Metzeler Tourance tires, roughly an 80/20 on-road/off-road tire, and this 6,000 mile trip will largely use them up. Modern motorcycle tires work great but they don’t last long. A motorcycle tire has a contact patch the size of a credit card or less and absolutely has to stick regardless of road surface. The tires are made of softer rubber and have a high silica content to repel water. The softer compound means they wear much quicker than the average car tire. Unfortunately, they don’t cost less than a car tire.