Just an update on Alaska Status

May 18th is sneaking up on me very quickly and before I know it, I will be on my adventure. My wife was talking to one of her friends the other day and the woman was telling Lori, you really shouldn’t let him go. To my wife’s credit, she turned to the lady and said, “This is number one on his bucket list and I could never tell him that.” “Besides, if I did, he would be more of a bear afterwards and I wouldn’t want that either.” She’s right, it is number one, because it is a promise I made over my Dad’s Casket when he passed July of 1999. Seems like yesterday we were watching my two boys play All-star baseball, which he dearly enjoyed, then drove home and died of a heart attack. My Dad always use to say one thing that I remembered and at the time it didn’t make me smile, but now it does. “You never have a promise of tomorrow.” Then he would add some wisdom to whatever the topic was at the time. His dream is now my dream, to drive to Alaska. His was in an RV and mine is with a motorcycle. Maybe when I grow up, I will drive to Alaska in an RV.

I’m putting the finishing touches on my route and I fear that if anything happens to delay me, I will not have enough time to do everything that I want to do. There are just to many things to see and too many miles to cover. The perk the way that I do things is that I can always just waypoint from point to point and cut out an entries day route in a manner of minutes. I have about 11 days to finalize routes and I will be done.

Motorcycle is ready. The GPS tracker made by Spot is installed for the wife. Today I went to Fredericksburg BMW open house and bought a new pair of heated socks, they’ve change to look like gloves, and some more straps. These straps have allowed me to find a place to put my tires. When I took it for a short ride afterwards, it worked. I was amazed and thinking about it, it might just help balance the bike distributing more weight to the front. I have lot’s extra weight on the back and nothing in the front, so this might help. I will ride it to work and on a trip before I leave to test the setup further. For those that work with me, just look for the big black gray ugly bike with crap hanging all over it.

I have all my tools set out and waiting for a pouch to store them in. All my camping gear is ready except for one item, and it should be here next week. I order a new tire iron and hope that it will do the job. Lastly, after some comments on Facebook about my tire mounting system, I have decided to order tubes for insurance. I will not be able to pack every safety device that everyone wants me to carry, but I feel confident that I will be warm and safe on the side of the road if I cannot fix it.

I think I’m ready, so come on May 18th. The pictures below were from my test mount. I now have different straps and they work very well.