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Narrowed down our choices: Motorcycle Trip -or- Hiking across Italy

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
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Bumped up the motorcycle trip. Leaving late next week. Michigan & Superior for sure. Maybe continue on around the others too? We will see how it all goes. I think we are mostly ready except for some final route planning and uploading the route into the iPhone. So I have work to finish.

Trip dates were moved because we plan to head to California (by airplane) in September)
 

NorthernRedneck

Well-known member
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Have a good trip. Too bad I'll miss you going through. Would have enjoyed showing you around. Our plans changed also from the whole month of August to the last two weeks of july. This was a last minute change for us. We picked something closer than the east coast. 2 and a half week tour rv trip.

Canadian eh!!!
 

Jim_S

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
Bumped up the motorcycle trip. Leaving late next week. Michigan & Superior for sure. Maybe continue on around the others too? We will see how it all goes. I think we are mostly ready except for some final route planning and uploading the route into the iPhone. So I have work to finish.

Trip dates were moved because we plan to head to California (by airplane) in September)

Have a good trip. Too bad I'll miss you going through. Would have enjoyed showing you around. Our plans changed also from the whole month of August to the last two weeks of july. This was a last minute change for us. We picked something closer than the east coast. 2 and a half week tour rv trip.

Canadian eh!!!

Hope both of you have a great trip!
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
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Finished the LED light install tonight.

Can you see me now?

There are about 300% more lumens than the minimum legal requirement on each bike. All the luggage boxes are removable so they have weatherproof quick connects to connect them to the bikes.

Amber for turn, red for running and stop.
 

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Bamby

New member
Aarrrggh, so you are a pirate and you can see them :hammer:

One area that could use some help is when the bikes are parked, especially at night. Some discrete reflective stickers would really help make them stand out even when parked when hit with backup lights in a parking lot let alone headlights.
 

Melensdad

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One area that could use some help is when the bikes are parked, especially at night. Some discrete reflective stickers would really help make them stand out even when parked when hit with backup lights in a parking lot let alone headlights.

Both have 3M reflective stripes on them. They light up pretty well. Just not visible in the pics above because I was trying to show the LEDs and there were no other lights on to illuminate the bikes. But the boxes and bikes have added reflectors.
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
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Needed some fuel so I snapped a couple of photos of the new LED lights I added to the side cases, it shows the reflectors and also I've included the quick connect twist locks for the wiring so I can remove the side cases.

These lights are stuck onto the surface of the cases using 3M automotive foam tape.

Not the most attractive lights, but they seem to work well. If they fail I can swap them with something else. But honestly it was hard to find any surface mount lights that would actually fit where I needed them to fit. I could have used longer lights and wrapped them around the corner of the boxes if I could have found any.

Honestly I consider this a fairly temporary solution but if they hold up to weather then maybe they will be a much longer term solution than I imagine.
 

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Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
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The NEMO 2 chain oilers are both installed.

This is the LAST of the do-dads and thingamjiggies that I needed/wanted on the bikes.

So far so good. One word of caution to other mechanical misfits and dimwits like myself, the Gidibi brand of NEMO 2 chain oilers do NOT come with instructions. Nor do they come with fancy boxes and glossy advertising. On the other hand, they cost about $20 less than some of the other identical NEMO 2 units. So that is a mighty expensive piece of paper you must get with the other boxes. If you buy the Gidibi brand be sure to go watch the instal videos; its a 30 minute job, start to finish, including clean up.

I ordered BLACK, they sent GREY (which was an option). Not enough time to return them to a foreign country (I think Slovakia?) for an exchange to get the BLACK that I wanted.

I consider any mechanical job a success when I need less than 2 trips to the hardware store and I don't bleed on the garage floor. So this was 2 successful installs. But somehow I got chain grease on my forehead :shock:
 

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Doc

Bottoms Up
Staff member
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I am impressed with all the add ons you did to help ensure a safe trouble free trip. Good job. :tiphat: I do hope we'll see some highlight pics once you are on your way.
 

Melensdad

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I am impressed with all the add ons you did to help ensure a safe trouble free trip. Good job. :tiphat: I do hope we'll see some highlight pics once you are on your way.

Thanks, I've tried to stay with practical add-ons. I admit that the painted cargo boxes are a bit of a vanity thing. I just didn't much like the all silver boxes. But my goals have been to keep things simple and light weight while increasing safety.

I looked at and lusted over things like radiator guards, light bars and crash bars but pretty much realized none of those actually do much for reliability or safety and they all add weight. Granted each would be a small amount. But carry enough pebbles around and you might as well just carry a big rock.

As for photos I'm not even sure I will have cell signals in some of the remote areas along the Superior and Huron coastlines! But when I find wi-fi I'm sure there will be photos here on the forums.
 

Doc

Bottoms Up
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Wife and I took a spur of the moment trip to Ontario a couple weekends ago. Cell coverage ended once we crossed into Canada. I forget how we found out about it but we signed up for $10 a day coverage so we could make calls and used WiFi at the hotel and got by with no issues. AT&T must have texted us info about the $10 a day offer, but if I had set it up ahead of time I would have saved some bucks. Had we not signed up for the $10 a day we could have used the roaming option but we heard horror stories of fees for roaming being over $100 for a few minutes of cell usage.
 

NorthernRedneck

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We encountered the same thing traveling in the states. We generally turn off our phones as soon as we cross over to the dark side and only turn them on where there's free wifi.

Canadian eh!!!
 

Melensdad

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We are getting closer.

Scheduled to leave the house Monday morning. Stop #1 will be Holland, Michigan. We booked an AirBnB for our night there. Its a semi-touristy town on the eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan.

The official route of the Lake Michigan Circle Tour, which is a mapped route, includes an ugly section of Interstate 94 that runs along the southern edge of Gary, IN and up and around the southern edge of the lake. We plan to follow Route 20 and Route 12, which is scenic and runs through the 'dunes' area of the southern tip fo the lake. That eventually will turn into the Red Arrow Highway, another scenic route and then rejoin the so-called official route, which leaves the interstate to join the local highways as the route moves a bit north of the Indiana/Michigan state state line. We will follow local highways up to Holland.

It's a lot slower route, but it takes us through small towns, touristy places, along the lakeshore and past marinas. All of which are invisible when driving on the super-slab. The point of this trip is to rediscover those family road trips of the 1960's.
 

NorthernRedneck

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When you leave Duluth Minnesota heading north you have two options for the highway. There's the divided highway that's boring and the same as any other interstate or there's the old highway that follows the lake shore. They eventually rejoin.

When they do, you'll go through two harbors. Get gas there as there's not much for fuel for a good 2 hours north until grand marrais. Just after two harbors on the left there's a place called Betty's pies. Mmmmm. Best pies in the world. It's a small restaurant with regular food but the pies are delicious.
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Oh, just a thought. When you get to grand marrais, you will arrive going down a bit of a hill when it levels off the highway goes through town to the left but you'll see an intersection where you can branch off to the right. Take the right. It'll take you to their mainstreet where you can park and walk out to the marina. Very nice scenery. There's a few small shops there along with sven and Ole's pizza shop. Best pizza on the north shore in my opinion.


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Melensdad

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Awesome, we are actually camping outside of Grand Marias.

I believe I have routed us on the old highway along the lake. I'm using FURKOT on my computer and uploaded the .GPX files to the SCENIC motorcycle routing App on my iPhone. I have our route planned out, day by day, from home to the night before we get to Toronto.

No interstate highways! As much rural road as possible.
 

NorthernRedneck

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Grand marrais is a very nice little tourist town in the summer. You'll like it.

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