Seriously...
VESPAsfw3 wrote:
Any thoughts on this?
Hi Steve,
Yuck. I hesitate to answer, because this thread has been so lighthearted up to now. On the other hand, having ridden my GT from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Los Angeles, California (including a long stretch of the Blue Ridge), I guess I do have a couple thoughts, and they're all about planning.
If everything goes smoothly, you just look over your maps, hop on your scooter, ride under fair skies until you are tired, and stop at a convenient hotel where no reservations are required, then ride home. Call that the best-case scenario. In that case, a lot of planning would have been a total waste of time. And then there's the approach I take where I try to consider the worst-case scenario. The following are my suggestions for planning that trip.
I suggest Microsoft Streets & Trips for planning your route. That software has lots of features which will make planning your trip more enjoyable. It's not expensive, either. As Beale noted above, there is an online service for planning back-roads trips, but S&T makes it easy to do things like reroute by grabbing and dragging a plot of your route, for example. I haven't seen an online map service which can do that. Also, S&T can find you places to get gas and places to stop and blah blah blah blah. For good reason, it's what we used to plan the Cannonball route in 2004 and 2006. If you have trouble getting started with S&T, PM me and I'll be happy to walk you through getting started.
Paper maps are good. On the Cannonball, we had our dandy Streets & Trips maps with our route printed on them. As it happened, a hurricane had knocked out significant portions of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was our route, so we got shunted down the mountain where we bought maps and began improvising like crazy to get to our destination. After that, I made $#!@ sure I had a paper map covering every stage of the route.
Another lesson learned about the Blue Ridge Parkway in particular, and we learned this from a ranger, is that they have a telephone number you can call to check the condition of the Parkway. Had I known that BEFORE I wandered all over hell and creation, I could have saved myself a ton of trouble. Just for fun, the park information number is (828) 298 0398. As their web site says, "this number is your best source for up-to-date information on special events, blooms, or temporary closures due to weather conditions or construction." Online you can get that information at
http://www.nps.gov/blri/ , but once you are on the road, getting online may be very problematical.
The final Blue-Ridge-specific suggestion I have is to make your hotel reservations well in advance. The fact is that there just aren't that many convenient places to stay and they don't hold very many folks, so reservations are a great idea. The downside to this is that it sort of limits your spontaneity. Sorry.
Having a cell phone is not good enough. We found that lots of places did not have digital coverage, so a digital-only cell phone was useless. I strongly recommend that you get a dual-mode phone. My new phone can be manually pushed into Analog mode if Digital coverage is poor or non-existent and that's good enough.
NOTICE TO THE SQUEMISH: THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS NOT LIGHT-HEARTED, JUST PAGE DOWN PAST THIS ONE IF YOU'RE GOING TO GET UPSET: When you get your cell phone, you need to program an ICE (In Case of Emergency) Number into your Contacts List. If, God forbid, you were involved in an accident on the road and you were unable to communicate with the EMTs, they would check your cell phone for an ICE. I'm surprised how many riders do not do this. We learned the hard way on the Cannonball when a rider didn't show up and we called his cell phone only to have it answered by an EMT from Lake Havasu. (The rider survived with very minor injuries considering that he had been struck from behind by an 18-wheeler and was thrown about 100 feet down the road)
If you're going to be gone a couple days or more, you definitely need to carry a charger for your phone. Stupid me, I forgot my charger and had to buy one at the Wal-Mart in Mena, Arkansas.
Okay, now you have a cell phone, so who ya gonna call? Scooter Busters? I gotta tell you, there is no Scooter Busters. So, before you go, do two things. First, make a list of folks you might call, such as every Vespa shop that's anywhere near your route. You can get that info from the Dealer List on www.vespausa.com , for example. Second, suppose you are on the road and, God forbid, you do have a problem. You have your list of Vespa Dealers, but how are you going to get your Vespa to the dealer? I recommend AAA. I have a "MoTow" policy through the American Motorcyclist Association, but when it expires, I'm going to get a deluxe AAA membership (called AAA plus) before Cannonball 2006. Again, this is from experience,because I found out that the AAA plus service will tow your vehicle up to 100 miles to your destination of choice before they start hitting you with a surcharge. (Murphy's Law: A scooter shop will always be further than your towing service allows before hitting you with a surcharge) Oh, and if, you need to call AAA from the road, be sure to tell them you are on a motorbike, so they are certain to bring tiedowns to cinch your precious scooter down on the back of their flatbed. MoTow will be appropriately prepared without having to be told.
Okay, so the scooter itself. Before you go, your big worry is not going to be about performance, big cylinder kits, loud exhausts, carburetor tuning, etc, your big worry is going to be about reliability. And the Achilles Heel of scooters is their tires. Surely you are not going to take off on a worn rear tire? Surely not! So, whether you do it yourself or not, you are going to do a full service on your scooter, including the following: putting a new rear tire on if yours is not like new, oil change, check your CVT belt and your variator rollers for flat spots and wear (a hidden Achilles Heel of CVT scooters), check your clutch, and check your battery (replace if more than 2 years old), check your brakes (you want them to work on the Blue Ridge and its access roads), check your air filter (an overlooked item that is very important), and check your lights.
About the tire thing, this has been thoroughly covered in another thread on the site, and lots of folks suggest putting Slime (TR) or a similar product in your tire to protect against leaks in the event you run over something. That's great, but only use that to get somewhere where you can get the tire replaced. I don't recommend repairing a scooter tire, in fact I warned against it in that other tire thread based on my personal experience watching a patched tire come "unpatched" at speed on Interstate 40.
Speaking of tires, how long would it take to get a spare tire for your scooter if you were on a trip? I suggest planning this in advance. I carried a spare rear and a spare front tire with me. This is where it gets a little sticky, because I had the luxury of a support vehicle to carry this stuff. At the very least, I would locate spare tires somewhere before I left. At least have a plan where you could call and have a tire drop-shipped to you on the road just in case.
Scooters have very small gas tanks. It's amazing how easy it is to run out of gas. A small gas can is a great way to avoid an embarrassing call to the AAA. I bungied mine in front of the backrest and used it three times, twice to rescue fellow scooterists and once to rescue myself.
If you ride, you almost have to carry a rain suit. The under-seat storage area is a good place for this, but make certain it's in a bag in case you spill gasoline during a fill-up.
You need to carry a change of clothing and enough changes of underwear to cover the entire trip. The problem is storage space on the scooter. Here are a couple suggestions: 1) Rather than carry underwear and socks, just go to Wal-Mart for clean underwear and socks. 2) I found an expensive alternate idea is extremely light travel clothing from someplace like TravelSmith.com combined with those packing bags (from Bed Bath & Beyond, for example) that allow you to squeeze the air out of the bag to compress it into the smallest possible space. I used those for every bit of clothing I carried.
In the mountains (and depending greatly on when you go) you will encounter a wide range of temperatures in the course of the day. You'll need to carry a way to layer up to keep warm in the mornings and maybe in the evenings, too. I got caught off-guard in Flagstaff, Arizona and ended up buying a sweat shirt at the local Target. Your mileage may vary.
Of course, you don't even think of going without the bare minimum of a decent helmet, gloves and riding jacket. As it happens, I crashed on the Blue Ridge (my fault, rider error, bad rider!) and was very glad I was wearing a full-face helmet, armored jacket and riding gloves. If I had been wearing riding pants, my only injury would have been my thumb. As it was, one knee got pretty beaten up. Hint: watch for gravel on the entrance and exit ramps from the Parkway.
Don't carry a lot of cash. There are ATMs everywhere now. Carry an ATM card instead.
Carry a spare credit/ATM card in your glove box in case you lose your wallet. Did this happen to one of us on the Cannonball? Sure it did! Believe it or not, an honest person actually found the wallet and gave it back when the rider called in search of it. Better to be prepared.
An unfortunately common problem with our scooters seems to be the failure of the electric mechanism that pops the seat open. You have to be able to get in there to gas your scooter so this is not a trivial problem. There is a manual latch in the glove box which will open the seat if the problem is the electric mechanism. If the manual latch doesn't open it, then you need to know how to jimmy that thing open. Somebody posted instructions on this board explaining how to do that. Put that thread on your reading list.
100-200 miles/day is really not a very long ride per day. If you were going any further, I would recommend a few long practice runs to get your butt prepared for some long days in the saddle and to make certain that you're not going to develop some unexpected back problems or other physical problems when you're far from home.
Let's see, I've covered route planning, maps, Blue Ridge Park info, reservations, cell phones, cell-phone chargers, ICE, towing, tires, prepping your scooter, clothes, money, emergency preparations, gas can, riding gear, the seat-latch gotcha, and the pre-ride. I can't think of much else right now. Oh yeah, my favorite road tune is "Radar Love" by Golden Earring. Don't take "Highway Star" by Deep Purple, it'll cause you to get a ticket.
Take lots of pix and post them here when you get back. Also, keep a paper journal so you can post that here when you get back. I found that carrying a computer was only practical if you had a support vehicle. They're just too heavy and impractical to carry on a scooter.
Have fun and be careful out there.
⚠️ Last edited by jrsjr on UTC; edited 2 times