DGP - To start off, just to set the scene, how long have you been riding for prior to this trip?
MS- I bought my first/current bike a year ago august 7th, and I took this trip partly because I wanted to get 20,000 miles on it in the first year (I came back with nearly 25000 but I did successfully put 20,000 miles on a bike in my first year of riding)
DGP - Was there any kind of inspiration or purpose for your trip?
MS- My grandparents had their 50th wedding anniversary this year so the rest of my family flew home to Seattle to see them and it was a good excuse for an adventure.
DGP - How did you prepare for the journey. Physically / mentally / practically / ect?
MS- My father was honestly more worried than I was, he made me download Life360 and kept trying to get me to take pepper spray (which I conveniently forgot) I've been camping my whole life so the only new part was the bike and traveling so far solo.
DGP - What are the details of you bike / and equipment you took along with you? Did you have a full camping set up, or just the bare essentials? Can you detail what you brought along?
MS- My bike is a nearly stock 2019 triumph street scrambler, the only 'mods' I've done to it that helped on this trip is the rear rack instead of a pillion seat and I had a 50cal ammo can that I had turned into a side pannier (best decision ever)
I'm actually very happy with the things I packed, I never felt like I was missing something and all my gear fit perfectly on the bike.
I had a youth tent which was juuuust big enough for me to lie down lengthwise so I slept on one side and put my gear on the other side.
My tent was bungee strapped down between my ammo can and a backpack that was on the rear rack.
The backpack held my clothes: 2 pairs of pants, a T-shirt, a medium weight flannel, 3 pairs of socks, and 7 underwear (trust me on this one, I did not want to be doing laundry every other day). It also held a good mummy style sleeping bag, a squeezable water filter for backwoods thirst, ziplocs to pack out trash, wet wipes, a leatherman, a power bank for my phone, and a metal fork-spoon-knife combo. ALSO the single best used (and most missed when I nearly ran out) were a shit ton of HotHands handwarmers. That's how I rode and slept in summer gear (even woke up to a layer of ice on my bike in Montana after a good nights sleep in a tent) and they prevented me having to carry bulkier clothes. In the 105° heat of Yakima and Wyoming, I'd strip down to T-shirt and opened my Olympia x moto 2 touring jacket's vent panels, in the 31° evenings in Montana and northern Washington I'd just put on everything I had and stick a few handwarmers in my gloves and one in every pocket.
Half of the ammo can was taken up by a 2 gallon gas can (no I won't take constructive criticism on this, you try running out of gas in buttfuck Wyoming and see how far that 12oz container gets you). The rest of the space went to a first aid kit, an inflatable sleeping pad, a tool kit, my Blip Roasters water bottle, my Sena charger, chain wax, a towel (thanks Douglas Adams), and sometimes my flannel when it got warm. Thus concludes my worldly belongings.
