It’s mid-February, I just sold my house, and have decided that I will hit the road for a 6 plus month journey starting in April. A trip like this has been running through my head for years now but it still wasn’t much time to prepare. I cleared everything with work and would spend the next two months transitioning my tasks to other team members. I must say my employer has been great to work with and supporting me in this (which is why I have been with them for over a decade now).
The next steps were to get my bike ready and to figure out what I needed to take on a trip like this. I collected a variety of knowledge and experience through the years which I will put to use. I also watched some videos of other fellow bikers to get some tips and tricks from them (figure it’s better to learn from their mistakes than to learn the hard way!). On this trip, I will be living off the bike and camping most of the time. I may be in some really remote places, so I need to prepare for that as well. As for gear, I have a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, hammock, camping chair, cooking stove and cookware, lights, camping shovel, folding hand saw, a few knives, a couple of tarps, along with a few other items. For any electronics, I purchased USB powered devices. I don’t want to carry batteries and I can charge the devices using a 12 volt connector on the bike. The gear I use and carry will change over the course of the trip, so I need to make sure I stay flexible and don’t over pack. Over packing is a common mistake which leads to a heavier bike to deal with, as well as no room for other items you pick up while on the road.
I plan on spending some time taking pictures and videos on this trip. It’s not something that I ever spent much time doing (outside of taking pictures on my phone) but I do want to document my trip. I bought a GoPro to get some action shots and I also bought a digital camera to try to get some higher quality pictures. This is all new to me, so lots to learn while out on the road and hopefully I can learn enough to get some good pictures and footage.
To carry the extra gear, I wanted to get a top case for my bike. I was also thinking about putting on heated grips and some other protective items. I plan on taking some less traveled back roads which will undoubtedly contain some dirt. I want to ensure that my bike will be able to handle this and is well protected. On a V-Strom 650, the header, oil filter and pan is positioned right behind the front tire. If the oil filter was to be punctured, that would lead to a breakdown which would not be fun. I did not have a skid plate on my Strom, so I went searching online for one. I decided to search Craigslist to see if there were any used ones for sale. In my searching, I came across a 2013 V-Strom that was completely decked out for a cross country trip. Had a top case, a tank bag, skid plate, LED headlights, two additional sets of accessory lights, crash bar, heated grips, upgraded brakes with steel braided brake lines, custom seat, two 12 volt connectors, along with many other additional items. It only had 15 thousand miles on it and the price was very good. I decided to contact the owner to see if I could take a look at the bike. After factoring in the costs of all the parts that I needed to upfit my bike for the trip ahead, the labor, not to mention the time crunch I was on (as I had other maintenance stuff to get done on my 2015 Strom as I am approaching 40K miles), the price difference was not that drastic. Hard to believe how expensive these accessories can be for a bike. I met the owner two days later to look at the Strom. The bike was in great condition and was basically road trip ready. There were only two issues, one was the right side of the crash bars were bent and other was that the key broke off in the top case lock. Both of these issues weren’t deal breakers for me, as I can bend the crash bars back and I have another lock for the top case that matches the panniers for my current bike (which fit up directly with this bike). I had no intention of buying another bike but after looking the bike over and weighing all things, I decided to buy it.
I met the owner March 16th to transfer the funds and title. This gave me a little less than 3 weeks to get everything ready for my desired departure date of April 4th. Over the next couple of days, I was able to get the title, registration, and plate for the bike. So the legal part was complete and ready to go. I then spent the next two weeks doing a bit of prep work on the bike. I rode the bike up to my local shop, my Uncle Don’s garage, where I have done a lot of work on bikes and other vehicles over the years. My uncle and I worked on getting the right crash bar bent back to where it’s supposed to be. We couldn’t get it back to factory condition but we made it better than it was! We then pulled the gas tank and swapped out the air filter. With all the added accessories, there were a lot more wires (and an excessive amount of zip ties) to deal with than I’m used to. It was good to get some experience with how the bike is wired up now though.
Over the next couple of days, I made a few other changes which involved putting the original rear shock linkage back on, as the previous owner had the bike lowered. Along with this I had to reinstall the OEM kickstand. I noticed the front forks were lowered slightly as well, so I set those back to the standard height. I reset the compression, dampening, and shock spring preload back to factory default settings on the front and rear suspension. Outside of the suspension changes, I made a few adjustments to the hand controls to better suit me. I also added a RAM mount to the handlebars to hold my phone. That about covers the bike prep, the new to me Strom is ready for the road!
Rock on.