Motorcycle touring and travel means smart packing, and The Bear has been doing bike trips professionally for five decades, yes, back when the CB750/4 was a touring option!
During my fifty years as a motorcycle writer, I have flown to the beginning of more motorcycle trips than I can remember. Along the way, and generally after stuffing up, I have come up with some rules for myself about packing; and generally, they work well.
It’s remarkable how little you need to carry when you simply can’t carry any more. In this case, heading out on a Honda Fury, it’s Andy Strapz’ AA Bag and a 10 litre “underbag”, also from Strapz.
Now picture me arriving at the Portland depot of MotoQuest, from whom I am borrowing a Suzuki V-Strom 650 for a three-week ride through Washington and British Columbia. I’m starting in Portland because it is the nearest MotoQuest depot.
Follow the Bear tracks here…
I open my suitcase, pull out my riding gear and change into it, put my flying clothes into the case, transfer the pair of pre-packed bags from the suitcase to the bike’s Pelican side cases and strap my camera bag to the rack. I’m ready to roll, and basking in the admiration of Tony, the man from MotoQuest who’s been watching me. “Man, you’ve done this before,” he says. I shrug modestly and take off.
If you’re riding in winter, it is important to have heat coming into your bloodstream somehow like electric grips or gloves.
Three days later I’m in Omak WA (Washington), checking my paperwork for the next morning’s border crossing into Canada. I do not have my passport. You saw this coming, didn’t you? A phone call to Tony confirms that I’ve left it in my pants’ pocket, in the suitcase. So I ride the 800 miles back to Portland, taking a detour along the coast, and up again to the border. I hope the information below will help you.
“So I ride the 800 miles back to Portland, taking a detour along the coast, and up again to the border”…
How do I start my planning? First of all I figure out what I will need. It’s simple, really. When I’m riding, I want to be warm when it’s cold, cool when it’s hot and dry when it’s wet. I also want crash protection, and I don’t want to carry a lot of extra stuff. Neither do you.
Resist the temptation to take extra stuff because it happens to fit into your luggage. A bit of spare space means room to buy nice things on the road.
Dry when it’s wet – I’ll take my French-made IXON Soho Urban jacket, which is almost if not absolutely waterproof. It did let some water through once when I was inundated by the bow wave of a truck on a drowned road in Belgium – the French and the Belgians never did get on – but it’s held up to rain very well. It also has good back, shoulder and elbow protectors.
I do not want to carry extra wet weather gear, so I need something rainproof for the nether regions that I can also wear when it is dry, and that offers crash protection. Fortunately, my good friends at Draggin Jeans have just what I want. The pants are called Oilskins, and they are both waterproof and smart-looking so you can wear them any time. A slight boot cut means that it’s no problem wearing them over your boots which then don’t fill with rainwater. They also have quality protectors for knees and hips.
Normally I would take a tank bag for my photo gear, but a shoulder bag like this one from Wunderlich does the job just as well and is easy to carry off the bike.
As for being cool when it’s hot, both the jacket and the pants breathe. This would not help much if I was riding in serious heat, such as the recent 39 degrees in Hungary or the 45 degrees I’ve copped in Abu Dhabi, but I do not expect that level of heat under normal circumstances. Might have to change my thinking about that, though, given what happened this northern summer.
And as for being warm when it’s cold, the jacket has a quilted insert which is nice and snug and which can also be worn as a separate puffer-type jacket when wandering around after the ride is done for the day, if it’s chilly. I also wear this on the plane. Bonus. I’ll carry a pair of long Kathmandu underpants to take the chill off my legs under the Oilskins if it gets really cold.
Don’t laugh at people carrying the kitchen sink with them. You don’t know how far they’re going…
So among the gear to keep me comfortable, the only thing I may need to pack while I’m riding is that pair of long undies. This leaves more than adequate room in my luggage for handy stuff like another pair of pants, a shirt and some T-shirts, a pair of shoes, a few changes of undies and the other small stuff you need on the road, like a couple of adapter plugs and cables, iPad, torch, wet pack, medication – which takes up quite a bit of room in my case – and… not much else, really. Oh, a bottle of cold medicine, usually Wild Turkey. One pannier also holds the tyre repair kit and chain lube.
“Oh, a bottle of cold medicine, usually Wild Turkey”.
The cameras and their bits and pieces reside in a shoulder bag which fits perfectly into my medium-sized Wunderlich tail bag (which doubles as my airline carry-on bag), allowing a bit of extra room for spare gloves, notebook and pen, sunscreen and a helmet lock.
Portrait of a man who has forgotten his passport 800 miles away.
In the evening, I pull the bags out of the Pelican cases and unstrap the tail bag before carrying them into my motel or hostel room. Easy as. No, I don’t camp much anymore; I’m well into my seventh decade and my bones are entitled to a bed whenever possible. Sue me. Or suggest a way to make sure I don’t forget my bloody passport. Old fool.
I’ve just got some new gear for Summer from Link International, a Macna jacket, so I’ll update you next month on how that is so far.
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The Author
