Just One More Mile - Initial Planning

First the great news - Tracy has been given the all clear by the consultant and now has great balance, and the Acoustic Neuroma is miniscule... so she can once again get back on a bike!! We're both absolutely delighted and will be taking Lydia (Tracy's little yellow Ducati) out on Saturday for some re-acquantance work...



Second, MORE good news!! Following lots of research and advice from various parties, I've chosen the bike I'm going to use for our round the world trip. First, I discounted getting the smaller F650GS Dakar - despite the fact that Tracy and I would then be going on very similar bikes - the reasons are largely personal, so I won't go into them here. It then all boiled down to a choice between the "new" R1200GS Adventure or an "old" R1150GS Adventure. Following some sound advice, and largely based on the reduced complexity of the old model (simpler wiring in particular) I decided what I really needed was a late-model low-mileage R1150GS Adventure - and so the search started...



When I found one on www.ukgser.com/forums I thought my dreams had come true - a late model, one owner silver bike in great condition with extras and only 7,800 miles on the clock. Perfect. But. I got beaten to the mark and the owner had taken a deposit when I called him. So the search continued and I posted a "wanted" ad on the same site. When I checked the following morning I'd received a PM (personal message) from another member of the forum, who had just put down a deposit on... a late-model, silver bike with one owner, extras and 7,800miles on the clock! Yes, the SAME bike I'd tried to secure just a couple of days earlier!! He was happy to ley me have it as long as he got his deposit back and so the deal was done... I dropped off my deposit a week or so ago (not got used to posting the blog daily, yet!) and pick it up on Sunday....



Then I'll store it whilst I use my existing R1150GS to keep the mileage low, and gradually modify it to prepare it for the rigours of our adventure... happy - you bet!

Yes, I've finally got round to sorting out the blogger publishing settings so now this blog also appears on our official website - www.justonemoremile.com

At present, the site is still in its infancy as I'm building it up on my laptop - it won't be officially launched until 29th June 2007, one year before our departure date, but those of you who are fortunate enough to have found the site or the blog can keep track of our planning activities from now on, directly via our website.

As always, comments welcome!

Ok, last time I posted it was to record the new departure date following Tracy's course being extended. This time, it's because we've updated the route plan...

When we looked at information on HorizonsUnlimited.com we discovered that the time of year we would be in South America, and in particular the world's southernmost town, Ushuaia, we'd be under a lot of snow... hardly ideal on a motorcycle trip...

So, at the weekend we sat down in front of our huge wall-sized world map, that's shown the same route on our bedroom wall for over 2 years, and started to look at our options. We discovered that if we fly from Auckland, NZ to Los Angeles in April instead of flying to Buenos Aires as originally intended, we could then go North to Alaska and then South all the way to Ushuaia, arriving around late December, when it is warmest (a relative term...). The net effect of all this is to rule out our cross-USA intentions, and to cut the trip short by around 5 months, but making both Alaska and Argentina fit into the best weather seasons...

And so we now have a revised start date, a revised route, a revised (reduced!) budget and a clearer plan of how it will all fit together....

We also did some "points of interest" planning, creating an initial list of must-dos along the outline route and getting ourselves excited all over again... and with 72 weeks until departure that's no bad thing... if you have any suggestions, please drop us a line...

.... next big event in this rather drawn-out saga is on 26th Feb, when Tracy visits the consultant to hopefully get the OK to get back on 2 wheels... fingers crossed!