Reflections on Trans-Canada ride

We arrived home (San Francisco bay area) on Friday the 13th. Now that I'm writing that date I understand why we had such a difficult ride through Marin into San Francisco. You don't really appreciate all the road camber changes and steep camber angles until you are riding a fully-loaded motorcycle in a heavy wind in stop and go traffic on the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. The travel and weather gods were demanding our obeisance just prior to the bridge authority powers extracting the relatively new $6 bridge toll.

The entire day of Saturday was spent in a bike-cleaning orgy - I can't write until the bikes are unpacked, washed, polished, Armor-all'd. For a 6,818 mile trip Peter's bike chain was not as grimy as I expected. I'm keeping a close eye on my bike's shaft and final drive - I've heard two stories about GS bikes blowing out their final drive, one at 44,000 miles, one at 47,000 miles and my friend Dennis' GS, also in the 40k range, has a small leak in one of the shaft drive connections. My bike had no troubles on this trip - the bike goes in for service and new tires (the rear is square) on Tuesday - when my GS is happy I am happy.

I have to go to work on Monday so my brain is shifting back into information technology geek mode - let's examine this trip from a project management perspective and set up the stories that I'll try to crank out over the next few weeks.

From a planning perspective this trip was a success. Minor oversight - maps for Washington, Oregon and California. The original plan was to burn up Highway 5 going home. Instead, we decided to avoid the inland heat and head for the coast (Grants Pass to Crescent City) which we have done in the past so I should have been prepared. Fortunately, AAA has lots of branch offices - love those free maps!

From an execution perspective this trip was a success.

• We stayed on schedule and arrived home on schedule - there were days built in to the schedule for bike repair (used for Peter's front tire replacement) and "do nothing" days which we used.
  
• As for scope, well, the ferry gods are a tough bunch to keep happy. We did make it to the island of Newfoundland, we did not make it to St. Johns. Our "re-entry" to west coast civilization was difficult. I was overwhelmed in Vancouver and really didn't want to brave more crowds and tempt the ferry gods so we decided not to go to Victoria. Still, we went from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific ocean so I declare a success.
  
• As for budget - the money for this trip was put away a while back. We travel modestly so for the moment, until the next credit card bill comes in, I'll say we stayed on budget.
  
• Customer Satisfaction - Peter says he is "very" satisfied with the trip. I agree. St. Johns to Victoria would have been the best outcome, and, had we been willing to sacrifice the "vacation" aspect of the trip, we could have done it. We both needed this vacation so Atlantic to Pacific across southern Canada is more than good enough.
  
• Daily operations - here's where some of the stories will come from. An SOP is a "standard operating procedure" - a good day is where nothing happens that you aren't prepared to handle and, routine stuff is handled in a routine manner. Like, finding your keys in the morning, or, knowing where your wallet is. Trouble is, at the end of a long day, there's noise in connection between your brain and your hands. I swear that while I sleep, little legs emerge from my key ring and my wallet has the ability to dematerialize and re-materialize from one pocket to another. Because we had modest mileage goals and a month to do this trip, I was not as strict with myself as I normally am - a new SOP emerged, the intermittent "Cecilie's morning freak out - code red - panic attack - where are my keys?!!!" (yes I had a spare key for each bike).
  

I know you want pictures. We are digging out of a month's worth of snail mail and we had to clean out the refrigerator - some new organic compounds formed and were off-gassing. I'm changing the resolution on the pictures now and FTPing to this site.