Bit the bullet, bought the flight tickets.

September 8th 2010 is the day we fly out to Toronto to start our 3 Americas trip .

Now we just need to get the panniers made for Jean's bike, buy lots of stuff to live off, sort out paper work so we can get through borders, starting with Canada. We have bought one way tickets, we expect to be be questioned at immigration. Better practice our smiles.

For those that don't know us, its not our 1st bike trip across the pond, we were there for 3 months, back in 2007

More stuff we have done at my main home page at YTC1

I don't expect to make many blog entries, just as and when the urge takes me. So, I suggest if anyone is following us at all they should use the "subscribe" settings on the page (Sign Me Up) on the top right, and you should get notified when we do write anything,

Also, I hate the way blogs usually start with the latest 1st, so expect to see this as a more linear trail of events.

I'm sure people will work out how to jump to the latest from the index on the right.

Not a major change, (but an expensive one) decided that my XJR was not the right bike for the trip. uses lots of fuel, tyres expensive and if I "ding" a wheel (alloy) I'm stuffed. Getting a replacement will be expensive, at least with spoked wheels I should be able to get local repairs done.

I dallied with the idea of an XT660Z (Tenere), had a ride of a mates and really liked it. Then after some sensible conversations with Jean, we decided that a bike she could ride was a better idea.

So I went and bought another Aprilia Pegaso, same as Jean's. Except grey, on "56" plate and pre-unloved (not the worlds best body work). This way we only need to carry 1 set of spares.

Sweet eh ?

I'll get the panniers put on this bike instead, so Jean does not have the extra weight or width to deal with.

Now I just need to add some "touring" bits and will be on a role.

My old XJ900F reached a milestone today, 100,000 miles.

She is a 1994 "J" reg, I've had her since 1997 with 11,500 miles.

She has never let me down.

And then she rolled over.... just like new again.

I can now put her back in the garage and get the XJR out to play on again.

Spent a few hours with Vern (Project VND) trying to work out how, where and what size panniers to stick on the bike. There was a lot of hmmming and arhhhing. Much measuring, re-measuring, head scratching and discussion.

Finally a decision was made, he

will need to make a cut out around the exhausts and there will be relatively flat tops with hooking points.

What I could not decide on was 9 inch or 10 inch wide, so both sizes will be cut with the intention now of fitting 9 inch ones to Jean's bike and then if I don't like 10 inch, trim them down for me. As this now means panniers for both bikes, another change to plan, we will not take top boxes due to the extra storage space we now have.

While riding my Pegaso last month I heard a vibration, so I crawled over the bike and noticed the radiator was loose. On closer inspection the 2 top rivets were missing. I popped into Pitstop and Paul had a look, then started to fix it by widening the hole and adding a pop rivet. The 1st one went in OK, the 2nd punctured the rad :-(

When we looked more we realised the radiator was slightly bent (from previous owners drop). After checking a new one was 300ukp ! I went to see a local radiator repair shop, only to be told it was knackered.

After a bit of ringing around we sourced a new one for 160ukp. so I was a touch happier. The bike was still off the road for another 2 weeks though.

While waiting for the repairs, I was researching the Pegaso forum for possible faults, and could see the most likely trip stopper would be the fuel pump. On all the websites a new one was listed as 750ukp ! I queried it with a dealer and he discovered it was a mistake, they are only 207ukp, so that was added to the spares to be carried. I've stopped looking at possible faults now, as too much knowledge is an *expensive* thing.

I'm not panicking, honest. But with the bikes due To ship out on the 1st September it would be nice if everything was in place

We are waiting on 2 major items at the moment

1) The panniers
2) Anti-malarials

We seem to have got into limbo with the surgery pracice nurse and the doctor over getting our prescription for the Malerone, and if we order online it we need to post off the prescriptions to get the pills. It is over £100 cheaper to order online though.

And of course we want to pack the pills in the bike panniers.

Vern has been making good progress, and mine are welded up, Jean's hopefully soon, so they can go and be anodised.

So, my bike

And Jean's bike

Apart from these two minor issues, we are on track.

It just seems that every time I tick something off my check list, another 2 items get added.

Finally, after what seems like an age, we have the panniers fitted to the bikes.

The tightly fitted garage, 4 bikes are squeezed in here, you can just see the XJ900 buried at the back.

This month has been a nightmare of organisation, originally I had a great plan where these last 2 weeks would have been a case of relax, throw the bikes on a plane, and then we run away.

But with the delays in getting the panniers made it all crossed over with the final bike servicing, so I seem to have spent the month commuting either to Project VND near Chester on one bike, taking the other to Pitstop near Leigh and combining 30+ mile push bike rides in between.

Pitstop have been their usual accommodating selves, even allowing me do the tyre changes as practice during the services. The amount I "leak" when doing physical tasks amused them no end. They also modded the bikes to have a radiator grill guard.

Finally the panniers were ready, and shipped of to be anodised, at this factory .

But fate was with us, Vern had previously returned to collect the panniers (prior to anodising) to complete the fittings.

We have decided to miss that part of the process and take them as is.

So, 1 bike all set up, including cheesy grin.

Now, finally we can pack all those piles of things we have had lying around the house for weeks :-)

After a frantic few days of packing, repacking, buying extra items to aid packing (once we had the panniers we had a better idea of how we wanted to fit things, we delivered the bikes to James Cargo for air freighting to Toronto.

As we pootled down the M56 it occured to me that this was actually our shake down run, it was the 1st time we had both been out with the full kit load. We resisted the temptation to pitch the tent and repack as a final experiment.

It has been 3 years since I was at James Cargo, but one of the staff recognised me and even remembered the fun and games we had with FlyGLobaspan back in 2007.

I had to remove one of my panniers to allow the bike to fit in the crate, Jean's being 1 inch less didn't need it.

We were going to walk to Manchester Airport to catch the train, but the aforementioned JC employee kindly gave us a lift as it was 3 miles away.

A couple of hours later (we still had a 2 mile walk from the St Helens Junction to home) we came back, looked in the garage and it seemed empty... with only 2 bikes in it :-)

We just have the small matter of our son's wedding this weekend and then we hit the (long) road next Wednesday.