We zijn compleet!

Vandaag heeft Willie van der Rijt gemeld graag mee te gaan en samen met Marc Lekens heeft hij het achttal gecompleteerd.
Mooie groep!!

Donderdag is de eerste samenkomst, ik hoop dat iedereen erbij kan zijn.

Alweer een maandje dichterbij!!

Ik kreeg vanmorgen een aantal antwoorden van mijn vriend René uit Vancouver:

Hi René,

Sorry I did not get back to you earlier,  re. your previous email

Date: September/October 2011. I have a group of 4, I think it will be 8 in a week. 8 is the max.

Sounds like a great ride, here are my thoughts

We want to rent ST or Goldwing and 1 HD Streetglide. Can we rent GW ST or HD in Vancouver?

I can do a bit of research for you re. renting bike, but it is usually quite expensive, about $100.00 cdn plus tx and ins, probably more if you are going to take it across the border to the US.

Also we want to start near an airport with direct flights to BRU or AMS.

So we have a few options:

SFO

Denver

Salt Lake City

Seattle

Vancouver

Vancouver would be great as it would be easier for me to help, I just have to hop on the ferry and be there with my car, no problem.

I think I could use some help from you.

Maybe I by a bike again (or buy yours if you want to get rid of it, the color is OK).

That could also be something to talk about, I want to get the GSA next year, but would like to keep my ST for maybe the first 6 months or so. So it depends if I buy early or late in the season of 2011, we want to do a trip to Baja in Mexico next year with the new bike, likely it would be in the fall so in terms of timing we could do part of the ride with you guys on our way south.

Even if the timing does not work for our trip to Mexico I would still like to ride part of it with you guys. 

I am not sure about the Canadian side of your route, if you want to do Vancouver - Calgary in either direction, I would suggest go Vancouver Kelowna, than head for Kamloops - Revelstoke, Golden, and than Calgary (arriving by the Banff area). Why do you want to go so far North? I don't think it's worth it, instead spend more time in Utah, have a look at the ride we are doing leaving June 9th, you could do something similar, but make  your way back up the Pacific Coast (like on your current route), that one is really amazing. 

So I would suggest either:

Leave from Vancouver (come stay a few days with us in Victoria, from there either go East to Calgary through the cities I mentioned before and from Calgary head south Boise- Salt Lake (all the national park Bryce, Arches, Monument valley... (not in this particular order) you can even do a quick stop a 4 corners, than head West through Grand Canyon/Death Valley and come back up the coast of California/Oregon/Washington by the 1/101 (only downside of this way is you might be fighting the wind coming from the Ocean), North-Westerlies.

Or you could do the other Vancouver- Victoria (stay in the blue room) take the ferry over to Port Angeles, and head south on the Coast up to Death Valley/Grand Canyon, East to Utah (all the National Parks) same as above and than North to Boise/ Calgary and make your way back to Vancouver via the interior (same cities again). Considering the trip you are planing, In your situation, this is how I would do it. I would rather even spend 2-3 days doing New Mexico to Santa Fe (about 450km) from southern Utah, than the North part of your canadian route.

Finally are you sure about your timing, until you reach south Utah and the deserts it will not be very warm, it is not unusual to have snow in the Rockies that time of the years, regardless, BC, WA, OR and North Cal will be wet for sure, and not much more than 8-14C especially on the coast, (when we did it last year in July even SF was cool 14-19C). You could be lucky, last year we had 25+ in September but it was exceptional. Are you able to consider late Aug-early September instead?

This is what we are doing June 9th to 24th.  

f

If I would buy a ST or GW in USA, could you get it for me and store/ride it in the mean time?

No problem for Storage in the garage, I can pick it up and ride it a bit to make sure all is good, :) no problem.

Finally,

My question is: how did you arrange the insurrance of your bike when you sent it over?

Any other things to consider for me?

I used motorcycle express http://www.motorcycleexpress.com/ they were quick and very professional, I received the Green card Ins by express courier the next day after payment. They also sent me copies. They provide Ins for US/Cdn ridding a bike in EU and other, I am not sure how it would work for you, but since the bike is US plated and you have a US address, you could get that for a while until you sort out the importing procedures. If I remember well we paid $760.00 us for 4 months full coverage including theft and vandalism and some road assistance in case of a bad accident (including a temp bike), you probably don't need all this coverage.

Today is Monday 1745 pst, I am off until next Friday, we should try to Skype.

See you in September (this year I mean).

René