To America We Go

I'm really looking forward to seeing the northeast coast - I imagine it to be a slice of 18th century England, conservatively modernised to the 21st century. Originally we intended to stay one night in New York after our overnight flight from San Francisco, but I made a mistake when filling in the rental dates at Jupiter's and specified pick-up on the 17th instead of the 18th. Instead of correcting this, I thought that this would actually be a better plan as we wouldn't have to find a hotel, hang around until check-in, then check-out the next morning and find our way to Jupiter's, but could head straight from JFK in the morning to Brooklyn, pack what we needed onto the bike and head off immediately. Cathy is a little concerned that we'll be OK after a very short sleep on the airplane, but I think that if we can just get out of the city and find a place to freshen up and relax we'll be fine.

We've worked out a rough route to follow on the west coast. Unfortunately the few days we had earmarked for Los Angeles at the beginning had to now be taken during the ride, and we really want to spend a couple of days in Las Vegas, so we will cover less distance and spend less time in locations along the way than I had originally thought. There is so much to see and do that it is impossible to do the area we are covering justice.

What a wonderful thing it is to receive a real letter nowadays with exotic stamps from a foreign country. In the post today was a small package of letters and cards from Dubbelju confirming our reservation. Unfortunately Oliver the Boxer got to the mail first, but I was able to rescue most of it. This personal touch reinforces our good feeling about the company.

I filled in the booking forms on Dubbelju's site and Jupiter's site, and have received confirmation from both that the bikes are reserved.

Dubbelju: 3 Sep to 16 Sep, 13 days. Pick up and drop off in San Francisco. 250 free miles per day (had spoken to Dubbelju about this and because we are not going to do huge miles, this would be the cheapest option). Helmet rentals will be an addition $6 per day each. They will store our luggage while we are on the road. A GPS mount for my Zumo will be available. Cost is $2079.73. A $300.00 reservation fee was deducted from my credit card.

Jupiter's: 17 Sep to 27 Sep, 10 days. Pick up and drop off in New York. Helmets included (optionally at additional charge). Unlimited mileage. Will store luggage. Zumo (universal?) mount available. Cost is $2,064.85. A "test amount" of $2,500.00 was reserved on my card, according to Jupiter's it will not be deducted and was to see if my card was able to handle the required deposit.

Our flight e-tickets have been received from the travel agent with all legs confirmed.

Now that the FIFA World Cup has concluded, there is a sense of incredible pride here in South Africa that we managed to pull it off. Cathy and I were lucky enough to be at the final, and as we were shouting for Spain, it had a happy ending.

While waiting for a response from the rental companies I had sent requests to, I suggested to Cathy that it may not be possible to get bike to pick up in LA and that we may have to travel to another city to pick one up and travel from another city to get our flight home after dropping the bike off. I also suggested that it might be a good idea to do something different from what we had originally planned, namely tour in a circle from one location and then further expanded that to "tour in a circle on the west coast, fly to New York then tour in a circle there".

The more we thought about it the better the idea seemed: less miles that "had to be covered" - we would have more flexibility on a day-to-day basis; we could take hard luggage - previously everything we took would have to fit on the bike.

We made a decision to do things that way. Because I had a good feeling about Dubbelju, I contacted them first about picking up and dropping off an RT in San Francisco, then Jupiter's about a bike in New York. Both came back positive, so we got our travel agent to change our arrival destination to San Franciso and add an addtional flight from SF to NY.

 

While there are quite a number of motorcycle rental companies with web sites, the difficulty I found was finding one with (a) BMW RTs and (b) offices in both LA and New York.

werentmotorcycles: Quick and friendly reply. They only had (in BMWs) a GS or an LT. The price quoted was $6,200.00 for 23 days (I'd budgeted about $4,000.00). Further conversation with them about the price turned out that the additional $2,000.00 was for the one-way surcharge.

EagleRider: My search for available motorcycles for the pickup in LA and drop-off in NY on their site had only turned up Harley Davidsons, so I was hesitant to contact them. Within the promised two working-days I had a reply and bikes (GSs and RTs) were available. The cost would be $4,321.00, with $750.00 of that being the one-way surcharge.

Dubbelju: Based in San Francisco and not appearing to offer any alternative drop-off locations I was also hesitant to contact them. I received a quick reply and just got a good feeling from the response. The price was $4,327.00 for 23 days including a $900.00 one-way surcharge (later told it would actually be closer to $750.00).

AdMo-Tours: Seemed to be specialising in dirt bikes, but I got a quick reply. I was not explicit in requesting an RT as first choice, so the quote was for a GS. The cost was $4,609.00.

Jupiter's: Just to mention them again with the list of rental companies I have been in contact with. Bikes were not available for the pick-up and drop-off locations during the time we wanted.

I currently own a BMW R1200GS Adventure and an R1100GS, so renting a BMW was the natural choice. When first starting out with planning this trip, I had found Jupiter's Motorcycle Rentals while searching for BMW motorcycle rentals (their headline feature being the coast-to-coast tour which is what gave me the idea), and dropped them an e-mail. A quick response and pleasant exchange followed in which I was informed that they would be happy to rent a motorcycle to me and looked forward to seeing me. The BMW RT in the blog graphic is from a picture from their site after I had decided that an RT would be a better bike to cover the expected distances.

Our first spanner in the works: on Friday I dropped Jupiter's an e-mail saying "Here we come! Get the bike ready" and got a quick response back "Sorry, four South Africans have booked all our bikes during that time and I have none to rent you". I wonder if our telling people of our intended trip has inspired some others to do the same, and they got in first? I'll be asking around to see if I can find out who these four are.

This weekend I sent two e-mail enquiries to other rental companies and am waiting for a response. The parameters of the trip (pick up in LA, drop in NY 24 days later) make finding a company difficult as there are not a lot who are represented in both those cities. If I don't have any luck with these two, plan B, C and D involves changing the pickup/drop-off city or possible just doing a circuit from where we can find a bike and making our way to that location and then to NY at the end by other means.

We contacted our usual travel agency (I still like the security of having a professional making the big arrangements and paying some commission even though you can do so much online nowadays) and gave her our dates. I requested as-direct-as-possible flights as it is already at least 22 hours on the road from Johannesburg to LA and would rather pay a small premium to minimise additional time.

By the end of the day we had agreed on Jhb-Atlanta-LA on 01 Sep and NYC-Atlanta-Jhb on 29 Sep on Delta Airlines at a cost of R13,500.00 (US$1,800.00) per ticket which was within budget.

Flights booked and on to the next step...

After filling in lengthy online forms and waiting two weeks for an interview date, we presented ourselves at the American Consulate in Sandton. Armed with files of documents proving our ties to South Africa, work commitments, financial abilities, touring experience and itinerary we were expecting a lengthy inquisition but were confident we would make the grade.

It turned out to be just a case of presenting ourselves at a window, answering the question "Why are you going to America?" ("We want to do a motorcycle tour"), and the pleasant young lady said "Your visa's granted. Have a nice trip.". A week later our passports were delivered with a 10 year visa each. I guess it's better to be over-prepared but we felt a bit silly for going to the lengths we did to be able to answer any question and the stress we felt.

That's one major hurdle overcome, and it's now all-systems-go.

In preparation for our visa application, we prepared a preliminary itinerary. Initially I had thought of just touring one area of America, but a web site offering rentals highlighted a coast-to-coast tour which I thought was a fantastic idea. Our idea of a comfortable distance in the saddle is 500km per day, with occasional rest days, so it was necessary to work out what distances we were likely to cover and if the entire trip was feasible. I'll note here that the entire duration of the trip was extended due to the decision to do the coast-to-coast, adding on at least a week to what we had originally intended.

With MapSource open, this is what we came up with: