To America We Go

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.