Debbie and my 2021 motorcycle trip. - Sailor Run

Summer 2021 major bike trip with “Debbie” towing our new “camping trailer”.

I returned back to Albuquerque, NM. in mid-April for my summer season back with Debbie, this being our normal arrangement of time together for the next few years. Like normal there were many things that had to be accomplished, such as planting garden, new gutters on the front of the house and a pretty much tossed together irrigation system to keep most things watered on the property. The things that the irrigation system didn’t get we were fortunate enough to have a good neighbor who watered the rest and that turned out to be no small task as we were to be gone on this road trip on our FJR Yamaha 1300 for 6-weeks.

We had planned to buy a new pop up camping trailer for the bike. Once we began looking into the purchase of such a thing it became obvious that availability was very limited and most manufactures couldn’t guarantee a delivery time as they couldn’t find people that wanted to work in the good old USA. It seems everyone is happy to stay at home when they get paid more for doing that than working, Hmmm, can’t say as I blame them.

It didn’t take Debbie long to solve the trailer problem as she located a used one within one hour from where we live and it turned out to suit our needs and was just 1600-dollars rather than the 3500-4500 that a new one costs. The Mini Mite trailer we bought was 20 years old but had been stored in a garage and had seen very little use, just what we needed to be able to both travel the good old USA.

It turns out that purchasing a trailer towing package for the FJR was not easy for the same reason of not much help and a large demand on manufactured items. It took a full two months to get one and that required a lot of “hound dogging” to make it “happen”. The cost was 400 dollars for the towing package but it was easy to install and would serve us well over the duration of our travels.

Debbie and I are very different in what we think a road trip should be. My idea is to ride the back roads, soak up the scenery and camp in remote out of the way places with nature, just the two of us. Debbie on the other hand wanted to visit many of our old cruising friends along the way and stay with them several days at each location. Deb compiled her list of people and placed it in front of me. I in turn added up the days it would take to stop at all our friends and it was looking like our trip was going to take three months. Lucky for me there were some large mileage days between friends locations where we would be forced to camp, and actually use the trailer we were going to be dragging around the USA “Hmmmmmm”.

We decided three months was just too long to be away from home with the garden and all so we sadly had to shorten the list of people to visit not to mention that we had hoped to go to the “Sturgis Bike Rally” in South Dakota but that was going to have to wait for another year. After much planning the trip was cut to 6-weeks, and we would visit 10-states along the way, they being Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.

Our estimated cost for fuel, food and lodging was approximately 2000-dollars a bargain at today’s prices and this only being made possible by our many great friends and relatives we stayed with along the way not to mention having an RV that gets 43mpg. Yes, the powerful Yamaha FJR even totally loaded down with two people, three full luggage compartments and pulling a trailer and this all happens on 86 octane fuel. The FJR with just me aboard and no luggage or trailer will get 52-55mpg at 75-80mph.

This road trip was a truly a memorable adventure and we traveled some 4700 miles and avoided any serious injuries. There were a couple of embarrassing moments like the time we pulled into Mc Donald’s to get a breakfast burger and while trying to spot a good place to park the bike and trailer where we could easily get back out of the parking lot I over looked a curb that was protruding out and when the tire on the trailer came up hard against it, simultaneously dumping Debbie and I over on our side in the parking lot. Thank God, I had installed those crash bars as they kept us from getting caught under the bike and no damage occurred to passengers or bike. The embarrassing thing was that we had to get help to get the bike back up right with all of the weight we were hauling. I’m sure if we had to Debbie and I could have gotten it up if we would have had no help, but that still remains to be seen. Now, you must understand that we don’t do this often but there was that one other time on The Port Townsend ferry when we were pulling into the ferry dock on Whidbey Island that I got on the bike and thinking that we were secured to the landing ramp I proceeded to lift the bike up of the kick stand and the ferry lurched sideways from the landing and I just continued on over and went down with the bike. Luckily I missed the car next to me and the deck hand on the ferry was a huge guy and with his help we were soon righted and on our way to my sister and brother-in-law’s place on Whidbey Island.

Of the 42 days we were on the road we did get to actually camp with our trailer 11-nights of our trip just enough time to know the trailer works for us and towing it is no problem for our Yamaha-FJR.

Once again in late October I will return to Sailors Run in sunny Mexico and resume my life as a sailor once again, with plans for Debbie to join me for part of that time down there.

Your Amigos Jeff & Debbie