With apologies to Robert Pirsig and the Chautauqua Institute
Navigation
My navigation process for motorcycle trips tends toward the Luddite. Rather than a GPS system, I print directions from Google Maps and stick them in the map pocket on top of my tank bag. If I get lost, I pull out my phone and use Google Maps to figure it out. If I don’t have signal, I ride in one direction until I do.
My route sheets are 25 pages long for both legs of the trip.
One of my first decisions on this trip was to avoid the highway. According to Google Maps, it adds about a hundred additional miles, and 9 hours. This is consistent with my planning and experience driving this trip before. On the highway in a car, it takes about two days. Back roading will add a 3rd day.
I also chose two different routes for the northbound and southbound trips. Why see the same scenery twice?
This is where I also discover that I don’t really have as much time as I realize. I have online friends all over the eastern seaboard, many of whom I’ve not met in person, and I’d love to do so. There’s just not enough time to get to them if I want to see my parents and get to Maine before my daughter’s flight. I’m going to attempt to see one of them on the return trip, though, a guy with whom I have so much in common it’s rather frightening. There are people on Twitter who think we’re the same person, because like Michael and LaToya, we’ve never been seen in the same room. Unlike Michael and LaToya, we’d be hard to mistake for one another.
Preservation
Anything can happen when you’re on a motorcycle, from a flat tire in the middle of nowhere that takes you out of commission to a fatal wreck. My motorcycling habit and Suzanne’s love of hiking have made us longtime owners of a SPOT Tracker, which allows satellite communications in an emergency even if there’s no cell signal. It also allows your loved ones to see where you are, and if you’re still on the move. It’s a great piece of kit. A recent update to their service is the Flex plan, which allows you to buy service on an as-needed basis rather than keep it up annually. I hadn’t used the Flex plan before, but it had been a while since we used the SPOT, and I had canceled our annual plan.
There’s one flaw in the service. It automatically renews at the end of the one-month contract term, which means you must remember to cancel it, or you’ve essentially bought the annual contract at a much higher rate. I only planned to turn it on for a month. Noting the renewal, I realized I need to wait at least one more day before I fire it up, or it will renew the day I return. I would like to start it as soon as possible so I can review how to use it and configure it, but it’s not going to be today.
A day passed, giving me that extra day I need to cancel the service at the end of the month, so I re-activated my device. SPOT does a lot of things well, but damn their customer experience sucks. I put in all my information about the device, hit the “Submit Payment” button, and got a message that the payment failed. What?
Apparently, they tried to bill to the card on file with my account, and there was no card on file since I hadn’t used it in quite some time. I clicked the link in the error message, rectified the error, and clicked back into the activation screen. All my information was gone! I had to start over again. SPOT, you need to fix this. It’s unacceptable, and it’s too easy to fix for it to be an ongoing issue.
Once I got the SPOT tracker activated, I configured the messages and tracking, and then shared the map link and password with my Dad, Suzanne, and Annie. They should enjoy being able to find me the whole time I’m on the trip.