Go West Young Man

Sounds like a great trip & glad you got such a good deal on the Sportster. We should meet up when you get close to Lake Elsinor in Calif, My friends & I ride the mountain roads in that area a lot and I can show you a much nicer way from there to L.A. then taking the freeway. You can take the Ortega Hwy from the Lake up & over the mountain it's a blast and from there over to the coast & go through the beach cities with the Pacific Ocean view all the way up to L.A. It's a lot more fun then our boring freeway. There is a lot of cool Norton stuff at a shop in L.A. Called the Garage Company you should check it out, he also has a ton of vintage Harley race stuff & bikes too if by then your realy liking the 883. I'll P.M. You my contact info & hope it works out for a nice days ride. Glenn.

Sounds like a great trip & glad you got such a good deal on the Sportster. We should meet up when you get close to Lake Elsinor in Calif, My friends & I ride the mountain roads in that area a lot and I can show you a much nicer way from there to L.A. then taking the freeway. You can take the Ortega Hwy from the Lake up & over the mountain it's a blast and from there over to the coast & go through the beach cities with the Pacific Ocean view all the way up to L.A. It's a lot more fun then our boring freeway. There is a lot of cool Norton stuff at a shop in L.A. Called the Garage Company you should check it out, he also has a ton of vintage Harley race stuff & bikes too if by then your realy liking the 883. I'll P.M. You my contact info & hope it works out for a nice days ride. Glenn.

Thanks for the kind offer Glen. I am just working my way through the bike at the moment trying to get as much done as possible prior to my departure back to Hong Kong this Wednesday. I will resume the work upon my return some time in July or August.

Be careful taking those trip to Hong Kong, I got my 850 because the owner kept going there & finaly decided not to ever come back!! He had a local well known Norton guy collect it & sell it to me.

Gary Since I already live in Hong Kong it's these trips to the USA that I need to be careful of, perhaps some lucky chap will get my 4 Nortons if I decide that California living is the way to go!

With L.A.B.'s kind assistance, I hope to post a couple of photos of the bike. I have evicted all of the spiders and given it a good cleaning, put new tires on it, a Screamin Eagle carb kit, overhauled the brakes, replaced the handlebars with something sensible, changed all the fluids, fuel hoses, filters etc. it now stands me in at about 1,000 more than I paid for it, but I am starting confident that all of the things that should be fresh are indeed so.

Very, very cool dave M, great pics !!! I absolutely luv Sportsters ... and I think you got a super deal.

Dear Chaps,

here is an update on my proposed trip: I have had to delay things because I got a serious infection in my sterno-clavicular joint while visiting Providence Rhode Island in April, I ended up in hospital for a week with my kidneys failing and all sorts of other problems. 4 months later I am back in Hong Kong my left shoulder is still sore with limited movement and I still can't ride a bike, however I am on the mend and hope to do the trip in Spring next year. I will be returning to Carmel next week to attend some of the classic car events in the Monterey area and might actually try to ride the Harley for a short distance to exercise it and more importantly, me!

My dear wife was nagging me to take out travel insurance and after a huge row, I bought some just to shut her up. Now I'm the one who should shut up and listen as she has saved me from bankruptcy after a week in a US hospital!

Pity you're not coming our way. We're in the very top LH corner of the US, in Anacortes, Washington State. To paraphrase a "Railway Journerys" narrator on the BBC "it's like Morecmbe, but without the sexual excitement". We have a motorcycle event here in September called "The Oyster Run". Two years ago, the event drew some 28,000 bikes, many of the two-up, but last year attendance was down about 20%. I haven't seen a Norton there yet!

Some of the best scenery in the US, kinda like a combination of the Swiss Alps and the Norwegian Fjord country, mild weather (it got to 75F today and people were falling over!) and nice people ( a lot of ex-pat Brits who came to work for Boeing in the 1960's and stayed).

dave M said:

We are taking the Southern route because we think it will be warmer and we do live in The Tropics, also the historic Route 66 is something we want to do, although I am well aware that it is difficult to find in places and often off the beaten track, but that is half the fun. Any words of wisdom would be very welcome.

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Dave,
It's probably a little late to make any changes in your plans, but if you are taking the southern route because you are concerned about running into cold weather up north then you may be mistaken. You are likely to encounter near triple digit temps west of the Missippi all the way to California on the southern route. If you were lucky the temps for a northern route might be a little more temperate, if anything. Check what's up on the NOAA site. There isn't much left of Rt66. If you want a trip with a theme, how about Lewis and Clark?

http://forecast.weather.gov/zipcity.php

Bob, Thank you for your comments, any advise or alterative suggestions would be gratefully received, nothing is set in stone and in fact the issue of the trip being postponed until next year, probably around late Spring, might be a blessing in disguise as it means that there is ample time and opportunity to look at all route possibilities.
Dave

Oops. There it is, missed it.

Here's my attempt at redemption. If you decide on a spring trip through the Desert Southwest, try to time it so you catch the wildflower blooms. I took a trip ten years ago to New Mexico and I got the time just right by shear serendipity. It usually falls sometime between late March and early April. The climactic conditions that trigger the bloom happen to be perfect riding weather too, if you don't mind a chance of a little rain.

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/mar/stories/wildpt1.html
http://www.desertusa.com/wildflo/tucson.html

AMA hall of fame in ohio east of columbus. went there a few years back, i thought it was pretty cool. If you have the time and if youre interested by the sort of thing you could head south toward MD and hit up a couple of the civil war battlefields-ghettysburg is about 1-1.5 hours from antietam, antietam is close to interstate 70 that would point you west toward the museum
http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/planyourvisit