12 Days and just over 3600 miles...

Well, I've been back from my trip about 3 weeks now and have almost all of my pictures loaded to my trip website.

I have a free website from Google sites that has links to all of my pictures and some videos. I logged in during the trip and updated when I could to keep friends and family up to date on where I was and what I was up to.

I went with a buddy of mine and we left from Marion, IA and made a loop through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa. We were originally going to take trailers since we were hauling a bunch of camping gear. (Only ended up camping 1 night!) I designed an external mount hitch and my buddy and I built it. My buddy had a basket he would hook into his hitch receiver that he used for getting groceries and letting his kids throw their backpacks in when he takes them to school.

I thought that was a neat idea so we made another basket and used these instead of trailers. We just got totes that fit the baskets and dropped them in. It worked great. The baskets have tail lights and turn signals on them so we didn't have to worry about blocking our lights. They worked great and were a lot less hassle than trailers. We still got good gas mileage, it was easy to find parking, and the wind din't grab them and pull us around. Plus we could still put the hammer down when we needed to. Fully loaded it rode like I had a passenger. Because the weight was distributed so far behind the wheel 60lbs rides more like 150lbs.

It is really useful. The wife and I like to go to local festivals and music in the park. Now we can take the bike because I can carry lawn chairs in the basket. Or if we want to go to the lake we can take a cooler. Camping, getting groceries, taking tools to my brothers, etc. etc.
I've had a couple of buddies give me a hard time about the basket. "Some poor little girl is crying because you stole the basket off of her bicycle.", but they change their tune when they have to take their car to carry lawn chairs to the music festivals.

Please feel free to check out my trip site and post your comments here. I still have some updates to do. I plan to post a map of our route and I have a nice video of Artist Road in Santa Fe that we took. I already have it loaded on Youtube but need to get the link on my site.

Been a good year. I have around 8000 miles on my bike already. (That's a lot for me and I am in the lead so far at the dealership.)

Here it the link to my site. Please check it out and tell me what you think:
Docs Road Trips

That basket setup is slick. Not only functional, but doesn't look half bad in my opinion.

I like the basket Idea, ride on

See you out there
Smokey

Post a pic here of the basket. I couldn't find a close up of it in your pics.

Great trip log!