Preparing for the first tour of the season

Our first nice weekend was upon us. The forecast was telling us both days would be sunny. Mid 50’s for Saturday and low 60’s for Sunday. It seemed like Spring fooled us all this year. She showed her face for a day or two and went and hid for another month. It has snowed here two more times since our last trip two weeks ago to Southern Illinois. And that's not counting the weekend we were gone, where we had a significant snow fall in Chicagoland.

Even though it looked like the weather was nice enough locally for riding this weekend, we were itching to do some touring and camping. The overnight lows were still a bit chilly here up north so we wanted to head south for the weekend. We actually wanted to go back to Southern Illinois. We really enjoyed ourselves down state two weeks ago and we were excited to take the street bikes there this time. It was definitely going to be a bit warmer down south.

Packing for the first sport-touring trip of the season is a huge project for me since most of my street riding stuff is put away for winter and the rest of my stuff somehow disappears when it’s not being regularly used.

This being a busy week and us having only decided on Wednesday that we’d be touring this weekend, I tried but couldn’t get to packing any earlier then Friday evening, the night before the trip. So Friday evening I attempted to washed some of the dust and cobwebs off the ST3. Went to the basement to find the top case and my riding gear. Went upstairs to find my motorcycle camping stuff and pack some clothes and sport touring essentials, emergency stuff, and plenty of warm layers. And finally loaded the maps on the GPS. By the time all that was done it was already too late for an early departure tomorrow. At least 80% of the stuff was loaded on the bike, so I went to bed.