Reliving to days of our youth?

[fastmover83]

Having reached old age pretty much intact, and longing to relive some of the motorcycling days of my youth, I have decided to slow down and enjoy more weekend trips, I have also decided to use my hotel money to buy more gas, and to travel as lite as possible and without cooking equipment. So with that in mind, I need to decide on what kind sleeping equipment I should buy, I own a pop-up tent, but folded up it's still too big to carry on a bike and most the small tents you can buy are more trouble to set up then they are worth. So I was thinking about one of those canvas sleeping bag and a ground tarp, if I can find one with mosquito net. This started me to wondering if any of you travel this way and if so, what equipment do you use, how do you like it, and what have you learned along the way. Steve.

 

[mcgovern61]

Steve,

Check out this link:

https://www.motorcycletrailerstore.com/i ... cts_id=190

If were up to me, this would be the way to do it and have everything you need!

 

[fastmover83]

Thanks Mc! That looks like a good setup, but it is more than I need and it would prevent me from enjoying the kind of roads I plan on riding. I live on the northeast corner of Olympic peninsula in Washington state and plan on making weekend trips to the coast or exploring the Cascade Mountain range and possibly to eastern Washington and Idaho. All of these trips will be on two lane roads with no time spent on interstates. It may sound strange coming from a guy who rides a Wing , but I am a minimalist type of rider, if I can't stow it in a tank bag, saddlebag or strap it across the back of the seat it stays home. Thanks again, I appreciate your input and I'll save that web site for future use.

 

[lew1701]

Back when I was in the Marines we had a pretty cool system called "shelter halves". The way it worked is that each person would have 1 half so two Marines would have to team up and combine their "halves" to make one shelter. The two pieces would just snap together to form the top seam...run a rope through that seam and tie off to a couple of trees then pull the sides out at the bottom and stake them to the ground. It formed a triangler shelter with no floor which would then fit both people. The whole thing would easily fit into a small backpack. I would borrow someone elses half and go camping in the desert all the time and back then I was riding a kz650 with no bags or luggage of any kind. Something like that could probably be found at a good army/navy surplus store.

 

[joedrum]

i cant help you with gear but it sure sounds like a good plan.... :mrgreen:

 

[scdmarx]

There are places like Big5 that sell light weight 2 man tents for backpackers and bicyclest, etc. If it's light and compact enough for backpacking, I'd imagine it should do pretty well for what you want it for.

 

[fastmover83]

I've had experience with shelter halves, in fact the part of my youth I am referring to are the five years I had running around Europe and England while I was stationed there is the 60's and early 70's. I was stationed in the western mountains of Germany just east of Luxemburg and traveled to or through every country I could reach in a weekend or a three day pass. Sleeping under a tarp suspended as a lean-to from one side of my 250 Zundap, parked behind a hedgerow and eating at Guest houses and markets. Then they transfered me to England for a year and a half and I did the same thing over there, except I left the badly worn Zundap in Germany and upgraded to a 650 Bonnie.

 

[mcgovern61]

Hey Steve, side note....I was out in Seattle during that storm last week...fun, huh!!

 

[fastmover83]

Yeah, when you drop that much snow on a place that usually only gets a few inches it can get real comical, in fact you would have thought it was a real disaster with all the 24/7 news coverage. It rained it all off overnight Saturday, so the good part is we've gotten our yearly week of annual snow fall out of the way and now we can enjoy the rest of the winter. Thank you Canada!