Part 8.
Prologue - our methods and conclusions.
27 April 2015
It is a year since we left for America. Hard to believe it has been so long already. Updating this whole account has brought it all back to life for me, and yet the rest of the crew are still living parts of it too.
Our various collections of old motorcycles have now been 'contaminated' by more recent offerings - in the form of our America bikes. I have spent many hours doing the maintenance on some of the Sprints that we were unable to do in America because of time and space limitations. I have found them good to work on and very robust in their construction. They continue to perform with very few issues, and we have found that there is a place for such machines in our biking experiences.
Here is a rundown on the various considerations required for such a trip, and how they panned out.
Insurance
After returning to New Zealand, we were without these bikes for several weeks while their containers were shipped down the Pacific. Once we had them home we cancelled all the American insurances, and the refunds were all paid back in to the original credit card. "Geico" were very good to deal with from day one. Mostly I only dealt with one person, and everything was arranged by email. As I was not able to provide the details of all the bikes and the van until we had actually purchased them, it was getting very close to our departure date before I was able to finalise this. You are legally obliged to have your insurance form with you in your vehicle at all times in America, so I was concerned that the necessary paperwork might not reach LA before we needed to leave there. My contact was most helpful and emailed copies of all the paperwork to us before we left NZ - so we were covered from day one. Brilliant. As it turned out - the papers were in LA when we arrived.
All the bikes were insured for 1 year - which meant we got 75% of the monies returned after our 3 month tour. There was no problem with this at all. The van policy was only for 6 months - so we only got half that back. It did cost just over US$1000 though - so it was a good refund. The bikes were around US$300 each - price was related to rider experience and age. Our travel and medical insurance was arranged with the NZ Automobile Association - we were not members - but they still had the cheapest policies.
Vehicles
The purchasing of the bikes and van were handled by John and Brent before we arrived, so they had fulfilled the sale transactions for us. We still had to complete ownership matters with the DMV, and found that the van had to get a smog test done as part of that process. Some bikes needed new plates, not a problem - just more money. The rego carries over as it does here, so most of the bikes had enough rego already current to get us right through the trip. We quickly learned to avoid any "Dealer" vehicles as they cost you considerably more to purchase. This is because there is a tax on the purchase price of vehicles - paid by the buyer. Private owners are happy to write a lower price on the form than the actual purchase price, whereas Dealers will not. This can make a difference of several hundreds of dollars. It is thus much more important who you have to check out any private sale vehicles. Our guys were tops.
The rego's are not refundable when you export the bikes, so we did not even bother to cancel them. Presumably the export documents eventually roll up at the DMV. We were able to retain the actual American "title" papers after the bikes were complied - even though they whip all your documents away forever if you do not demand them back. I figured these papers would be quite important to prove some known history if they should be sold at a later date.
Of all the vehicles we purchased, there were no nasty surprises, they proved to be very much what was promised in the ads, and we had a tremendous degree of reliability considering that we gave them hardly anything more than oil changes before roaring off around the continent. Pretty much all of them were acquired via "Craigslist", and we became rather expert at browsing the lists over the entire length of California. I still peruse the same ads for the same bikes, and there are hardly any. We did it at the perfect time for the models we chose. There are still a lot of 1050's, but the supply of good 955's has dwindled. Buying prior to springtime did afford us rather good prices, although there were less to choose from.
The freight charges for shipping the bikes home were about US$450 per bike. The costs of landing them here (duties) were about NZ$1000. Depending on the current exchange rate - there may not be a great saving over buying a similar example locally - although with my salvage title bike there definitely was. I was required to obtain a "repair certificate" before I could get local compliance, but that cost only a few hundred dollars for the inspection. I probably saved several thousand dollars over a similar year and model on the local market.
The van fetched nearly the same price when sold as we paid for it. It was only 3 months older, and although it had covered 11,000 miles - that made little difference to its all-up mileage. It was an important consideration that we purchased a reasonably low mileage example to begin with. Both for maintenance reasons and the resale value. The trailer had an issue in that we did not receive the title papers after the purchase. We were aware of the importance of same - it was just a stuff-up. It is possibly still sitting where we left it in our friend's front yard. Be handy on the return visit.. lol.
Cash and Safety
In respect of our security - we did not feel threatened by any event that occurred the entire time - our bikes were not messed with, nor the van and trailer. The people we met were friendly and helpful, nobody suffered any credit card fraud or deceit - although there were several mistakes made with credit cards by staff at motels. I ended up paying for 3 rooms at one motel - and of course, you do not discover this until you are several days and several hundred miles away. We later discovered that two other couples had not been billed at all - so it was a simple thing to balance it up between us.
Money management. The cards we favoured are called "Cash Passports" - by the ANZ bank, and are debit cards which can hold several different currencies at the same time. We were thus able to buy American dollars before leaving NZ, store them on the card, and purchase everything in local currency - thus avoiding constant conversion charges suffered by normal credit cards. We were also able to withdraw cash from money machines and became expert at spotting those machines which did not charge any transaction fees. It is possible to transfer any one currency to another using the internet, and thus top up your currency of choice while on the move. We have retained these cards for our next trip, as they have zero fees if you use them at least once a year - and with the international purchases I make every year this is easy to maintain. Absolutely brilliant things indeed.
Methodology
Our travel plan worked a treat - even though nobody could reassure us it would. Apart from our first 3 nights in LA, and the BSA Rally - we made no reservations whatsoever in advance. We were determined that we should not be held to a fixed itinerary, so we could stay or go at our choice. We would ride to a destination we had agreed upon the previous evening, having then used anyone's internet device to book a motel. Mostly we used "Booking.com", but we soon found that any given town or city had many more motels than Booking.com were listing. Except Kayenta. But that was the only fly in the ointment. We were warned that things can become expensive in Native American run cities. They can. Our Kayenta motel cost more than double what we normally paid. No problems - we needed to stay there so we did. We just noted it for future reference. In the latter stages we just rode into town and looked for a motel. Always found one. We were prepared for prices and availability to become difficult during the summer break - but it made no difference on our trip in 2014. Things are still a bit tight financially in the USA, so there was little competition for motel rooms where we stayed. We saw many motels that had closed down completely.
Legalities
We had some limited dealings with Police. We first met some at the Sonora Farmers Market. They were pleasant and talkative, and did not seem to be overtly cautious or paranoid in any way. Many appeared to be wearing a gun, but we never saw one out of its holster. One rider who was more fond of speed got stopped a few times. He was given a warning once, and fined a moderate amount another time in a different state - but the officers were pleasant to deal with, and the fine was able to be paid online. Our local friends had advised us that we could get away with travelling 10mph over whatever the posted limit was on any highway. So we did. We even found what our speedo error was and added that to the mix. No other riders were pulled over at any time. Most civilised is my impression. The rule of thumb was - as long as the "occasional" vehicle was travelling faster than you - there would be no problems. I would agree that this seems valid. Don't be the fastest Dude.! We circumnavigated Cincinatti during what seemed to be a major speed camera bust. There were cops with hand held speed detectors leaning against the lane barriers in flyovers, and lots of marked cars pulling over any vehicles that were pinged. As usual, we were lined up behind the van using its GPS to guide us, so hardly at risk. Frankly - the general traffic flow was so fast anyway, that novices like us still learning the ropes would have been hard pressed to speed in such a place. We saw a lot of marked cars on the Northern CA coast and heading down the NAPA Valley - where the roads were twisty enough to spur us on - but we played a cautionary game for that reason alone, and there were no issues. The rest of the traffic was usually very well behaved and intent on maintaining a fast pace. Most often - we were the problem rather than the example.
Learning Curve
Riding/driving on the right side of the road. This was to my mind going to be quite an issue. It wasn't - but it was. It caught you out when you thought it was under control. Carparks were a problem because they did not have marked lanes - and we would naturally tend to orbit clockwise rather than the opposite. Pulling out of driveways or turning left across oncoming traffic was a problem because you either looked the wrong way - or somehow just assumed that traffic in "that" direction would necessarily be going the same way - rather than coming towards you. Whilst we had zero accidents involving any other vehicles - we did cause a few emergency breaking instances - some of which were just local drivers being super cautious. I imagine that there is quite a high level of anxiety amongst local drivers regarding the possibility of being sued if they hit you - so they tend to play a safe game. If you even look as though you are contemplating crossing the road - the traffic stops. This is most annoying when you did not intend to cross the road. You now feel obliged to do so. They will not move until you have completed your crossing. Sheesh.!
Final Score
We covered varying mileages depending on whether we were 2 month or 3 month stayers - obviously enough. As a rough average, the van covered 11,000 miles before returning to San Fran, while the bikes did 10,000. This is because all bikes spent quite a few days on the trailer during driving spells. The final bikes probably did more than another 1,000 - what with 250 mile lunch days and the final haul down to LA during the third month. The reliability was simply astounding over the range of vehicles we had. The 955's proved almost trouble-free despite being older and likely less well maintained. As these bikes became more expensive over the years, they commanded a more well-heeled audience, many of whom chose to spend the necessary to have them maintained. Allan and Beth's 1050 Sprints were the most expensive bikes in the fleet, and gave no troubles whatsoever. Brent's 1050 was quite cheap as it had a much higher mileage, and it did suffer some ills. People commute on these things here, so they can have done an incredible number of engine starts for example. We spent US$1000 on a fairly comprehensive tune-up for the Chevy van, including new front shocks, which made a tremendous difference to the comfort of the ride. As it was shared by all parties, it cost less than $80 per head - so was well worth the exercise. The trailer lacked a spare wheel, and this was highlighted by getting a puncture in Durango. It made it to the motel - but we then considered what that might have meant in Death Valley and promptly bought one. John French loaned us a fuel container, and it was most useful on several occasions. It was attached to the trailer so we did not worry about any safety issues regarding fumes or spillages. I think we did very very well. We purchased the bare minimum of tools, and only as the need presented. With such a large fleet (10) bikes to care for, we were once again most fortunate - or we simply chose well. Maybe both.
In this actual map of our circuit, each marker represents a place we stopped for at least one night. Obviously we explored further afield, but this sums up the general direction. It does not include the rides up and down to LA, but every leg is shown in the individual route maps for the days we did them. It was a rather ambitious plan considering all the unknown factors - but we did it - and we had a ball doing so. We made many new friends, and found many wonderful places. What a ride.!
We have had plenty of time since returning home to digest all that took place. Every member of the crew would be keen to return for a second bite - bless them. A bit less mileage and a bit more exploring and getting to know people and places would be a likely plan. We have also talked about perhaps buying a few old cars and trying that out...hahaha..
Thanks for looking in folks. Much love to you all. Kilroy and the crew.