By Dale Borgeson
Trip planning can either be a big deal or trivial depending on your style. Some people need to plan every detail and pick every nit. You might think these people are overly obsessive but they do seem to enjoy it sometimes as much as the trip itself! I pore over maps and spend a lot of time running proposed routes through various trip planning software packages. Here the web is invaluable because you can easily research areas and determine in advance the places that you want to visit and the sights you plan to see.
If you're one of those obsessive types mentioned above and want to plan each evening's stay and every stop and break during each day's ride you'll find the computerized trip planning software very useful. There are many of these software packages available and it is a plus if your route planning software is compatible with GPS navigation systems.
These trip-planning packages can also help whether you are staying in campgrounds or in hotels/motels along the way. In many of these programs you can "turn on" an option that will show whatever features you are searching for (such as hotels, campgrounds and restaurants) along the way. Another feature is the ability to print overview maps, strip maps and turn-by-turn maps of your route. You should still pack a good map for each area you are visiting in case you leave your planned route.
If you can, get the maps for each state you'll be going through (or think that you may go through) before you leave home. If you are on a major highway and see a Visitor/ Welcome Center when you enter a state, these are great for getting tourist information and most of them will give you a free road map of the state. Big road atlases are OK but they don't have the detail of individual state maps, they are too big for easy storage, and they won't fit in the map window of a tank bag.
If you are the free spirit type that likes "winging it" then each morning figure out where you'd like to be at the end of the day and work your way in that direction – just be ready to end up somewhere else. Look for small twisty lines – those are the good ride roads.
Interstate Highways are usually, but not always, the most boring but you'll make the best time. US and major state highways can be the worst for traffic but may encompass some of the area’s most important historic icons. If they connect metropolitan areas they'll have traffic and the bigger the cities the worse the traffic. When they're two lanes and are full of cars they're awful. If they're in a more isolated area they may not be too bad.
The state and county roads have the most potential. Be aware that some state and many county roads are not on most highway maps. Even if the one that you start on is on the map it can intersect a road that's not on the map and you can easily get lost. County roads that are paved sometimes turn into dirt roads and dirt roads sometimes dead-end.
Roads marked as "scenic" often are good but not always. I've taken some "scenic" roads that were the pits. More than once I've wondered if the person who made the map was on drugs the day that s/he decided to designate the road as "scenic".
Some other things that may indicate a good road are:
• roads designated as America's Byways – byways.org
• roads through national forests
• isolated roads
• roads with altitude changes (the greater the better)
• roads along rivers (smaller the better)
• roads that don't seem to go anywhere in particular (i.e. there's not a town at either end)
• roads that go across areas that other roads don't cross (there's usually a good reason)
• roads that run through a valley (with a river is better)
Be flexible and take a good road if you come across it. I once ended up on Missouri 19 from Steelville to Alton just because it seemed to be the most direct route from Hannibal to the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. It was awesome! I added a half day to my trip just to re-ride several sections because they were so much fun.
Daily Mileage
When you do your trip plan, either in advance or on the road, it’s important to realistically plan your daily mileage. It's important because if your expectations are different from what's possible you won't be very happy and your trip won't be fun.
As a rule of thumb, it's difficult to consistently average more than 50 mph over the whole day, at least when you're just starting touring. A more reasonable average speed is 45 mph. This means that if you are willing to ride 10 hours you can expect to do 450 to 500 miles in a day. If you stop a lot or are playing tourist your average speed will be much lower. To give you a feel for what this means I've made a table to summarize a day's travel.
A Typical Day's Schedule
Activity Duration
500 miles at 65 mph 7:40
Gas stop 00:20
Breakfast 00:30
Break 00:10
Gas stop 00:20
Lunch/gas stop 00:30
Gas stop 00:20
Break 00:10
Total time 10:00
For example, you decide to go 500 miles on a particular day and you plan to leave at 7:00 a.m. and arrive at your destination at 5:00 p.m. To do this you need to average 50 mph. Assume that you go 65 mph whenever you're moving and know that you must stop for gas about every 100 miles. This means you will have to make 4 gas stops including restroom breaks and a lunch break. If each stop averages only 30 minutes you will burn up all of your "down time" and you will have to make the 8 hours of actual seat time average 65 mph. If you are with a group you can expect the "stops" to take longer and occur more often as we know that endurance is only as strong as the weakest bladder in your group!
Can you do this? Should you do this? Do you even want to do this? You won't really know till you try it sometime. In a car it's a piece of cake (unless there are small children in the car) but on a motorcycle it's tougher than you might think. Don't plan your first tour assuming that you can average 50 mph. If you discover over time that you can really rack up the miles, that's great but don't count on it for your first couple of trips.
If you've never toured before, I'd recommend setting up some trial rides as a test. Loosely plan a one-day trip of between 200 and 500 miles starting and ending at home. The distance should be long enough that you need to stop at least twice for gas if you start with a full tank. Don't try to go too fast just go whatever speed at which you are comfortable and still keep the cops off your back. Try not to stop except for gas.
How did it feel? What body parts are sore? Can you walk normally? Any problems could mean one or more of a number of things:
• you may have passed your daily endurance capacity
• you need to get used to riding the distance by doing it a few more times
• you need to change something about your bike to make it more comfortable
• you might be doing something wrong for your comfort, i.e., how you put your feet on the pegs or hold the bars
• you aren't doing something you should be doing, like stretching
All of the above problems have similar or identical symptoms. Only a fair amount of experimentation will give you the cause of the problem.
After a few day-trips, try a weekend – still beginning and ending at home. Next you could try a 1500 to 2000 mile trip over a 4-day weekend. Doing 500 miles in one day can be a lot different than doing the same distance four days in a row. After a few weekends you will have a good idea what sort of daily mileage you can handle and then can try your first one-week trip.
If you are touring with other people be sure that your riding styles are compatible and your entire group is comfortable with whatever daily schedule is set. It is very unsettling to try to keep up with a group that is riding faster and more aggressively than you feel comfortable riding. It also creates a potentially dangerous situation to ride at a level that is outside your comfort zone. It is much better to test the group compatibility on a short trip. If your group is large enough consider breaking into smaller groups where you can ride with other people who have similar riding styles and perhaps set up points to meet up at particular times.
Route influences on daily mileage
You need to consider why you are making a motorcycle trip. Do you want to just get in a lot of riding or do you want to take a lot of pictures and do a lot of sightseeing along the way. That trip to Yosemite might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for those photos and those memories. Taking some extra time to experience the area may be what separates a good trip from a great trip. Personally, when I tour I plan my daily segments to be 300 miles or less so I will have time to stop and "smell the roses" as they say. If I am in an extremely scenic area my forward movement mileage goal for the day may drop down to 100 miles or less. Chances are I will ride more than that but it will be to explore the area not to gain miles toward my final destination.
The 45 to 55 mph average speed rule of thumb can vary a lot depending on a host of influences. The major influences are:
• type of road
• traffic and population density
• weather
Types of Road
Two-lane roads are more interesting and I prefer riding on them but they will produce a lower average speed than Interstates. Averaging 50 mph on a rural Interstate is way slow (for me) while doing 50 mph on most rural two-lane roads is very fast – especially east of the Mississippi where there seems to be a town every five miles.
You'll get lower daily mileage on two-lane roads for several reasons. Two-lane roads have a lot of towns and you have to slow down and maybe even stop at a few traffic lights. If the towns are fairly close together this can take a lot of time and significantly reduce your average speed.
Two-lane roads are more tiring. They require a lot more of your attention than Interstates. Your level of concentration is higher because there are a lot more hazards on two-lane roads and in towns than there are on divided highways.
The hazard density on two-lane roads is about 10 times what it is on the Interstate. Because you fatigue faster on two-lane roads you need to take more breaks.
Pay attention to your level of fatigue. Don't try to tough it out; it's not worth the risk. If you're tired, stop, if you're really tired, stop for the day. If this screws up your schedule, tough, stop anyhow.
You also can't go as fast on two-lane roads, at least not on most of them. The speed limit on most two-lane roads is 55. Going 65 is probably pushing it for both safety and speeding tickets. Out in Nevada or Wyoming you can blast along with little risk except maybe a ticket. In more built-up agricultural areas 65 or so is about as fast as you can safely go.
Weather
It's pretty obvious that if the weather turns bad you should slow down. Bad weather usually means reduced traction or reduced visibility, or both, and that means lower speeds. If you have proper riding gear rain will only reduce your average speed about 5 to 10 mph. If you have lousy gear you will be miserable and therefore fatigue faster and that can really kill your mileage.
Cold weather alone won't affect your mileage as long as you have the right clothes and it's not too cold. If you don't have the right clothes it will severely slow your progress and you might even kill yourself—hypothermia is nasty. Hot weather will also slow you down—how much depends on your gear and your personal tolerance to heat.
The point here is that weather is not predictable, so when you encounter bad weather accept that your daily mileage will be reduced and that you may completely screw up your schedule. This is part of touring and will happen; count on it.
The Bottom Line on Endurance
In the end your daily mileage doesn’t matter. What matters is that your mileage matches what you can do and want to see. If you want to stop at Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons and ogle the mountain goats, don’t plan on doing 500 miles that day—if you try you’ll be unhappy. Remember, this is supposed to be fun. Be realistic.
The biggest mistake many people make is planning too many miles in a day. Usually they do this because they decide that they just have to be in a particular town on a particular day and they overextend themselves to make it. I’ve done 900-plus mile days with no ill effects but I'm used to it and I like doing it. However if you're going to do that sort of mileage you're going to be riding all day and a good part of the night and not see anything unless it's from the seat of your bike while it's moving. Again, it's not necessarily a problem if you know what to expect. If you think you might want to do this sort of thing (it's called "Iron Butt" riding for obvious reasons) work up to it.
If you're going to do any real high mileage days, try to put them at the beginning of the trip, not the end. Also try to have a non-riding or very low mileage day, say not more than 200 miles, every five days, at least until you know your limits.
Take it easy on the way home, a lot of people decide that the trip is over and that they want to get home now. Most touring accidents are on the last two days of the trip, on the way home. The trip isn't over until you pull into your driveway. Don't get the "I gotta get home" fever at the end — it could cost you more than the extra time will take.