[fjmartin]

I had asked Joe B when the trip was first being planned if I could park my motorhome and trailer at CSC somewhere and he spoke with Steve and they said I could. I'd check with him on making sure their is space for more vehicles.

I captured all the blog info from JoeB also and I know he says that we each need to carry all our own stuff and I plan on it but I would be good to discuss splitting up the load somewhat. For example on my 9 day trip to Cali in January and a few thousand miles I didn't burn any oil at all so if I burn some on this trip I'm sure it will be just a few ounces. Having each of us carry a quart with 16 bikes seems wasteful as we could share. Same goes with some of the tools and cables, fasteners, spark plug and other things like I carry a battery jumpstarter, and pump siphon, tire levers, patches, electric pump and spare tubes. I know for the BDR trip coming up we will sit down and figure out who will carry what so we have a complete kit shared amongst the group.

I have to say that I'm generally an over packer. Worse than my wife my a miles but I learned on the Mojave/Death Valley week that I was fine with very little extra clothing. I seriously was fine with just being a dirty guy especially since several of the days were camping with no shower. Since this trip has hotels I am planning on bringing a minimal amount of clothing but to more easily fit them and transport them I'll be putting them in compression sacks. I was able to get ALL of the spare clothing I'll bring for this trip in a test packing in a single compression sack that only took up about 1/2 of the Tourfella top case.

I'm not worried about bike weight for the road portions of the trip but I know now that handling a loaded bike offroad is much more difficult than not.

Really, right now my open questions are:
Tires. I put on my OEM stock CST tires as they roll much nicer than my Shinko 244's and most of this trip is road. but with the 14 miles to the cave painting and the 30 mile optional dirt/sand ride that I want to join in on I'm wondering if the CST's will cut it OK.
Fuel. I had seen a post on Facebook of a guy setting up his bike to carry extra fuel for this trip and a comment from another person saying it wouldn't be necessary as their are plenty of fuel stops with only one being a road side stop to get gas from a truck. So I'm thinking of leaving my 12 liter fuel bladder at home but bringing my Mr. Funnel which filters out water and particulates from fuel for that stop. What are you all doing?

Let's keep this dialog going and we'll see you down there in person!