Prologue

As of writing this post, this is the only overnight trip I have done in the USA on a motorcycle. I covered close to 1000 miles (1600 kms) and explored a bit of two states in 3 days. It’s been a while since I did this, so I don’t remember some of the details. I still decided to write about it as this is my first big ride here and one that helped me clear my mind of some changes I had going on in my personal life. This time I’m including video clips to share the experience as I have more videos than pictures from this trip. I hope you find this to be a fun and interesting read

The story is from July 2019. It would have been about a month since I got the NineT and I was actively trying to get back in shape to be able to ride motorcycles again. I wanted to take some time off and clear my mind – in other words explore somewhere new. At the time, I did not have a specific plan in mind – just a lot of scattered places that I wanted to check out in my bucket list. There was a long weekend coming up which I wanted to make complete use of somehow and with this in mind, the search for a route began.

When I started looking for a route, I was in fact looking for a trip to do by car as I was not confident if I was in shape for an overnight trip on a motorcycle. I had found a couple of interesting places in Oregon and I was leaning towards going to Oregon. It is a place I somehow find more scenic than Washington for its natural beauty. Even now, there is a huge part of Oregon I’m yet to explore.

Fast forward few weeks, early August. I finally started to plan a route by looking into travelogues about Oregon and came across a route called ‘Mt Hood Scenic Byway’. The reviews were good and the route length was enough to keep me engaged for 3 days. Another place I wanted to check out was the US 101 Route through Washington. I had covered a part of it when I did the loop around the Olympic National Park, but I wanted to complete the entire section in Washington state as well. I started working on a plan, slowly building out the route I wanted to take.

Thus a plan was made. The high level plan was to take US 101 to Oregon, do the Mt Hood scenic byway and return via Vietnam Vetarans Memorial Highway (I-84) and then back to home via I-5. As per the map, the trip was to be ~700 miles or 1120 kms. As I was building the route, NineT kept coming up in my mind and in the end I decided to make it a motorcycle trip instead. I was a little worried about the distance, but felt that since I’m on my own, if I felt I cannot do it at any point, I can always return midway.

Fast forward 2 weeks, August 30th 2019. I did the pre-checks on the bike and made sure everything was working and in order. At night I went to the nearby gas station and filled up on fuel. It was an exciting evening – the first big ride was about to begin.