Christmas present from Mr Branson

Seems ages since my last post but it is exactly one month ago.

Just woke up to a Christmas surprise from Mr Branson. I wonder! White beard, flies around the skies in something red and white.....hmmm!

Anyway, what better way to start one's Christmas Day, than with an email telling you that your flight times have changed. Flying out of Heathrow, we'll now be leaving 1h50m earlier. Yeay, more time in Chicago! Boo, we'll now have to get up 1h50m earlier!  Coming back from Los Angeles, we'll have an extra 50 minutes in the airport! Plenty of time to buy some disgusting Hershey peanut and chocolate combination for the boys back home!

Thank you Mr B or should I say Santa?

The camera never lies!

 

And relax....

There's a  certain amount of relief in my household now. All the accommodation has been taken care of now and although I haven't been able to book 2 first choice hotels, there is a possibility they could still be booked nearer the time. If not, we shan't be left wanting or having to sleep in the car!

Today also saw me book our flights and car hire. I've been tracking the cost of both for a while and have been a little dismayed to see the flight costs creeping up. We were waiting for a couple of quotes from friends in the business. In the end though, we have gone it alone AND saved ourselves a sizeable chunk of cash. An employee rewards scheme at Cath's place of work, gave us an 8% discount on a Virgin gift card, which we were then able to use to purchase our flights. We were always going to go Virgin anyway, as they were cheaper than British Airways from the start but this worked perfectly in our favour. We shall be leaving Blighty at 11:35 on Monday 31st August and saying our goodbye to the US at 17:01 on Sunday 20th September.

I've booked car hire with National, for collection in the city. As we plan to spend a day sightseeing in Chicago, it didn't make sense to pick up the car from the airport. Not only was that more expensive but on top, we'd have parking at our hotel to pay for. We'll collect it early Wednesday 2nd September. It'll go back in LA on 18th September. The car return is only about a mile from our hotel at the airport, so that's good. Once again, we plan a sightseeing day in LA, so no need of the car and added parking charges for an extra day. Let someone else do the driving, eh? This time, it was better to go direct to the National website, than use the employee scheme, as that gave a 10% discount over the employee scheme tariff. Win, win, today!

These long dark winter months coming up, will allow me to fine tune our itinerary. I'm the sort of person who likes to do detailed, meticulous planning. I hate to leave anything to chance. Some might say that takes away any spontaneity of the trip and to a degree that may be true but I'm sure if you were to ask my Wild Hog biker pal Grizzly, who has been on two tours with me now, he'd agree that all that planning made for two very well structured and very enjoyable tours. Would he have wanted it any other way?

Anyway, that's all for now.

Branson's finest. Probably not Virgins!

And still they plan

No-one would have believed....

..that it would take so long but, we have, finally, arrived at dates and got a major chunk of the tour, stopovers, hotels, etc., nailed down. We shall be on the road for 17 days, though not driving for all of those, as we have a couple of 2 nighters planned. We'll arrive in Chicago, 31st August, return from Los Angeles, 20th September, arriving back in Blighty on the 21st.

Having finalised the dates and cross checked our route distances and timings, we were able to identify our overnight stops, taking into account that this is not just a road trip from A to B to C but one where we want to experience the real Route 66, so 4 or 5 star hotels are not a dominating feature. We may be sacrificing some of the more usual creature comforts of the 21st Century but given the choice of having a TV or sleeping in a room where Clark Gable reportedly slept, which would you choose?

My main worry was that we were going to be away for Labor Day, a Bank Holiday in the US. I'd been warned, by David at Orange & Black, that it might prove difficult to find accommodation for that weekend and that the roads would be busier. As it goes, the hotels are booked. How busy the roads are, we shall discover soon enough.

There's still a few ends to tie off, 2 or 3 hotels to confirm, car hire and flights to organise, then I can relax and you can have a rest from blog updates for a while. It has been questioned, as to why I have to write about it before we've even set off!

Anyway, that's all for now.

El Rancho Hotel, Gallup, New Mexico

Yep, still planning!

Proving to be more complicated than I expected and certainly more than I have been used to, on previous tours. You'd think getting me and Ms Dozey across the States would be a lot simpler to plan, than getting 4 blokes on bikes around the UK or Europe. Well, you'd be wrong.

Maybe I/we are making it more complicated? Not sure but having specific 'wants', such as places to stay (El Rancho Hotel, for example), trying to fit lots in yet not be travelling too far each day, are all conspiring to complicate matters.

I've been all through the EZ66 guide now, so the route and sights are all logged. All we have to do now, is break that 2500 miles, into manageable daily chunks, with a few 'rest' (read, non driving) days thrown in. Simples!

Maybe I'm painting a blacker picture than it actually is, we've both done pretty well not to strangle each other, thus far, so that's a positive.

One thing IS for sure. We shan't be bothering with a Mustang. I'm quite settled on the idea of a Toyota Rav4 or similar SUV, though I did have a 'moment', where I was considering buying a 1920s Model T Ford, to make the trip as authentic as possible! Crazy? Not quite so, when you can pick one up (probably no surprise to you yanks), for anything between $11,000 - $15,000. I kid you not Brits. Maybe one for when I'm retired.

Shouldn't be long now before we have something solid to work with, I believe we are pretty close already to deciding how many days we'll be away. I had initially thought 3 weeks (20/21 days). The way it is looking, we'll arrive in LA end of Day 18, so pretty much spot on, allowing a day of sightseeing in LA and a visit to my American chums, Dean & Carol.

Rest assured you'll be the first to know, assuming you've signed up for blog updates, that is ;-)

Planning continues at a pace

Quite a slow one though, if truth be told.  I am now going back over the route using the EZ66 route book. I bought it from the US, as it comes highly recommended. I could have bought it on Amazon UK but that would have cost £30. Including postage from the States,  it was about £17. I must confess,  when I first opened it, I was a little disappointed but now I have actually started using it in anger,  I can see what a good purchase it was. 

Cath has joined the planning on a couple of days and added her ideas of what to stop and see.  She's also knocked up a spreadsheet that tracks the mileage,  so we can work out how long the trip will take.  Once we have that,  we can choose our dates and start booking things

Watch this space. 

Sent from Samsung Mobile

Four Wheels on my wagon?

But what's it gonna be?

Cath's dislike of riding pillion, meant this was never going to be another Harley trip, though I did briefly toy with the idea of a trike. However, there were two things wrong with that; one, the luggage space, even with a trunk (UK=boot), is barely enough to hold Cath's make-up bag and two, a trike would cost something approaching 4 times that of a car!

No, this would have to be four wheels. But what? On 2 wheels, you ride a Harley, obviously. On 4, then surely it has to be a Mustang convertible. One thing wrong with that! Again it boils down to the size of the trunk. Nelly the elephant could get more in hers than Ford has provided, the Mustang only having twice the cubic footage of the trike! Doesn't sound then, that that is going to leave any room for my clothes, once Cath has got all her footwear in. Now I can hear you all saying, " you can use the back seat, as there's only two of you". A fair suggestion, IF, we were going from airport to hotel and unloading. But we ain't. As we shall be moving on each day and stopping off en route, then that would leave our luggage on show, as temptation for ne'er do wells (I'm sure there are one or two in America) to break in the car. No, all our luggage needs to tucked away out of sight.

All might not be lost though, as I have found some interesting videos on you tube, which seem to suggest the Mustang trunk is bigger than one imagines. Might have to visit a local US car dealer and see for myself.

Failing the Mustang, we'll settle for something midsize or maybe even an SUV (Toyota Rav 4 or similar), as I am planning on running on some old unpaved Route 66!

Don't worry though, you guys will be the first to know, when a booking is made.

I've run through the list of sights to stop off with Cath and apart from one addition, she is in agreement. Now comes the task of guesstimating the amount of time we'll spend visiting. For the most part, I expect it'll be stopping, reading the information we have on the subject, taking a few pictures and then continuing on our way. 15 minutes tops. Others, may include some interaction with the natives (real natives, in some cases), so stopped time may be significantly more. It's not an exact science but will give us a good idea of what each day will hold. Do that for the entire 2448 miles and we'll know how many days it's going to take. Simples! Once we know that, we'll know how many days we have to top and tail the drive in Cjicago and LA.

Anyway, loads to do, so back to the planning.

P.S. I've added Cath as a contributor to the blog, so you may see the odd post from her, if not before, probably once we hit the road.

There's more to this lark than just blogging!

Driving down Route 66 with Catherine, has been something we have talked about for a while now but fitting it in around my biking tours was always going to be difficult. As many will know, 2014 saw my old Irish muckah Patrick (a.k.a. Grizzly) and I spend 3 weeks touring Europe, so quality holiday time with my good lady was in short supply. I'd already started planning for a 2015 tour, The Wild Hogs Scandinavian Tour but I ran out of Hogs! Bill (a.k.a. Dudley) passed away in February, David (a.k.a. Biggsy), has, seemingly shut himself away from the world and reliable old Grizzly told me he had two weddings to go to in 2015, so wouldn't be able to afford another tour!

So, when one door closes, opportunity knocks, or some such thing and suddenly I was free for a 3 week tour with my partner.

And so the planning began.

We sat down searched the web for all Route 66 tours, 2 wheeled, 4 wheeled, coach, etc, and listed the places they stop over, together with the number of days they take to complete. It became clear quite quickly that 2 weeks is the average time. Longer tours just added a stopover somewhere, rather than reduce the mileage, and some days there are big mileages involved. We didn't just want to be sitting in the car for 8 hours each day, so we shall be looking to spread it out over 3 weeks, including some sightseeing in Chicago and some time in LA to visit with Carol & Dean, wife and tour guide from the Wild West tour I did in 2013.

Moving on from that, I downloaded a set of Route 66 TYRE routes, which I have gone through, tidying up and marking the alignments that I want to drive along. Then, in conjunction with the National Parks Service website (linked on this blog) and some other websites, I have marked the things/points of interest that I plan to stop at. Notice I said I. Cath will need to go through and agree or otherwise with my choices, before we can start to build in our mileages and overnight stops.

Rather than just driving the road, I want to get more involved with the history and culture this time round, so I already have some historic motels/hotels on my list of potential places to stay. Cath likes her luxuries though, so I'm hoping they don't still look like they did in 1949, though retain their old worldly charm.

There's loads more to do yet, so watch out for the next post.