After our ride to the 2003 GWRRA Region Rally in Visalia, Carole and I decided to take a look at what the GWRRA had going on at a national level. I looked at their site and saw that the 2004 Wingding was being held in Grapevine, TX just out side of Dallas. I showed Carole and she instantly got excited. The Dallas Fort Worth area of Texas is one of our favorite party places on the planet!
I immediately called the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine and made reservations, and then sent our money to the GWRRA for event registration. I didn't really care that the Wingding was going on, it was just a darn good excuse to ride all the way to DFW and back.
We spent the next 9 months getting Dori ready for the ride. We bought a GPS along with the complete audio hookup from Kennedy Technology Group. We also bought and installed the CB (I had the dealer install the antenna a few days after I bought the bike knowing that it was just a matter of time before I installed the CB). We purchased a Sony Mini-Disk player to give us some tunes when we were out of range of radio stations (I wasn't yet ready to go with Satellite Radio since the market still appeared to be unstable). Highway pegs, a luggage rack, and fog lights finished off the practical portion of our purchases, but we spent a ton of cash on chrome and lights just to get her looking right. After all, part of owning a Gold Wing is making it your own.
Since a large portion of our ride was going to be through some of the most expansive deserts the southwest has to offer we focused quite a bit on comfortable riding attire. After doing quite a bit of research on the different garments available we decided on Joe Rocket Phoenix 2.0 Mesh Jackets and Joe Rocket Phoenix Pants. We also purchased a pair of Camel Back hydration systems so that we wouldn't have to stop just to drink water. In hindsight, I have to say these purchases were the wisest investments we made on our whole trip. Every day on the road we encountered triple digit temperatures. But never once did we complain about the heat. In fact, on one day we rode in 43 degree temps and 115 degree temps.... within six hours and were never uncomfortable! We learned that it is more comfortable (temperature wise) riding in 100 degree heat with our Joe Rocket gear than it is to ride in the same temps with just shorts and a tee shirt. And the Joe Rocket gear has more than enough armor to make us feel protected.
As the time drew nearer we started discussing what we were going to take on the trip for kick around clothes. We decided on a couple of pairs of jeans apiece, some tee shirts, a dress outfit for each of us to go dancing in, swimming gear, and enough socks and underwear for seven days. We figured we would do laundry while in Texas. All of our gear fit in the Paikit Rak leaving us room in the saddlebags for our cowboy hats on one side and our boots on the other. Believe it or not, even though I felt we had plenty of spare room we were over-packed. The Pakit Rak is AWESOME!
The last couple of weeks before out trip I started developing the route in our GPS. I purchased Microsoft Streets and Trips on a whim and was very happy I did. I worked the route out in Streets and Trips, communicated with friends from all across the U.S. that had experienced some of the roads in the Southwest, and flipped the coin when deciding on which road to take in a lot of areas. My main objective was to avoid interstate as much as possible, and when given a choice between a straight line on the map and a squiggly line on the same map I would never choose the straight line. We were going to make this the ride of a lifetime. Indeed, we were not disappointed with the result.
So we hit the sack on the eve our trip knowing that we were as prepared for our trip as we could be. The only planned stops we had on our route was Sedona, AZ for two nights and the four nights at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine. Everything else we were going to simply play it by the seat of our pants. I forgot to warn Carole ahead of time about my preference for dive motels but she was going to experience it soon enough. We fell into a fitful sleep for the night. We always have difficulty sleeping the night before a ride.
Reading through trip descriptions can often be like sitting through your friends slide-show of their Disneyland Vacation so I'll end this page here. However, if you want to read about some of the roads we took, some of the challenges we faced, and view some of the pictures you can follow the links below.