The Duffel Bag
Want to go traveling on your Harley? All you really need is a duffel bag. That
is it, the basis for hitting the road, a place to stuff a bit of gear, a change
of clothes and a toothbrush. Throw it over the passenger seat of your '94 XL883,
secure it with a couple of bungee cords, and you are on your way. It really is
as simple as that.
Of course, you have to have that volition, that desire to go. I know riders who
go around the world on a whim and a wallet, others who spend three years
planning a trip to Alaska, plotting where they will be every hour of every day.
And others who dream of going to exotic places like Key West or Big Sur, but
that's all they do, dream. Something holds them back, perhaps a fear of travel,
maybe an unwillingness to abandon the comforts of normal everyday life. Or they
get greater pleasure talking about the trip than actually doing it.
We might think we need saddlebags and windshields, GPS-based navigation systems,
cell phones, all the frou-frou. Nice to have on a trip, especially the
saddlebags to carry all the other things, but the key to happy travels is in
you, the rider. You have to want to go. To leave the nice warm home and head out
on the highway, to see sights you've never seen, go to places you've never been,
have a great time. Maybe freeze your butt. Or get soaked through and through.
But it's all in the game, a most wonderful game.
Myself, I'm an Electra Glide sort of guy; but basic duffel traveling will do. I
came across this great country last spring on a Softail Deluxe that had the most
inadequate saddlebags I've ever seen. They looked good but had room for not
much. Everything else went into a duffel over the back seat.
My first duffel-bag trip was at age 17, when a friend and I took off for two
months in the summer. We did not have the money to buy Sportsters, but we each
had a used 250, and a tough canvas duffel bag, probably from the local army/navy
store. I remember that we dilly-dallied about departing, until one afternoon we
looked at each other and said, "Tomorrow we are leaving, ready or not." And we
did. We lived cheap, camped out, got wet, were pretty dirty at times, and had a
memorable trip.
Getting soft in my old age, nowadays I like enough fairing and windshield to
keep the worst of the weather off me, bags and a trunk to carry my gear. I
usually do a big trip every year, three or four longish journeys of 1,500 miles
or more, and a dozen shorter ones.
One curiosity is that I still get the pre-trip jitters. A day and a half before
I'm due to start a trip, I become irritable and snappish. The wife, having seen
this for years, ignores me. Why I get this rattled aspect beats the heck out of
me. Once I am on the road, I am fine, but it is just that anticipation that has
me going.
I was talking to a soldier back from Iraq who said that the worst time for him
was preparing to go on patrol, the anticipation; once he was out the gate, he
was fine, doing his job, no time for nerves. I think, in a much lesser manner,
that happens to people setting off on a trip, fretting about what should be
packed, what will get left behind. But when you are finally on the road, all
that is forgotten.
Yes, preparation. If somebody were to call me up and say I had to be in
Amarillo, Texas, by tomorrow evening, I could have the Glide loaded and be gone
within 30 minutes. Of course, I'd probably forget the toothpaste or the spare
socks, but that is the advantage of the convenience stores attached to most gas
stations.
Beyond the personal stuff, clothes and toothbrush, I always pack a few items for
the bike. A basic few tools are good, in case a fastener loosens up. As is the
tire kit and the ability to fix a flat tire. I am a stern advocate of mag
wheels, which means that should I run over a roofing nail and the tire goes
flat, I can plug the hole and pump up the tire. Plugging the hole is relatively
simple, and the little compressor I carry weighs less than a pound and runs off
the bike's battery. I do not consider a plug to be a permanent repair, and stop
at a dealer at my earliest convenience to either get the tire patched from the
inside, or mount a new tire. I also carry 5 feet of clear hose, because I have
found myself on a lonesome road where the station that once pumped gas has been
closed for two years; the hose provides a little bit of security.
Then there is the cell phone and H.O.G. membership. It is nice to have H.O.G. at
your back but in some remote parts of this great nation you can probably get
yourself back on the road quicker than waiting for a flatbed to show up.
Much of a motorcyclist's carrying space is taken up by riding duds, for cold and
wet weather. My regular daily wear usually consists of boots, jeans, and a
leather jacket, with longjohns and an electric vest in the duffel for when I'm
going to the top of Colorado's Pikes Peak.
If I know that the weather is going to be on the cool side of warm, I'll wear
chaps as well, though I find them a tad cumbersome when strolling through the
Wheels Through Time museum in Maggie Valley, North Carolina.
More important is the wet-weather gear. I have ridden through many a full day of
rain, which is no fun at all without good gear, and I have learned how to stay
dry. My main protection is the Harley two-piece Streamline rainsuit. The pants
are easy to get on in a hurry, the jacket effortlessly fitting on top of
whatever I am wearing. A pair of lightweight rubber overboots slips on over my
Wolverine Wellingtons (easily done if you use one of those omnipresent plastic
grocery bags to get your overboot on), and these keep my feet dry. Water-
repellent gloves are okay for a shower, but in a serious rain I use industrial
rubber gloves, with liners inside.
All this fits in the duffel, or the saddlebags and trunk. But the one thing you
cannot buy is the willingness to go, to take off, to start the trip. Sometimes
it is the desire to see new things, the Grand Canyon, the majestic purple
mountains, the beaches on Cape Cod. Or, as my wife reminds me, it could be a
woman who just wants to get away from her husband and the kids for a few days;
as she buckles down the saddlebags on the Dyna she reminds them that the trash
truck comes by on Wednesday, and promises to send a postcard from Yellowstone.
But again, you have to want to go. There's nothing wrong with not going, as long
as you are happy with that. But if you are one of these riders with regrets,
lying on your deathbed regretting that you never took that trip to Nova Scotia,
then my advice is: Go. Just go. Just do it. Life is way too short to wait
around. Yes, yes, you can put the trip off until you have all the bells and
whistles and the GPS unit, but a Sporty and a duffel bag will do for right
now...and maybe a credit card that has not been maxed out.
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