Final Day in Redmond

The Kawasaki OEM top box was not going to work for me for these reasons:

1. Had a paltry weight limit of 4 pounds
2. Speed limited to 80 MPH

Now these might be restrictions made by some over zealous safety person at Kawasaki, but I didn't really want to take the risk. So with a 25% restocking fee and $30 shipping, I sent the top box back to the distributor. What I really needed was a Ventura rack, I knew these could be used at speed and the way they attached to a bike would mean they could take more than 4 pounds. 

Ventura pack racks are hard to fit because you need to get special L-brackets made specifically for your bike model. Most of the time you'd go to a motorcycle apparel store and they'd have to order in the brackets, because it was stupid to keep all the different L-brackets in stock. This was time I didn't have, I wanted to get moving pretty soon.

This is where I got really lucky, it turns out the only Ventura distributor in the United States happened to be in Lynwood, about a 15 minute ride from Redmond. I rang up, they confirmed they had the correct fittings and then I rode over there. The extremely helpful staff there lent me his toolkit, and gave me a hand fitting the rack to my bike. In about 15 minutes we were done!

I even got a free emergency tire repair kit! I now have so much redundancy in that space, I bought one of the bog standard "spike handle with rubber logs" kits from the dealer in Kennewick, then Josh suggested I buy this "Slime" stuff, where you just spray it into your tire and it plugs the hole while inflating the tire, then I got this free kit from Ventura! This kit is way different to what I've seen before, it has these plastic keys that you turn into the puncture hole then snap off.

I managed to get all of my stuff to fit in the Ventura bag and the panniers. Just. As expected the SLR takes up a lot of room. I can save space by removing the lens from the body, but I'd like to be able to have quick access to it if I need it. Also the sleeping bag takes a fair bit of space, even though it's one of those super small goose down ones. I figure if I do end up buying a "Bivy" for camping, I'll just roll it up in that and it can go on the back of my bike. 

It's a pretty tough balancing act, on the one hand I need to pack light and small, on the other this is a solo trip for 5 months so I need to be prepared for anything. I've got a small polar fleece jumper that takes a fair bit of space, but I don't want to ship that back to Australia because what happens if it gets cold? There are lots of considerations like that. I'm guessing that as I progress through this trip, I'll find things that I just don't use and start to trim down the fat of my luggage.