Hi everybody.
I hope you had a merry merry. Mine was fine. Just a day in with the family. Santa was kind, but not over-burdening.

The best thing about Christmas is that it’s over. Ok, not quite true. But it is over and I finally have a chance to catch my breath, catch up on correspondence and hopefully not catch a cold.

In this month and a half between now and vacating the store, I have quite a lot to do. It’s pretty overwhelming, to be honest. Stressful and the like.

Some things are for the immediate – like restocking the store. Other things are for a bit in the future, like mapping out Scoot 66 and outfitting the scooter for a 7,000 mile run.

The outfitting will involve figuring out just what I need for 40 or so days on the road. Having been on the road for nearly that long before, I have some idea, but having never done it on a scooter, a lot of this is new.

In a car, you can just pile things in there. On a scooter, you need to think like a backpacker. I can carry a little more than a backpacker, but only a very little more.

I’m debating on whether I should bore you dear readers with my scooter outfitting antics. For instance, who really cares if I’m installing a cigarette lighter on the Vespa (to recharge a cell phone)? Does anyone really want to hear about the bag I got for my seat?

And what of the mapping? Normally, mapping is as easy as plugging two locations into google maps and pushing a button. But with Route 66, it’s a bit different. Route 66 doesn’t actually exist anymore. There’s no longer a US Route called “66″. The roads and highways themselves exist (mostly), but they’ve been renamed or incorporated with other roads. Not only that, there are many different alignments that US Route 66 went through.

My job is to pick the alignment I like best, figure out where it was and go there. It’s basically research while riding. Yeah, there are several books that I’m using to help, but they often disagree about what was and wasn’t actually Route 66.

Once I sort all that out, I have to type turn-by-turn directions for each day and print them on tiny cards that I can tape to my handlebars and headset. And then I have to print out the maps that I made.

One of the biggest challenges is figuring out when to stop. There are only two reasons to schedule a day off. The first is laundry. I suppose I could do laundry before leaving in the morning, so it’s not a huge big deal. I’ll have to do laundry four or five times on the road.

The other reason is maintenance. The rear tire needs to be changed ever 3,000 or so miles, the front every 6,000 – 9,000 (depending on a lot of things). The oil needs to be changed every 3,000 miles. The belt (for the transmission) needs to be changed every 6,000. I’ve got to figure out where to do both of these things. The best bet is to just take it to a scooter shop. They may feel sorry for me and do it for cheap.

I’ll probably do this in Albuquerque, NM for the oil change and rear tire. And then again in Salt Lake City for the oil change, both tires and belt. That should get me home. In order to make this happen, I pretty much need to know exactly when I’ll be in Albuquerque and SLC. Both of these places are well under the 3,000 mile mark, but better safe than sorry.

I guess this doesn’t seem all that stressful. But believe me, it is.

How much I’ll update everyone about this, I don’t know.