Thanks for the kind comments! :thumleft:
The small matter of the costs.... 8)
Renting vs Shipping your own bike: I had a look at the shipping costs and the break even point was about 4 weeks. Thus if you intend renting for longer than 4weeks it would be cheaper to ship your bike. The down side of shipping is that you have to ship the bike long in advance (3months?) and then wait another 3months for it to get back to SA. Six months without your boney?
From what I could find on the net it would seem as if shipping into and out of Canada is somehow less cumbersome. Maybe some Dogs that have experience could give more insight on shipping.
Rental costs:
My three week rental worked out to ~$95/day.
It is the insurance that is the killer and there you have to make a personal call. The option that I chose came to ~$20/day
I also had to pay a `$700 "one way" rental fee. (There were personal reasons why I wanted to do the "across the US" trip.)
Rental Company:
I rented through a 3rd party but picked the bike up at EagleRider. My recommendation is that you rent directly from EagleRider, they were great!
DS bikes are however not that popular in the US and the rental agencies have limited stock available. Solution: Book well in advance. A "group booking" for DS bikes may be a challenge.
Accommodation costs:
My budget was $50-$60/night and I could roughly keep to that. Nothing wrong with cheap Motels. They are clean and has all the basic needs. They are without exception also close to cheap sources of food. McDonalds, Wendy's etc.
I did all the reservations on the fly. McDonals etc has free WiFi and I could pull over and make a reservation for the night. I used Hotels.com or Bookings.com to find the best deals.
I also tried AirBnB but short notice doesn't really fit an AirBnB home owner. I was never able to find something on the entire trip on AirBnB despite looking for it every day. When you are on the road you cannot always wait for the home owner to reply....
TIPS
When (not if :biggrin
I ever do this again I will consider the following:
I will definitely consider camping. The campsites are beautiful but as mentioned early in the RR they all seemed to be closed for "winter". I will have to do more research on camping though. Any comments/experience from fellow Dogs?
Camping does however require more baggage. But I will in any event crate ship my bags to a friend to arrive a couple of weeks before I leave. Biking gear takes up a lot of space and even though you are allowed to take big bags on the long haul flights, the proverbial hits the fan when you switch over to the regional/domestic/budget airlines. They make you pay penalties for excess baggage.
(Look at the specials on the EagleRider website).
Take a round trip i.e. same pick up and drop off location. (With the $700 one way fee I could ride for another 7 days.... The US is big enough to make a huge loop.)
They also post "one way specials" from tome to time. Most of which ends in Las Vegas or San Francisco. Doing this you can pick up the bike in any of the participating locations and take a one way trip to Las Vegas. (Just check, they often have time limitations on this e.g. 7 or 10 days etc)
Dogs with more experience, please comment....
