Phoenix to San Diego – Bike Service, Carnet & Regroup

The ride from Phoenix to San Diego is uneventful. With no interest in exploring or taking any time to ride in the lands near my former home, I just rolled the throttle and made my way toward the border.
Arriving in San Diego I got down to business. This planned minor downtime stop would allow me to tweak the bike, my load, my gear and prepare for the journey to the bottom of the world.
I made an appointment with Gary at Brattin Motors, the San Diego BMW dealer. Contacted Avon for a new set of tires, Roger at Adventure Motorcycle Equipment guided me through adjustments on my exhaust system and Rolf at Rok Straps set me up with another set of straps so that loading and unloading the bike would be quicker and cleaner.
If you haven’t heard of RokStraps, check them out. These straps are “permanently” fastened to my bike and have a small degree of flex and extra strong clips that make for fast loading and unloading of the gear strapped to my seat and on top of my Jesse bags. I discovered these straps at BMW Santa Cruz County and had a set for one side of my luggage and not the other. After 12,000 miles and many nights at hotels and campgrounds it was clear I needed to outfit the other side with Rok Straps. No brainer.
My tool roll which is simply a $5 piece of 3″ PVC about 20 inches long and attached with hose clamps to my engine protection bars. Some of the dirt roads sent my front forks traveling the entire distance allowed. This caused my front tire to skim the center of the tool roll. While I had arranged through Touratech-USA for a set of stiffer fork springs, I never took the time on the road to install them figuring this would reduce the number of times my tire would hit the PVC.
My top case is a love hate relationship for me. On the road it becomes like that junk drawer in your kitchen. Just catches everything and anything. The original idea of this box was simply to keep my camera gear. This would make for secure and easy access to camera and lenses when the scenery inspired me. But as the stuff accumulated in the box, getting to camera gear became burdensome and a hassle. I had to refine my system so that this wouldn’t happen. So I resolved to keeping spare gloves, my AEROstich bike cover and my camera stuff. Let’s see how long I can hold this.
While I waited for supplies and reinforcements I focused on my maps and guidebooks, and handled the final paperwork and details necessary for my Carnet de Passage. and staying with Angie in Carlsbad, I took advantage of wireless internet, telephones and a warm bed.