October 10, 2010 Catching up, Red Dog’s camping outfit

Man I can't believe it's been this long since I last updated Red Dog's blog. A ton of stuff has happened in the interim period; I changed my mind about riding Red Dog on my summer tour and bought a new Kawasaki Vulcan 900LT. I named her Green Girl and barely a week later rode off to Key West, FL.

June 06 Leaving for Key West...in the rain

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Five weeks later I stopped to visit a friend  in Kansas City and while there I traded Green Girl in on a new Honda Goldwing which I christened theYellow Peril. Talk about spur-of-the-moment decisions, that’s about as extreme as you can get.

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July 15th -Leaving Kansas City on the Yellow Peril

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.The 2010 summer ride clocked up more than 11,000 miles on the two bikes and turned into one of the most fun trips I’ve taken. For anyone interested here’s a link to the blog about it: http://ridinggreengirl.blogspot.com/

 

Red Dog and the UniGo trailer

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Meanwhile back to Red Dog and her latest report. Not long ago while I was logged onto the Modern Vespa Forum the topic of how much camping gear could be packed in the UniGo trailer came up. I figured it was time to do a show and tell with pictures and made it an afternoon project . In addition to that I wanted to see how the trailer would handle with a full load.

The UniGo easily holds all my gear plus clothes 

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Starting out I gathered up what I expected I’d take along for an extended camping trip, tent, sleeping gear, cooking equipment, that sort of stuff. I didn’t include food as I’ve found it just as easy to buy things as I go along, particularly perishables. This wouldn’t be quite the case if I were heading out to a wilderness area but for this exercise I figured my imaginary trip would be in the lower 48.

  

Trial run base camp set up in the front yard

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Cooking gear, lanterns, etc.

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My creaky old back loves this GoKot

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A Cocoon sheet from REI...what luxury

Katahdin down bag from L.L. Bean keeps me warm

In my previous post I talked about fine-tuning the Red Dog/UniGo rig for optimum handling under full load and as a result they’re now ready for a long road trip. I’ve been riding Red Dog a lot of late, much to the chagrin of the Yellow Peril and as much as I like the big yellow Goldwing I find Red Dog to be a constant source of fun.

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A bunch of us who own Piaggio MP3 scooters are planning to get together this coming springtime around the first week of June. Our initial choice for the gathering is Panguitch, Utah and that would be an excellent outing for Red Dog and the UniGo. Stay tuned!