Readying the bike for the season, cleaning things up, dont rush getting the bike on the road though. Right now is the time to look over the bike completely. Air up the tires to full air pressure and check them the next day, look for cracks. If you see ANY get the bike to the shop for new tires. nothing will ruin your day or life than a front tire blowout at highway speeds. Check your fluid levels, when was the last time you changed your fork oil? is everything tight? does the bike start easily after it has sat overnight without the battery tender on it? Water level in the battery? check it over carefully. Every minute you spend now is less that will cause you problems later in the year and miles from home. While you are readying your bike, check over your camping gear. make sure mice did not make your new compact sleeping bags their new home. get a can of tent water-proofer and on a good day set up the tent and check it out, at least re-treat the seams. I respray the whole tent with "camp-dry" silicone water-proofer every 3 years. finding problems now means you dont have to scramble later. One thing I added to my kit is the Scala Rider Q2 helmet bluetooth headsets. I can answer the phone on the road and talk to my wife as well as listen to my ipod and GPS. (I plug the gps audio out into a ipod fm transmitter and use the FM radio on the headset to listen, works great) This allows greater freedom and it stops the ripping out of the headset cords the old bike intercom had. Plus these devices are cheaper than replacement stock Yamaha headsets.
Several advancements have came about in camping gear. Some easier to use like a Cot-tent, but they are impossible to carry on a bike. some newer summer tents pack very small and there are new smaller cooking stoves available. One thing that works great is getting a soft fold-able cooler. you can easily stash it when riding, but use it to go get food for cooking after you set up camp if you want to cook over the campfire. I will cover some of the new smaller camping gear soon.
Many times on a trip you want to share with others your travels or even simply remember where you have been for your own use. You can use a GPS, some of the better units allow trip logging, but most dont that are best for road trips with all the maps. Enter the GPS logger. Specifically the AGL3080 GPS logger. This little guy is cheap at under $70.00 on amazon.com and it allows you to press a button to record a location or continuously log your travel every second to the end of the day when you can easily save it to your netbook laptop you packed. (more on communication on the road for a later article...)