2. Bits and bobs

I am hoping to jump on Doris and take her across the channel through France and into Spain but I am running out of time, by that I mean I have to get going before my step son goes back to University on the 10th or I have no-one to watch the dog as both Beth my step daughter, and Lorni my wife work. So there are things I want for the bike the first on the list was a tank cover

The reason being I am going to try to keep the bike in as good nick as possible so to save the tank getting dinked, a cover seems a good idea however like a lot of things I am finding difficult to get hold of as the bike is no longer made and hasn't been for over 17 years, I did find one but it is coming form Germany and definitely wont be here in time for my trip, The next thing I wanted to do was to upgrade the known problem of poor headlights so I have found and bought an Osram H4 bulb for her.

This should help with night riding, next problem is how to wire up the sat nav as I wont go anywhere without it, there are two ways of doing it , one is to run the cable for the holder down to the battery via a fuse which is what I have on my old Harley..

The second way is to run it like I would in the car straight from the cigarette lighter bearing in mind I am going to run an axillary power cable though to charge the phone etc I think this way would be better as then there is only 1 cable run to put in,

So now all i have to buy is a cheap little bracket with a ball lock on that fits on the handlebars and that is another job done.

Next problem is how do I hear the sat nav, on my Harley I had an intercom system that plugged in via a lead and my phone was blue toothed straight to the bike and on that matter I have another problem all of my older helmets are now in a state of repair that I wouldn't want to use anymore the only other helmet I have is one that says Harley Davidson all over it and has the intercom system already plumbed in, so it looked like I would have to buy a new blue tooth headset and a new helmet or..what I have done is to buy a helmet with the blue tooth headset built in and funnily enough the colours were blue, black , black and yellow or.....burgundy LOL so burgundy it is.

Complete with disk lock ok so nearly there I only need a set of boots now as my monster cruiser boots I use with my Harley wont fit under the gear change lever. I would like a tank bag as well but we will see on that one and I have to get a pair of gloves as Motorcycle news ran an article about motorcyclists being stopped for wearing no EU compliant gloves, bloody hell they just keep getting the tools to stop and  fine bikers anyway best have a compliant pair, I have a textile suit to wear and I picked up a little sunshade for my sat nav to try and make it easier to read.

The only bits I would love to have is a full luggage set but no-one makes them anymore so getting hard to find so I will will use my old Nelson Rig set from the Harley and sit it on the seat behind me and strap it to the top box.

The tour pack consists of a medium size suitcase and roll bag on top loads of little pockets all over it this with the top box will have to do., so much to do to make a motorbike into a usable device.