ROT Rally: Austin we have a go for launch

I have been on the fence about going to the ROT this year. There are lots of great reasons to go but the heat, money constraints and concerns about leaving Wonderful Wife behind have had me on a mental teeter-totter.

As of this morning, the teeter-totter is firmly grounded on the side of going. After yet another night of restless, troubled sleep the morning dawned with a major outage at work...in a technology area I am personally responsible for..crap! That clinched it. I need a break. I need some cut loose time, a party with a few hundred thousand of my closest friends...a rally. This ain't just any rally but the Republic of (by God) Texas Rally!

Can't say republic of Texas without including the by God, by the way.

Two challenges immediately came to mind.

First, when I was installing the Pile O' Parts I decided to leave the saddlebags off. I figured I could always reinstall then if need be. Unfortunately, my bike lift (my son-in-law Moose) is out of town which makes getting the shocks off and the bag mounts pretty near impossible. I will figure out a way to get around that. After all, I went bike camping way before I had saddlebags.

Second issue was how to charge my phone while camping for two days. This would not, normally, be such an issue. I would just carry a spare phone and only turn mine on when I needed to make a call. There is no spare phone at the moment and because of some personal issues I need to be able to be reached. I was also hoping to post from the rally (yeah, that is probably a bad idea).

A quick stop into Radio Shack on my way to grab some lunch brought a surprise solution; the Solio Rocsta-i charger:

It has built in batteries that can be charged via a USB cable or by the solar panel built into the device. When my phone needs charging I just plug it to the Rocsta! Then I can leave the device in the sun to recharge it. Not sure how well it will work but I plan to test it out tonight (charging the phone not recharging the batteries with the solar cell).

A geeky solution worthy of a BMW rider! Or, of a nerd who rides a Harley...

Tonight, I will start organizing my crap (it's been over a year since I went bike camping) and try to come up with a solution for packing it all on the bike.

T minus 42 hours and counting...

Hang in there

-Buddha