We took our first fully loaded (almost) shakedown ride this weekend. It was just a quick 70 mile ride up to Lake Berryessa in Napa, but it felt good to see how the bike handles with a passenger and luggage. We also got to test out some of our camping gear. Overall I was very satisfied. My favorite new gadget are the rokstraps. It may just be a heavy duty bungee, clip, and strap, but it's a game changer when you are strapping your bags down.

Charlie rode with us on his r80gs build to remind me how far I have to go on the badass-scale. I love how his bike looks with the tall forks and extended swing arm. It's a lean beast of a machine.

He also brought his torque wrench so I could tighten down my oil pan bolts. I changed my oil pan gasket last week and tightened the bolts by hand. Unfortunately, I discovered that almost half of the bolts are stripped. The oil pan is functional but leaks a little now. I ordered an m6 timesert kit to repair it next week.

I wish we could go on a few more of these little jaunts, but we will be pretty busy between now and October 15.

Key learnings:

1. The GPS battery is almost worthless—it lasted maybe 30 min.

2. Diana needs a little practice mounting the fully loaded bike.

3. It is not convenient to store our headlamps in the cooking pots.