Test packing

Well, I received a couple of items in the mail today that should prove to be pretty useful on my trip which begins two weeks from now. In the above photo, the first is a cable that connects to my motorcycle's battery on one end via SAE connector and at the other is a cigarette-outlet which I can plug in my cell phone's car charger. This will help keep my phone charged while on the road - useful for the nights where I expect to be camping and won't have an outlet to charge the phone overnight with.

The green item on the right is an ultra light and fast drying camping towel from REI. Again, on the nights that I'm camping I'm sure that I'll want to shower off. Having a towel that packs small and dries quickly will save me space and (hopefully) keep the rest of my clothes/gear from getting swampy.

Here's a photo of the cable running into the tank bag that I'll be using. This bag is supposed to have a capacity of 18 liters and has a pouch to hold a hydration bladder to keep me from drying out while on the road. I had taken a photo of it on the bike earlier, but for some reason the photo(s) didn't save onto my phone's memory card.

One thing that I discovered when packing the clothes is that my shoes take up an awful lot of space in my saddlebags since they only have ~17 liter volumes each. Depending on the rest of the gear that I want to take, I might opt to take 1 pair of shoes and buy another pair once I'm in Portland. Then I can mail that pair back as I prepare to head back to Santa Barbara. Fortunately the trunk that I have holds approximately the same volume (46liters) that a standard carry-on bag does, allowing me to have enough clothes for 5-6 days on the road at a time. The red bottle is a camp fuel bottle which I intend to put gasoline in, just in case I find myself running out of gas before I can get to a station.

Finally, here are some photos of the trunk mounted and the camping gear on the passenger seat. I already know the saddlebags fit from my trip a couple of weeks ago with Kitty to USGP :-)
Thank you Marck for lending your dry bag to me, it's able to hold the tent, sleeping bag, tent footprint and my camp pillow in there! Hm... with all that weight out back, this bike will be even more wheelie-prone...