What's your touring budget?

[Tourmeister]

Howdy,

:tab My apologies to non registered guests that tried to vote. The forum permissions would not let me set it to allow guests to vote. I have since tweaked the code a little and it should allow guest voting now.

:tab Okay, so when you folks hit the road for more than a day or so, what is your budget? Where do you like to stay? By budget, I am talking about lodging, gas, and food. There may be other stuff like T-shirts, etc,... along the way, but we aren't talking about that stuff.

:tab If you leave comments, I'd love to know what you ride, how far you like to ride in a day, what you spend your money on, and so on...

Adios,

[Anonymous]

I vote on the high end. However, the poll does not work with my browser. Safari 1.2 on Ti Powerbook G4. Oh well!

Ed

[Tourmeister]

Hehe, sorry about that. I am a total non-html savvy user. I've no clue why it would not work for you. Anyway, thanks for the input!

Adios,

[Anonymous]

I cant tell ya Scott, I have never toured.....

[Anonymous]

I couldn't make the poll work for me, but my typical touring budget is between $100.00 and $150.00 per day.
Mike

[Anonymous]

If I'm touring, I can expect to put in ~800 miles on a "superslab lets get there quickly" day, and ~400 miles on a "let's see how much rubber we can remove from our sidewalls" day. Some quick math works that out to between $30 & $50 a day in gas alone assuming an average of 35mpg and $2 a gallon for gas.

Figure a continental breakfast (read: free), a $10 fast food lunch, and a $15 dinner. I prefer Super 8s, Knight Inns, whatever is cheap and roach free. Typically it's ~$50 a night split up between me and a riding partner ... so $25 out of my pocket. 1 or two stops during the day/night for a coke and a bag of chips .. maybe $5.

I've estimated on the conservative side for a lot of this, my 929 and VFR (which I did most of my touring on) both took regular so gas was considerably cheaper than $2 a gallon. I'll go with $75 - $100 (sorry, but I'm not getting the ability to enter the poll, maybe cause I'm not registered?)

Bill in Brooklyn
Former VFR List Squid Formerly Known as Hussey
'03 K1200LT-C

[Dirtrideroader]

Depends on where I am going and the weather. I like to camp. But if I am pressed for time and wanting to cover some miles, staying with Tom Bodett is easier. I usually either pull my bike in the room or park it in front of the office. First I try to get chummy with the night manager. They will usually agree to keep an eye on the bike. I usually eat some granola bars for breakfast with a gatorade chaser. Skip lunch and eat dinner as a break in the early evening. I usually can get in a couple hundred miles after stopping for dinner.

All that said, that is travelling alone. If I had one of my girls or my wife(that ain't going to happen) with me, I am sure I would cover a lot fewer miles and stay in a nicer place. Camping in the spring and fall is the way to go though. Nothing like sitting outside looking at the stars drinking some kind of local beer. Unless maybe you are in Milwaukee....

[Tourmeister]

Okay, guests should be able to vote now. I had to tweak the forum code so it would allow guests to vote. Sorry about that!

[mlinkibikr]

Camping is good but I found that it killed my spontaneity out on the road. With the choice campsites filled early, it meant that I had to get where I was going by about 4pm. And it was one more thing that I started worring about earlier in the day.

This "where will I camp paranoia" came from an early expedition with a buddy of mine out to the Smokies. We rode over thinking we would pull into Smokey Mountain Nat'l Park and sling a couple of hammocks and be good to go. The campgrounds were booked solid - no extra space. Well we talked to a kindly couple who let us use the back of their space for our hammocks. We should have pulled the bikes back there too, because no sooner did we finish our 6 pack (each) of cleansing ale and crawl into our hammocks, than an authoritative ranger proceeded to roust us out with a promise that if we weren't gone in 10 minutes time we would be spending the night in the "county hotel".

So now it's dark, we're a bit "giddy" from the effects of our earlier refreshment, and we're navigating pitch black park roads through the mountains. Approximately 25 yards past the National Park border sign, we found a flat spot off the road where we simply laid our bags down in the grass and passed into weary sleep.

Next morning I wake up to a strange but vaguely familiar odor, then hear the "moooooooooo". Opened my eyes to see that we had bunked down in a cow pasture and were surrounded by 6 or 7 curious bovines. It's very surreal, kind of like a Far Side cartoon because it's also foggy and wet. It's like "where the heck am I, how did I get here, and what are those cows about to do!?" I look over at Dan waking up, see the look on his face and cracked up. We laughed about that the rest of the morning.

So now I travel with a AAA book and when I lock in the likely destination I just call the Best Western and get a ground level room. No stress. No worries. Unfortunately I'm probably also missing a few more good stories as a result.

Dave.

[Tourmeister]

That was pretty funny!

Adios,

[Anonymous]

Scott:
I am in almost exactly the same place on this as Bill Ng. I did 30 straight days of touring last summer. We only had two days out of thirty that were non-riding.

For that trip, we tried to put a cap of $50/hotel room. Breakfast was sometimes included in the hotel stay, otherwise, local for about $5. Lunch was always on the cheap, say $7-$10. Dinner was whatever was local, often $15. Fuel depended on the day, but we did 10K miles in 30 days, so average of 333 miles day, divided by 33 mpg is about 10 gals X $1.75=$17.50.

Now, of those 30 nights, we stayed with friends 11 nights, camped 2 nights (one was free, the other was $11). So for this trip, the lodging was actually much cheaper than our nightly budget of $50. Figure $50/night, times 17 nights = $850. Spread over thirty days, that's an actual average expenditure of $28.33/day.

Keep in mind that this is what we paid for a trip that we planned, that we mapped out, and that we started with an understanding that we wanted to travel cheap. It does NOT mean that I would not consider touring for $150/day, or more...if the place was right, etc. Of course, once the price gets much higher than that, you run into competing hobbies...I can sail on a private yacht with my wife, around the Greek Islands, for about $250/day...and would rather spend the $$ there, and do the riding on the cheap.

Hope this helps,

Dan B

[Anonymous]

Flea bag for me!!! Or tent!

[VFRinAustin]

Me, I kinda just play it as it comes. I voted at 100-125 but I have been known to be cheaper and also spend much more, just kinda depends on how my day has gone and what I can find when I am looking to finally stop.

[FotoMoto]

LIke your poll says, a hot shower and clean sheets is all I need.

[Anonymous]

Budget poll:

$50-$75

[Jack Giesecke]

I started riding motorcycles for cost reasons in the first place, started touring on a motorcycle for cost reasons. It turned into a whole lot more reasons than cost in my later years when I could afford more, but old habits are hard to break. I'll camp, I'll get a campground with a shower when I can. Every few days I'll get tired of the bag and look for a flea bag, AKA Habib, hotel, you know, the kind that's usually owned and run by a guy named Habib. There's one in Las Cruces 18 bucks a night, clean, too! You can't camp for that unless it's in a road side park.

I definitely don't ride for the comfort of a 100 dollar a night hotel room. I love the outdoors and I'm used to the outdoors. I've spent many a night in a tent in the middle of nowhere, by bike, 4x4 truck, car, boat, or on foot miles from an actual road.

[Anonymous]

My wife and I traveled with a pair of FZR1000's. We did a couppla 9,000 mile trips and a bunch of 3,000-4,000 milers. Camped in good weather and our camping equipment was high quality and comfortable. Hotel in bad weather. We usually traveled in the fall. We both used Aerostitch suits. We always eat well when we travel. Daily expenses for the both of us would range from $100 to $300, with many more of the less expensive days!

200 mile days in the mountains are wonderful, 600 mile days on the interstate are bad ....... really bad ..... we try to avoid them but they will get you from A to B quicker.

As much as I enjoyed traveling with the sport bikes, we bought a Pick-up to transport them to the good roads (we live in Florida). Grinding down our expensive sticky tires on the interstate just wasn't right.

DB

[Tourmeister]

As much as I enjoyed traveling with the sport bikes, we bought a Pick-up to transport them to the good roads (we live in Florida). Grinding down our expensive sticky tires on the interstate just wasn't right.

:tab I hear ya on this one!! Long ago I gave up the need to say I never trailer. I got nothing to prove to anyone. It just boils down to getting more time riding on the good stuff and saving the tires. Living in Texas where it takes a day to get anywhere out of the state, trailering makes sense.

Adios,

[Valker]

I rarely count the cost per day..I figure my cost per 1000 miles. I generally travel cheaper than most everybody I know, but that is because of a lack of refinement on my part ;-) I calculate $50/1000 miles now days. I ride a Valkyrie which gets between 30 and 50 mpg most of the time. 1000 miles divided by 40 mpg=25 gallons for $37 now. I camp free most of the time; either off the beaten path, farmers' fields (usually with permission), something out of "Free Campgrounds USA" or the like. I eat out of the saddlebags or from a grocery store. I usually carry tuna or chicken in cans and have that with crackers. I drink water from faucets to refill my canteen. My last trip to Alaska cost a touch less than $1000. I understand that most folks wouldn't care to travel like I do-that is just what I like. If I need to travel with someone else, especially my wife-we live better than that. I started bike touring in 1968. At that time, I figured $10/1000 miles-but I was tougher then! :eek:

[brd]

I'll try to camp if I can. Though if I can find a decent motel for $30 or less, I'll consider it.

For breakfast I do a protein bar and some other snack. Then either lunch or dinner (depending if I'm near a town at the time) will be at a restaurant and the other will be something from the grocery store in a can.

I like to do lunch as the big meal if I can, as in the evening I'm usually looking for a campsite. Also, I frequently have neighbors at the campground offer me a burger/steak/whatever when they see me sitting there alone eating my hobo dinner. For this reason I never carry beer, either. :mrgreen: