Today was a day off the bike.

While the motorcycle was getting serviced at Motohio, I spent the day planning the final leg of my journey.

Readers might recall that one of the designs of this trip was to travel farther faster than in the past. In planning the first leg of the trip, across Canada, I referred to it as an “aggressive (high-mileage) schedule.”

The ride home from Columbus will test me in a new way.

Instead of rarely using interstate highways, for this leg of my journey I will exclusively use the interstate system to get home in just seven days.

While this is not Iron Butt territory (1,000 miles in less than 24 hours), I will average 377 miles per day, covering roughly 2,650 miles in the next week.

I’ll be averaging roughly seven hours a day actually riding. Adding breaks and fuel stops, I’ll expect to be in the saddle about nine hours each day. That’s no longer than I’ve been doing and leaves plenty to time to eat, exercise or swim, and rest.

Temperatures should not be too cold until I reach the Rockies and the Cascades where I’ll have to stay bundled up. It may rain on me on Saturday, as I ride into Kansas, but is predicted to be clear otherwise. I expect it to be windy through the Midwest.

As I’ll be focused on getting those miles done each day, unless I detour to do an interesting road, I’ll probably not be taking too many photos.

And, expect daily blog posts to be shorter. I’m not sure what I’ll write about after spending all day on the interstate 🙂

I’ll try to get creative during this leg, and I may surprise even myself.

One final note – I’ve made all my reservations changeable so if I hate this plan, I can make changes.

Stay tuned!