2012 Coast to Coast Trip

I decided to continue the motorcycle trip theme using the same blogger account I used previous years to keep things simple enough for my pea brain. This years trip is a 2 week ride from home (Vermont) to Portland OR. My niece is getting married and asked that I attend her wedding so thanks Beverly for the perfect excuse to ride cross country.
My brother begged out this trip (too busy fishing) so this year it's Dave, Jeff and I. Not having my brother will be tough. I'll miss his motel radar (see previous posts). We have sorta the same game plan, no organization, no real plan other than to get to Portland in time for the rehearsal dinner on June 29th and we leave this Saturday June 16th at high noon. I have my trusty old R1100RT, Dave has a brandy new R1200RT and Jeff has a K-bike (don't know K-bikes but I will fill this in later), so all BMWs. The rough plan is to go over the top of the Great Lakes (Canada) and end up in the Dakotas. After that it's meandering to Oregon. We hope to get a few long days in to build up the posteriors and then back it off when we hit the Dakotas.
Dave and I are part of a bicycle challenge at work (here) and we decided to get a small folding bike so we can continue participating while on the road. The challenge is to get people to get up and ride their bike and the neat thing is you get quite a few points for just riding each day regardless of distance. We are the #1 team in the state thanks to some young, slightly crazy bucks pounding miles in, and us less young bucks just wheezing out a couple miles every day. So as is typical, we solved the problem of 2 team members being gone for 2-1/2 weeks by just bringing a bike along. Might be nice to stretch the legs every night as well. Should be interesting and will certainly be a conversation starter on the road.
So in going over my RT I found those @#$% mice had chewed up my air filter again. So I snagged a new one and changed the oil and filter while I was at it. I just had a service last year so it should be good to go. I ran it into town and back tonight and it feels good.
My other dilemma this year (commence geezer whining) is my hip has been acting up and the doc says I will just have to deal with the pain until I get a new one. Ironically, it hurts the worst when I sit on the beemer. So I started 6 or 8 weeks ago doing physical therapy which didn't seem to do much. So I have been trying a  chiropractor for the last couple weeks to see if that helps. So far nothing magical is happening so we will see. I did a test run a couple weekends ago and it was ok. Hoping for the best (end of geezer whining).
It is about 3000 miles and we have about 12 days so we need to average 250 miles per day. That is about what my brother and I did the previous 2 years so sounds doable.
When we get to Portland, Jeff will fly back (his daughter is getting married back east and he guesses he ought to go), and Dave and I go back on the train up the coast to Seattle, and then another train from Seattle to Minneapolis. The fly home from there.
Should be a great trip!!