hey,

i am currently looking into options to ship / airfreight my bike from somewhere around mexico, the US or canada back to mainland europe.

so far calgary was my best bet (got a hard-to-beat quote to fly my bike back to europe)

thing is, i'll ship out of there mid december - which i think may not be the wisest time to ride in canada - friends already advised me against it.

any other tips to get to calgary safely ? my first approach would be to just ride up to vancouver and then cross to calgary - but roads may be closed.

basically any route recommendation up from san franciso would be appreciated. the shorter the better - it'll be nothing more than a race up to calgary as i'm running out of money ...

thanks !
martin

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hit the road jack! tr15a

Mid December is pretty risky, perhaps you can ride the coast to Vancouver and then watch the weather forecast and try to pick a travel window... So far this fall the weather trend has been pretty normal for Western Canada with snow starting to show at elevation... This is not so good when you have a series of mountain ranges to cross to get to your destination... Another option would be that once your in Vancouver try to find somebody headed east in a pickup who could load your bike in the back, maybe sharing fuel costs for payment...

Having snow riding experience helps... I do lot of winter riding and have been caught more than a few times having to ride in nasty weather..

I will add my advice to not try to ride on the Canadian highways into Calgary in December. If you do insist on trying I would advise crossing the mountains as far south as possible. maybe coming up through Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. There will be more snow on the western side of the mountains.


This doesn't mean that you won't hit snow and quite possibly -10 to -20 degree temperatures at elevation.

nice bike man !

i love snow, wouldn't mind riding it either, just hate when it comes to ice. and well, it's risky ... and cold ...

think i'll stick to everybody's advice and try something else. thanks a lot for the replies !

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hit the road jack! tr15a

Hello from montana just south of calgary on I-15. It is winter here, snow ice etc. There are mountain passes if you head west to east that are seriously bad. That is not to say that occasionally their aren't nice rideable days but you can't count on them.

For what it's worth i once got stopped by snow in the states and had to get back to work. I ended up going from car lot to car lot looking at their "back row". The cars pushed in the back that were too ugly or didn't run too good. I made a deal on a mazda hatchback and by taking some parts off I managed to stuff my 650 yamaha in the back and taped up the hatchback to seal out the cold. Just a thought but if you have to get thru, a quick drive up interstate 15 and even if you had to leave the car in montana and make it the last 200 miles into canada it might work. You can sleep in a car in the winter and might even be able to resale it for some cash. Pickups are expensive and rentals are expensive but a standard crappy looking car can be cheap. For reference see "worlds fastest indian".

ON a even farther out note if I had more time than money I would home build a sidecar from the junk rear end of a bike and some square tubing or angle iron. I have ridden home built sidecars up north to the arctic circle crossing on the dempster highway and also almost to Guadalajara in mexico. [url=http://www.moto406.com]MOTO406

Man, don't try this.

Options:

rent a u-haul one way from Vancouver and put your bike the back
ship from west coast somewhere
stay a few months longer.

It ain't worth dyin' for.

Yeah we just had between 1 - 2 feet of snow in the Bow Valley - just West of Calgary, Calgary has a few inches of snow on the ground currently, its not too cold at the moment, about -10 to -15 C, but generally mid December is when the temperature plummets, temperatures of around -40C / -40F are not unusual.

Rent a U Haul as mentioned or try to line up a ride East to Calgary for you and the bike.

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Cheers
Grif

'11 KTM 450 EXC
'09 Suzuki DR650
'00 Discovery Series 2 V8
'95 Defender 90 300 Tdi Overlander
http://gipperstravels.blogspot.ca

Which reminds me of passing that way years ago.
The letter P in the sign "You are now entering Roger's Pass" had been crossed out by someone.

Is that sign still there?

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Dave

I'm heading to Calgary on Dec. 20. Could easily tow my ATV trailer with your bike on it.

aw that would have been great ! i'm here in L.A. struggling with US customs (opened another thread for that) to ship my bike out of here. read it to late ...

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hit the road jack! tr15a