Hi, after completing a half-year Europe to Australia tour last year, we now dream of doing a ´PanAmerican-trip´ together with my girlfriend. Most likely this would be 2-up on 1 bike. But because of work - that damn thing, that´s always standing between you and your dreams (and Im only kidding!) - will probably need to split this trip into at least two parts this time.

The first part of this plan, would be a tour around North America (US and Canada) for about 1 month, hopefully a bit more, but I know I´ll probably be a bit short on vacations Sept/Oct 2009, when we thought of doing it.

It would be easiest for us to fly into New York, then head northwest into Canada, then to the West coast and follow it south, then east all the way to Florida, and finally back north to where we started from. Or we could do it the other way round, too (but weather-wise it could probably be better to do this starting from NY around Sept 1st, 2009).

I am in the process of finding out, how much it would cost to send our own DL650 into the States (for reference, from Sydney, Australia to Helsinki, Finland, by sea, cost less than 500 euros one way). At the moment it seems likely, that I am not sending our own bike over just for 1 month, but possibly do that in 2010.

The other option would probably be doing this (the US&Canada-part I mean) on a rented motorcycle... anyone got any idea, roughly where it would come to, if we´d rent, say, a Vstrom 650 from NY for 1 month, and did up to 5000 miles with it? I got a feeling, that even if I could find a suitable bike for rent, which might not be easy, it might be quite expensive. And I dont know, whether or not you can easily cross into Canada and back on a bike rented from the US? I did once have a bike rented out of Johannesburg, which I was able to take generally all around southern Africa (8 countries) with a special permission from the company I rented from, so I´d figure it shouldnt be impossible.

Yet another idea, that could perhaps be realistic: - buy a bike in the US, prepare it for 2-up riding (that´s one problem, if you dont have much time, but should be do-able with good planning), and then do both the US&Canada2009-"leg", as well as the later Central&South-America2010-"leg" with it. After that, try selling it in Argentina, be prepared to sell cheap, or if that fails, then ship it to Europe. Finding a place to keep the bike somewhere safe for almost a year in between those 2 trips could be one problem, though I got some friends over there, that maybe could help with that. Bikes seem to be very cheap in the US, compared to my country, at least for now. I like the idea of a small investment, considering the risk of losing the vehicle totally, if bad luck strikes.

But not sure right now, because I´m not a US-resident, just a tourist, am I able to do all the necessary paperwork for it, so that I wont get trouble in some Central&South-American borders later on. If we decide, that buying our own bike in the US is the way to go, then we´d probably try to do all our riding in the Americas with this same bike. And I know that to be able to go to the Central&Southern-parts of the continent, we will probably have to be the owners of the bike we ride, so not possible by renting.

Any experiences, thoughts or ideas, what would possibly be the best way to make this happen, and also route suggestions & places to visit on the way, would be warmly welcomed!