Pan,
You are pretty bang on with this. I've planned a route across Canada for this summer. I am giving myself (riding 2-up) between 75 and 80 days. I'm in Toronto. Meaning I will cross Canada twice, approx 22k kms using Mapsource. I have chosen alternative routes to the TransCan. This is my first trip across Canada and by working with maps, etc, yes...Canada is large. Thunder Bay is considered the middle of the country if you measure Victoria BC to St. John's NFLD.

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http://www.motorcycle-overland.com

Thanx for all the heads up, but I'm very well aware of the distance. My inital plan was more like 20000km riding but I've "cut" it down to around 15000-16000km.

It acctually had a plan for the last summer to be doing some driving from the most southern point of Sweden and to the most northen point and back just to get a feeling of the distance, but the we bought a puppy the the plan went down the drain. That would easliy been a 6000km trip. And I'm quite used to ride longer distances on funny roads. The club I'm in we mostly do some riding each week and we use to end up with 200-300 km each evening, mostly on gravel or twisters. And we also do the 600km trip to get to ride 300km fun gravel not around Stockholm... Yes I know we are abit mad but who cares we have alot of fun... Soo I'm not afraid of the distance, well I'm not afraid at all acctually.

I was thinking taking close to 5 weeks to drive east to west and perhaps doing some higher speeds going back, not sure yet if I'll just make it one way or the full return trip.

The road from Montreal to Halifax is about the same as I was looking at but at the moment I'm thinking I might skip going all the way to Halifax and just head up to Prince Edwards Island instead and make that my most easten point. Still not sure since I've got 2 weeks to get me from Irsihtown, NB to Trenton, ON and I guess I got some sparetime there...

The T63 tires are like the MT21 but last a few 1000km longer. The thing is that I'm gonna need knobbies in Irishtown (perhaps I might add) and absolutely in Trenton since I'm about to attened the RFS DS ride there which is 300-500km of dirt/gravel/singlelane/.... No I will NOT be doing it with full luggage...

I'm doing a major overhaul of the bike at the moment which includes a rebuild of the engine since it's consuming abit more oil then I feel good with, so it will be in good shape even if it's got 63000km on the clock already. But if I do get stressed about the time I just turn around and swallow my pride for not beeing able to cross canada.

Again thanx for all tips.

Cheers,
Zappa

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Zappa
Stockholm, Sweden
XL600V Transalp

NOT that I'm disagreeing with anyone about the long distance across Canada - having done it, Vancouver to Halifax, we know it's a VERY long way. BUT just to ease the stress for those wanting to do it, it is possible to do it pretty quickly - we did it in 8 riding days in 2002 on an R80G/S, including 1/2 a day for a service, and did do a (very) little sightseeing on the way. So that should give an idea of a reasonable non-ironbutt two-up minimum time.


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Grant Johnson

Seek, and ye shall find.
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One world, Two wheels.
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

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Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

The actual longitudunal center of Canada is about 40 km to the west of the Ontario - Manitoba border, or, 120 km east of Winnipeg. I drove past it 2 days ago, there is a sign to mark it.

Michael