This may not come as news to any of you, but the last two years have sucked. Epically.
As is the case with most of you, travel has been curtailed for obvious reasons and we’ve had little or no events to go to. Places that would normally be destinations have shut down, been in lock down with limited access, and we’ve generally felt it a bit unsafe to do much aside from the occasional day ride.
But we’re hoping summer 2022 is when things start to turn around – with higher vaccination rates, we’re hopefully going to be able to do more, travel more and have more to see than we have for the last couple of years. Which will translate into more articles for Scoottoronto.com and more chances for you to generally mock our severe incompetence.
This summer (subject to conditions, right now we’re keeping it in the “hope we can do it” pile in the plans folder) we hope to do a major road trip out to either the East coast or if things look open enough and we feel comfortable doing so, the west coast. Which is a more ambitious trip, being more than twice the distance.
One project we are undertaking and will cover on this site is our Scooter Hauler trailer. We’re in the process of buying a 6×12 cargo trailer which will be converted into a simple RV/scooter hauler.
This has a few advantages for us – we can setup base camps at campgrounds and explore around them on the scooters and not be subject to staying in hotel rooms or dealing with setting up camp in bad weather. We can drive longer days to get out of Ontario as we can switch drivers and rest in between, and won’t be subject to riding in rain/cold/dark.
We’ll have a simple bathroom and kitchen setup, giving us more options in those places where restaurants are fewer and farther apart. (And depending on several factors, public washrooms can be harder to find these days – having our own gives us further options.)
We’ll document the entire process – so you can learn from our mistakes. And we have no doubt we’ll be making them.
The trailer we have ordered is a 6×12 enclosed trailer from Action Trailers in Strathroy, ON. New, it comes to around $7500 CAD with our selected options (increased height and RV windows.) Though due to supply chain issues, prices may vary depending on when you order.
We’re expecting it to arrive in April/May (it’s being custom built) and we’re already figuring out things like flooring choices, how to built a tiny washroom in the v-nose, how to secure the scooters, weight limits and more.
The trailer itself is a little under 1500lbs, and has a limit of 3000lbs – which is also the tow limit of our vehicle. We have 725lbs of scooters to go into it, so we have a hard limit of about 775lbs for everything else being carried in the trailer. So lightweight will be the major theme.
The couch will be a simple wood frame with cushions and will folder into a thin panel and be secured against the wall. The “kitchen” will be a simple counter with wood legs and curtains to hide items beneath the counter (which will have a simple manually operated sink and water jug system, as well as a grey water jug)
The “bathroom” will have a similar sink (tiny as possible) plus a cassettte toilet and a wall that will be as lightweight as possible.
It will have a simple 12v system based on a deep cycle battery we already have, wired into some basic LED lights and some ports to charge our electronics on the go. It’ll be charged when we get campsites with power, or from our tow vehicle (which does have inverters for household plugs.)
So that’s the major project for the next little while – but aside from that we definitely plan to get out and do more weekend trips. Some using the new trailer, other day trips just on the scooters. We’ll be posting those as well.
Hopefully we will get to more events as well – but it’s hard to tell what will happen, or what will be able to happen. But we hope this is the year we can see more of you out on the road – safely, always safely, but hopefully things continue to get better and we can add 2020 and 2021 to the list of things we rarely speak of. Alongside such things as the Star Wars Prequels and most reality TV.
So keep an eye out for updates – because this year we’ll have more of them for you. More adventures to share, and more stories to tell.
And we sincerely hope they rarely involve disasters leading to cannibalism, and rarely end up as cautionary tales.
This year anyways.