Our Ride, Dinky - our sporty Options

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I'm a life time biker having started at 12 with my first powered bike which was just that a bicycle with a motor on it - not much of a motorcycle - but hey at 12, 4'2" and about 65# I don't think I was quite ready for a dresser. But I was hooked the first time I twisted the throttle and I've been on a bike ever since. Haven't always had a car, but have always had a bike except for a short time when we lived on a boat, but that's another story For now we'll limit this story to our current ride and how he came to earn that position.

The last year or so before deciding to go fulltime we made a decision to downsize our traveling ride. So we added to our family and picked up a Sporty. We named him Dinky, actually we named him Dingy to start with, he was like a dingy on a boat compared to our home ride, Love Boat, pic below, but it somehow evolved into Dinky. So here's Dinky ready to ride

And here's our old home ride and previous travel companion -

That's our previous coach and the rack we had on the back of it. This was an RV Lifts of America rack and it served us well on 2 different coaches. Age (mine), weight (the scooter not mine) and the fact that DW was no longer able (COPD) of helping me if we needed to pick Love Boat up all played a part in deciding to go with a smaller bike for our travels. The final consideration was the fact that we like to ride the forests, the back roads, the I think it's still a road type roads and they're a lot easier to handle on a sporty - that loss of 600# makes him easier to handle, something I can pick up when he decides to lay down on the job and a lot easier to get on/off the rack.

The decision to go with the Hydralift on our fulltime coach instead of the old lift was mainly for overall length. With the old lift we added about 4 feet to where the car connected. With the hydralift it connects about 2 feet out from the back of the coach and still under the rack. With the RV Lifts it was the back of the lift. So with the extra 6 feet in the length of the coach we needed to lose that extra 2 or 3 feet in order to keep our overall under 60'. So we decided to go with the hydralift.

So here's Dinky on his new lift and ready to travel -

We opted for the clip on windsheild and the zip on saddle bags and rack pack so that we could strip him down to the essentials for loading, traveling and unloading. We discovered with Love Boat that getting the bike on/off in the sand, mud, grass, etc. can sometimes be tricky, so by stripping him down we eliminate any possible naps on the way off the rack

Well that's my current ride. Tell us about yours -----