Hello ladies and gents-

I'm Cory, I live in Baltimore, MD and I have been riding since I was about eight or nine.  My father used to force me to ride a little 50cc barn bike with a reupholstered sheepskin (barn was a sheep farm) seat and make me go out and take little trips, he did it to "man me up" because apparently I was a girly child (it may be true), regardless of his intentions I am forever grateful for the experience. 

Bikes: I'm on a '09 M696 now and also have a GS500 I've recently started training the girlfriend on as she is working on getting her license.  I bought my Monster earlier last year and finally decided to sign up for this forum after stealing all your trade secrets for free and possibly give back a bit of experience to someone else.  I've owned a few other bikes over the year of several different flavors but the Monster has by far been the funnest. 

Fun fact: I recently started planning a trip to Europe with a coworker and our girls.  As of right now we are going from Libson, Portugal to Rome, Italy (3,000 KM/2,000 miles) with about two weeks staying a few nights in the major cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Marselle, Venice...  We are in the process of working out the rental details but we are probably going to get BMW's F800GS or the 1200.  If anyone has an experience with this, let me know!

Hey. So there's local area sections CAM encompass the Capitol area... And dirty charm city too... City that reads, my ass

So drop on in a say hey.

There's also a Facebook group for the balto folks.  Baltimore Area Ducati, BAD. check that out too

As far as the trip - there's a couple companies that organize trips like that. Thought they might be more organized than you're looking for.

As far as bikes - look into the multi 1200. They are just great bikes.  Unless your planning for some off the pave time the GS bikes won't be the best choice. If you want BMW they make some sport tour bikes that would probably be better suited

I'll check out those groups!  Thanks!

From what I can gather, most of the renters in Europe for touring have been BMW's, but perhaps I'm just not finding the right place.  I'm really excited for this adventure. 

For free form rental, yeah you might well be more restricted and the bimmers seem popular as rental mules.  I'll stick with the position of taking a sport tour over one of the GS bikes

Yeah..

well thanks for the tips, I applied for BAD as well. 

Took a long ride to Seaside Heights this weekend ~500 miles total, it was a good trip but the stock m696 seat can get a little sore, there was fine, but the way back, a lil' rough... I may have also been dehydrated and hungover...