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Electronics
GPS
A GPS is an interesting bit of kit -- and not just from the General Relativity Frame Dragging compensation perspective (fortunately, negligible) -- but more for how you use it and how it affects you.
For a start, a GPS is not a SatNav (though it can be). A GPS tells you where you are and, much more importantly, where you've been. It's that ability the go back the way you came than can save your bacon.
That said, if you've got an accurate (street) map of the world with appropriate "routing" information then if can be a godsend. However, the problem there is that you can believe all to closely the facts being reported by the SatNav and that can get you in a mess. The SatNav itself is subject the (in)accuracies inherit in the device changing direction and lean. The latter is particularly prevalent on a motorbike (as you lean to go round curves) and the GPS will automatically and dramatically increase its radius of uncertainty. I see it jump from +/-2m to +/-12m quite regularly. When the GPS isn't sure exactly where you are the SatNav can, and does, start recalculating your route midway through a turn.
Still, SatNav features are a bonus and not to be relied on.
One thing you are slightly better off relying on is someone else's trail. As the GPS remembers where you've been you can then download that information and pass it onto others to upload into their GPS'. Then, just like retracing your own steps you can retrace someone else's. Top!
GPS
After ruminating for a while I chose the Garmin 60Cx. It's a pretty reasonable GPS, it can SatNav, you can put a large (at least 2GB) microSD card in it, you can mount it on a bike and it can be powered off a cigarette adaptor.
The downsides are that the buttons are a bit fiddly with gloves on and that its only way to converse with you it to beep. Which you can't hear above 30mph so you have to remember to keep looking at it if it's SatNav'ing for you.
Maps
At the time I bought mine the freely downloadable worldwide routable maps market was a bit thin on the ground so I ponied up for Garmin NT Navigator for Europe.
Garmin are a bit of a dead loss at this point. To download maps to your GPS you need MapSource which, unfortunately, comes in a few similarly named variants, several of which are no use to you. Paying £80 to Garmin for their European maps gets you a good copy.
One of the things that MapSource does let you do is select from the various tiles that map up the map (think pages in an atlas with extra pages for city details etc.) and only download those rather than spending 2 hours waiting for the whole of Europe to download.
Free Maps
Garmins also have a large number of maps online for download. Even if Garmin themselves don't make life especially easy.
In particular, OpenStreetMap now has the facility to generate worldwide (for as much as people have mapped the world) routable maps.
This is a huge leap forward from when I first played with OSM only a year or so ago.
Extras
You'll want a RAM mount and cradle:
and a cigarette power adaptor:
In my case, I dismantled the cigarette power adaptor and attached the wires to the lighting circuit directly.
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