rtwPaul

After my super quick ‘fix” of the frame in the farmlands of Ontario we had decided to leave Canada, we knew that we had a choice, either ride across Canada and hit massive forest fires in B.C. and then a quick run down the coast to Mexico and onwards, or more of the US…we opted for the US

Canada is obviously very similar to the US in a lot of areas and ways, but as a long term overlander, it is expensive for equivalent things, food, gas and mainly camping. $40 in a lot of areas for a square of dirt to me seems outrageous.

So, we did the last tourist thing before leaving the country, Niagra Falls

Always an amazing sight to see and way better from the Canadian side

instead of the crossing close to the falls, Buffalo, we turned west and headed for Windsor/ Detroit, I had a little cash left so we emptied the tanks in Canada and refilled with what we had left before heading back to the US

Now it seems as overlanders that this border would be a breeze, well Egle was very nervous and rightly so, Lithuania is a little-known country and crossing a border is the ‘SOLE DISCRETION’ of that border guard if you can or cannot come into a country. She has been told in the past her passport was a fake, Lithuania wasn’t a real country etc.

We pulled up to the gate together (a no – no) and immediately the officer says, “nice dreads” she replies “thanks” then he catches us off guard, “I used to have dreads, had to cut them off before I applied for this job!” We chatted for about 15 minutes, bikes, hair, countries…he actually closed his gate so he could talk to us longer, super nice guy with an apt name “Cooler”

We were in and relieved…well she was, mine was simple all I got was a “welcome home” she had to answer a few simple questions and a 90-day stamp was added to her passport

Our goal was Snake River Spur Rd. this is where the COBDR begins (in WY)…so a quick ride across the country with a mix of dirt, slab, people, sights, corn fields, unique locations, good food and bad weather.

Camp food doesn’t have to be dehydrated….

We didn’t and we did!

Then in the distance a hill…about friggin time

Then a bigger one

Then the mountains…hello Wyoming

I’d dropped eakins a PM to let him know we were headed to Colorado and specifically the COBDR and if he was around we stop by and say high, he arranged a place to meet at Timboat in Steamboat Springs, so we talked BDR’s and other routes, travel, bikes, getting lost, getting found, we mentioned we would do most of the COBDR but were doing a side trip to Moab to see another friend mcmarcia for a little R&R for Egle to write a few articles and then we would rejoin it, we sat down and devised a great connector to Moab from Gypsum, CO

Great to be back in the mountains, (free) wild camping, dirt roads cheap(er) gas

Outside of Gypsum we figured we’d have an earlier day going down this unassuming track

coming around a corner hard pack turn to sand, then bulldust, TEN MILES of it off and on, bone-dry powder, not a great thing to ride in on an air cooled bike

After this shot above Egle’s bike wouldn’t restart, it was way overheating from the slow going, gas was expanding and boiling and no shade in sight, what should have taken us 20-30 minutes took almost 2 hours

The following day we headed west and got high!

eakins talked about Lands End Rd. of all the thousands of miles I’d ridden in CO I had never heard anyone mention this dirt road, great to see new places, we got here at the end of the day, early morning would have been better for the best views.

To get the best morning views we wild camped on the side of the road at about 8000′ and looked out as the sun set and smog from the fires in the north almost hid the lights of Grand Junction further west

In the morning we got the great view from our new Big Agnes tent, the wind had blown all night and valley was somewhat clearer

from here its a hop, skip and a jump to Moab for the rest of the week while she writes…

trees, dams, a cracked frame, a busted battery, two carbs that needed rebuilding, lots of welding, the biggest crane game in the world, loads and loads of beer, icebergs, black flies, amazing people and one complete dickhead on the ferry in Quebec is how I’ll remember Canada this time around, but I digress.

Running around Lab City with Darren and later getting to see his first ever motorcycle that he owned that he bought as a basket case in multiple boxes and built this killer Norton with right side shift left side brake

We got a new battery for Egle’s bike and we were good to go after a few checks to confirm it was just a battery issue. Once you are about 50km from Lab City you are on your own, seriously on your own, a mix of pavement and dirt for the run down to Baie Comeau was a tree and lake lovers paradise

paved or dirt – you get both

Dams, yeah they’ve got those too

are they big, yes they’re ‘dam’ big…see what I did there?  Can you spot Egle?

the occasional bridge

and some more trees…

We stopped in Baie Comeau to meet a rider ‘John’ (not an inmate) who I’d spoken with on FB who was coming the opposite way on the TCAT/ TLH when he was t-boned by a car and rushed to emergency with his leg broken in 4 places…get well soon buddy if you see this.

When we came out @Doogle passed us at an intersection but didn’t see us so we carried on to Saguenay to meet @jackalsour, thx for your amazing hospitality btw.

To get to him we missed a turn in the fog and ended up on a ferry which allowed us to meet the most obnoxious Quebecer ever, who worked on the ferry. We were crossing here

as we docked, we go to ride off and as I’m almost off the ferry he puts his hand up, so I stop then the conversation starts

him – blah, blah, blah in French
me – !
him – do you understand me?
me – no!
him – you have to respect the line
him – you have to respect what I say
him – you have to respect me!
me – what line?
him – FUCK YOU
him – if you don’t like it leave my country
him – fuck you, fuck you fuck you!!!
me – ok…
….twist of the throttle and I ran him out of the way and I might have said something on the way off the ferry

and Quebecers wonder why they get a bad name, just wish I had it on video, it’d go viral but he’d still keep his job and probably be a hero in Quebec

and back to the trees!

All was good for a few days heading towards Toronto and then my bike was not starting, the starter had nothing, not even a click, a little roll backward and forwards initially got it to start then this changed to a full on bump start. We headed for @roadcapDen in Toronto and his well-tooled garage and we did a fix by taking the bike apart and doing a starter rebuild.

While putting the starter back in I notice the crack

I check the other side and that has one too

We left @roadcapDen place and headed up the road to meet some other friends @waterlilly and Les of No Agenda World Tour, and former owners of Dual Sport Plus in Stoney Creek, as luck would have it they were at a farm with a fully equipped workshop which I was given free run of and got to play with a MIG welder which I haven’t touched one in about 10-12 years so my bead was a way off but my strut cutting was more important to reinforce the frame to make it all good again and better after rewelding the frame

So a very uneventful/ eventful ride across eastern Canada, these bikes need to leave the country, they really don’t like it here, to date in Canada, carb rebuilds x4, broken fuel filters, cracked luggage rack, broken spokes, busted battery, failed starter, failed GPS, failed GPS mount, cush drive rubber failures and cracked frame in two places…and fixing @waterlilly bike when she broke down in Toronto the other day riding with us.

before we jump ahead to ‘that photo’ there is stuff in between…

@damurph lead the way out of St John’s and in the general direction of @skibum69 he showed us a few areas that a lot of locals miss

@damurph really knows Newfoundland like the back of his hand and is a definite asset to any rider who makes it all the way east, thanks again for your hospitality

@skibum69 and I have been chatting for years but never met, so over a few beers we got to know each other face to face, Mike is a Cicerone so the beer on offer was something special.

…and to put a face to the name…he’s the one in sunglasses

we planned on staying a couple of days and the only thing I really had to do was change rear tires on both bikes, the Kenda was done after 7000 miles but the Mitas looked like it had another 2-3000 left in it, but we’d been carrying the Metzeler Karoo 3 rears since Maine so I just did them both. So if you ever get to his place there’s a 17 incher to get you home if you need it…you’re welcome.

As I’m doing the swap Mike hands me a sticker that @C-Stain and @fredgreen had left for me, an honorary invite to the very secret society that is “Team Canoodia” so now I wear the badge with pride thanks, guys and it was great meeting you after all these years

Back on the floor to clean the wheels and I find a problem with my rear wheel, kinda normal for me to break spokes and this is the third bike in as many years I’ve done it too.

I thought I had spares with me but I didn’t, so a call to @warp9man and he overnighted a few replacements to me from Utah!!! Warp9 amazing customer service, thanks again Kevin.

So this is the scene…

@VTbeemer gift was not coming true in eastern NL

So what do you do, well Mike has a reasonable selection of beer, time to try a few while we wait…

Now 2 days turns into 6 and we have time to check out the local area and the natural wonders to be found

getting a little hot in the summertime here!!!

Eventually, we have to leave and we head west, we check out the trail but opt out of riding it for various reasons. If you don’t know most of the TCAT on NL is the old railbed called the T-railway, sadly for us two wheel guys it has become a haven for ATV’s, its a lot of deep ruts, river rock and closed areas to motorcycles which is no fun – we didn’t want to duck walk our bikes across the island so we took the heavily traveled route which is still amazing

and camped all the way, morning duty before packing up

and the next day on the beach

heading up to Saint Barbe there are less and less people and the locals just do their thing surrounded by amazing scenery

We hop on the ferry and get to the BIG LAND and go iceberg spotting

After a horrendous night getting attacked by the black flies we hit the Trans Labrador Highway in the rain, the prophets charm has failed!

After Red Bay, there is one gas stop at Port Hope Simpson @ $1.43 a liter then it’s a long trek to Happy Valley-Goose Bay

after the first 50km or so the surface is good and fast, really fast, we were averaging around 70mph for most of it…but as you know that will take it toll

the pavement begins around 60km from HVGB

before the pavement Egles left rack had snapped, at the two top mounts, a crazy bunch of straps to hold it together and we rode on into town arriving still in daylight, we struggled to find a place to camp as we knew we had to be close by to find a welder in the morning. A local guy gave us a tip to an abandoned campsite by a lake that is only used one day a year, yesterday!!!

if you are heading this way make a note of it as it’s not easy to find – 53.417140, -60.403941, follow the road and you’ll ride thru the campsite, we camped on the beach under the pavilion, a lot less black flies there

In the morning a local told us to go to Chubbs Machine and Welding, the owner is great guy if you break something he’ll help you out

All welded up we head out for Lab City just a quick 338 miles with a whole lot of nothing in between. Stopping for a break Egle goes to restart the bike and nothing, stone dead, I pull it apart find nothing but then we have power again from nowhere, hit the button and its dead again, rinse and repeat a few times and now we know were fuct!!!

If it were anywhere else a tow, a battery and other parts swap would be the order of the day but we are in the middle of nowhere and without risking the running bike we decided to try and hitch a ride for her and her bike.

I presumed it was the welding that had sent a strong current thru the bikes electrics and fried the lot, even though I had removed the negative battery lead…at this point, it was a guess.

We flagged down about ten vehicles but none had phone service or could help, guys in work trucks told us they weren’t allowed to pick up passengers for insurance reasons so we waited until a semi pulled over, one with a logging crane on it and this is how you end up looking like you are being attacked by a transformer or playing the worlds largest 25 cent crane game

Egle got a ride to Churchill Falls which has basically nothing, it’s a service town for the industry there for a few hundred people. Luckily we met the owner of the one hotel and he offered his truck and a driver the following day to get us to Lab City, thanks, Carvey we owe you big time

so truck number two, a little smaller this time

@skibum69 put us in contact with another Cicerone, Darren, who just happens to run Trish’s Place B&B and is a biker, one of the few here. Again if you are heading this way make note of it. Decent price and great people.

With good wifi, I researched a little and with the help of his extensive selection of tools we diagnosed the problem and a few emails back and forth with Jeff @procycle and big thanks for replying after hours – that it was just coincidence about the welding, the battery had busted internally from the Trans Lab the day before. A new battery was sourced and we are ready to again in the morning into Quebec.

out of ‘Merica into Canoodia, the last stop before the border

We didn’t go too far from here, just over the bridge to Deer Island to meet @West Isles again 6 years after the first time I was here and spend a little time on the island and on the water with him and his brother and mom…good times.

Even got a few unique views when we were out, photo below is not distorted but a thin layer of fog that appeared a few feet about the water line and was only about a foot thick

and a bald eagle posing for us

Egle got to taste a lobster roll for the first time

in and out of all the little coves of the island where the lobster fishermen leave their boats waiting for the season to begin again

All I can say it was tough to leave when the view from his house is this…

even woke up for sunrise to see what it’s like…and I am NOT a morning person

We were shown St. Croix Island, which may mean nothing to most people, but this is where the French first settled and interacted with the natives and based on this little island started the French involvement with Canada

The plan from here was simple, take a leisurely ride north to Sydney and get on the ferry to NL, but the ferry had another idea, it was booked solid for about 10 days out except for two available spots in two days time so we had to high tail it up through NB and NS a perfectly timed invite from @DHC8tech halfway was great and we’d loved to have spent more time.

We made the ferry in time…and started the crossing, we’re in there somewhere with all the cruisers/ road couches

After a late landing on ‘the rock,’ we found a campsite close by and decided to hit the dirt in the morning

taking a few days to cross all the way to St. John’s with a split of dirt and pavement

80km before our destination @damurph Egles bike kept stalling, we limped into his house and while she unpacked I tore her bike apart under the watchful gaze of @damurph, @C-Stain @fredgreen who just happened to be there as well…lots of laughs and BS but it wasn’t until the next day that we figured the problem with a little telephone help from @C-Stain home mechanic and a dried out Oring on the float that I swear blind I changed back in south carolina…maybe not, who knows!!!

A quick ride around the St. John’s area and the obligatory photo at Cape Spear, the easternmost point of North America and we were ready to start looking west for the next month or more.

Now to begin the Trans Canadian Trail (TCAT)…where does it begin????

This looks like the obvious place!

 

Getting to the TCAT is a commitment in itself…the route we took was just over 11,000 miles to get to St John’s, Newfoundland to reach that Zero marker. The trail itself is no slouch, it a very rarely ridden adventure in its entirety due to the recommendation of riding east to west to get the good timing for the Rockies and most other provinces and hopefully perfect weather along the way.

The Trail itself is about 10,000 miles which make the original TAT of 4800 miles seem…ahem, a little short in comparison…this really gives you an idea of how much bigger Canada REALLY is.

The Trail was put together by a large group of riders mainly from ADVrider and spearheaded by our own @Deadly99 so this is more of a thank you to him and all the others involved for taking the amount of time you did and hopefully we manage it all and do you proud and the next island we cross is Vancouver Island…

Updates might be few and far between for a while unless we get invites of tent space from inmates as there really is very little along the trail and connectivity is sparse, do a little research and you’ll see what I mean.

A quick look at google maps shows the first possible hook up with an inmate @jackalsour is a mere 3300km away from where we are now and with only 4 decent sized towns along the way and a few smaller settlements…yikes!!!

Where I would love to regale you with tales of amazing offroad adventures, river crossings, defeated mud and sand I can’t…if you’ve even looked at a weather channel in the last few weeks you’ve seen we are in the wrong side of the country at the wrong time for off-road adventure to do at the level we wanted. In two works ‘IT SUCKS’

nothing else for it but to race from place to place, avoid rain clouds that cover whole states and dump for days on end. In turn, it has been the case to wait on a new GPS as the rain destroyed my ever faithful Garmin Montana after over 200,000 miles of riding and now I fear my new DSLR may be going the same way.

Before we even rode mile one we had an agreement that if it was a Sunday we would ride into Manhatten as Egle has never been, it’s all too familiar to me as I used to work out of Hells Kitchen for a while in the mid 90’s…so Gotham on the horizon, here we come

We stopped to pay out respects at the 9/11 memorial in NJ

Even Adventure Minion looks happy about our direction and the very rare blue sky outside the city

…and then down on Wall St.

It was a quick ride thru the big apple just as an experience and boy did we get some stares riding in full MX gear among a sea of yellow cabs

A check of the weather leaving NY stopped our plans of heading to Long Island to see friends and hours of riding in the rain so we diverted to VT instead to see other friends for a day which turned into 5 (thx @VTbeemer and Julie) you guys were amazing in more ways than we can ever thank you for and that stop may well keep this RTW on the road for a very, very long time as talk turned from bikes to investments and fingers crossed a very good one was made.

In between working deals, tires were changed and the amazing Metzeler mc360 mid-hard bought for JUST riding dirt managed 5200 miles with only 1000 miles of dirt, you honestly might want to consider it, we’ll be running them again for the TCAT and hopefully all dirt, we can’t wait to see the result.

A few miles after crossing the NH state line and ‘oh snap’

This cut short our clear day and dirt options thru New England on a Saturday afternoon with every bike shop in the area closed until Tuesday. With a mishmash of chain parts from my toolkit and an ATV mechanic we found in his garage we pieced it together but with confidence waning we decided the better part of valor was pavement just in case the fix unfixed itself!

We had an invite from @Peculierboy in Bar Harbor but he was heading out of town, we met in the middle of Maine and he told us he left the door open for us and to let ourselves in. This ADV community is amazing and so are you, Steve and Jane.

so a little chill out on the island to sit and wait for new chain and sprockets to arrive

Downtime and brass era cars at the Seal Cove Auto Museum were a good option to see some amazing vehicles from the past and learn a few things, and opinions

 

My new Garmin arrived but can you imagine if you were navigating the world with the first ‘GPS’?

Stopping one afternoon an old man approached us asked us where we are headed – we told him “RTW but firstly Newfoundland then across Canada on dirt roads to the west coast and hopefully, the weather will improve”.

Like a messiah he looked up at the sky and said, “for you and only you I predict fair skies and following winds, your riding will be great from here on out!” and walked away before we could respond.

We’ll see I thought…so it’s goodbye ‘Merica for a while and hello Canada tomorrow…

I moved to Vegas in ’98, since we left Phoenix a few weeks back I’ve seen more rain than I have my whole time living there, so sadly the ride has not been as planned…WTF is going on with the crazy weather everywhere this year???!!!

Out of Louisiana the most direct route back to the TAT for us was to Natchez and up the Natchez Parkway

As you can see from the above photo we are both carrying spare front tires, about 400 miles north of our friends place in La the tires were starting to cup, so I swapped direction on then while I was there to add a little life…lets see how that works out, tires were mounted in Phoenix for reference.

Over the next few days, we hit the TAT where we could if it wasn’t waterlogged

we even got lost, like everyone does on the TAT from time to time, shitty Mississippi mud

locked gates

dropped bikes

tracks so minimally ridden you know that no one has been here for years

or more years

but we kind of made our own version after a while and even found a few cool places to camp

a rare bit of sunshine

but even when it wasn’t raining we still got wet!!!

I guess wet weather in the south makes the bugs grow real big as well

Even got a chance to go to a little drag racing in South Carolina where pick-up trucks beat muscle cars and guys sit on the roof of their car to watch

stopped in to see my buddy Dale at Wheels Through Time, but sadly he was outta town

but I still have to walk around and take some shots

We’d recently watched Harley and the Davidsons on Amazon prime so El was fascinated to see the board track bikes in the flesh and the various Harley models thru the years

why isn’t this happening now???

carrying on thru the south we saw some of what you might expect to see

and some of what you don’t

a few days back we got to Pennsylvania, yes, we didn’t show many photos of the rain but believe us it was there almost every day and torrential and was miserable

but a surprise text from @ricochetrider and he became our savior and let us dry out for a few days, wow we cannot that you and Cynthia enough for your hospitality

Finally, the rain appeared to be stopping but water was still around, looking down from his house to the river and some of the seven bridges over the Susquehanna River

even got treated to a display from fire trucks dating back to 1878

did you know there is a Statue of Liberty in Pa

or the longest bridge in the world…I didn’t

before you jump, read…

so sadly not the crazy TAT update we expected to share, all we can hope is as we go further north the bad weather doesn’t follow us.

…and BTW the Metzeler MC360 is still going at 5000+ miles…

after some R&R we rode directly to the TAT and joined it heading eastbound, passing a Yak along the way and Egle was amazed to see one but all I could think about was Ron White.(some of you might get the joke)

Cuchara Pass is where we hit the dirt for the TAT and instantly it didn’t look good

Two miles from the top the snow was everywhere but not on the track

One mile from the summit and I had a go at riding further but a solid sheet of ice under the snow made me turn around after just 50 yards because of zero traction and we ended up doing a 75 detour to get to La Veta

on the east side of the Rockies, you get to see the land flatten out and know it’s going to be your companion for quite a long time

but get out of snow and you know there is going to be something else waiting for you down that dirt road, in a 3 hours stretch we had mud…

and a flat tire a piece and both times it shredded the inner tube!!!

but we kept on rolling for a few days as the road got flatter and straighter

in Kansas I reminded Egle that last year as we were riding around Europe and I kept saying why we were taking photos of everything but these sights and buildings to her weren’t anything special – “well there might be a guy in Kansas who has never gone anywhere and never even seen a hill never mind a building over 100 years old”. On this road, she turned to me and said: “OK, now I get it!”

The TAT just touches KS for a very short time then heads into Oklahoma where straight roads, cows, wild horses, escaping inmates and weird guys who jump out of bushes are the norm

we spent the evening in Tulsa at the weekly ADV gathering with @Throttlemeister @SmilinJoe @tomski74 and a lot more inmates and then got to stay in this famous location

after a few days in OK, it’s nice easy riding thru Arkansas, a little water along the way and a burger and some pie of course

we’re not the first here of course…

now where most of you would continue along the trail and we would have too but, as we never heard a thing from Guinness who knows if this record attempt is even a thing we decided to detour to see some friends in Louisiana and we’ll rejoin the TAT in Mississippi in a few days but first we need some southern hospitality, some good Cajun cooking, and a little gun play, and maybe a beer or three…yep that’s how we roll – a different kind of R&R this time

and if you have never held live ammo before you might look a little surprised about what’s going to happen

but then you go with the flow and act like a total boss and hit every single thing they suggest you aim at

gumbo was devoured too quick so no photos but how about a steak and a twice baked anyone???

See you in Mississippi if you are headed west we’ll be riding straight at you…

after the 3 days of snow on the way from the UT/ AZ border back to Phoenix we sat and waited for the summer to arrive and not just there, watching the weather closely it appeared in a few days it would be here, every place that we planned to be near in the next week or so had an increase of around 10-20 degrees – time to ride, again.

Egle had been identified when we were at OX, a lot. So while I was doing a last few little details with the bikes she was doing the final work on her new disguise so none of you will be able to spot her in a crowd

Southbound from the eastern side of PHX we rejoined the AZBDR and a mix of other tracks i had, our destination was @MaddBaggins in the outskirts of Tucson. We hit the dirt in Superior and before we knew it we were running on a track parallel to the AZBDR, oh well still good, seeing what you’d expect in this part of the world.

The riding for the rest of the day was good and the impromptu passenger was enjoying the ride

all was good in the dirt until about 7 miles from Tucson and a steep climb on the Old Mt. Lemmon Rd Egle had an off in the rocks severely bending a shifter

eventually finding somewhere on the bike after removing the shifter to gain leverage to bend it back into shape we reached the pavement and get to see Tucson in the distance. If you haven’t ridden in this area this is a must ride paved road to the summit

Coming out of Tucson and switching states and linking to the NMBDR the riding was great…

right up to the point where it all went horribly wrong…

 

the day started out good, long stretches of graded dirt

interspaced with a few sections of choice pavement

then back to the graded and dirt stuff for the rest of the day, all looked good for a fun days high-speed ride

then the rain started, we tried to outrun it but the track got worse and worse, the photo doesn’t do the brown river flowing down the track justice, traction was virtually zero, the direction was mainly uphill which didn’t help matters and it kept getting worse, both bikes snaking all over the place at a pace of around 3-5 miles an hour was all we could manage as the tires got more and more filled with sticky NM mud/ clay mix

no choice but to bail and set up camp with soaking wet gear in amongst cow shit off the trail

so at 2 pm, we were in the tent making food listening to the torrential downpour, checking the GPS to try and find a way out of this slop…the GPS showed no other roads, but it did tell me that it was 25 miles backward or 23 miles forward. At this point, I pulled out the Bulter map for NMBDR, thx @eakins. Determined exactly where we were and the little addition to the map “TRACK MAYBE IMPASSIBLE WHEN WET!!!”

All I could think is – YEP!!!

The following morning a section of blue sky appeared with the menacing black sky following and we packed and rode out and kept the blue sky above us. An hour later sticky mud was a memory and we were back to easy riding with well-drained roads

We decided to wrap it up early and get a good spot to camp with a view

and the view from the other side of the tent as the sun set

The following days were good to us, great vistas, good tracks and even a little pavement thrown in

and then the occasional thing happens to ruin your day

but it doesn’t matter how bad the day(s) have been it could be worse…a lot worse

We all agree there is no such thing as the perfect adventure bike unless you are standing in a BMW showroom right now, the salesman will of course disagree.

A large number of couples are taking off into the sunset but strangely, the usual combination is the man on a bigger bike than the women. Of course, this can happen due to physical characteristics of each partner but a familiar choice seems to be a 1200 GSA for the man and an 800/ 650 GS for the woman.

This is all well and good until there is a tough road to ride and they find the bikes too heavy, or a hotel that offers parking in a less than desirable neighborhood where you have no choice but to stay there, the parking is inside, and the bike is too big to fit.

Or you break down and there isn’t a BMW dealer for thousands of miles, you can’t use one bike to help you fully diagnose the other because they are different, and honestly, if they were the same it would be very tough without the correct computer terminals and hook ups.

Here’s a reason you may not have considered if you haven’t traveled extensively: will that expensive BMW cause you to make a bad or even life-threatening decision? You are in XYZ country and civil unrest breaks out, you need to leave and can’t ride out but those two beemers are worth the best part of $40,000…could you walk away? Probably not!

The reasons can go on and on.

Recently the DR650 is popping up as a bike that couples are buying two of, they are cheap, reliable and have a design that’s been around for a couple of decades with very little change so parts are available everywhere. Check a few blogs and find Michnus and Elsbie, Mick and Tan, Mike and Shannon, Pascal and Janine, Jeff and Sally, Suzie and Kelvin and Paul and Egle. There are many more solo DR650 riders out there as well.

One thing we will all agree on is the simplicity of the DR. It’s easy to work on, two bikes the same makes it easy to diagnose an issue, swapping parts to eliminate questionable ones is not complicated. Small enough to fit in the tightest spaces, it can be made to fit most riders with stock adjustments internally in the forks to drop the front 1 1/2″ and two height settings on the rear shock will make the bike adaptable for almost any rider.

They are very easy to pack small for shipping. Mick recently packed two DR’s in a crate smaller than one GSA would fit in and actually paid shipping by weight, not volume.

Another issue is Carnet value. A massive difference on two $20K bikes or two $4k bikes is huge if you are really traveling the planet and could be the difference of getting to go everywhere you want to go or only going where you can afford to go because of the value of your bike.

But before you go, you need to make the bike ‘right’. Did the designers at Touratech really create that new part to make the bike better,  in order to help you out in the long run from parts that fatigue and fail? Maybe, but it may very likely just be a little bling that generates the company a good 500% profit margin and nothing else.

Enter Kevin Tanis, a DR650 rider not by immediate choice but more by fluke. Kevin is an owner of a KTM 990 – a beast of a bike that he rode solo and two up. But when he and his wife weren’t riding together, he wanted to ride with friends and sometimes, she wanted to ride her own bike so he looked around and read and heard the DR650 was a good, simple, reliable bike.

Luckily for us, his wasn’t 100% perfect. He had starter motor issues, choke/ carb problems, broken levers, bent rotors, snapped foot pegs. So by simple necessity instead of just going to the dealership and buying the stock replacement part that inevitably would break again, he looked to see if he could improve on the design – and he did.

The stock choke nut is plastic and over time can become brittle and break, crack or easily be cross-threaded. So Kevin designed and made a CNC machined aluminum version. Then the “squark” from the starter housing began and a simple tear down of components found a bronze bushing where a bearing would be better, and what if it could rotate so a different carb could now easily be fitted?

A busted peg in Mexico and a comment from his wife about adding a bottle opener to the peg underneath because she couldn’t open her Coke, and could the pegs be a little bigger because her feet hurt from standing on the pegs all day!

So who is Kevin Tanis? Kevin Tanis is Warp9 and his business is not making parts for DR650’s.

His primary business is making wheels for motocross and enduro racers and riders, but as the interest for his parts for the DR650 garnered so much attention he now has a parts line of 16 different items including wheels.

All the parts are functional, they were built out of necessity because of failure of stock parts. The good thing is the parts are very realistically priced – around the same as the stock replacements and in some cases, lower than stock.

As an example, the choke nut (at $20). First, call the dealer and see if you can buy a replacement stock plastic part. Not easy because it’s a Mikuni part and not a Suzuki one but as an individual, you can’t buy from them. Mikuni would refer you to another company called Sudco who may give you a part number to give your dealer to order and guess what it’ll be $20 +/- and eventually will break or crack again. You may not feel this is important but when you can’t get your bike to run correctly you might want to check that little nut for a hairline crack that can affect the mixture and make your bike run badly or not at all…$20 to Warp9 will seem like a great investment

On my bike I have 10 parts and Egle has 11 from Warp 9. They were added because the stock parts were either worn or fatigued enough that they needed replacement.

So think about your bike a little more than cosmetic appearance if you are heading out to be on the road for a long trip of days, weeks, months or like the names listed earlier, years, Kevin might be a person you are thanking on more than one occasion.

To see a complete build to prep two DR650′ for RTW travel you can check my website and build thread in ten separate parts…link to part 1 parts 2 thru 10 follow immediately after.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from the fire the night before I find a bizarre photo on my new camera that I guess it decided to take itself when inadvertently I’d turned it on, set it on timed release, hit the shutter and moved it all at the same time…I have a learning curve with this new Pentax bear with me!!!

but I guess we were getting transported to more fun riding, around the fire over a little too much alcohol we came up with a slogan for W38M (that probably won’t be used) – We’ll come up with shit…and it’ll be awesome!!!

The next morning was a slow start, not surprisingly. Up and walking around it appeared we were at an impromptu Mosko Moto convention, between us we had almost every piece of luggage they make

the next few days we a mix of dirt and pavement and a ride around the Mogollon Rim where one of the NY’rs with us had very little travel experience in true NY style described the view as – “a total eye fuck!”

We arrived at OX and the motorcycle section was totally detached from the rest of the event and at times it appeared like a ghost town, but at the end of the weekend I was talking to one of the organizers and she said they have plans to integrate the bikes with everyone else which is a good thing as a separate unit I doubt many vendors would return.

For me, it was a few shots in strong HDR to keep my interest peaked, of some of the vendors to let you know how it looks

and how about this for a very rare (food) truck in these parts…anyone?

For us, OX was a chance to meet up with friends and talk about rides to come which I’ll cover in the next post as it’s the real reason we actually came, for us, it’s a starting point of sorts that I’ll detail….

 

for us Overland Expo is a start point, a few weeks back I changed the title to add …”on as much dirt as possible”. The reason for this is – back in December 2016 we applied to create a new Guinness World Record

As Dusty had changed the name of his company and was in the process of starting a new company we decided to use OX as our new start point, I have messaged Guinness more than a few times to let them know what we are doing but they are the least responsive corporation out there. They claim that they will respond in 12 weeks or less, well its now been 161 days or 23 weeks and absolutely zero communication from them from multiple emails from me.

…but regardless we continue…

So why do this? Well over time I have had more than a few requests for a photography book, I thought why not put a few things together. A good North American loop of dirt tracks in the US and Canada that most anyone could access from approximately 500 miles from their front door. Full GPX tracks of the route, a book and maybe a Kickstarter to help the project. I have spent over two years collecting tracks and trying to make them join up into a fun ride.

But I am getting way ahead of myself here, in reality, it’s just a ride to go and find dirt, cool views and take some photos and maybe meet a few inmates along the way, I am just putting this here as additional documented proof to Guinness about my communication attempts, and their lack of response.

The last thing I would like to happen is to have to use the same line Austin Vince did at the end of Mondo Enduro!!!

 

The first 5 days of the ride almost singlehandedly looked like the complete opposite of what we had planned and detailed to do above. We left OX to head to 4 corners area to start hitting dirt but instead, we hit high winds, snow, blizzards and torrential rain instead, Days that we expected to have highs in the 80’s and 90’s were in the 40’s and 50’s with nightly lows all below freezing. A stop in a BLM office in Utah and a long talk with a ranger told me that virtually all the areas we had planned to go were either snowing, snow drifts in place, flash floods or mud and washouts.

Where we planned to be riding 90%+ of dirt we only made 11.2% or 79.8 miles of 708 miles covered…damn!!!

But when life gives you lemons…this has to be one of the most scenic areas of the country so it was great to show Egle some amazing sights via pavement.

Canyon de Chelly –

She stood there amazed and when she did turn around proclaimed “this is where freedom lives”

at the bottom of the canyon are some of the original dwellings

Then onto Monument Valley

and we finished the day in the Valley of the Gods after a short stop at Goosenecks as the sun was setting

The next morning even thought we had a brief blue sky temps were around freezing, but a little dirt to play on

fine snow was falling as we climbed Moki Dugway and there is a bike in that photo…

From the top of the Moki Dugway, we headed to Halls Crossing to take the ferry to Bullfrog to ride the Burr Trail (a little dirt) the elevation was lower so the snow turned to torrential rain and the captain of the ferry was debating about cancelling the ferry due to the severe condition, luckily for us he didn’t.

We ended up after drying off in a gas station for 3 hours then finding a place to wild camp on the Burr Trail in the saturated sticky red mud, the following morning in the day light we got to see where we picked

The blue sky only lasted a short time then the temps dropped again and we had snow at 5000′ as we left the switchbacks

our first 4 days looked like this, we saw awesome scenery but we need to find more dirt!!!