Today I got up early. Had some light breakfast with Marc, Bert, Bearnd and Manfred. Jeff sat for a while and was in decent spirits considering his motorcycle blew smoke a few days back and its sitting now in Medallion at the BMW shop. He agreed to go in the support van behind us until […]
Land of the Giants … Read More »
Man, I’m beat. What a day. Working backwards, we all finally got back to our hotel in Cartagena with our bunch of freshly released BMW motorcycles. Its now dark and 8pm. The day started in the lobby to head out to the harbor at 8am. Simple math; thats a 12 hour day of of stress,
Today was a long day — basically watching third-world office workers complete very basic tasks in third-world time. Does that make sense? Ok, let me try again. Today, I spent most of the day trying to get my motorcycle out of Columbian customs, there, better. But its the minutia in the middle that is pretty
Confused In Cartagena Read More »
Numbers: 5,028 — Miles rode on this trip. How about 8,092 km, better? 2 — Bikes; 2016 BMW R1200 GSA — and a Rock Solid 2005 Honda CRF 450X with bad carbs… 27 — Days
I never said that I was Joe Camper and I never even tried to fake it that I knew what I was doing while camping a week back. My spiritual camping leader and very capable camping guide, Chris, took the lead for sure and I followed — except for the tent which I will take
From Bananas to Phoenix Read More »
I’m now in Torrey, Utah by myself after getting reacquainted with my luxo and techno BMW R1200GSA — missed my baby after riding the Honda off-road hard core, very utility and purpose built enduro bike. I settled into a bit of a iffy motel here just outside The Capital Reef National Park, but it has
So today was the most horrible and the most incredible and the most exceptional. What does that mean? Well, it means that I don’t have a tone of images, nor did I take any videos because it really was the day that I had taken 5 leaps forward in my skills as an off-road motorcycle
Overnight Ride — Day 2 Read More »
It’s been an exhausting 48 hours and I mean a real hard 48 hours for a newbie dirt bike rider. This post is about the first 24 hours. Today Chris got the bikes ready and we left early from our fine dirtbag motel, with dirty walls and dirty sheets, in middle of somewhere Utah
Overnight Ride in Utah Desert Read More »
Forget the motorcycle bullshit today — I think we need to deviate from that and talk about the fun part of today’s activities. Chris and I booted out for the one hour drive to Moab, Utah, home of Jeep Week in Chris’s customized 2008 Chevy van –– and I mean big van designed and built for off-roading.
Yep, thats me on the right — shocking for me anyway. So how did I get here in the badlands of Utah? The images in this post were all taken today. We went from low lands to high lands to trails with snow on the shoulder. Cows and horses are roaming wild in the backcountry.
Shit, I don’t know where to even start? Probably with one of the best rides I have ever had to date — mainly because of the intense Utah landscape, unlike anything I have seen before — click on any of the pics to enlarge. That’s a good start. My bike, the freshly paved tarmac for hundreds of
The ride was really uneventful from Albuquerque to Flagstaff. I’m now an expert in packing and unpacking my bike each night. I can do it with my eyes closed — and I probably have 50 pounds of crap with me that goes on and off checking in and checking out. Is that a skill? I’ve
Been there and done that… Yah, I’ve been to the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas before. I look like a stiff board in this picture — oh well. Last time I froze my ass off and it was the high 20’s in March. This time it was much nicer but still brisk — about
Coming back to Amarillo, Texas, their are really two things that I know keep the tourists happy. The first is a visit to the Cadillac Ranch and the second is dinner at The BIG TEXAN on famed Route 66 — home of the Free 72 oz Steak. Otherwise, Amarillo feels like an authentic old Texan
Mountain Oysters Tonight Read More »
So I was not going to write a blog for today because after reflecting the 6 or 7 hours of riding through Oklahoma into Texas. The reason for this small few paragraphs is really for me to remember this leg of the trip. What can I say about Oklahoma? I mean that literally, what can I
Memphis, Tennessee is certainly the home of Rock ‘n Roll — No dispute. That is my next journey and gosh, it was a full day of music experiences. But before leaving Nashville, I had a fun interaction with Robert Johnson, my interesting bell man who took my bags downstairs. Robert was huge and fragile — in
Rock ‘n Rolls Birthplace Read More »
I was really looking forward to this day for a while, but first I was so hyper-focused on the days weather. From the time I got into the room last night I was watching the weather for today. I brought up Weather.com. Then I looked at WeatherUnderground.com. Then my Radar apps. All I saw was
Ask away… What does the title of this blog, “Fright Night”, have to do with Bush’s Best beans? Answer: Nothing. Good. More about that later. So I hustled out of my hotel room just after a satisfying Hampton Inn heavy barf breakfast — ready for a fun and tactical day, but first was a visit to the
Busy, busy day — and great day. Where to start? Well, I checked out of the Atlanta Airport Gateway Marriott hotel to head out for what was to be a great event, the Porsche Experience Center which happens to be next to the airport. So you may ask me, what is the Porsche Experience Center?
Porsche Excellence Read More »
Gosh, I had so many things to talk about today during my ride from Orlando to Atlanta. What was supposed to be a 7.5 hour ride turned into 11 hours. Why? Miserable Atlanta traffic, thats why. Every time I go through Atlanta, using I-75, I get whacked with traffic. Virtually 100 percent of the time
Eleven Hours in the Saddle Read More »
Let the new 2017 motorcycle adventure begin. Led Zeppelin wrote a great song called Dazed and Confused. If you’ve never heard of it — don’t fret, the world will never be the same without Zeppelin. Anyway… I have just started my five-week trip of which 28 days will be on a motorcycle — crossing America
Excited, Dazed and Confused Read More »
So today were on our way back home after a full day in Queenstown just killing time and enjoying some amazing weather and tons of visitors — or at least were flying to Los Angeles and then home the next day. We really have a great feeling about this trip to New Zealand. Now for
You know how it goes, sometimes you book a sightseeing side trip on a holiday and you get second thoughts just before you go. Well, that exactly happened with Paula and I. Not only second guessed but third and fourth and not to mention we can probably double that because Paula was yapping in my
Milford Sound Track Read More »
So this is a difficult one. Which cover image represents our last 2 days? Hmmm, hard, trust me. Of course I could have chosen the cute calf suckling its mother in the foreground with hundreds of dots of sheep in the background as you see in the image on the left. Too easy. Click on
Crossing the South Island east-west, west-east, their are 3 main roads known as Passes which carve the mountains to complete the journey. We left the west coast and traveled east through one of those passes, Arthur’s Pass. We had stopped to go for a 3 hour hike up and through forest, open areas and streams.