Feature image is of our luxury 1-star hotel in Banos. Very rough around the edges and of course — no decent internet. But, its a bed. The ironic part is that they gave themselves a 4-star rating — on what rating system, I’m not sure? Riding Day: Banos De Agua — Cuenca (380 km) — […]
Slippery Road to Cuenca Read More »
Feature image is of our back parking lot at our hotel in Banos, Ecuador. Not fancy, but does the job. I also love the backdrop buildings and mountain covered in clouds. Its funny to think of this adventure as hard work — its supposed to be total enjoyment. That said, yesterday was real difficult and
Todays feature image is of hearty $3 lunch of chicken soup, beans, cheese and corn in Quilotoa Lake, Ecuador. We woke up early to get a fresh start on a quiet Sunday in Quito. Our goal is to hit Quilotoa Lake, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Ecuador. Although traffic was super quiet, it took
What did I do on my day off? Go to a bull fighting match? Go to watch a cock fight? Walk the broken down town? Go hunting statues? People watch and take pictures? — well I did bit of that. No, it was a very mellow day — but rest assured, I had some fun.
Feature image is taken from top of 8 story monument overlooking the absolute latitudinal of the earth. Will and I are bugging Marc and Oliver everyday for a field trip — like in public school. Instead of full out riding, maybe stopping to really get into the life of the locals. Were generally stopping in
Featured image speaks for itself. Today we crossed the border between Columbia into Ecuador. The Saul hotel is not recommended. If your ever in Pasto, Columbia maybe look elsewhere for a raty hotel although admittedly the choices are limited. No heat in the room last night although I heard that others got hot water bottles
Featured image is of a mountain range — but not just any — if you look in the middle, or better still, click on the image to enlarge it and you can see the road we travel in altitude. We climbed up to over 9,000 feet often with no safety guard rails over mountainside —
The featured image today is taken from my hotel room balcony in Cali, Columbia. I can offer limited pictures due to no WiFi or Internet for the past 2 days. I am not using my phone to tether the single bar. Hope to add photo’s soon. So today started off with jubilance, excitement and more.
Todays feature image is of a truck which got toasted off the roadway. Hard to believe that it got stuck into green field and nobody got hurt — but then again, these are crazy drivers so its not a shock. I’m not really into bad news on this trip, but today the bad news bookend
Coffee Capital of World Read More »
While riding, I often think about what to talk about in this blog which is really my journal because generally there is lots of time to think. Today was just too much to digest and come up with the vast topics that flow while I am in a specific scene or incident. However, today one
Learn Columbian Riding Fast Read More »
We now have seven riders on this tour. That’s Jeff on top. I’ll get to that in a second. I had a pretty restless night sleep last night — Wonder why? Today was the first day of riding and journey begins for the next 70 days and 17,000 km’s. I also had on my mind
And Then There Were Seven Read More »
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 »