Deer +6, TAT riders +3 A good nights sleep does wonders. Sims knee still looks swolen, but there is no pain unless he tries to kneel on it. The plan for today was to stick to the tarmac for the rest of the MABDR and get to Damascus to start the TAT. Although Sam keeps updating the TAT, and the start keeps moving, we chose Damascus as our starting point as it conveniently ties up with the MABDR. We met a group...
Deer +2, Bear -1, fender bag -1, off +1 Today was a good test. It started off with us congratulating ourselves on how quickly we were able to have breakfast and broke camp and deteriorated from there. A few km outside of Warm Springs, we saw a bear. Unfortunately it was dead and lying in the middle of the road :( More back roads and then some gravel, where Sim had his first little off somewhere on the trail near Potts jeep track....
Deer +9, TAT riders +2, river crossings +3 We got off to a reasonably early start this morning at about 6:30 ish. We had a short bit of gravel,then mostly sealed roads for the rest of the morning, with a little more gravel in the afternoon. Just outside Hancock we came across our first and only traffic jam. Some sort of biker rally, but we didn't see many bikes, it was mostly cars and trucks trying to get in. We found the...
Deer +6, big black snake +1, charging cable -1 After being well fed and looked after by Paebr332 and totaly not murdered, we headed out to get some fuel and do some Amish spotting. Sadly no Amish, so it was back onto the MABDR. A mix of forest roads, backcountry roads and some quite busy main roads. About an hour or two in, we came to an intersection where the gps track said go straight, but the only road ahead of us...
Deer +4, tank bag cover -1, bear dog +1 We got off to a more respectable start this morning from our motel in Nazareth. I swear my helmet smelt like cigarette smoke but Sim says its probably just my imagination. Lots of lovely little back roads and our first taste of dirt relatively early on in the ride. As we were pootling along this little dirt road in some forest, Sim spotted a seemingly random parking lot and then a big...
Not much in the way of mileage, but a great start to the trip. We got off to a very late start, after putting the barkbusters back on (they had to stay off until we could get them through the doorway) and packing everything on the bike we realized we hadn't checked the chain tension and the tire pressure after the visit to the bike shop. Of course we needed more air and the chains were way too tight. Doh! All...
After a minor misunderstanding with the freight company about when and where, we were finally able to retrieve our babies yesterday afternoon from one of their warehouses in Elizabeth New York. It was a lot of fun unpacking the Groms from their shipping crate. Thankfully no damage at all, and everything was all still in there. We unpacked them on the floor of the warehouse, reassembled a few bits and packed the saddle bags. While Simon was making sure handlebars were...
Sim and I are gear junkies, there is no denying it, but after having recently bought a house and 2 extra bikes, we have had to restrain ourselves for this trip. Lucky for us, we had most of the gear we needed already and only had to buy a few extra bits to get us by or cope with the different riding conditions. With the Groms being little bikes we tried to go the minimalist route wherever possible and keep things...
Whilst we were mostly happy with our bikes there were a couple of things we decided to change and add. We also wanted to make sure we knew our bikes inside out so gave them a thorough service also. It actually ended up being a bit of a long to do list and we took our time over the course of a couple of weeks to get it all done. We also made sure that we had plenty of time...
So we needed a crate to pack our little buddies into and safely ship them across the ocean. Since freight is usually worked out on a volumetric basis, it made sense to try and fit both bikes along with all of our gear into a single compact crate. Initially we thought we would go for a steel one as it's lightweight, doesn't need any special certifications and is usually free from friendly motorcycle dealerships. Kawasaki was our first point of call. We...