We were pretty happy to be picking up the Ural Thursday…

But before we got home…

…there were complications.

We’re working with the dealer now to resolve this, and once we have all the details we’ll post the full story.

“Breadfast” was even worse than expected. We go to the restaurant but it’s closed, and we’re instructed to go acquire breadfast in the gas station seating area. So we go, and sit, and wonder how exactly this is supposed to work. How are they to tell the difference between people coming in to sit from the gas station and people wanting breakfast without… whatever else they’d buy?

We sit. Nothing happens. We watch others do the same. Nothing happens to them either. Eventually one ends up talking to an employee. He gets up, acquires his bread products from the glass cabinet that holds them, then goes back to his seat. Hmm… I must have missed something, because how does he get his coffee or tea?

I go to the cabinet. Noting that it contains the same bread products that it contained last night, and probably all day yesterday. I grab a selection for us, and stand in line at the cashier hoping that somehow he’s involved in the process because we’d be damn thirsty without some drinks.

I show him my receipt from the hotel, as instructed by the woman last night, and drinks are ordered.

The bread products are, indeed, from yesterday, and we only eat some because they all suck now. We’re not being picky… these are the light flaky things like croissants that simply don’t survive very long.

The weather, however, is beautiful. There were a few clouds when we got up, but they’ve burned off or moved on, and now it’s almost exclusively blue sky. The thermometer claims it’s 50 degrees although it feels more chilli than that. I’m hopeful that I’m just perceiving it colder than it really is. Dachary is convinced the thermometer is broken… she may be right. So we load up the bikes, or… start to.

Dachary loads her panniers and I decide that mine require further beating. So I wander off, find a brick, and begin to liberally apply it to the pannier. Last night we’d determined that the screws were still just fine, it was the pannier itself that required straightening where the screws emerged.

I beat it until my hands hurt, which wasn’t much, because bricks don’t seem to be designed with many shock absorption devices for ones hands. But, it helped somewhat. Now both top pucks make contact, although one only barely. I consider it the reserve puck… to be used in case the other one fails.

=http://www.flickr.com/photos/corporaterunaways/5521541334[/url]
=http://www.flickr.com/photos/corporaterunaways/5521541334More LlamaDeer[/url]

The we ride for a bit, passing more llamadeer, and i start futzing with my mirror when I hear Dachary ask if i saw… something. I didn’t quite hear. “Ostrich” she says. “Ostrich?!” I think. “On the side of the road.” she says. Ok… I know I was focusing on the mirror but how the hell would I miss an eight foot tall giant blob of black and white against a tan tan landscape? Damn. I’ve got to pay WAY more attention… A little while later I see some grayish birds maybe two and a half feet tall milling about on the side of the road… “Ostrich!” I hear… “Those are emu” I reply. And they’re surprisingly well camouflaged. The gray isn’t a solid flat color like on a seagull. It’s got variation, and their legs and neck are a nice gray too.

Apparently Dachary has never seen an ostrich in real life, and she’s definitely never seen an emu. I can’t remember ever seeing an emu in real life either, but i’d seen them on tv. I inform her that an ostrich’s back would come to somewhere near her shoulders, while its head would loom over her, and that they’re black and white. I think maybe she assumed that these were just females. Looking at the pictures as I write this I realize that female ostriches do look a lot like really large emus, only with white tips on the wings. Also, I’ve no clue why there are wild emu running around in Patagonia.

More llamadeer, a few more emu, and not a lot else. Routa 3 is really flat and this part of it is one of the most boring roads on the trip. But, every time we stop for gas, or a pee I excitedly tell Dachary “Guess what?” “What?” she says. “I’m not frozen!” “Hooray” she says. I’ve decided that today is a wonderful day because I’m not fucking frozen like yesterday. It doesn’t matter that the landscape is lame. I’m not frozen or soaking wet! The temperature isn’t actually much warmer (if any) but the lack of rain makes a huuuuuge difference.

There was, however one notable problem, well… three, on the way to our lunchtime gas stop. The throttle got stuck open… three times. At least, that’s what I thought was happening. The first time the revs started shooting up and there was still some forward pull from the engine. Shit! I grab at the clutch. I try switching gears, because I don’t know what else to do, and … that seems to do it. It calms down. Of course, I was right behind a big truck when it happened.

Next time it happened I’m behind another car, just about to pass it. And again … I’m noticing a trend here…

My barkbuster had gotten shoved way up when I dropped it in the mud the other day (probably saved my clutch lever) and I haven’t bothered to fix it yet because we’re not going to be on dirt or anywhere else I’m likely to drop it again.. I’ll get to it… but now I notice that the top edge of the plastic is pressing hard against the place where the clutch cable starts coming in to the lever. Hmmm.

At lunch we find that the gas station serves real, honest to goodness food! Holy shit. How wonderful. I point to the food on other peoples plates “Look! Real food!” After we order I keep interrupting the conversation with “We’re going to have a real lunch!”

Today is a good day. Even the crazy engine shit can’t get me down.

After lunch I take the leatherman to the Barkbuster, loosen it up, then have to karate-kick it down into place because we can’t push it. After it’s back in place we notice that the plastic slamming upwards managed to break the tension adjustment screw / tube thing in half. So, no more tension adjustment for my clutch.

My theory is that the first time the clutch was only mostly in when it got stuck and thus there was still some engine power. The other times I was about to pass, and while, at the time, I associated it more with the hard twisting of the throttle rather than the clutching, which is totally on autopilot at this point. No more problems after the tweak though, and the tension seems to be fine.

Eventually we make it to Rio Gallegos, where we’ve decided to stop for the night because the border is close and we don’t think we can make it anywhere else with a hotel. We pull into the gas station, hop off for a desperately needed pee and the ATM that happens to be there. We notice that the gas station attendants are shooing the customers away when they come. Not good. We’re gonna need that “gas” stuff. But then, a tanker truck pulls up, and parks over by the holes in the ground they pour the gas into! Oh happy day!

I confirm that no, they don’t have gas, then ask how long? “Medi hora”… I can wait medi hora, even if that is probably a bullshit estimate. We go in, take off our gear, and some gas station snacks (empanadas and cookies). Occasionally people notice the truck and try to form a line to wait for it, but the guy shoos them off. I take a picture of the tanker truck guy because I’m so happy he’s shown up, and how often do you get to see one offloading its contents? But after that he gives Dachary and me the evil eye every time we try and see if there’s any progress.

=http://www.flickr.com/photos/corporaterunaways/5520951927[/url]
=http://www.flickr.com/photos/corporaterunaways/5520951927This man makes us happy[/url]

The whole time he’s offloading Dachary is chomping at the bit to get out there, but we don’t want to gear up, get in a line, and then get shooed. So, we wait, until the tanker man starts putting away his stuff (an hour after we got there) and a line starts to form, but doesn’t get run off. We throw on our stuff hop on the bikes and get in line about eight cars back.

=http://www.flickr.com/photos/corporaterunaways/5526714509[/url]
=http://www.flickr.com/photos/corporaterunaways/5526714509The station just got gas[/url]

It takes another half an hour, but eventually, we’re gassed up, and set off in search of a hotel, but drive past the whole city without seeing a one. Ok… Usually hotels exist where travelers can see them, because the locals tend to have places to sleep already.

We go in towards the center of town and see a building with HOTEL and contact information on the side. Pull up. It looks like a hotel. But there’s no-one at the desk, the desk is a bit dark, and the door is locked…but there are cars, and …. hmm. I wander around the corner to where Dachary saw another hotel sign. It points directly at a tiny house. That can’t be it. There’s a very large pink house looking thing beside it, which *could* be a hotel. I walk up to the door. This doesn’t look right. I ring the buzzer. An old lady opens the window beside me and informs me that no. It’s not a hotel. Not anymore. I apologize and ask if she knows where one is. “Centro” Which confirms, to me, that the one around the corner, is in fact, not a hotel… at least not anymore. While I was away Dachary deduced that it was now an apartment building.

Centro it is… We pass a fancy fancy looking place that we’re pretty sure we don’t want to pay for, but see nothing else. I go in, in hopes that either we’re horribly wrong or that they can lead us to somewhere more appropriate. I’m not wrong, but he does lead us to somewhere more appropriate. The Hotel Paris, which is only 225 pesos ($60 US) has good off-street parking, and WiFi. I say “Only” in the context of Patagonia where every hotel is “only” fucking expensive. But, the lady at the desk is nice and it’s not a town that looks to have many that haven’t gone out of business.

The room, however, is roughly 1,000 degrees inside. That’s ok, there’s a window and it’s already cool out. We track down dinner and luck out in that it’s 8 PM and thus we can find a restaurant that’s actually open.

I’m just pooped, and Dachary’s mentally pooped, so we decide to call it a night and get some sleep… with the window open.

So, yes. The bike was overheating. After dinner and Googling (the only net access was in the restaurant) we went back out to the bike checked the oil level and then ran the bike until the overheating light came on to see if the fan would kick in. It didn’t.

So, we went back to the cabin (tiny one all to ourself. Rustic and cute) and I pulled out the iPad to check my downloaded copy of the F650.com FAQ (damn I love this device) while Dachary checked the Haynes manual. The Haynes manual had better pictures and, seemingly clearer instructions.

My back was sore at this point. I suspect I used too much back and too little leg when we were lifting the bike after draining some of the coolant. I tend to do that without thinking. Dachary had a splitting headache. So, hoping against hope, that I’d be able to do something that would be able to make the fan come on even if I had to manually wire it up to the battery. The goal being to be able to see the volcano in the morning that we were barely 10k down the hill from before returning to BMW in San Jose.

I followed the instructions and removed the fairing, then looked for the circular doohickey with a tube and the fan switch that was pictured in the manual and in the F650.com FAQ. There wasn’t one. I checked under the left fairing. It wasn’t there either. I went back in to recheck the manual. Yup. Circular doohickey. I brought the manual out.

I sat down beside the bike with my headlamp and reread it. Staring back and forth between pictures and bike. Eventually I realized that the text was ambiguous and the FAQ had mislead me. It was the OTHER picture i was supposed to be looking at.

“Oh THAT thing… how do I get it off?”

There was a nut. I grabbed a wrench. I undid the nut. I got antifreeze on my hands…. electrical switches, in my experience, don’t tend to live in fluid. I examined what I’d just removed. A copper rod that lived in antifreeze. Hmm. That must be the business end of the temperature gauge. I thought it sensed the oil temp, but whatever. I examined the wired up lipstick tube it was attached to. Hmm… little clips. Would have been nice if the manual mentioned those. I screwed it back into the engine. I pried at the clips and out popped a thingy with four sockets (two just empty plastic and two with metal connectors for two of the four pins that shoved into it). Some instructions said to try shorting it and seeing if the fan came on. I grabbed the handy piece of wire in the tool kit and did so. No good. Next it suggested taking a 12 volt battery (got one of those in the bike) and running leads with the “appropriate connectors” i think the phrase was, directly to the fan. It should be noted that the only people on the planet who might have something with the “appropriate connectors” happen to be standing in a BMW mechanic’s workshop.

At this point I noticed a large half pit-bull mutt standing in front of my bike wagging so hard it almost made its rear end hop every time. It desperately wanted petting. I obliged it with my right hand whilst attempting to roll up the tool kit and move the *stomp* The Haynes Manual’s page on troubleshooting the fan now has a large dirty brown footprint in it. More petting was administered until he was satiated enough to let me get back to work.

I went the brute force route to wire up the fan and disconnected the 12 gauge leads from my battery to my Fuzeblock (you should totally get one by the way) bent some of the extra wiring out of the way until each was small enough to fit in the socket and shoved them in. Nothing…. “are these things even live???” I touched them together… no spark. Shouldn’t there be a spark?

I’ve gone through all the suggestions at this point. Simon says it’s a dead fan. I don’t have a spare one of those. But I’m not 100% confident in my tests, so it could also be a dead switch. I don’t have a spare one of those. Or a fucked temperature sensor. I don’t have a spare one of those either.

I put the fairing back on (six screws and the blinker), thoroughly annoyed that the manual was wrong and there was zero need to remove the thing. Put the seat back on. Put the stupid door behind the seat back on. Rolled up the tools and went back in. At this point the back pain is not an issue when in the correct position, but when not (upright, walking, moving) It’s a problem. I’ve started walking like I have scoliosis, but it’s not too bad. I just can’t stand up straight.

I also can’t lean over to reach my tank bag to put my Leatherman away without involuntary yelps…. not good. I go to bed. That should help.

It doesn’t.

We set the alarm for 7:30. I wake up around 6:30 I think, and read for half an hour before Dachary wakes up and officially starts the day. The plan is to make it as far as we can towards San Jose. We’ll call for a tow if we need one, but we suspect we can make it there… eventually….with lots of stops.

Time to load the bikes…. shit. I can’t lift my pannier. “Um… Dachary?”
I decide I can at least take my Camelback and my tank bag. I grab them, and make for the door. I get to the first stair (of maybe 8) and drop the Camelbak. “Shit.” I put the tank bag in my right hand and hold tight to the railing with my left. I go, very, very, slow, and almost fall to a squat a couple times from the pain. I barely hold myself up and make it down. Slowly. I go slowly, to the bike. I fall to my knees half way there. I breathe… I get up. I keep going. I make it to the bike. Dachary has moved it out for me.

I stay at the bike. I can’t do anything else. I *should* be able to ride, because sitting is ok. I just hope it doesn’t start to lean to far one way or the other when stopped because i’m dubious of my ability to keep it from going over.

Dachary brings out the panniers and puts on the first pannier. It’s pointing on a slight downhill and the kickstand starts to slide back. I barely hold it, but only because it’s barely trying to roll down the hill. She comes around, takes the bike from me, hands me the helmet, and walks it down to some flatter ground twenty feet away. I follow.

Or, rather… I attempt to follow. After about six feet I fall down. The pain in the lower back was simply too much to remain upright. I try and sit up straight. That hurts more… laying down… laying down is good.

Dachary sets the bike up and walks over to me, questioning, dubiously, my ability to actually ride five hundred pounds or so of bike. I question this too. “Help me up?” she tries. It doesn’t work. “Pull hard.” That hurts… hmm. “I think I’ll crawl up.” I roll onto my hands and knees and get up from there.

“Why don’t you go to the restaurant. I’ll take care of the rest. Can you make it?” I think I can, and I do. I wait. She finishes loading the bikes up and comes in. I’m fully expecting her to declare that we’re staying here another day, but she doesn’t. Neither of us want to stay. We order breakfast, and while I was starving when I woke, I can barely finish mine. She barely starts hers, and uncharacteristically, declares she can’t eat it. We order her something else, and i force myself to eat. She does the same with the ginormous cheese pupusaish thing that her first plate is replaced with. Neither of us finishes, but the waiter was totally attentive and helpful, so we tip him well.

The ibuprofen I took at the start of breakfast seems to have done some good, or maybe it was just the sitting. Either way, I can walk to the bike, and miracle of miracles, I can get it up off the kick stand.

I go down the volcano in neutral 90% of the way trying to keep as much air flowing over the radiator as possible, and a few revs on the engine. I’m convinced we’ll have to pull over in less than three kilometers before the light comes on, but we make it almost all the way, until Just before the bottom a truck is inching out into traffic and I stop for him. Dachary expected me to just go around, speeds up to follow me, notices I’m not going around, slams on the brakes, the ABS kicks in, she’s leaning a little to the left, and has now stopped so quickly that she doesn’t have time to get upright before she’s lost her momentum and down she goes.

She’s fine, but I’m in the middle of the road and there’s a truck blocking me from getting to the side. It moves. I move. I hop off, and by the time I’ve made it to her bike (ten feet behind me) three motorcyclists have appeared, are at her bike, and by the time i start to touch it are already lifting it.

Before either of us get a chance to really say “Thank you.” they’ve disappeared in a puff of smoke. Ok, the smoke’s an exaggeration. A white guy on a bike appears out of nowhere and starts chatting. Mentions how he got screwed by a local honda dealer when he did a shite repair job on his bigger bike that ended up screwing it over worse than when it went in. I’m thankful for my BMW Roundel.

We continue through town to a McDonalds just up the road from the Pan American. They have net. Maybe we can figure out what the deal is with making phone calls in Costa Rica. We attempted this morning, but kept getting some spanish error message we couldn’t understand. They have net. It doesn’t help. We can’t call Costa Rican or even US numbers from Dachary’s phone.

After an hour of letting the bike chill and giving ADVRider.com a quick update, we set out again. We figure the volume of air over the radiator that we’d get from highway speeds should keep it cool. We’re wrong, and just as we hit the permanent traffic jam caused by the bridge construction, the light comes on. “Shit.” This road has no shoulder. But there’s a bus stop on the right. We pull in. We let it cool, and while we do I notice a tiny turn-off just after the stop. I absolutely do not want to continue on a highway with no shoulder and a right lane that is exclusively for buses, so we take the turn off.

I don’t care if it’s slower. I don’t care if the motorcycle overheats more times between here and the dealership (about 10 k away) so long as there’s somewhere safe to pull over when it does.

We go. It overheats.
We pull over.
We go. It overheats.
We pull over.
We get off and give it a longer rest.
“Wait… do you smell cookies?”
Dachary wanders off to find a bathroom at the Office Depot we see across the intersection, and eventually returns a liter lighter and in possession of more lithium AAA batteries! Not that we needed them, but now we have two extra sets. (They also had AA lithium batteries, so if you need some for your SPOT tracker, try the Office Depot in San Jose. They had a ton. Dachary didn’t have enough money on her to buy them all so there are still plenty left.)
We set off. We make it to maybe one K away from the BMW dealer when the light comes on. We pull in a gas station and practice our sweating techniques for ten minutes.

We take off and YES! the Dealer!

We pull in to the bike area and before we’ve got our helmets off Adolfo has appeared. “You’re back. How are you?” We say we’re good, and I explain that “mi moto es enferma. el ventilator es muerte y le “antifreeze” est pfft pffft pfft out the side” “It’s overheating?” he says. “Yes. Let me show you what I’ve tried.” I do, and he says “so the fan is dead.” I shrug. “I think so.”

Dachary asks him if that’s a part that he has in stock. “Let me check.” We pull the panniers and bag off the bike expecting to be told it’ll be a day or two. He comes out, grabs the bike, and wheels it into the belly of the shop, then returns and says “we’ll examine it now. You can sit here or over there.” he says pointing to the couches by their accessories shop on which we watched Dr. Who just yesterday…

I’m somewhat awestruck. I was NOT expecting to have them tackle it immediately. We go over to the couch after a moment of cooling in the breeze so they don’t feel we’re hovering. We watch more Dr. Who until someone rides up on a F800GS, kitted out for adventure. We’re intrigued. Someone tells him to move his bike over by where we’re sitting, and as soon as he gets his helmet off we pounce with the questions. “Who? Where? How long?”

It’s Cory (Oso Blanco on ADVRider.com) who, we quickly discovered, is way more badass than us, and we had a great time chatting him up. We felt a little bad because at one point Norval (the Director) came over and totally wanted to chat too but we were completely monopolizing Corey. Norval’s a good guy, and like most real motorcyclists, loves encountering an adventure rider.

Somewhere in there Norval brought out the dead fan / motor, and had me feel the resistance it was putting up when you tried to turn it. There was barely any, but i surmise that there’s supposed to be none. Regardless, it was dead and there was a new one being put in, and eventually, it was done and ready to be set free with a swipe of the magic card. I go in. They hand me the bill…. “so many digits!”… she converts it to dollars. “Such BIG digits!” I hand over the card, because what else can I do. The bike doesn’t work without a fan… a fan that cost 189,158.63 cordobas or approximately $378 US! I shit you not.

I am totally regretting not having taken a picture of the dead fan because it is a simple sealed electric motor with a cord coming out one end and a rod with a fan blade coming out the other. The motor fits in the palm of your hand, and nowhere in our wildest expectations, did we think it would be more than $100 US. I just checked BikeBandit and it’s $237.83 there… but, add in Costa Rican customs costs, and some dealer markup and they didn’t screw us. It’s just another case of BMW screwing people for some random part.

Now, some of you would argue for ordering it online and having it shipped in, but when you add in the days of expensive San Jose hotels, plus customs fees, plus taxis / hassle getting to FedEx, or wherever, to pay the customs… It’s actually cheaper. Plus, they didn’t charge us jack shit for the labor. Eight hours of it (two guys for four hours I assume) and it was such a negligible part of the bill it may as well have been free.

So, once again the guys at a BMW dealership have done the best they can for us, and as we set off (after many pictures with us and Cory) they were walking Cory off to see a list of local hostels they’d pulled up for him since the sun was about to set.

We made our way back to the hotel we stayed at last time, grabbed dinner, diagnosed why nothing coming out of my Fuzeblock was working (because I’d blown the fuse when I’d crossed the wires last night – a new fuse put it right), and settled in for some relaxation, oh, and some laundry. Poor Dachary’s back is now killing her from leaning over the sink and scrubbing so long.

Doing laundry in a sink takes FAR longer (and takes far more work) than you expect.

….

I love the incredible service and support we’ve received from that BMW Roundel, but sometimes it comes with a price…literally. I consider it a case of getting what you pay for.

Unrelated: ask Cory about the mods to his bike. This is my favorite one, but he’s got a bunch of nifty little tweaks that he’s made.

Summary Damage Report:

• One, maybe two, cracked ribs
• Severely bent left pedal mount

Recommended Purchases:

• Nikwax
• 2nd ContourHD camera (details to follow in separate memo)

Notable Products:

• Fastway Pedals

Details:

Sunday’s practice run ended up a little more “interesting” than anticipated.

Nargo in the mud

Some people from ADV Rider had put together a trail ride through the Arcadia State Park last sunday and we went along to get more off-road experience. As everyone who came was on a “big bike” (with one exception) the trails we were taking weren’t supposed to be particularly tricky, and overall they weren’t. But in the process we discovered that Dachary has a nemesis: mud. While inexperience and, at times, a lack of confidence was certainly a contributing factor to the four drops, we’re still unsure as to the primary cause of three of them. We do believe that the Trailwings tires she currently has on her bike are quite possibly the most inaptly named tires on the market as they are horrible in mud.

The roads started out as rather easy hard-packed dirt roads, but then we turned off onto a portion of an enduro trail, which is where the first drop happened. At the very end of a minor wallow Dachary’s back end slid out and down she went. We didn’t realize it at the time but we suspect that this is when she cracked the rib(s). When we stopped at a gas station, one minor, mudless, fall later, she commented about some chest pain but continued on. Little did we know…

Muddy Dachary

Dachary commented after the ride that she

“…had a totally fun day and would do again. In fact, am thinking about getting a smaller dirtbike when we get back and playing in the mud more often. I highly recommend it.”

Her ContourHD camera was running through each incident, and while an attempt was made to film the last two falls the V.I.O. P.O.V. camera failed to actually save the video in what has come to be standard behavior for it. It doesn’t appear to always get the signal to record from the remote unless the following footage is incredibly boring, in which case it always gets the signal. Full details on the VOI P.O.V. versus ContourHD will follow.

After the last fall we noticed that her left pedal was at an odd angle and she couldn’t use the shifter. The shifter had bent slightly, and was easily adjusted using the odd looking tool in the BMW tool kit that no-one knows the name of, but the pedal was another matter. Eventually we discovered that the pedal had come down on something hard under the water, and when it reached the end of it’s pivot range it held its own and, instead of breaking, transfered the force into the frame above the pedal and caused  it to bend instead. The bend in the frame doesn’t look too bad in the photo (there’s curve in the vertical piece of  frame in the middle of the photo) but it’s enough to angle the pedal up a few degrees and make shifting more difficult. Unfortunately, we’re not sure how to correct it since there’s nothing solid behind it to use as a leverage point. On the up-side, any potential concerns over the pedals breaking in a simple drop have been eradicated.

slightly bent frame

We’ve uploaded some additional photos from the ride to our Flickr account and a couple more videos of the less dramatic parts of the ride to our Vimeo account. We’ve gone ahead and ordered a second ContourHD so that there will be no more doubt about what does, or doesn’t, get recorded.

Medical notes

The pain of cracked ribs increases for several days afterwards. Anecdotal evidence suggests that during this time the reading of humorous articles such as this one can be extremely painful and possibly set healing back by a day. Also, it is inadvisable to take painkillers that are also blood-thinners (Asprin, Ibuprofin, etc.) when healing from cracked ribs or  broken bones as it slows the process.

or, the Puppy Dog Route… take 1

The plan was to hit the road early Saturday morning, head up to Troy Vt (about three and a half hours on the highway), camp in sub-freezing weather to test how well our gear could handle it, and then spend the next two days riding the PDR from north to south, with one more camp stop along the way. It was supposed to be our last  real ride before winter really sets in and it gets too cold for camping without seriously heavy-duty winter gear, or too cold for riding without the same. One day on the slab for two days on the dirt. We ended up with two days on the slab for one on the dirt with minor hypothermia, one off, a hurt wrist, serious dehydration headaches and more. In short, it was a good test run. It just wasn’t nearly as enjoyable of one as we’d hoped.

Day one:
Slab, chills, more slab, more chills. After an unsurprisingly late start Dachary got her first taste of cold weather riding, and camping. We started out with the rain liners in the coats (Dachary had them in the pants too) and by the end of the day I’d added my fleece and she her coat’s thermal liner. She started shivering violently maybe ten minutes before we stopped for dinner.  A steak, and a semi-rushed time at Applebee’s (is there any vegetable they can’t fuck up?) warmed her up, but apparently not enough, because she had trouble keeping her temperature up between then and the next morning.

We were racing the sunset to get to camp, something that seems to happen entirely too often, but it was the most incredible sunset either of us have seen. We were riding around beautiful vermont hills covered with red and gold leaves with dramatic fire edged clouds against a crisp blue sky. The video doesn’t even remotely do it justice, and I’m sorry to report that it wasn’t until Sunday that I started experimenting with taking pictures while riding, but we made it just a few minutes after sunset.

Dachary snugged her sleeping bag liner around her, pulled her hat as low as it would go, zipped up her sleeping bag, and put her coat over her head. I don’t think either of us realized she was actually cold to the point of mild hypothermia and it tok her half the night to warm up. She actually overheated at one point, went out to pee, and never fulled warmed up again.

Day One Action Items:

• Update employee handbook to recognize the signs of hypothermia and take quicker action.
• Policy change. Below thirty degrees employees shall henceforth be allowed to expense a motel room.
• Standard issue office supplies shall henceforth include coffee (instant or in tea-bags) and tea. Hot Cocoa is no longer an officially endorsed substitute.
• All riding footage must include music or have the wind noise muted

Day Two:
Sunday morning neither of us wanted to get out of our sacks, but moving around as we broke camp warmed us up. It seemed to take us forever to actually complete the task though and we got off to another late start, which was somewhat compensated for by the excellent breakfast at the Junction 101 Restaurant.

Kay stops for a picture

Sadly, less than an hour into the surprisingly tame dirt Dachary had her off. Her E-ZPass lept from her windshield into the space between her forks and headlight, which freaked her out (understandably), and made her stop as quickly as possible, which would have been fine except that it was on a corner on a hill, where she proceeded to loose her footing, fall over and whack her wrist. Of course her camera wasn’t running and I was around the corner, and because she was down in the middle of a blind corner, we didn’t stop to take a picture. I tried to film her taking pills after we’d picked it up and pulled out of danger (mostly), only to find afterwards that because it’s attached to the bike I’d taken the camera off the helmet to help with her bike. So I filmed lots of nothing.

Being the trooper that she is, she refused to take a break and just kept riding through the pain, which she concealed the true extent of. Unfortunately, the day wasn’t through with us. The microphone on my headset (Sena SMH10) died and left Dachary carrying on a one way conversation with me for the rest of the day. The really annoying thing about this is that her mic died about a month ago too. I’m hoping it was a bad batch because we aren’t going to have many more opportunities to test them on significant rides before the big trip.

A dirt road in northern Vermont

Practicing taking pictures while riding

The ride itself was beautiful and I experimented with taking picks with my point and shoot while riding. But it was frustrating because of problems with the GPS route. It was created on a different set of US maps, and my GPS wanted to recalculate it, which i wouldn’t allow because it would recalculate without any of the dirt roads. That left me with “as the crow flies” lines between waypoints, which would have worked if there were actually enough waypoints. But there were frequently parts with multiple turns between waypoints. If Dachary hadn’t printed out the turn by turn version we’d have needed to pull over and spend an hour reworking the map on the computer before reloading to the GPS, but between her reading that and me the waypoints we managed to get to the end. Mostly. We missed a few sections of it along the way, but managed to keep routing ourselves back onto it, except for the last missed turn when we were sick of fighting the GPS to find our way, sick of not being able to talk to each other, and generally wanting to say fuck-it and get to the campground. So we did.

The approaching clouds

When we got there we were “greeted” by some woman who was personally offended by my not having taken off my helmet, and Foggy so that she could see my face, even though Dachary was the one dealing with her to get a campground. “Are you going to show me your face?!” she said all annoyed. No, actually…”I’d have to put it right back on.” It’s somewhat of a pain anyway since the Arai, which fits my head so well, is smaller at the bottom (as it should be) and is thus fairly tight when it goes on or off.

Dachary’s energy level just crashed when we pulled into the site. I think she’d been running on nothing but willpower. It later turned out she’d drunk less than a liter of water the whole day because the Foggy made it hard for her to fit the camelbak tube up under the helmet. You’re supposed to drink 3-5 depending on circumstances. We set up the tent, I laid out the mats and bags, and ordered her in while I took care of dinner and cleaning up. Which is when I noticed a text from my ex., who was watching the dogs.

“You need to come get them now.” Apparently Ben had been having a hard time of it there, peeing everywhere, and snapping at people. When we got him back there were scratches on his nose too, so he’d probably been having issues with the other dogs as well. Which means we can’t leave him with her on the trip and are going to have to find another solution.

That night was serious headaches and nausea for Dachary. At least it was warmer. A few degrees above thirty is a much more dealable temperature.

“I’d heard movement in the brush, twigs snapping, etc. close to our tent, like the time we heard the bear on our Trans-Mass Trail trip. It kept going through my head that the woman at the office said it was bear season, and very dangerous, and that’s all I could think about. Laying there in the dark, listening to those noises, my heart was pounding and I was torn between lying quietly in the tent and hoping whatever-it-was wouldn’t notice us, or hopping on the bike and driving around the lake to the more populated RV section. Then I heard the probably-moose-sound from near the head of the lake, and immediately nixed the idea of riding the bikes around, as we’d have to pass the moose. So I laid there quietly for well over an hour, until the noises finally got too far away to hear and my exhausted body dropped back into sleep.” – Dachary

I slept through the whole thing and was very envious when I found out what I’d missed.

Day Two Action Items:

• Employees must drink 3-5 liters of water per day. No exceptions.
• All GPS maps must be tested ON the GPS before depending on them. Confirm that there is a waypoint at every intersection if it’s a route the GPS won’t normally route you via.
• Those silly looking yellow egg holders are now officially endorsed office supplies (we did everything but drop a bike on them).
• Spare microphones must be included in the standard issue office supplies. An inability to communicate is bad for employee morale.
• Hard panniers will henceforth be recommended for protecting stuff in offs.
• Soft panniers will henceforth be recommended because they don’t need banging into shape after offs.
• Update employee handbook to recommend one person removing the tent fly while the other throws everything out of the tent. It has been found to be an good time-saver.

Day Three: Day three was just a long ride home on the highway so that we could pick up the beasts early. But, we packed up camp and we ready to go an an hour and a half, which seems like forever but is actually pretty good for us. We don’t rush, but we don’t like taking as long as we do. Day Three Action Items:

• Update employee handbook to suggest that one person should never remove the fly by themselves when there’s lots of condensation. It gets all over the tent itself and drips inside.
• Update employee handbook to note that Vermont restaurants do breakfast far better than Massachusetts ones. Reasons unknown.

Fall colors against darkening skies