Our Sunday Scoop

In our last blog post, we were stuck near the top of a mountain in New York state, and the bike was dead. The road had gotten pretty rough, and after a few too many falls, the motorcycle would simply not start again. It was the old gremlins resurfacing once more, but this time we were in a particularly bad spot.

To make matters worse, the skies were getting darker and darker, not just with the approaching evening, but the deep rumblings of a thunderstorm could be heard brewing not too faraway.

"This is bad," I just kept repeating over and over again to Tim as he tried repeatedly to get the bike going again. I didn't know what to do, as my brain was fresh out of ideas. I felt helpless, and a part of me just wanted to plop down on the ground and wallow in misery for our situation, but that wouldn't have done any good.

"We'll get through this," Tim reassured me. "We always do."

But things at the moment felt particularly bleak.

A couple hiking along the trail came up to us and asked if everything was all right. We gave them the rundown of our newest woes, and they told us that they were parked at the base of the mountain. If we could get our bike down there, after they finished their hike, they'd meet us and try to get us a tow truck.

"Well, we can't go up the mountain with a dead motorcycle," I told Tim. "So I guess down is the only way we can go."

Tim agreed, and we decided that I would walk down while he rode the bike using momentum alone. That way there would be less weight to prevent him from falling, but also, I could push him whenever he got stuck.

So Tim headed off with a silent motorcycle, clicking and clacking its way over the stones and down the trail. Until I could no longer see him.

I walked and walked and walked. But apparently, Tim had not gotten stuck (it was pretty steep, so the momentum was good), and he made it all the way down without me. As I trekked, still wearing my helmet and all my gear, with my big clunky boots squeaking over the rocks, I took a rest on a log by a tree. I removed my helmet, and sat there for moment just to collect my thoughts. And I wondered why I had felt so hopeless before? Certainly, Tim and I had been in worse situations in the past. At least here there were people hiking this road, and the paved part wasn't too far down the slope. And at least we were in America where we could speak the language, and call for help. Things may have seemed dire in the moment, but I reminded myself that we were going to be fine. We had not hurt ourselves, and we had each other, and that's really all that matters.

With higher spirits, I made it down the mountain and saw Tim and the bike parked next to the hiking couples' van. He had taken off the seats and was unplugging and replugging in the battery in an effort to reboot the bike's electrical system. It had been electrical problems before, and so we figured it might be an electrical glitch again.

​Once the battery was plugged back in, and Tim hit the ignition... VRRRRRRRM! The bike started!

Just as that engine roared back to life again, Tim and I looked at each other with excited eyes. And it began to rain.

The rain started off just as a few massive droplets, but very quickly turned into a plummeting patter of thick, heavy globs of water.

"Let's get to the nearest hotel!" Tim shouted over at me. I quickly Googled some hotels, and the best option seemed to be a half hour away. "We can make it," he said. And with fingers crossed, we got on the bike.

We hadn't really had enough time to prepare ourselves for the torrential downpour that was suddenly upon us. Tim still didn't even have his jacket zipped up, and had to pull over to get that fixed and his gloves on. But we soon realized that it didn't matter... we were going to get soaked.

That ride to the hotel was one of the worst storms we've ever been in. It was Barranquilla, Colombia bad. It was cats and dogs bad. The streets became rivers, and the streetlights became blurry mirages of colors through the grey, watery world. The cars next to us splashed us like they were hosing us down, and our front tire cut through the flooded streets like a ship carving its way through the ocean. It was cold, and we were drenched.

At last we arrived at the place we'd marked on the map, and pulled up to a very welcoming hotel that had a roofed section in front under which we could park the bike out of the rain. They gave us a key to the room, and we stepped in with squelching boots filled with water, dripping right over the carpet. ​

We stripped off all our wet gear, piled our soaked bags by the front door, and reveled in the warmth and dryness of our room. We even ordered a pizza, figuring we deserved it after everything we'd just been through. But soon, the conversation turned to more serious matters.

I asked Tim, "Now that the bike is working again, should we continue on down the BDR all the way to Mt. Washington, or even to Maine?"

He didn't give me an immediate answer, as we both just contemplated it all. It hadn't been more than a couple of hours ago that we were thrilled to just keep going... we were having the time of our lives. But now that the bike had this hiccup, and it was reminiscent of our earlier motorcycle malfunctions, we were worried this wouldn't be the last time it would happen.

"We've been riding more than 80,000 tough miles all over the world on this motorcycle," I finally said. "I think it's expected that it's going to have some problems now, and I think it would be foolish of us to believe that this won't happen again."

Tim said, "Yeah, we need to give the bike a good refurbishing before we head down any remote mountain roads with it again."

We both looked at each other, and with a sadness heavy in our hearts, we knew that this was probably the end of the line... at least for now.

Stay tuned, because in next week's episode, we make the journey back home, which unfortunately requires a visit to the hospital.

In the meantime, check out our latest video on a day that had equally terrible weather, but this time it was highly unusual - a sandstorm.

Have a great week, and we'll see you next Sunday for the final installment of our summer/fall adventures!

Our Sunday Scoop

The previous day, things couldn't have gone better for us. We'd been riding along the Northeast Backcountry Discovery Route in New York state, and had zigzagged across the Delaware River, and were now headed towards the Catskill Mountains. We were enjoying ourselves so much, I even told Tim, "I think we should do the whole thing - the whole Northeast BDR."

And he agreed. "And if anything, we should try to get to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Hopefully it won't be too cold by then," he said.

But the weather was already changing on us. Plenty of leaves had fallen off the trees, and autumn had set in with full force. We passed lovely orange pumpkin patches while the skies sometimes clouded over into a gray haze. Exposed bare branches of trees turned the world around us from green to brown.

Our Sunday Scoop

We had just finished our final Overland Expo with a bang, and were simply loving our time on the East Coast. Having never been there before on the motorcycle, we figured this was our chance to explore and ride through a region of the country that was new to us - the Northeast.

We kept hearing about the new BDR out there, which stands for Backcountry Discover Route. It's a road that has been carefully mapped and plotted out, and, as you guessed, it goes through the backcountry of the state. It hits up a lot of off-road, but mostly weaves its way along the most pleasant and scenic roads through the rural areas, places which people normally would never get to see.

Our Sunday... oops, Tuesday Tuneup!

After our soul-nurturing ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway for three days, we arrived at Overland Expo East in Virginia, not really knowing what to expect. Well, we knew what the other two Expos had been like. The one in Colorado, and the big one in Arizona had been full of adventure motorcyclists and 4-wheel drive enthusiasts who loved going off-road, hitting the high-altitude mountain trails, and roughing it out in the middle of nowhere.

But somehow I just couldn't imagine the east coast vibe being quite the same. We'd already heard that the East event was significantly smaller than West. Plus, horror stories of mud, mud, and more mud kept surfacing in conversations. It had been hard, and sometimes stressful getting all the way out to the east coast from Arizona in only ten days... and I wondered, was this going to be worth it?

Our Sunday Scoop

We had just spent the past week rushing across the country, from Arizona to Georgia, in order to get from Overland Expo West in Flagstaff to the upcoming expo in the east. It was hectic, it was uncomfortable, and I was miserable.

The days had been long and exhausting, with my ears ringing at night from hours of my helmet being battered by highway-speed winds. Plus, the weather had been terrible. Starting with the hailstorm that hit us in New Mexico, to the high winds in Oklahoma, and then topped off with the torrential rains of Arkansas and Tennessee, by the time we arrived at Tim's uncle's cabin in northern Georgia, I was ready for a rest.

But with only a few days left to get to the expo in northern Virginia, we had to now make a choice - stay an extra day in Georgia and then take some grueling highways up to Virginia, or leave the next morning and ride a more leisurely road up north called the Blue Ridge Parkway.

As we wrapped up our wonderful weekend at Overland Expo West, we now faced the daunting  prospect of what was next - traveling from Arizona to Virginia for the next expo in just ten days. Since these were overland expos, most people attending were in vehicles with four wheels, and if they were going to both of these, they'd be driving. That's still not a lot of time, but for us on a motorcycle, it was an even tighter schedule.

I find that motorcycle travel, though exponentially more exciting, is also more exhausting than traveling by car. The wind, the weather, the heavy gear, the sitting on a rattling machine in one position for so long... it all adds up to be more strenuous than going in a luxurious padded seat with armrests, drink holders, and windows to block out the rest of the world as it rushes by. 

​This is also one of the things we love most about motorcycle travel - the vulnerability of it. The way we're exposed to the elements, the way we're immersed in our surroundings as opposed to being in a bubble. But in this particular instance, I was not looking forward to the ride out the Virginia. And this was not only because we'd be taking highways, skipping all the sights, and having long days, but because the motorcycle hadn't always been working properly for us this summer. And we felt that at any moment something else could go wrong.

I look back on the days when we were living in our house in Kenya, and how I would excitedly write up my Sunday Scoop blog post each week. I would have time to think about it, to write it just the way I wanted it, and to choose the right pictures... Those were the days.

Because ever since we've been back on the road in the US, things have been different. Our days are filled with getting miles under our belt, bracing the winds, or cold, or heat, or hail. Sometimes the bike would function, sometimes it wouldn't start at all. And all the while we were nervous about keeping to our strict schedule of Overland events. And we were nervous that we might never reach our destinations.

Even now that we're back in Chicago (we're settling here for the winter), I barely have a moment to write a blog post. So I apologize for the lateness of my stories, but this one I think you'll like. Especially if you know our origin story of Maiden Voyage, and how we took our motorcycle on its first trip out West to Colorado and Utah, you'll understand the significance of us revisiting some of those places.

Once again we had broken down, and once again, a dear friend was there to rescue us. This time we had a non-starting motorcycle in Boise, Idaho, and our savior was Brandon Lever. As I paced around fretting over our latest mishap, Brandon told me that everything was going to be all right, and that he had a good feeling about it. But I didn't believe him.

Since the mechanics in Idaho were all fully booked, Brandon offered to trailer us and the motorcycle down to Salt Lake City to the dealership there. And hopefully, if all the stars aligned correctly, they would be able to diagnose the problem, and the solution wouldn't require any parts to be ordered, because we had just a few days before we had to be down in Flagstaff, Arizona for the Overland Expo West. There was simply not enough time to get anything done besides a simple fix, and once again, we were alerting the heads of the Expo that it was possible we might have to cancel all our plans.

I used to think Idaho was just full of potatoes. In fact, I never gave much thought to the state until someone told me that it was America's greatest hidden gem. And then more people told me the same. It took me a while to believe them, and to be honest, I still held some skepticism for years, figuring I might as well just go and see what they were talking about for myself.

​Idaho's beauty may not be such a secret anymore, but it certainly still holds an allure created by legends of lost travelers who speak of this treasure of a state like it's a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

While we were making base camp with our friend Pete in Denver, and planning our trip to Idaho, we were inspired to do a little detour. We met one of Pete's friends, Brady of MeerkatADV, and a fellow motorcycle adventurist like ourselves, and he had made videos of his time riding some incredibly high and gorgeous mountain passes in southern Colorado - Cinnamon Pass, California Pass, Hurricane Pass, and the toughest of the four, Corkscrew Pass. And when we saw the footage, our jaws dropped.

"It looks like Peru!" Tim cried with his eyes alight.

"Or Argentina, or Chile!" I said, grinning from ear to ear.

Considering that the mountain passes we did in those countries were some of our favorite riding on the planet, this meant that we now knew what our next adventure was going to be.