BC, Ooh Fook Aye?

As per usual we planned on leaving the earlier then we did. We met up with Luis, a friend of Joes for dinner. Joe met Luis down in Columbia where Luis, his friend Robin and brother Evan were staying at the same hostel and paragliding. Luis had a tough accident and broke his back. 1st lumbar. Despite doctors telling him he'd never walk he's made an an amazing recovery and watching him walk you wouldn't even know.

We went out with Robin and his girlfriend and a couple of their friends to see a relatively local band called the Boom Booms. It started off slow but the second half got real and it turned out being quite fun. I ended up linkin up with this kid Dan from Switzerland. A pretty sick biker turns out he knows a kid that works at highlands. Small world.

Here is the bike I should be riding:

Soooo sexy.

Saturday 7/20/13

Robin had encouraged us to stay telling us about a music festival that was going on and his birthday party the next day. Joe was on the fence so I made the called. We stayed. We packed up our stuff and moved to Robins front yard. From there Robin drove us to the store to get some supplies then we headed to the Festival, Starbellyy. We had an issue, tickets where 60 bucks and we only wanted to see the last two shows. Aesop Rock and this heavy drum and bass, guitar and harmonica dou. We forged some wristbands out of a bits and bites package, hung out with some of robins hippy friends and stabilized a very swollen and potentially broken ankle. Finally it was time to see the show and we made it in without incident.  

I'm go out and say it. Aesop rock sucked. It was really depressing. 

The next band had some pretty sick beats but the highlight of the night was definitely this:

 Straight out of national geographic.Literally. Mary Jayne, she was raised Mormon. We had some really good conversation. The show ended and a whole group of us went back to the camp ground where we were staying. Joe, Robin and I pulled some Jesus shit and whipped up a super dank 3am spicy tomato, sausage and tortellini meal for 7 or 8 people. It was dank. 

Sunday 7/21/13

Robin was celebrating his birthday with a big dinner and a float down the local river. Finally I got to float a river. It was awesome. There were log jams to avoid, some  beautiful women and great weather. There was a group of maybe 12 of us. A total blast. Then we did the S bends, a more gnarly section where a kid got impaled on a piece of rebar and drowned. I was a little nervous and it was kind of rowdy but totally worth it.

Floating and shit:

We went back to Robin's and had an awesome dinner. His mother made this crazy good desert. A great night.

Monday 7/22/13

Joe and I took off on the highway and it totally sucked. Then ridewithgps pulled through and turned us onto a logging road.  There was a sign up on the road saying it was closed from kilometer 25 to 45 due to three bridges being out. We considered our options then went for it. The highway was that bad. It was sweet dirt road riding. We came to the first bridge, it had been rebuilt. The second one was still washed out but easily passable. Then we came to a spot where a massive mudslide had washed out the road. There was a navigable track. Finally we came to kilometer 45 and realized why the road was closed. There was a thin river maybe 12 feet across that was very swift moving and probably 2-4 feet deep. Joe was up in the air but again I made the call to go for it. I walked across with my dry bag and he tossed me his. The tough thing about the river was that it had a very steep entrance and exit. He stood halfway through the river and I gunned it. Made it most of the way then dropped it. We pushed it out and avoided the hydrolock. It was his turn but I convinced him to let me ride his bike. He was against it but i argued from the point of him already having a broken ankle. Finally he agreed and I got it two thirds of the way through and he road it from there. 

Then we got kind of lost on logging roads. 

Then my muffler fell.

I wired it back on.

Finally around 9 30 we made it out of the woods. We pulled into a tiny closed gas station and two big white tractor trailer trucks pulled in. Just the trucks. They hailed us and invited us to follow them to the next town to grab a drink.

We follow these massive white angels to the next town and found a bar. The bar was open but not serving food. We were eating chips and talking about cooking rice. An old guy at the bar named Mark kept trying to get us to come over his place and cook chicken wings. We were unsure. Then this dude at the bar. Finnigan said "ok i've had enough of this, i've got a restaurant down the road. If one of you comes with me I'll go make you some food". One of the truck drivers volunteered and he was gone no more then 15 minutes when he arrived back with a massive platter of fried food. It was amazing. We were all stuff and he offered it up free. Joe and I were still trying to figure out where to sleep and Mark again offered up his spot. A little worried we took him up on it anyway. We went back, had a beer. Smoked some surprisingly good doobage and listened to his stories about the married wives club he had going on. Clearwater is quite the place, the hospitality we received was as usual. Extraordinary, oxy-moron I know but it is what it is.

Truck drivers, I'm sorry I spaced your names and I also want to apologize, I forgot to say thanks and good bye. 

Tuesday 7/23/13

Mark made coffee, we packed up and hit the road. 

The day was over all unevenful.

Then my chain broke. On the highway.

I pulled over and started to fix it. Then my chain tool broke. 

Finally we piece mealed it together and got to town. 

We found a camp site, cooked up some dinner, showered and hit the hay.

Wednesday 7/24/13

I headed into town early and picked up chain, and a washer for my front sprocket bolt. The spring washer had lost its spring and the sprocket was floating on the spline. The guy at the shop was super helpful ( notice a trend here?) and we got it all fixed up and ready to rock in an hour. Joe pulled up and again we hit the road.

We road to Smithers where we stopped for gas and then Lunch. I noticed the bolt holding my front sprocket was gone completely and the sprocket was floating on the spline. We stopped at a Honda dealership and the kid hooked us up with a bolt and washer free of charge. Then I noticed my tire was flat. One of the lugs had actually ripped off and it time to replace the tire.

We pulled into Eyecandy customs right next to the honda dealership. They had some k60 scout tires but none in my size. I settled for a wierd tire from korea. The owner Sam was super friendly and cut joe and I a deal on the tires. We installed them and by this time it was five thirty. Sam gracouisly invited us back to his place for a barbecue and camping. We accepted. He and his wife live right along this gorgeous river. We cooked up some food, drank some beer, shot some targets with pellet guns and told stories. There was another adventure rider there from Lowell Mass. He was on a BMW 650.

Thursday 7/25/13

We went out for an early morning spin with Sam. He was on a old honda 600 and was rippin wheels and spinning his back tire all over the place. We were doing some fun muddy trail riding and came to a river. The descion was made to turn back and go up the ski hill. We cruised up the ski hill. Sam talked to some maintence guys and they let us ride the lift line to the top. It was a super fun little hill climb. The clouds obstructed the view but it was fun nonetheless. We went back to sams, packed up out shit and were again on the road.

Busted out a couple hundred highway miles and filled up right before the cassiar. Got on the Cassiar and i crashed into a beaver pond and busted my motor. Joe towed me 60 miles to the KTM dealer in terrace at 60 miles an hour on the highway. It was super dangerous but tons of fun. Actually it wasnt fun at all but its a good story.

We stopped at the KTM dealer and slept outside over night. Watched Goodbye Pork Pie. A kiwi classic. A beautiful night and a great adventure.

Friday 7/26/13

We went out and grabbed breakfast. When we got back the Mechanic Mike took a look at the bike, we cleaned the carb, checked the valves and did some general troubleshooting. Still no start. Finally the owner came out and looked down the spark plug hole with a fiberobtic camera. There it was, sure as shit. Cracked piston. Fuuuuuck.

Joe and I went out for lunch and considered my options.

A guy at the shop had offered me a ride to the ferry on sunday. I looked into renting uhual, a truck and the ferry seemed the way to go. I talked to progressive. They might warranty the motor.

Returned to Kickstart in terrace and pulled the motor with joe. It took us about two hours.

Called Brian, the good Samaritan who had offered us the ride. We went back to his place then ordered some pizza. Drank some Canadian clam ( Canadian beer and clamato) and watched some tv.

Satuday 7/27/13

Joe hit the road for Whitehorse.

Brian and I kicked it for the next two days.

Sunday 7/28/13

Brian gave me a ride out to Prince George and I caught the ferry.

Monday 7/29/13

The ride on the ferry is slow. Did some good listening and reading. Met Victor, a Danish traveler. Put in some work on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Its a slow read but I like it. I have to read half of it twice but it makes sense.

Tuesday 7/30/13

I'm writing this from The grind in Juneau. A small coffee shop. They made me an Ice coffee with 6 shots of expresso. Holy shit.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. My camera cracked and the lense is all foggy. So this is all ive got.

Bozeman to Nelson via Missoula.

Joe and I finally broke the Bozeman spell, but it took us about half a day. I had lost a set a very special glasses given to me by Kyle so I had searched half the day for them. Sorry Kyle, they never turned up. I drove all over the place looking for them to no avail. It really pains me.

Sunday 7/14/13

Various pictures from the day:

Joe and I had about 300 miles planned on ridewithgps.org. Having stayed in one place for so long our shit was quite disorganized and we didn't end up hitting the road until noonish. We had to stop at rusty's to look for the missing glasses and pickup a battery pack I'd left there. I canvased rusty's house for the glasses but found nothing. It's a real bummer because those glasses just made my day better when I put them on. Hopefully someone has found them and is enjoying them. Joe realized he had forgotten his insulin back in Bozeman so we headed back there. Despite Bartons best attempts (offering us a beer) we left and finally got on the road for real.

About an hour into the ride we came upon our first no trespassing gate. It was an old railroad line that had been bought and closed. When this happens both joe and I will scan our gps and come up with (hopefully) an alternative route to backtracking. We found one that went north east and continued towards it. The road was this beautiful old railroad track with tunnels and 200 foot high bridges. 

Here is a photo:

After taking this picture I continued, Joe who was following gave me a minute so he wouldn't be riding in a dust cloud. As he waited a pickup truck came flying up behind him with the horn ablaze, skidded to a stop and almost knocked him off the road. The guy got out shouting at him. I had no knowledge of this and continued another 5 or ten minutes. After going through a second tunnel and entering a beautiful valley via a 200 foot wooden bridge, i stopped and waited for him. No joe, then I saw a pickup truck. I turned to face it sensing something was wrong. He pulled up and I asked him how he was doing. He said not good and that I needed to learn to read. I inquired why and he said that there was a big sign saying private road. I told him the only signs I had seen had said no hunting and I was unware that the road was private. He said your buddies waiting back at the first tunnel, you better go join him. I headed back and met up with Joe, a guy was waiting with Joe and told us we were lucky the rancher hadn't called the sheriff. We headed out and detoured and 50 miles to get around all these ranches. It put a real cloud over our day. We weren't ripping along, we were polite and just passing through yet this guy had felt the need to be a total asshole. Also when we backtracked there was a board on the side of the road, faded to the point of being completely blank saying private road. It would have been impossible to tell had we not gotten off and inspected it. When I'm king, any road you haven't built yourself will be public. Rich pretentious fucks.

We pulled into Boulder MT, around 8 oclock. Were recommended to go to the Windsor by a local and headed there. It's right on Main street. The bartender was beautiful and joe fell a little in love. We ordered 26 dollar Ribeyes and dug in. Joe beat my ass at pool a couple times and we headed to a free place to camp the bartender had recommended.

Here is our route:

Monday 7/15/13

We packed up quick cause neither of us had used our tents and grabbed breakfast and bearspray, for use on both grizzleys and asshole ranchers.

We headed for Missoula, the riding was great and again ridewithgps sent us through some questionable area's. One road went right in front of someones house and they had vicouis corgies outside that attacked my tires. I had to clutch the whole way through to avoid hitting the little bastards. They did they job well though and as soon as we passed the property line returned to their shaded beds. Thank god they weren't pit bulls.

After passing through this property we came to a bunch of national forest, which in my opinion is the best spot to dual sport, you have tons of fireroads and trails and its public land and clearly posted. We came on 3 guys two on beemers and one a KLR they had ridden some gnarly shit, especially considering two were 68 and one was 62. I doupt I'll make it that old let alone be riding the gnar. Who knows?

I contacted a honeybadger hookup from Missoula, we played a little phone tag but he said he could put us up despite having a pretty awful day. He had just had surgery removing a bunch of pins from his had, after not being out of surgery for more then an our his parents called him to tell him they were getting divorced. Classy. Needless to say his day was kind of rough. Keep your head up Dylan. He was nice enough to us and offered up some tubes, we searched for them but couldn't find em. So insteaded headed to the river with a sixpack. Almost as good, plus the water looked nasty.

We got back to Dylan and he was out for the night, with a day like that who can blame him? Joe and I eager to hit the town went out with his roommate Elen and her friend Sam, we did a little bar hoping and before you know it were all feeling pretty good, Elen tried to teach me a couple swing moves but my timing was off.
Elen and Joe headed back and Sam and I stayed out. The night quickly degraded into at risk behaviors like seeing who could stand closer to a moving train (not my idea) and other nefarious activities.

Here is our route:

Tuesday 7/16/13

Sam had offered that Joe and I go tubing with her and a friend on Wednesday, I having now tried to go tubing 4 times with zero success was keen to experience this famed Montana pastime. I decided to stay, and Joe decided to head up to Fernie.

Sam is researching Blue birds, not endangered in the least this is apparently a hobbie of a some folks as part of a larger understand of evolutionary biology. Who knew? I accompanied her on a walk where we checked a couple bird boxes.

After the birding we stopped and got burritoes, they seemed small so I ordered two.  After fulling loading them I realized they were in fact quite big and was only able to just finish the one. Crazy I know, I must be getting old. Anyway I decided to give the second to a homeless person, we walked towards town and were appraoched by Rainbow Child Famous Shamous, he asked us for money for beer, I gave him the burrito. He was stoked.

Sam dropped me off to grab my bike and gear. She had some errands to run and I needed to write the blog for boseman. We agreed to link up in a few hours.

I wrote the blog, got dinner and still hadn't heard from her. I went down to the park where I ran into Shamus and he told me the burrito fed thirteen people, he'd counted the bites. Around 7 ocklock I got a text from Sam, she was going to have to cancel. It looked like a gnarly storm was rolling and I needed to find a place to sleep. I hit the highway. I needed to clear my head and find a camp ground. I kept passing camp grounds but it didn't feel right. Finally, It was about 9 30 and getting dark. I pulled into a rest stop and low and behold. KTM factory team 18 wheeler. No. Fucking.Shit.

The team wasn't there -  they fly from race to race, but the driver was and we talked for about 45 minutes. He told me I should stop in at the headquarters in Cali and see what was up. He thought they'd probably "help me out" he also gave me some of the Teams racing stickers. Maybe someday KTM will have an adventure team racing sticker with my name on it. Here's to hoping.

Photo's of of the truck + me being as unphotogenic as ever.

I didn't like the camp ground and continued on, it was dark and there was a fire on the right hand side of the road. Here are a couple pictures:

I arrived in a little town called St Regis. They had a couple camp sites but they were both closed. I went into a bar and sat town, a handful of locals were there and a couple from Spokane. Apparently Spokane is getting to be quite rough. Over a couple I talked to the bartender and after a couple beers he offered up a small tract of land he owned right in town for me to sleep on. It had running water and I was welcome to it.  I headed over and crashed out.

Wednesday 7/17/13

I woke up and packed up and planned my route to Libby.

The riding was epic, fire roads with these massive waterbar rollers.

It was all national forest so no worries of trespassing.

About halfway through the day I came upon this:

Then this:

Panoramics from the three corners:

The bucketlist just grew by one.

I arrived in Libby and found a great little campsite right on main street. Montana was starting to feel like New Hampshire, at least Libby did. Strip malls, with slightly bigger rolling hills. The main difference are the trees. Well that and the accents. I started seeing signs for scraping cars and firewood. The campground was cool, I cooked up a red sauce dinner and hit the hay.

Here is my route:

Thursday 7/18/13

The prevision day my bag had come lose and I'd lost a cable that connected my gps to my computer and ruined the one for my camera. The one for the gps was easily replaced at radio shack but the on for the camera is proprietary and impossible to find. I have to ordered it offline. Fucking proprietary bullshit. I fail to understand why they can't use a micro or mini usb like the rest of world. Or even a firewire for chrissakes. It's retarded. Assholes.  Anyway now I can't charge my shit. Luckily i can remove the sd card and take them images off.

The lady at radio shack was super helpful.

Another epic day of riding. I'm getting in the hang of planning routes. Stay in the national forest and make sure you take a main road in. The problem is alot of the roads going in and out of the national forest pass over private land. So dickhead land owners gate them making it tough to get in the public lands. They are essentially extending their back yards. Total garbage.

The riding was mostly two rough took track with the occasional dirt road. Then I came upon this random tarmac twisty that was a tun of fun. Here are so more pictures. Right near the border I ran into border control, they were hiding out behind a truck and trailer. I wonder what they had in the trailer. They asked me a bunch of questions but were super nice and didnt ask me for anyway paper work. I guess they were waiting for some unsuspecting drug runners or something...

I dipped out of the forest into idaho to cross the border. Again they searched all my shit. Once i crossed the boarder I came into this big valley, it was like pulling into the mediterrean, hot , and big farms growing cherries and grapes. It was so wierd. A micro climate for sure. I drove past this farm stand with this super cute girl running it. Our eyes locked and I continued, I almost turned around but didn't. Probably should have. Back up into the moutains I went, British Columbia is like Montana's badder older brother. I already like it better, a little wetter, much bigger and the people have a more friendly vibe. Nothing against Montana, the folks I met were great, it just rains a little more here in BC.

Once in the BC mountains there were these longs climbs where I stood up and kept it pinned in third gear for 30 minutes at a time. Those big roller water bars returned the the roads where just rough enough to make you pick your line. Adventure riding heaven.

Pictures:

I pulled into Nelson. Nelson has a city campground that is right in the thick of it. 20 bucks a nite but you get wifi, a bench, free hot showers and laundry for 2 bucks. Slamming deal. Plus you can put two small tents in one site and they will give you a deal. Make sure you call in advance though because they book up fast. I was lucky enough to get a site. I set up and cooked the second half of the red sauce tortellini meal. Little trick I figured out, a can of good spicy salsa plus shitty red sauce = dank spicy red sauce. Did some laundry and walked around town. EVERY SINGLE PERSON I walked by smiled and said hello. That's what I'm looking for. That's what I like. I like BC, and I like Nelson.

Here is my route:



Friday 7/19/13

Today has been uneventful, I secured Joe and I camping at the Nelson Campground, ate a good breakfast at Full Circle Cafe and ran some errands and wrote this post. I'm excited for the Nelson nightlife. I need a haircut....

Thats all for now, we'll probably hit the road tomorrow.