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Let me re-introduce myself. Gary DuBois, sometimes known as the DixieOutlaw and sometimes worse. Been married to my sweetheart 39 years tomorrow.
No we are not mad at the club, nor anyone in the club, but I have to admit my day brightened a bit today with the announcement of the closing of that worthless dealership in B'ham.
We have just been really busy this year and quite frankly riding motorcycles has not been one of our priorities. Angie has ridden her bike exactly once since Oct 2009. I have less than 4,000 miles this year.
We spent the late winter preparing for a six-weeks Spring vacation in Europe. The six weeks turned into five weeks as it took us a week to get to Europe while trying to work around the Icelandic volcano. Result we had one week in Germany with our youngest daughter and her husband; two weeks in the Great Britain where we did a bike share ride to Scotland from London and then back; and two weeks on the French Riviera with our oldest daughter and her family. Needless to say we had a wonderful trip and would like to go back.
After returning from that trip, I began earnestly preparing for my long talked about trip to South America and return, not to mention it has just been too hot to do any serious riding (it is suppose to be fun.)
It has taken months of coordination, route planning, bike prep, and prepping the house and cars for winter to get ready for our trip south.
Roger Dabbs and I are departing here on 8 October or what we think (hope) will be a four month riding adventure covering appropriately 22,000 miles. We have had four face-to-face meetings and hundereds of emails to iron-out plans and sort loads. I am riding the KLR650 and Roger is riding a Vstrom 650. We decided on the lighter bikes versus our R1150GSes.
To add adversity to the planning I broke my tractor and had to separate it to put in new clutches and then on 8 September, I crashed my yellow GS. Immediately after a rain shower, I hit a slick spot while braking and went down the asphalt at about 45 mph. The bike slid 150 ft and I slid about 80 ft. Good bit of road rash to the bike and riding gear, but nary a scratch nor bruise on me. I did bang up my already bad right shoulder a bit and it is still sore and I dislocated my left thumb which is still sore. Good riding gear pays for itself every time you wear it - remember ATGATT (all the gear all the time.) One of my riding buddies went down avoiding running over me and broke two ribs - I think now he wishes he would have just hit me.
Our trip plan is to ride from here to Panama and either fly the bikes to Bogota Colombia or catch a sail boat from the San Blas islands in Panama to Cartagena Colombia. From there our route goes through Ecuador, Peru, Chile and into Argentina. Then the ride through Patagonia to Tierra del Fuego. At the end of the road we will turn around and ride north to Buenos Aires and then to the border with Brazil and Paraguay to visit Iguazu Falls. Then across the Andes back into Chile and head home basically the way we went down. Hope to be home by 1 Feb 2011.
Was planning on going to Shellmound this weekend, but we are having a early family Christmas get together with our brothers and sisters Saturday.
We will attempt to keep a blog going when we have internet access. The blog site is http://attencionadetalles.blogspot.com so follow us there. Currently there are only a couple of entries as we were testing the site.
I do appreciate all of you as friends and appreciate your prayers for traveling mercies.
Gary
No we are not mad at the club, nor anyone in the club, but I have to admit my day brightened a bit today with the announcement of the closing of that worthless dealership in B'ham.
We have just been really busy this year and quite frankly riding motorcycles has not been one of our priorities. Angie has ridden her bike exactly once since Oct 2009. I have less than 4,000 miles this year.
We spent the late winter preparing for a six-weeks Spring vacation in Europe. The six weeks turned into five weeks as it took us a week to get to Europe while trying to work around the Icelandic volcano. Result we had one week in Germany with our youngest daughter and her husband; two weeks in the Great Britain where we did a bike share ride to Scotland from London and then back; and two weeks on the French Riviera with our oldest daughter and her family. Needless to say we had a wonderful trip and would like to go back.
After returning from that trip, I began earnestly preparing for my long talked about trip to South America and return, not to mention it has just been too hot to do any serious riding (it is suppose to be fun.)
It has taken months of coordination, route planning, bike prep, and prepping the house and cars for winter to get ready for our trip south.
Roger Dabbs and I are departing here on 8 October or what we think (hope) will be a four month riding adventure covering appropriately 22,000 miles. We have had four face-to-face meetings and hundereds of emails to iron-out plans and sort loads. I am riding the KLR650 and Roger is riding a Vstrom 650. We decided on the lighter bikes versus our R1150GSes.
To add adversity to the planning I broke my tractor and had to separate it to put in new clutches and then on 8 September, I crashed my yellow GS. Immediately after a rain shower, I hit a slick spot while braking and went down the asphalt at about 45 mph. The bike slid 150 ft and I slid about 80 ft. Good bit of road rash to the bike and riding gear, but nary a scratch nor bruise on me. I did bang up my already bad right shoulder a bit and it is still sore and I dislocated my left thumb which is still sore. Good riding gear pays for itself every time you wear it - remember ATGATT (all the gear all the time.) One of my riding buddies went down avoiding running over me and broke two ribs - I think now he wishes he would have just hit me.
Our trip plan is to ride from here to Panama and either fly the bikes to Bogota Colombia or catch a sail boat from the San Blas islands in Panama to Cartagena Colombia. From there our route goes through Ecuador, Peru, Chile and into Argentina. Then the ride through Patagonia to Tierra del Fuego. At the end of the road we will turn around and ride north to Buenos Aires and then to the border with Brazil and Paraguay to visit Iguazu Falls. Then across the Andes back into Chile and head home basically the way we went down. Hope to be home by 1 Feb 2011.
Was planning on going to Shellmound this weekend, but we are having a early family Christmas get together with our brothers and sisters Saturday.
We will attempt to keep a blog going when we have internet access. The blog site is http://attencionadetalles.blogspot.com so follow us there. Currently there are only a couple of entries as we were testing the site.
I do appreciate all of you as friends and appreciate your prayers for traveling mercies.
Gary
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