The REAL Adventure Begins...

When originally planning this trip I had split it into four separate phases to not get overwhelmed with the scale of the logistics (I was responsible for logistics and Ken was responsible for bike prep). Phase One was departure from Virginia to getting on the plane in Vancouver - Phase Two was getting off the plane in Seoul to the ferry ride to Russia and clearing the bikes in Vladivostok - Phase Three was travel through Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan to entering Europe through Estonia - Phase Four was traveling throughout Europe to getting the bikes on a boat and us on a plane in Great Britain. 

Phase One is now complete as we get on a plane to Seoul tomorrow morning and the bikes fly out on Korean Air on Monday.  Now things will get much more interesting as we will be be entering Phase Two where we must navigate through customs to clear the bikes in Seoul, ride around and across South Korea to the ferry in Dongue, take a 22 hour ferry ride to Vlad, then finally go through the process of clearing the bikes through customs in Russia.  All this must happen on schedule as we have reservations on the DBS ferry for Sunday, July 27th.  The ferry generally is sold out during the busy months of July and August so we need to make that ferry on Sunday

We had a bit of a scare last night when I received an email from United that our Sunday morning flight from Vancouver to San Francisco had been cancelled.  After 2.5 hours on the phone this morning with United customer service, we were booked on a Canada Air flight a half hour later than our original United flight.  All is good again.

We lose a day while traveling west so will not arrive in Seoul until Monday afternoon local time.

Let the adventure begin!

Hunter S. Thompson.

Bike Crating Day...

We said goodbye to the bikes yesterday as we likely won't see them again until we get to Seoul.  We have to stop by our shipper today to complete the export paperwork and pay for the air transport, but I think the bikes will be at their warehouse and we need to go to the administrative offices.

We took the SkyTrain to Pacific Motosports in Richmond from downtown to settle up with Rusty for the crating.  The sky train is an Impressive transportation system when it works.  Unfortunately when we got back to the Richmond station that particular rail back to the city was down.  This provided us an opportunity to figure out the area bus system.  We eventually got to the far western station near the airport and were able to catch the working Canada line back up to downtown.  Couple of extra hours of travel, but now have both trains and buses mastered here.  I have a feeling this will not be as easy in Seoul.  We have a 3 day layover there and will most definitely have a need to use public transportation.

Some crating pics.

Malone's, our bar attached to the Cambie Hostel.  It was karaoke night in the main bar, so we chilled with a pitcher of Molson on the more laid back side.  They are nuts for Karaoke here.  The main bar was packed to capacity.

Vancouver...

We arrived in Vancouver late afternoon yesterday after an uneventful ride from Puyallup, just south of Seattle.  The boarder crossing was relatively short and painless, although the tiny young lady in the Canadian customs booth was surprisingly intense and asked more questions than I expected.  I guess when you have stamps for Russia and Kazakhstan in your visa things get ramped up a bit.

We dropped the bikes at Pacific Motosports for crating and took a taxi to our hostel in downtown Vancouver.  We have a great location on Seymour not far from Gastown.  My first time in Vancouver and I must say so far I'm impressed.  We had a couple of pitchers of Molson and found a good sushi place for dinner.  There is certainly no shortage of sushi options here. We must have walked by a half dozen in a couple of blocks before settling on the most crowded one we saw.

Our hostel is pretty cool, but also very hot - like stupid, crazy, dripping sweat hot!  Sleeping last night was next to impossible as the window had to be left open to barely get some airflow.  There is a pretty significant heat wave going on in the Pacific Northwest right now.  We are on the second floor over a busy street and two bars so the street noise was endless.  Need to stay out later the next three nights to avoid the room as long as possible.  Maybe also buy a box fan to get some airflow into the room. 

Looking forward to exploring much more of Vancouver over the next three days as we go through the crating and prep for shipping process.  Today we need to go back to Pacific to pay when they finish crating and then Friday to LEI, our shipper, for final inspection of the bikes.  Motorcycles are considered "dangerous goods" in the airfreight business so the process is a bit intense.  All together it will be about $2k per bike to crate and ship to Seoul.  We will then have customs fees of about $300 each to clear the bikes in S. Korea.

This view from our hostel room shows how close we are to the street - and we are on the bus route that apparently runs 24/7.

My street.

Will have to check this out.

Down Seymour from our hostel.

Maintenance Day Two...

Yesterday while finishing up the maintenance a couple of issues surfaced on my bike.  One new and the other a re-occurrence of a previous issue that we thought was addressed and somewhat stabilized in April.  The re-occurrence was a small crack in the case where the kickstand bracket attaches.  The crack apparently developed due to the kickstand bracket working its way loose during the cross country shake down trip in April.  The bracket together with the weight of the bike was then putting significant pressure on the case every time the bike was on the kickstand.  We took the kickstand and center stand assembly apart, put JB Weld over the crack and put it all back together with loctite on the bolts.  It still leaked a bit, but much less than before and now had the bracket plate firmly pressed against the case where it should be.

I always had a few teaspoons of oil leaking out through the micro crack in the case behind that bracket, but noticed that after the fresh oil change the amount of oil puddling under the bike had increased.  Upon closer inspection, sure enough the bracket was loose again and putting pressure on the crack and hence more oil leaking out.  This was a bit baffling as we had applied loctite to the bolts during the previous repair, but the bonds had all worked loose.  So we did the process all over again but this time tried silicone over the crack instead of the JB.  Time will tell if this works any better.  Will most definitely be keeping an eye on this area during the trip.

The new issue surfaced while adjusting the valves.  A previous owner of the bike had apparently over tightened a bolt that holds the valve cover on and cracked the bolt hole.  Then apparently tried to rig a fix with JB Weld and a thread insert.  When I tried to screw down the bolt, it just spun in the hole as the whole job had come apart.  About the only thing to do was to use the same method with the JB and thread insert - only try to do it better as it obviously did not hold up the first time.  It worked for now as I was able to get a thread with the bolt by being super gentle.  Will find out if this fix was any better next time I need to open the cover to adjust valves - hopefully not anytime during this trip.

Oh well, just part of the fun of owning a 20'year old bike with 95k on the clock.

In this pic you can see the crack where the bolt is supposed to screw in.

This pic shows my attempted repair.

The Welborn's - Stoney, Nichole, Cindy (Stoney's Mom) and baby Owen.

Thanks so much for the hospitality!!!  It was great to see you guys!

Maintenance Day...

We got 90% of the maintenance complete yesterday so have a pretty lax day today.  We had given ourselves two full days in Stoney's garage to complete the PM and tire changes.  The new rubber looks sweet!  We needed to go with more aggressive tires to tackle the steppes of Mongolia where there are little to no paved roads.

New Shoes!!!

Last US Stop...

We made it to Stoney and Nicole's just south of Seattle on Sunday afternoon after a great ride up over Chinook Pass.  There is still lots of snow up there despite only peaking around 5500 ft. at road level.  It is quite a sight when the monster snow capped peak of Mt. Rainier appears around a corner.  It is amazing how much snow is still on in it in mid-July.

The cool air was welcome after hitting 100 degree plus temps in northern Idaho and eastern Washington.  We left our truck stop campground in Idaho around 7:30am and encountered our first close up of the wildlife.  We were motoring about 65 miles per hour on the tree lined highway when a moose came bounding down the bank and int the road right in front of us.  I am now sure the anti-lock braking system on my bike is operational as I had to grab a giant handful of brake to avoid running into the moose.  The thing was HUGE.  I've never been that close to a moose before.  Ken was so close as we went by that I think he could have reached out and touched it.  Needless to say our heads were on a swivel until we picked back up on I90 several miles south.

Stoney has a guys dream garage, full of tools and space for wrenching.  It also has the requisite kegerator which we spent the evening testing out thoroughly.  We also got to meet Owen for the first time - Stoney and Nicole's 3 month old son.  He is going to be a big boy!

We will be here for 2 days changing fluids and tires on the bikes to prepare them for Northern Asia.  I don't think it has completely sunk in that we are getting on a plane to South Korea in less than a week.  We ride to Vancouver on Wednesday to drop off the bikes to be crated and prepped for air transport.  We are staying at a hostel in downtown Vancouver for 4 nights, flying through San Francisco and then to Seoul.  The bikes will go out the next day direct from Vancouver on Korean Air.  Should be fun hanging for a few days in Vancouver, a city neither Ken or have visited.

Mt. Rainier.

Fun twisty roads on the pass.

Rainier.