Oregon to Ushuaia on an XR650L

[RexBuck]

Originally Posted by Ulyses

Steve!

Good to hear from you! Glad to see you're still alive and kicking. How's Colombia been so far?

Hard to tell, just picked up my bike this morning. I'm really looking forward to exploring the country. Getting my bike organized with Girag to fly over was kind of like going through two borders . . . twice. Lots of waiting.

I dropped my bike off on Friday and Girag wouldn't have it available until today. Fortunately I have some friends in Bogota so leaned on their hospitality for a few days. Bogota is a massive town (10 Million) and should be avoided at all costs on a motorcycle. The drivers are stupid crazy and the traffic is insane.

I'll head over towards Medellin in the next few days and camp out there for awhile.

Ride safe and enjoy the boat trip.

[Ed Zachtamundo]

Keep pushing and keep posting; I have a lot of spare time on my hands. Cory left me with one of his jugs of protein/vitamin powder, so I get to see what healthy food might be like for a change.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes! I'm sure I'll be all healed up and back in action before next summer.

[Brown Falcon]

Originally Posted by Ed Zachtamundo

Keep pushing and keep posting; I have a lot of spare time on my hands. Cory left me with one of his jugs of protein/vitamin powder, so I get to see what healthy food might be like for a change.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes! I'm sure I'll be all healed up and back in action before next summer.

Glad to hear you're staying positive! Hope you have a quick recovery!

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by MasterMarine

I figured that would be coming considering your background.

I never was in the Marines. I used to have a houseboat repair business at Lake Powell at Wahweap Marina that was called MasterMarine. I logged into ADV way back then for the first time so that is my user name.

Anyway, thanks for everything you have done for our country and great job on your RR. It is not often that I find myself laughing out loud while reading these things and it has happened several times while I have been enjoying this one. Thank you so much for sharing the experience. It has to be tough to do in real time.

Nice! You pulled a fast one on me. I figured you were a former Master Sergeant or Master Gunnery Sergeant! Haha. It all makes sense now.

Thanks for the compliments! I'll make sure to go out of my way to get in some more trouble and make some more good stories!

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by QCRider

Those Frenchies are everywhere, isn't it!!! (Just kidding - I'm also from QC originally). Too bad you had to blast thru CR. I've been catching up with your RR over the past few days, and was hoping to have a chance to meet you while passing here. I could even have rode with you to the PTY border to help a bit. I've done it several times now, even to help a few friends to cross. Any reason is a good reason for a ride!

Last time I was there, I spent 2 full days to help a buddy who was importing his bike from PTY to CR, thanks to the Central America Bureaucracy! At the end, he had to leave his 2012 GSA there and get it back after all the paperwork was done 2 weeks later. I don't know if it gets better in SA as far as border crossings, but for CA, based on personal experience, I came up with this rule or thumb: Plan for 6hrs / Anticipate 4 hrs / Hope for 2 hrs.

Enjoy the rest of your trip in SA, and pls keep posting whenever possible. Your RR is top quality!

PS: I sent a few pesos over to Justin to help. Hope he's doing fine.

Damn! Thanks man! I wish I would have slowed down a little and met up! I made it to Panama City today and now I've got two days to cool my heels waiting for the boat. I didn't think I would make it quite this fast. Thanks for the compliments! And way to go representing the quebecois! I wish I could read french so I could have read that family's sight.

I think you are right on the border crossings. I've had everything from 6hrs to 1hr so far.

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by RexBuck

Hard to tell, just picked up my bike this morning. I'm really looking forward to exploring the country. Getting my bike organized with Girag to fly over was kind of like going through two borders . . . twice. Lots of waiting.

I dropped my bike off on Friday and Girag wouldn't have it available until today. Fortunately I have some friends in Bogota so leaned on their hospitality for a few days. Bogota is a massive town (10 Million) and should be avoided at all costs on a motorcycle. The drivers are stupid crazy and the traffic is insane.

I'll head over towards Medellin in the next few days and camp out there for awhile.

Ride safe and enjoy the boat trip.

Phhew....makes me glad I'm not flying. I've had my fill of borders. I'm hoping they start improving soon.

How much did it cost to fly your bike?

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by Ed Zachtamundo

Keep pushing and keep posting; I have a lot of spare time on my hands. Cory left me with one of his jugs of protein/vitamin powder, so I get to see what healthy food might be like for a change.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes! I'm sure I'll be all healed up and back in action before next summer.

Bro! Good to see you on here!

Go easy on that protein powder....you might start having a lot of really bad gas.

What are your plans? Are you going home next week?

[Ed Zachtamundo]

Mom got here today- all is well. Looks like we're all coming back on the 21st. Let me know when you want to cash in that wookie life-debt I owe you, man!

[Ulyses]

I decided to sleep in today and take it easy as I was expecting good roads (thanks for the heads up Jdowns) and no border crossings. I took my time getting ready and spent some time hanging out with Ed Zachtamundo's friend, Orley, the pet monkey:



I think my friend Jeff (Mathews) was right, this little devil was a trained thief! Look at him trying to get my sick Suunto watch! Actually, he was trying to eat it and he kept biting it. I started to get worried that he might miss and bite me and give me the outbreak virus (which would probably happen with my luck), so we parted ways.

I got back on the road and was soon on a four lane divided highway. The riding was fast, uneventful, and actually quite boring. After spending the last few months fighting for my life everyday on the road, getting on something that was very similar to an American Freeway is almost kind of a let down.



Still, it's kind of nice not having to worry about coming round a corner and crashing into a herd of cows (possible in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua), or running over an open man hole cover (happened in Mexico, barely avoided in Nicaragua), or finding that an entire lane of the road has collapsed and is only marked out by painted white rocks (Honduras). This pic from Honduras pretty much sums it up:



I stopped after about 60 miles and found that my oil was a quite low, almost halfway down the dipstick. Riding hard on the old XRL really takes it's toll with oil consumption. I just changed it a few days ago, but I've also covered 1,122 miles during that time, which means that my bike has been slowly re-hydrating itself on my expensive synthetic Motul 10W-40.



I added about 200ml. When I did the oil change at Mario's I measured the oil that came out of the bike against what I had put in when I changed it last. I then added the amount of oil that I had put in while riding and came up with 700ml. So, during an 1,800 mile stretch of pretty hard riding, I managed to lose 700 ml of oil. I'm wondering what I'm going to lose this time around. I guess that's why I carry a quart and a half extra.

Still, a lot of my oil freak outs could be due to improper oil checks. I swear, there's a significant amount of voodoo magic that goes into checking the oil level on this bike. If you haven't sacrificed a few small animals to the oil gods during your day's ride, you're liable to get two drastically different oil readings only a few minutes apart.

As I was riding along, I came up on this truck with a few kids and what I assumed was their mother. One of the kids started making faces at me and another put on a mask as soon as he saw me so I tried to take his picture.



You can definitley see the mask, but the kid making faces (far left) is a little harder to see. I also saw this tricked out rig:




I'm assuming they are on a round the world trip. It's looked like a heavily modified F-350. I wish I could have got some better pictures, but my camera was dying.

I saw three adventure riders (two BMW's and one KLR) today as well, all heading in the opposite direction. I didn't stop to try and catch them, but I'm kind of wishing I did.

About 2 PM I crossed the Panama Canal into Panama city. I managed to snap one horrible picture before my camera died:



And a few minutes later I was at Mamallena's Hostel. $13 for a bunk in the dorm, $30 for a private room. I went for the dorm to save money.

I have mixed feelings about Hostels. The plus side is that they are generally really cheap, have good wifi, and good advice from english speakers. Unfortunately, the backpacker mentality and the adventurer rider mentality don't always mix that well. I talked about this in depth with all of the other ADV riders at San Pedro and they all agreed. It's not that the backpackers are bad people or really weird (though some of them are), they're just have a different mindset most of the time. Of course, the real downside is that you encounter a lot of Panchos, Spacers, and Wasteoids.

Panchos are people who walk around wearing those mexican hoodies that are made from the same material as a drug rug. They think they are really curturally savy and cool and hip and what not, but are generally just a Spacer or a Wasteoid, or both. (Chris, if you are reading this, we don't put you in this catagory).

A Spacer is kind of like a pseudo hippie. I met a bus full of Spacers at a McDonalds in Coban, Guatemala. They told me that they had just spent a week in the jungle at "Rainbow Fest". I asked them what "Rainbow Fest" was and they said that they had just sat around in the jungle and smoked a bunch of weed, done lots of meditating, made animal noises (i'm not joking, they actually said this), and did a bunch of other things that involved good vibes, positive thinking, feelings, etc, etc, etc, My brain just kind of shut down when they started talking and I started getting glassy eyed and going into cave man mode. I suddenly felt the urge to kill a small woodland creature and cook it on a fire right in front of them, or maybe just eat it raw. I had to force myself to snap out of it and be polite.

A Wasteoid is someone who has no purpose other than to get totally wasted as frequently as possible. They may look like a hippie, or a hipster, or a college kid, or whatever, but really they are just in Central America to drink as much booze and do as many drugs as they can on the cheap. They may try and pass themselves off as a hippie, but hippies actually have a purpose (or they used too at least). Wasteoids have no purpose. They just exist to spend their parents money on getting hammered 24/7, all while trying to look like they are simple, poor backpackers.

Kurt and Corey, the two Canadians, identified Panchos and Spacers for us. Since then, I've been noticing how much you run into those kinds of people down here. It's eerie and a little frusterating too. I'm going to have to get Corey to write something about Panchos and Wasteoids, I don't think my definition does it justice.

In any event, I'll get off my rant now. The Hostel seems nice and Panama City looks very modern. Here's some hastily snapped pictures. The patio:



One of the dorm rooms:



The back yard where they let me park the bike:



I'm going to go explore a little tomorrow and I'll post some more pics up then. I've been frying my ass off in my riding gear over the past few days; I may try and find a motorcycle shop tomorrow and buy some armor that I can wear instead of my jacket. Does anyone that's reading this know of any good shops in Panama City?

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by Ed Zachtamundo

Mom got here today- all is well. Looks like we're all coming back on the 21st. Let me know when you want to cash in that wookie life-debt I owe you, man!

Good! Has Zac made it down yet? Thanks man, but don't worry about it, I know you would have done the same for me.

[wbedient]

Originally Posted by Ulyses

So, during an 1,800 mile stretch of pretty hard riding, I managed to lose 700 ml of oil.

If my DR wouldn't drink oil and had a cush drive I'd be much happier with its pavement pounding abilities.



Still looks like a pretty capable ADV steed! Have fun and ride safe out there.

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by wbedient

If my DR wouldn't drink oil and had a cush drive I'd be much happier with its pavement pounding abilities.



Still looks like a pretty capable ADV steed! Have fun and ride safe out there.

Thanks! What drinks more oil? Your XRL or your DR?

[wbedient]

Originally Posted by Ulyses

Thanks! What drinks more oil? Your XRL or your DR?

I don't know.

The DR rarely gets on pavement over 50 mph and the XR doesn't use any oil unless you go highway speeds. So I can't really compare them.

I had a ULYSSES that sipped a little oil every 3000 miles or so, but nothing worth fretting over.

[alvincullumyork]

Originally Posted by Ed Zachtamundo

Keep pushing and keep posting; I have a lot of spare time on my hands. Cory left me with one of his jugs of protein/vitamin powder, so I get to see what healthy food might be like for a change.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes! I'm sure I'll be all healed up and back in action before next summer.

I hope you heal up soon. Being out of the game sucks.

[Ganjora]

thoroughly enjoying your RR.
thanks.