First off, I would like to thank Chuck Williams and Hari Crowder for their generous donations. The month of October is almost over and the donation goal has not been reached. If you are enjoying these posts, please take a little time to donate a few bucks for the cause.

Under the torrential rain of San Francisco, I walked through downtown wearing my rain suit and 75 liter pack. I could see a stream of water coming down from the top of my hood every time I stopped moving. A black guy approached me and offered me a sandwich, I was dumbfounded. I realized I looked like a homeless person standing in the rain shouldering a backpack with no umbrella.

The rain finally stopped and after farewells to Elizabeth and Harrison I left for San Jose. In San Jose, I met Jessica Cover and stayed with her for the next two nights. Jessica was one of the most interesting people I have met on this trip. At age 27; she is an accomplished young lady with a bright future as a chiropractor. Even though she was preparing for her exams, we talked for hours and had a great time.

As I have mentioned before, Rob Eberle the owner of Cycle Recycle Parts II has sponsored this expedition and generously shipped some much needed parts to Tom Murphy’s house in Berryessa. Located in Indianapolis, Cycle Recycle stocks an impressive inventory of used and new parts for classic Japanese motorcycles. Shipping is cheap and fast and Rob is a knowledgeable guy to talk to. It is nice to find a shop these days where you can actually talk to the owner rather than answering machines. The box consisted of a new high chrome fender, valve cover gasket, oil filter, inner tube, clutch cable, speedometer cable and a set of progressive fork springs.

At Tom’s house, we changed the front springs, made the new fender fit and fixed the kickstand on the bike. Chuck and Ray, two of Tom’s neighbors, and Bob, another GSer, showed up and the party started. Over some beer and pizza, courtesy of Tom Murphy, we speculated on the best way of fixing the stand. Ray brought his welder over and welded the top surface of the bracket to raise the stand. In the mean time, Tom looked for his missing 14mm wrench for two hours and accused everyone of stealing it. It turned out he had it last and left it on his own shelf!

Tom, Chuck, Ray and Bob are all great guys and their help was tremendous. We had a great time and lots of fun, but I had to be in Los Gatos for the night so I said my goodbyes and made plans for the next day to meet up with them in town for a ride in the mountains.

Chuck rode out with me on his Harley to show me the way.  I was enjoying my new fork springs until we got to the exit ramp. I tried to lean the bike but nothing happened. I pressed on the handle bar and almost wet my pants from what I saw. The handle bar was moving but the front wheel wasn’t! Somehow, between four “Certified Mechanics”, we forgot to tighten the fork pinch bolts and all that was holding everything together were the headlight ears.

I got off the curved ramp god knows how, and tried to catch up with Chuck (I had no idea where we were heading and didn’t want to lose him), but I couldn’t go as fast for the fear of losing control of the bike. Finally I caught up to him and flagged him to stop and we pulled over at a restaurant. Out of 6 bolts, 4 were finger tight and the other two barely hanging on. I escaped yet another fatal mistake…

I met up with Tom and Chuck in town the next day and we rode up on a twisty road going to the top of the mountain to kill some time at the Alice’s restaurant. This biker bar was a cool place and there were hundreds of bikers from all over. The ride was great and besides witnessing a motorcycle accident scene on the way, was without a glitch.

Tom treated us again to burgers and beer and we basked in the sunshine, talking and enjoying the view. Bob and Chuck took off for San José and Tom and I rode on highway 1 south for Santa Cruz. We said our goodbyes and I headed south as usual and Tom north back to San José.

I had a great time staying in Silicon Valley and made some amazing friends. California has been good to me so far. Next stop:  Monterey and Carmel…

First off, I would like to thank fellow GSers Rob and Lisa Hayward for their generous donations. The GS resources website has been a great help on mechanical issues and is still holding first place on donations. Thank you for everything guys.

My reunion in Ashland with Gib was bitter sweet. I stayed with him for 3 nights and left for California on Sunday. He gave me my last million-dollar haircut with his Hikari scissors which are unbelievably sharp and expensive. They are handmade by the Samurai people and the smallest scissors they make are sold for around $600!

He wanted to buy a laptop and I wanted to get a smaller one so we made a deal and I exchanged my 15.4” Dell for a 10.1” HP that he paid for. This machine is very compact and portable but it’s like an “Etch A Sketch” compared to my old one. We flipped a coin for the farewell lunch and after feeding me for the last time, I was on my way to California.

I took Todd’s advice to take the California Hwy 96 and what a great route it turned out to be. California has the best roads in the world in my opinion, and 96 was no different. With all its twist and turns, it passes through the Klamath National Forest which is breathtaking. I was hoping to camp somewhere along the way but I kept on pushing toward Eureka. At around 8pm I decided I had enough and wanted to camp but there was no camp spot around and I was approaching more populated areas. In Hoopa I found a campground that was closed but I figured I would poach it anyway.

Hoopa is on an Indian reservation and the whole place looked kind of iffy but it was already dark and I had no choice. Plastic bags and trash all over the place, this campground was a true dump but if that wasn’t enough, two Indian guys in a truck rolled in and stopped where I was going to camp. They shouted something that I didn’t understand and drove off and parked about 100 yards away. They started howling and making war noises (I used to watch a lot of western movies so I know what that sounds like). After a while they got in their truck and started approaching my site still making noises. It was pitch dark and no one else around so I didn’t take their noises as a friendly gesture. I got my hatchet out, opened my Kershaw knife and got the bear spray out of the sheath. I turned on the bike headlight and stood with an axe in one hand and pepper spray in other behind the light, waiting.

The truck stopped right in front of my campsite and the guy in the passenger side started putting on black gloves! At that moment I knew I was in it for more than a friendly talk. I gripped the axe handle harder and stood still, but he never came out of the truck.

The driver stepped on the gas and the truck took off with a screeching noise and they left the area. I really wanted to camp there but I didn’t want to be surprised in the middle of the night by a truck full of angry Indians so I rode off on my bike like I stole it.

For the first time since the start of this trip, I rode at night and the Hwy 96 became my nemesis. With my crappy headlight ,I could barely see the turns let alone the flat spots off the road to pitch my tent and the night dragged on. I was getting pretty tired and my eyes were hurting from concentrating on the road and looking for but not finding a single spot to camp.

I got to Eureka at 10:30pm and went straight to a Super 8 Motel and checked in for $59. I was mad at myself for getting in a situation like that and risking my life when I could have easily camped out at 6 pm for free in day light. Never again.

The next day all hell broke loose and Northern California experienced its first storm of the year (it was on the front page of the San Francisco news). Rain came down in sheets and oily roads turned into one big skating rink. I took it easy all the way and stopped to check out the giant Redwoods of the Northern California forests along the way. Ranging from 500 to 2000 years old, these threes are about a size of a submarine! Standing next to them I felt like one of the little people in Gulliver’s Travels.

That night, I stayed with Harrison and Elizabeth, my couch surfing hosts and was out of the rain. I had a great time staying with these two love birds. Both smart and athletic, we talked about climbing, current politics, stupid things and drank some fine scotch out of Harrison’s collection. He gave me a lock-picking tool and a practice lock and lectured me on how it works, but as much as I tried, I never even came close to successfully picking the lock. But I’ll keep trying.

I’m staying here for another night, then meeting Tom in San José for some bike maintenance. Stay tuned…

When I was in Beaverton, I asked Todd if he knew a road that went from the coast to Medford avoiding major highways and he said “Yes, there is a road, but you don’t want to take it with a loaded bike like that”.

The road that goes from Gold beach to Merlin is indeed a challenging road. I know because I rode it. It passes through the Rogue Wilderness and Kalmiopsis National Forest and is 50 miles long. It is a one lane road with two way traffic, and with blocked sections due to slides and loose gravel patches. It is a gorgeous ride through some the oldest forests in Oregon that goes from sea level to 4500 ft at the Bear Camp Pass. The wind was so strong that at times I thought I would get blown off the ridge and the temperature dropped by the minute.

To begin with, at the junction in Agnes, I took a wrong turn and I was officially lost. After riding for 40 minutes, I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong. The map showed that the road was paved and heading east but my compass kept on pointing north and the road I was on had turned into single tracks.

For the only second time since the start of the expedition, I fired up the GPS. (I used it once to tell Todd where I was in Portland but I wasn’t lost that time). My GPS is not a mapping unit so I had to match the coordinates to the map and figure out my location. The problem with the map that I have is that the latitude markers are not very precise and had to be divided into minutes and seconds so I could get an exact fix on my position. With no ruler to measure, I did a good job of dividing the degrees latitude and to my horror, I found myself about 12 miles north of my intended route. My compass was right, I was going north indeed.

I backtracked to the junction and found the sign for 23E to Merlin. At Bear Camp Pass, my thermometer showed 29 degrees Fahrenheit in full sunshine. My hands where frozen in my summer leather gloves and I could swear I had an icicle hanging from my nose. All I wanted was to get to lower elevation quick and be out of the wind but the road didn’t go down. Instead it kept on going at 4000 ft for another 5 miles before finally descending down. It was getting late in the day and I had to find a camping spot but I had no water.

I saw a truck camper in the woods and approached it to ask the guy for drinking water. The man in the camper was John Scullion and he turned out to be one hell of a nice guy, and in all strangeness, he was from South Carolina, where I lived for few years. We knew the same fishing spots and beaches and had a lot to talk about so I pitched my tent next to his camper and got down to talking.

I made chicken cacciatore with Basmati rice for dinner over the fire and he told me what gold mining was all about which I found very interesting. He even showed me some of the gold nuggets he found and we got along pretty good. The next morning, after a mushroom omelet (regular mushroom, that is), I hit the road to Medford. In Medford, the Rogue Regency Inn sponsored my accommodation for two days while I went around the town looking for sponsors. The hotel was clean with indoor pool and spa and friendly staff.

Motorcycle Superstore headquarters is located in Medford and I wanted to get those guys on-board. They have not call me back yet but I hope they do. While in Town, Kurt Beckman from Bike Barn Motorcycles did sponsor me and Medford was all good again. Bike Barn is on the N. Pacific Highway in Medford and their focus is on dirt bikes but nevertheless, it was a cool shop. He had some Husaberg dirt bikes which you don’t see around very often, along with some cool Moto Guzzies. Thank you Kurt for your support.

I left Medford this morning and will stay in Ashland tonight with Gib (we finally caught up again). I will head south tomorrow towards San José to meet up with Tom, another member from GSresources to do the final adjustments to the bike before crossing the border into México.

P.S.  I have not received a penny in donations for Centro de Bethania. Get moving guys. I’m counting on you.

This flu took a lot out of me as big city traffic, rain, and popping pills don’t really mix. There were many people who sent me get well emails including Debbi Matte, my battery sponsor (Batteries Plus), who looked after me like a mother hen and sent me jokes to cheer me up. Thank you guys.

I made Portland a little after 4 and started looking for a rack to replace the broken one. The only place I knew that carried the same rack was Wal-Mart, but since Portland is anti Wal-Mart, I had one hell of a time locating one and when I did, they were out. After riding for another hour, I found another Wal-Mart on the other side of the town and luckily they had one left. I called Wade and got directions to his house and was home free.

Wade had read my posts on ADVrider.com and offered me his garage and sleeping quarters which I desperately needed. After a couple glasses of wine, we got to work and replaced the old rack with the new one and mounted the solar panel that Debbi gave me on the right rear aluminum pannier. I stayed with wade for two nights and reorganized my gear, shifting the weight backward a little.  Back while I was in Seattle, I had stopped at Touratech USA.  Tom, the owner, was kind enough to supply me with a great Ortlieb dry bag which has made my life easier. No more garbage bag over my backpack for water proofing!

Another member of GSresources in the Portland area named Todd had offered his garage while I was still back in Prince George (BC, Canada), so I called him and met up with him in Beaverton. He took me out to lunch to a Hawaiian joint and I stuffed myself with kalua pig. Man that was good. He performed some surgery on the front forks to straighten the bend I had in them along with drilling another hole in my broken windshield and I was on my way. Todd is a canny navigator and all the directions he gave me were right on. Thanks to his gift, I found my way out of the wine country and toward the coast quickly but wetly.

The Oregon coast is a phenomenal place- 800 miles of sand and giant rocks coming out of the ocean, with little towns scattered all along the way. Speed limit is 55 at most and I don’t like it, but the scenery makes up for it. After Beaverton, I stayed with my CouchSurfing host Corrina in Otis for two nights. She was the only person in the area on the web site and I was lucky to be her guest. A non-profit environmentalist, she lives in a cute house nestled in the woods of the country side with 13 chickens and a cool cat. She made a killer dinner of fish and pasta with fresh vegetables and I devoured a whole skillet of it.

The next evening I worked with the Lincoln City Food Pantry to get more familiar with the food bank system in Oregon. My impression was mixed as it was very much like the other food banks I’ve visited and volunteered for:  it lacked an educational infrastructure.

With shelves full of food, it is sad to witness people coming in and stocking up on unhealthy garbage while passing up the fresh produce that was also offered. There was only one lady who picked up an apple in the 3 hours that I was there and I had to take a picture of it. Feeding without providing education is wasting resources. As simple as that. Food education is something we are lacking and there has not been a serious attempt to make it a reality. Let’s try cooking sessions in churches one Sunday out of the month. I’m sure God would be fine with that.

In the year 2009, the obesity rate finally caught up to the hunger figures. According to United Nations, there are 1.1 billion people worldwide who are suffering from hunger and that exact number holds true for obesity. Of course there is “no relationship whatsoever” between these two phenomena and you would be labeled a communist if you ever tried to make one.

In our own country, we have an obesity rate of over 30%! That means that out of every 3 people, one weighs as much as the other two, and what do we do? We switch to Diet-Coke instead of the regular Coke! These are the two ends of the same spectrum of poverty. Have you ever wondered why George Clooney doesn’t weigh 400lbs but the guy in the trailer park down the road does? Education and healthy diet is the answer. When you are on food stamps, you don’t pick the healthiest food, you pick the most filling one.

Sometimes I think that human race is not as evolved as other species. We care more about our lawns and Halloween costumes than we care about our neighbors. I read an article on vampire bats not long ago that made me shiver. Vampire bats, which primarily feed on the blood of mammals and birds, must obtain a blood meal at least every 3 days or face starvation. On a given night, there are individual bats that do not successfully feed. Fortunately for them, those who do get their share of blood, regurgitate some of their meal to feed the unsuccessful ones. This behavior has evolved over time, and the bats have developed a level of recognition to where they will refuse to regurgitate blood to feed those bats who have not participated in food sharing in the past.

With our IPods and million mega pixel cameras, with our triple over-head cam engines and Mars Rovers, we still don’t possess a decency of sharing our meals with those who need it desperately. It wouldn’t cost us much.  Maybe if we didn’t buy another $18 stupid gadget that ends up in a box in our 19 door garage; maybe if we cooked a meal once in a while instead of stuffing our guts with shit shiny Chinese food from a buffet, or buying a 50 gallon drum of mustard from Costco, we could scramble up 20 bucks to feed a family of 4. And get them educated so they don’t have to eat fat and sugar when they do get to choose their food. Maybe I’m a visionary or maybe I’m just talking to my god damn self or maybe both. Perhaps that’s the problem.

This month is a month of giving. Spare that ugly orange walnut turkey that you put on the kitchen table to bring a “Holiday Feel” to your home; instead, bring joy and life to a family by giving them their very basic need: food. Scroll down and take a good look at what a “Mechanically Separated Turkey” (this was on the label, I didn’t make this up) looks like in a Food Share freezer, then compare it to what your Butterball will look like on Thanksgiving Day.

For the month of October, I’ve chosen a well-deserving and unique organization called “The Centro de Recuperacion Nutricional Infantil Bethania” in Jocotán, Guatemala. It is a private medical center that treats about 400 malnourished children each year. They are desperately underfunded and your donations are matter of life and death.

Children that are being treated in this facility are extremely malnourished. Antonio, the boy pictured on my donation page of this website, was the weight of a 6 month old baby although he was 3 years old at the time the picture was taken. Every recovery costs $900 per child; that’s in a nation where 75% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.
Please make a donation of any amount (think of it as a second turkey for thanksgiving dinner) and I will pitch in $2000 out of my own personal travel funds, even though it will make the expedition more challenging for me. Donations can be sent by check, cash, kisses, hugs and/or credit cards. Please visit the Donation Page for more information.

Let’s not be human for a while, let’s be vampire bats…(if you make a bumper sticker out of that, I want royalties :P)

I know it’s been a long time since my last update but I’ve been sick ever since my last post battling a bad case of influenza.

I got to Ferndale rather early on the 23^rd, and had to wait around for Ted to get off of work. I bought some oil and another tube of epoxy for later patch works and waited at the library for Ted to call. I arrived at his house around 6pm and we got to work, changing the oil and drilling a hole in my front box for a camera mount. One of Ted’s friends named Carter showed up on an another old GS bike and we got to talking for a good long time. When Carter left, Ted and I talked about skiing for another 2 hours and finally I hit the hay after midnight in the “Man Cave.” There’s nothing like waking up to a fresh cup of coffee, two big smoked salmon steaks and a box of crackers. I said my goodbyes to Ted and got on the road for Seattle early in the morning.

If you have a choice between driving in Downtown Seattle on a loaded bike with no map or giving birth to a flaming walrus, look into the second option. Seattle is a city of agony. I rode around downtown for hours without finding a single parking spot that was safe or cheap. 0-2 hours of parking goes for $8 and more than 2 hours for $16. There are cheaper places to park, but most likely the bike would get stripped as soon as I turned my head.

After a long day of cursing and swearing, I finally hooked up with my host, Natalie and hunkered down at her house. Natalie and Christy were my hosts in Seattle and they were so nice and cool I didn’t want to leave. I got sick the first night and was no good after that but I managed to make some chicken marsala for them as a show of appreciation. Thank you guys.

Between the antibiotics and fever reducers I have no recollection of the small details but I got out of Seattle on Sunday and went to Chris Mathews’ house in Buckley, WA. It was 2 years since I saw Chris and the reunion was great. I stayed at Chris’s for the night and as much as I would have loved to stay longer, I had to leave the next morning. There is a big storm coming over the northwest that could be pretty nasty, plus it’s no fun riding in rain, nor while being sick either.

After a great breakfast of sausage and eggs at Chris’s, I bid Chris and his hospitable and cool girlfriend farewell and headed south again.

I was almost dozing off on the highway when I heard metal scraping the road and to my horror, one of the front boxes was hanging by a thread of aluminum and scraping the ground at 70mph. I slowed down but couldn’t stop since I was in the fast lane and Hwy 5 is a 10 lane highway. By the time I made my way closer to the shoulder, the box finally came off and started bouncing down the road at high speed. Miraculously, it did not hit any cars and it came to stop right on the shoulder of the highway.

I picked up the box and lashed it to my rear pannier and got back on the highway again, bound for Portland, Oregon. I will be staying at Wade’s house with a garage tonight so I’ll put on a new rack and will adjust the load so this doesn’t happen again.

I’m still pretty sick, so bear with me here. I will write more as soon as I can.

The Hwy 99 was a long and twisty hell. On a bike with an oil leak, I really didn’t enjoy it one bit as I my riding pants got soaked and construction road blocks at every bend made it a 5 hour ride. The leaking oil kept dripping on the exhaust and every time I stopped, a cloud of smoke encircled me which made breathing difficult.

I got to Vancouver during rush hour and found my way toward Sarah’s apartment. Sarah was my CouchSurfing host on Friday and Saturday and she was a great one at that.

On Saturday, I finally found a valve cover gasket and oil filter and Andy offered his garage to do the operation. Andy read about my problems with the bike and called me when I was in Williams Lake and he even offered to ship the complete rear wheel off of his bike to get me down to Vancouver (I had already changed the tire by that time, but his selfless act of kindness was touching). On Sunday afternoon, we tore the bike apart once again and changed the valve cover gasket along with the tar colored oil in Andy’s garage and had a great time talking about old GS motorcycles the whole time.

My Sunday host had canceled on me and I had nowhere to go so, with Sarah’s help, I found a cheap hostel called the American Backpacker in downtown Vancouver. This place was rundown to put it politely. If I concentrated hard enough, I could do a study on rats and other small mammals in their natural habitat. But if cost only $10 and I needed a place to stay so I checked in. The only parking spot was in the back alley and as I was getting my stuff out, I noticed that there was broken window glasses all over the lot, so I put 4 different locks on the bike and started walking in. I was only 15 feet away from my bike when I heard a window shatter and saw a guy running with something in his hand and that was enough to turn around right there and go back to the bike. I moved the bike to right in front of the hostel and chained it under the light, but I still didn’t feel completely safe, so I opened the double door of the hostel and moved the bike inside in the front hall. I didn’t care what anyone would say, I was not about to move it an inch, no matter what.

Besides being a dirty place, this hostel was one of the coolest places I’ve visited in Canada. I made many friends from all over the world and had a great time.

On Monday, I managed to get a print shop to do my brochure printings. Thanks to TR Trades Production, LTD, I now have 500 brochures to pass around. Danielle Dongan, the owner of the shop, was super helpful and she even tri-folded them for me before I picked them up. Thank you Danielle, you’re a doll.

I spent Monday and Tuesday at Elizabeth’s. My new host was a cutie who rides her yellow JAZZ scooter all over town and her dream is to do the Tour de Europe on her Bicycle. An explorer at heart, she was smart and very enjoyable to talk to.

On Tuesday, I decided to do some fundraising on the rich side of the city, so I setup my display in front of the Starbucks (one of my sponsors) with the help of a pretty and very enthusiastic Persian girl named Natalie (I hope the spelling is right). Natalie provided muffin samples, a donation bucket and tables, but as the day went by, I realized that it’s hard to get a penny out of this pretentious bunch.

5 hours of begging and only $20. That has got to be a new record for me. (I didn’t see one beggar in the whole area; maybe they knew what I didn’t know!) There was a lady who bought a bottle of water for her dog while pushing her $4000 stroller and refused to throw her change in the bucket (she ate the free sample though.) I watched a parade of Lamborghinis, Mercedes, and Ferraris go by with people in them who had so much but spared so little. When you talked to them, they all bitched about the economy, like they were suffering. I suppose they used to use their helicopters to do the shopping, but now they are forced to drive their crappy Rolls-Royces. There is truth to the saying “the less they have, the more they give.”

I am leaving for Ferndale, Washington tomorrow. It will be good to get back to the States after all.

Seven o’clock in the morning. Gib woke me up. I wanted to kill him but I was so tired I couldn’t even get out of the bed. I rolled around and listened to his gibberish for another hour until I couldn’t take it anymore and got up.

First thing, I talked to the Hotel manager and she sponsored the accommodation so I could get the bike fixed before moving out. I already missed my scheduled lecture in Prince George and also because of the delay, my Vancouver events were canceled too, so I figured I should take care of the bike at least.

I found a carwash and washed all the oil and mud off the bike and got to work with a can of brake parts cleaner and paper towels. After half an hour of cleaning, I was able to JB weld the leak area and it held. My second task was to find a tire, but after a few calls, I found out that the closest place was 300km away and I was out of luck. While I was working on the bike, a Japanese guy showed up and took me to a motorcycle shop two blocks away and they plugged my tire one more time and didn’t charge me either. Very nice folks and the shop owner had a GS1000 that he drag raced. It was a cool bike but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me.

Wednesday morning, Gib took off early to go to the Harley Davidson dealership and said he would meet me there. When I got there, he was gone and I didn’t see him anywhere on the road either. Well, I like the solitude better anyway; that way I’m my own man.

I rode south toward Vancouver and stopped at Williams Lake to get the new tire and that’s when I met Dave Graf. Dave is the owner of New Life Cycle, arguably the biggest motorcycle shop in Canada. At first I only saw a few motorcycles here and there, but when he gave me the grand tour, I could not believe my eyes. This warehouse had over 260 complete bikes and well over 1000 bikes that have been parted out, parts meticulously organized on shelves.

A motorcycle traveler himself, Dave has been to South America four times and as soon as he found out I was heading there as well, we were in business. I switched out the old tire for a new one in his yard and he gave me a tachometer drive and cable for free so I got the tach fixed as well. He invited me to have dinner and spend the night at his house and off we went. We went through 5 giant albums full of pictures from Mexico to Argentina. Dave is a generous man who’s been involved with poverty issues in Latin America and supports many families and children south of the border. He even gave me two books to take with me so I don’t have to read warning labels off of my underwear anymore! Thank you Dave.

In the morning, we parted ways and I headed south again. I was not in a riding mood, so I stopped a million times and finally pulled over and set up my tent on top of a pass and called it good enough for the day. I will head to Vancouver tomorrow morning and will stay there for a few days. Now that I’ve missed my events, I’m planning roadside fundraisers which should be fun.

By the way, today is my birthday. Don’t bother sending me all the gifts; just make some donations so I can meet the September goal…