homme de fer
Well-known member
Awesome!
No need for any other words to describe this thread.
No need for any other words to describe this thread.
Quit our jobs, sold our home and everything in it, gone riding...
- Thread starter Lightcycle
- Start date
Lightcycle, I enjoy so much reading your story and being able to follow along this awesome story. I do have some questions for you, with no disrespect intended, but more to see your perspective now that you guys have some months in your story.
1) is it going as you expected ? Is the original plan with expenses n stuff following relatively close as you guys originally planned it?
2) has your mentality of a long "vacation/road trip" changed over the last few months ? Do you in some form miss the routine ? Engaging your brain into work tasks and just productivity (again not trying to be rude or offensive), a home and/or your own bed?
3) how far are you planning to go? What happens when you hit Argentina or Patagonia ? Do you have a rough schedule of your general destinations ? Maybe a boat to Europe? Or Africa? Or Asia ?
Anyways, I won't hassle you with more questions (just curious really), and
as always thank you for sharing your story and posting your great pictures
1) is it going as you expected ? Is the original plan with expenses n stuff following relatively close as you guys originally planned it?
2) has your mentality of a long "vacation/road trip" changed over the last few months ? Do you in some form miss the routine ? Engaging your brain into work tasks and just productivity (again not trying to be rude or offensive), a home and/or your own bed?
3) how far are you planning to go? What happens when you hit Argentina or Patagonia ? Do you have a rough schedule of your general destinations ? Maybe a boat to Europe? Or Africa? Or Asia ?
Anyways, I won't hassle you with more questions (just curious really), and
as always thank you for sharing your story and posting your great pictures
I'm sure if he was, it was all part of the act!
NA was more expensive than we thought, even with camping, groceries and staying with friends (old and new). But Mexico has been a lot cheaper than we thought, so it's slowly balancing everything out. So yes, overall, it's very close to what we originally planned!
I don't really like routine. And I don't really like engaging my brain either
So even after 7 months, this lifestyle is perfect. But seriously, there is a routine to travel, you still have to figure out the next stop and how to get there, seek shelter, do laundry, grocery shop, cook, maintain yourself and the bikes, and all within a very constrictive budget as well.And as for engaging my brain, I'm experimenting with photography, and I spend quite a bit of time writing up what we see and do. Plus I'm learning lots of geeky stuff about Apache MIME handlers, MySQL databases, PHP scripting and AJAX and XML programming! Oh, and I'm learning Spanish as well!
There is absolutely no plan. If we get tired of travelling tomorrow, we'll stop. We've done so many motorcycle trips in the past and they've all been bounded by schedule and deadline, so we absolutely knew that this trip would be completely different - we'd drift from place to place, double-back if we wanted to, stay put for as long as we wanted until we felt the urge to move again, talk to people along the way to get ideas. And it's worked out well. There are places that we would never have discovered (like The Wave) if we had a route and a schedule!
Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/68.html
In 1943, a fissure opened up in a cornfield just outside of Uruapan. The farmer and his wife watched as ash and stones erupted from a small hole in the ground. A week later, that fissure grew up to be a volcano measuring 5 stories high and after a year it was over 1,000 feet tall! During this time, the volcano continued spewing lava and ash, covering the field and burying two neighbouring villages, Paricutin (which the volcano was named after) and San Juan.
We wanted to see this volcano first-hand, so we rode about 15 minutes outside of Uruapan and stopped for lunch in Nuevo San Juan. The inhabitants of old San Juan had plenty of time to evacuate their homes and they relocated their town further away from the volcano and named it Nuevo San Juan. After lunch, we rode further uphill to where the farmer's field used to be. The road crumbled away to a dirt path through a very scenic forest.
"Excuse me!" Neda beeps her horn... nothing.
"Con permisso?"... ah, that did the trick - Spanish-speaking cows...
The trail gets smaller and disappears into the forest
Trail becomes a field of fine volcanic ash
The ash is like sand, which is our sworn nemesis! Our big, heavy bikes with smooth, street tires leave deep gouges in the soft surface. As Neda tries to accelerate out of the dark ash, her rear tire leaves a smokey ash-cloud in the air that hangs in the air behind her until my bike cuts through it. Instead of paddling our way through all of this, we decide to park the bikes and hike 30 minutes to the farmer's field.
From across the field, the volcano appears in the distance, rising 1,400 feet in the air
Although we are assured by many people that the volcano is dormant, we're a bit taken aback
when hot, smelly gases still rise from the fissures in the ground!
For once, I'm not responsible for the smell behind me...
Scrabbling up the very steep summit of the volcano, we take different paths
because whoever's ahead leaves a small landslide of babyhead volcanic rocks
We reach the top, and bask in the... uh, sulfuric gases
Looking into the crater of the Paricutin Volcano
There's an awful lot of heat and activity here for a "dormant" volcano...
Hiking around the rim of the volcano
In the very far distance, my zoom lense captures what remains of old San Juan
Old San Juan lies almost completely covered in lava from the Paricutin Volcano. From the peak, we can see the direction and the shape of the lava flow. The only thing standing in San Juan is the top of the the church. It's too far to hike today, as it's taken us 2 hours to get from the bike to the summit, and the sun is starting to hang low in the sky.
Getting ready to descend
Spectacular views from the top of Paricuctin
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/f4ZeXooMhto" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
We take another way down the volcano, as it seems a bit more direct, although it's much more steeper. From the video above, we slid down as if we were on snowboards down a Double Black Diamond run - smoke still rising all around us! When we reached the bottom, we got a bit lost and spent almost an hour rummaging through thick foliage trying to find the path back to the field we came in from. We had less than an hour of sun left and I was starting to panic a bit, but thankfully Neda has the tracking skills of a woman in a shoe store on Boxing Day and we made it out into the field as the sun was beginning to set.
Just another 30 minutes to get back to the bike and then a ride through the forest in the dark. Not looking forward to that.
In 1943, a fissure opened up in a cornfield just outside of Uruapan. The farmer and his wife watched as ash and stones erupted from a small hole in the ground. A week later, that fissure grew up to be a volcano measuring 5 stories high and after a year it was over 1,000 feet tall! During this time, the volcano continued spewing lava and ash, covering the field and burying two neighbouring villages, Paricutin (which the volcano was named after) and San Juan.
We wanted to see this volcano first-hand, so we rode about 15 minutes outside of Uruapan and stopped for lunch in Nuevo San Juan. The inhabitants of old San Juan had plenty of time to evacuate their homes and they relocated their town further away from the volcano and named it Nuevo San Juan. After lunch, we rode further uphill to where the farmer's field used to be. The road crumbled away to a dirt path through a very scenic forest.
"Excuse me!" Neda beeps her horn... nothing.
"Con permisso?"... ah, that did the trick - Spanish-speaking cows...
The trail gets smaller and disappears into the forest
Trail becomes a field of fine volcanic ash
The ash is like sand, which is our sworn nemesis! Our big, heavy bikes with smooth, street tires leave deep gouges in the soft surface. As Neda tries to accelerate out of the dark ash, her rear tire leaves a smokey ash-cloud in the air that hangs in the air behind her until my bike cuts through it. Instead of paddling our way through all of this, we decide to park the bikes and hike 30 minutes to the farmer's field.
From across the field, the volcano appears in the distance, rising 1,400 feet in the air
Although we are assured by many people that the volcano is dormant, we're a bit taken aback
when hot, smelly gases still rise from the fissures in the ground!
For once, I'm not responsible for the smell behind me...
Scrabbling up the very steep summit of the volcano, we take different paths
because whoever's ahead leaves a small landslide of babyhead volcanic rocks
We reach the top, and bask in the... uh, sulfuric gases
Looking into the crater of the Paricutin Volcano
There's an awful lot of heat and activity here for a "dormant" volcano...
Hiking around the rim of the volcano
In the very far distance, my zoom lense captures what remains of old San Juan
Old San Juan lies almost completely covered in lava from the Paricutin Volcano. From the peak, we can see the direction and the shape of the lava flow. The only thing standing in San Juan is the top of the the church. It's too far to hike today, as it's taken us 2 hours to get from the bike to the summit, and the sun is starting to hang low in the sky.
Getting ready to descend
Spectacular views from the top of Paricuctin
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/f4ZeXooMhto" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
We take another way down the volcano, as it seems a bit more direct, although it's much more steeper. From the video above, we slid down as if we were on snowboards down a Double Black Diamond run - smoke still rising all around us! When we reached the bottom, we got a bit lost and spent almost an hour rummaging through thick foliage trying to find the path back to the field we came in from. We had less than an hour of sun left and I was starting to panic a bit, but thankfully Neda has the tracking skills of a woman in a shoe store on Boxing Day and we made it out into the field as the sun was beginning to set.
Just another 30 minutes to get back to the bike and then a ride through the forest in the dark. Not looking forward to that.
And then, salvation!
Castullo and his brother were also visiting the volcano, and they managed to drive through the ash and park a lot closer than we did. When they saw us walking though the ash field, they offered us a ride in the back of their pickup truck. We had seen tons of Mexicans riding in the back of pickup trucks in our travels, and now we were doing the exact same thing as the locals! So awesome! We were giggling like kids and taking lots of shakey pictures all the way back on the bumpy ride to the bikes, and the two brothers were shaking their heads and laughing at us from inside the truck.
We thanked Castullo for the ride and then negotiated the rest of the ash field
I couldn't put my kickstand down to help, so I had to ride past Neda, park and come back to pick her bike up.
It was getting dark very fast...
We did manage to get back to Uruapan safely, and it was only after a couple of days of rest from our long hike that we felt ready to venture out to the other side of Paricutin to try to find the remnants of the church in the lava.
Had lunch at Angahuan, the closest town to old San Juan
We were a bit worried about eating here, didn't seem that sanitary... but the food tasted good
We rented a couple of horses and descended down the steep path
strewn with volcanic rock
There it is, the remains of the church in old San Juan
This was the only building remaining in the entire town
There are shanties set up just outside the ruins and it looks like people still worship at the church
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Just a geeky observation...those sulphurous gasses can be pretty dangerous as they tend to knock out your smell receptors as the concentration increases and then at certain higher concentrations the gases can be as poisonous as cyanide but you can't smell them any more. Only a big consideration if you're in a hollow or depression with no wind though.........or if the volcano is about to kick off with a fireworks display..
Yeah, we were out in the open the whole time, but when we spent time exploring the areas around the fissures, I did feel a little light-headed. Also, the rocks got pretty hot to the touch as well! You were able to hike down to the floor of the crater but we didn't have enough time.
Actually walking around an active volcano and watching the lava flow out of it would be so cool and is on my bucket list. I think Hawaii has a few...
I like volcanoes, geysers etc...saw some bubbling mud pits up close in Costa Rica that were pretty cool with the steam coming out the ground at various points such as in your pic. Also went to Arenal twice to see the volcano there (at one time the most active in Central America) but both times the clouds were down and saw nothing...kept hearing it rumbling though which was awesome. Couple of good ones in El Salvador/Guatemala too, one extinct but you can wander all around the rim and the other was kicking off at the time so again we couldn't get close, the one in Guatemala went nuts pretty recently I think too. Hawaii is on my list too.
One of the things I'd love to see is the lightning that accompanies the ash cloud of an eruption. I've seen pictures and they awesome!
Jeez, we are moving so slow right now, Darien seems like a million miles away. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Oh wait a minute, there is no bridge!
Just wondering....how are you crossing the Darien Gap?
Jeez, we are moving so slow right now, Darien seems like a million miles away. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Oh wait a minute, there is no bridge!
Just learned what a dormant volcano is.
And just learned what the Darien Gap is.
Learning is fun!!!
BTW, I notice you guys constantly wearing motorcycle gear in, how do I put this, strange situations. For example recently Neda is riding a horse with motorcycle gear on (you always seem to have the same gear on but that is another question). There are others if I go back through the pages. This must a times get a) hot and b) smelly. Have you guys not figured out a way to dump the gear when you are on a tour etc?
alb
And just learned what the Darien Gap is.
Learning is fun!!!
BTW, I notice you guys constantly wearing motorcycle gear in, how do I put this, strange situations. For example recently Neda is riding a horse with motorcycle gear on (you always seem to have the same gear on but that is another question). There are others if I go back through the pages. This must a times get a) hot and b) smelly. Have you guys not figured out a way to dump the gear when you are on a tour etc?
alb
Well we have hardcases that we can store our gear in when we go hiking. The first day of volcano trekking was 6 hours long and over rocky terrain, so we ditched the gear and wore hiking clothes(you can see it in the pictures), but the second day, the trip was only 30 minutes, so we kept our gear on.
Not sure what you mean by wearing the same gear? We've sold everything, which means no house, no closet, no other gear, just whatever we can fit in what little storage space we have on the bike. Having an extra riding jacket and pants would take up way too much room! The jacket and pants are mesh, and they allow a lot of ventilation so we stay very cool and since they are textile we wash them every month. So only smelly towards the end of the month...
Not sure what you mean by wearing the same gear? We've sold everything, which means no house, no closet, no other gear, just whatever we can fit in what little storage space we have on the bike. Having an extra riding jacket and pants would take up way too much room! The jacket and pants are mesh, and they allow a lot of ventilation so we stay very cool and since they are textile we wash them every month. So only smelly towards the end of the month...
Well we have hardcases that we can store our gear in when we go hiking. The first day of volcano trekking was 6 hours long and over rocky terrain, so we ditched the gear and wore hiking clothes(you can see it in the pictures), but the second day, the trip was only 30 minutes, so we kept our gear on.
Not sure what you mean by wearing the same gear? We've sold everything, which means no house, no closet, no other gear, just whatever we can fit in what little storage space we have on the bike. Having an extra riding jacket and pants would take up way too much room! The jacket and pants are mesh, and they allow a lot of ventilation so we stay very cool and since they are textile we wash them every month. So only smelly towards the end of the month...
Just hang one of these babies around your neck near the end of the month. Manly, woodsy smell.
Loving the write-ups! Happy travels!
It's actually an F650GS, with the 800cc twin engine, and it's holding up amazing. No major problems (knock on wood), other than regular maintenance, tires, new chain at 35K, pads, light bulbs, etc. It's been very reliable so far.
The Tiger 800 is nice as well, I rode one in Iceland a couple of years ago. It's a bit characterless, especially for a triple, and I wish I would have gotten hold of the 800XC, which is more comparable to the F800GS, with the knobbies, upgraded suspension and wire-spoked wheels, etc.
Tiger 800 in Iceland
I Love KTMs! We were originally going to do the trip on two KTMs, but at the last minute, KTM called us and pulled their sponsorship because they didn't think we would be able to complete the trip...
Oh wait, that was someone else...
