This weekend things have started to move on the Andes Moto Extreme website development. Walter Colebatch got in touch about his latest project and through mutual support of each others projects I am now following on from my work on Sibirsky Extreme to now focus my efforts on the new website.

Sherri Jo Wilkins has also joined the team and will be the base camp manager, photographer and videographer. Other members of the team include:

Walter Colebatch – Team Captain
Lukas Matzinger – Technical Director
Barton Churchill – The Mountain Man

The plan is to take a troika of Husaberg FE 570s to South America and make a world motorcycle altitude record attempt of 20,500′ 6,250m!

You can follow the prep here (www.andesmotoextreme.com) ready for a kick off in March 2012.

Ok perhaps the name is overly dramatic considering I’m modifying a DRZ but it made me chuckle for a moment. In all seriousness though the project has started in earnest. In recent years there has been a hive of activity in Holland when it comes to Adventure Motorcycling. Whether it is welding extra fuel tanks, luggage racks or prepping suspension the Dutch are the experts. Walter’s bike is currently in Holland being prepped for its 2011 outing.

In my case I found a small photo on Google of a DRZ. I traced it back to a guy called Allan Boerlage and I got in touch with him. He’s a busy man but he kindly offered to create a mould of his custom Rallye screen for the DRZ. We talked about this just before Christmas and I said to him that there really was no rush as I don’t yet have the bike. I said mid February would be fine. Time has flown and here we are, mid Feb. True to his word Allan has produced the fairing and what a beauty it is.

Breaking out of the mould

A quick pull and the finished product begins to emerge

It is black all the way through so won’t require painting

Many thanks Allan!

I’m scheduled to travel to The Netherlands, Germany & Austria in a few weeks so I will be sure to thank Allan in person, share a beer and pay him for his time at the beginning of the 2011 everywherevirtually adventure bike project.

I have not posted for a long time because there were a number of false starts and idea changes. My circumstances have changed quite a bit and after much thought I stopped compromising on the kind of bike I needed. I was considering a bike that would be a halfway house between going two up and adventure overlanding. Well to be frank that just ain’t going to work.

So for now the requirement has shifted to a significantly lighter 400cc bike that is cheap to run, easy to service and with parts easily available anywhere in the world. That bike is the Suzuki DRZ400SM. yes you read that right, the SM as in Super Moto. I need a bike I can use on the street once in a while and the SM is good for that… check the video below…

As you can see it fly’s pretty well too and I like flying! There will be many detractors on my choice. Some will say it is an old design, others will say it is too heavy (at 295 pounds / 133kg) even though I will be losing 100kg in comparison to my old BMW and some others will say it is too slow. yet more will say that compared to a 600 or 800cc bike the service intervals will be too frequent.

I have checked all the pro’s and cons and for my purposes this is THE perfect bike. It can be easily changed into a dirt bike, it is easy to work on, with limited electronics. Fuel range can be increased quite substantially and my luggage requirements these days are in the realm’s of Dave Lomax etherealness.

Will I be trudging the painfully boring expanses of Europe’s autoroutes, motorways and autobahn’s? No I won’t. I’ve done that, been there and to be honest it is a waste of time and effort. The real fun starts when you get to the perimeters of this continent of ours.

The bike you see below belongs to a friend of mine in Holland and he has very kindly offered to cast a fairing from the same design he has used on this bike.

I like his fuel setup here which is a 17L Safari tank. That said I’m toying with a 17L on the front and a 5L on the rear similar to this configuration.

While 22litres of fuel is more than enough in most places I have a riding style that means I like to keep stops to a minimum and keep on riding. Every fuel stop usually ends up with 30 minutes of faffing about especially if other people are involved. So I am thinking of doing a 28L on the front and a 5L on the rear. The only downside to this is weight if fully fueled up and the 28L suffers from having 5L of fuel you cannot utilize because it needs a vacuum pump to drag it up from the bottom of the tank. If I can sort the pump issues and have some degree of control with regard to the distribution of the fuel front and back then I will go with the bigger tank.

As far as spares and kit goes for the bike I have drawn up a list based on Dave Lomax’s advice after his numerous trips into the deserts and lonely places around the world on a DRZ400.

Take a look at my bike kit list here

if you are interested in my pack list for myself it currently looks like this…

Before I write another thing I would like to thank Grant & Susan Johnson and Chris Colling & Dave Lomax at adventure-Spec for making my attendance possible this year. Without them it would not have happened.

the 2010 10th anniversary event was much bigger than previous years. As I rode up the driveway to Lumb Farm I said to myself “Oh Wow”. They had pulled out all the stops. There were more vendors, more bikes, biggest tents, a video screen. It was all together an impressive event.

The campfire was blazing, the road kill cookout was in full swing but most importantly the people made the event special. Old faces, new faces, adventurers to be and adventurers with many years and locations under their belts.

In addition to the great setup the weather was perfect. It was consistently warm and sunny for the entire event. 28C and wall to wall sunshine. You could not have asked for better.

Attendees included Austin Vince and Lois Pryce, Jenny Furneaux, Simon Gandolfi, Walter Colebatch, Jenny Morgen, Peter & Kay Forward and many many more that can be found here

This year I was of course without my F800GS and arrived on my 1994 CB500. I guessed I would be the only attendee on a CB500 but by some strange quirk of the universe two guys arrived on loaded up CB500′s. Not only that but they plan to ride around the world over 80 months on these machines. I was heartened by their story and impressed at their low tech approach to luggage and increasing comfort. They were good guys, with a good sense of humour and I reckon they will go far and I personally will be looking forward to reading their story.

To find more photos of the event have a look here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/everywherevirtually/sets/72157624238859917/with/4736800180/

Or click on the gallery above.

I was riding down the road today and the handling of the bike became a little wobbly. A quick glance at the front tire and everything was OK. I got to the traffic lights and had a check of the rear and all was not well. It was looking as if it was at half pressure. I’ve no idea where I picked up the nail but it was kind of irrelevant now anyway.

I went to the petrol station to get some air and then headed to Halfords. I kind of knew they wouldn’t be open at 8pm on a Saturday evening but it was worth a look anyway. I also realise that Halfords are pretty useless when it comes to most things. They are always out of stock of everything you need. Even when the items are in stock they often stock substandard items and if you do manage to find what you want they are staffed by spotty teenagers who are work shy and only want to talk to their work mates. If you ask them something they read it off the information on the box you have just picked up as if you cant read the box yourself . Anyway I headed home on my slowly deflating rear tyre.

I realised the nail was not a nail and some of it had snapped off right down to the level of the tyre. It was like a little tube so of course the air was whistling out of the centre of this tube. It reminded me of the stinger thing the police use to stop cars in their tracks.

So Sunday’s task is to find a “Stop & Go Tire Plugger” Thankfully I have tubeless tyres so I don’t even have to remove the wheel or tire and the fix will do until I change the tyres in 900 or so miles.

Not much news to report really. The BMW will be picked up on Monday by their collections agents. Already the finance people are after the remaining £1300 but I’m out of work so I wish them luck in trying to retrieve that money because If I don’t have it they certainly can’t have it. In the interim I am prepping the little Honda.

The biggest challenge for me is the ergonomics. I have been used to the stretched out riding position of the 800 and despite me being only 5′ 7″ (171 cm) the distance between the seat and the pegs is too short. The pegs are also behind me a little and of course the bars are low and set forward which adds to that cramped feeling. I’m hoping adding some bar risers and my airhawk will help in the short term.

The bikes engine is sound and the few things that are wrong with it are cosmetic. Somebody has previously tarted it up and not done a very thorough job of it. Springs painted in black paint without a primer so it just flakes off.

The forks, engine casings and other silver bits again have been painted in silver paint with very obvious brush strokes.

various nuts and bolts are rusty, so to save time and money I have been taking each one out, cleaning it up and spraying it in black satin hammerite which gives them a powder coated look. Hammerite also has the benefit of inhibiting rust. The scratched panels and gaudy pink decal will also be going. Everything is being primed and sprayed satin black. Matt black is not as hard wearing.

I replaced the bulbs in the headlight and instrumentation panel. I was going to install my HID 50w bulb but then realised that the lens is plastic and will melt or go brown as has been discovered on various forums. There is a fair amount of rust inside that light and I need to take the thing apart and clean it up. I haven’t got the time at the moment to start messing with the wiring loom so for now I just cleaned it up enough to get by until the summer.

My tired and battered Sat nav is also getting a make over. If you look closely the screen is cracked in the bottom left corner and the unit itself has a crack in it. It makes using the back button and certain keys problematic. So It is also getting the satin black plasti-kote treatment. I’m hoping it will all look good in the end. The British weather as always has been problematic. 5 celsius in May with damp and occasional showers does not make for good spray painting conditions.

My friend Greg in Austria gave me some good tips though. One of which was to put the cans in a bucket of hot water. This has the effect of increasing the pressure inside the can which will result in less blobs. Genius.

Fixing a bent footpeg – Attempt 1 from everywherevirtually on Vimeo.

The last time I did it was on the shore of Lake Prespa in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Fitting brake pads in Macedonia from everywherevirtually on Vimeo.

After staying the night in the little village of Stenje beside lake Prespa in Macedonia I decided it was a good time to do some early morning maintenance before breakfast.

Later on this day we would be riding through Kosovo and Serbia and we wanted the bikes to be in tip top shape so that we would not have to make any unnecessary stops in the middle of nowhere.

I had such fine tools as a rusty nail, a rock and a few inappropriate spanners. Oh well. It worked in the end.

So last week I ordered a new set from Motorworks in the UK. When editing the video above a chance comment by Walter in the film about twin disks on the front highlighted a schoolboy error I have made. I ordered 1 set of rear pads and 1 front when I should have ordered 2 for the front. It is no big deal as I’m in the UK next week and the bike is hiding away from the snow and ice for this week anyway.

I have been rather remiss of late in updating this blog. I’ve been annoyed at myself because there has been a lot going on. A lot of good stuff going on… a lot of adventure motorcycling goodness

I recently attended the Horizons Unlimited UK summer meeting at Ripley in Derbyshire. This is an event that draws people from all over the world. That phrase is often used for events and it’s always a little hollow but on this occasion it was true. We had Canadians, Americans, Dutch, Germans, Greeks, French, Irish, Spanish, Australian. Then there were the bikes. Not shiny, immaculate machines but battle hardened adventure motorcycles that had travelled the world. Sometimes many times over.

They bore the scars and stickers of many places around the globe and it was a delight to see. These bikes take on an almost mythical aura and are more than the sum of their parts. They tell a story of themselves and of their owners.

The welcome at Lumb farm was fantastic. I had ridden the 50 or so miles to Ripley straight after work in Manchester. Not long after leaving home I spotted another 800GS in front of me and assumed he was also off to the meeting. As it transpired he wasn’t and lived locally. nevertheless I made a new friend and had made a promise to share a brew in the future and talk bikes

I pressed on and arrived at Lumb Farm by 8pm. I had a very friendly welcome. I was given a map of the campsite, a bottle of water and some stickers. This was great because I’d been at thsi place the previous year for another event and the welcome was non existent. In fact it was bordering on rude. So I was setup for a great weekend.

I met Chris & Dave from Adventure-Spec. Despite me bringing a tent it would transpire that I would crash on the floor of their marquee shop. Although after one night of my snoring Dave decided to upgrade to the hotel “Volkswagon Van”.

The weekend was packed full of talks from adventurers that included Austin Vince, Sam Manicom, Ted Simon, Nick Sanders and many others. There was a roaring camp fire that was burning the whole weekend. A road kill cook out, workshops on how to change a tyre out in the wilds, yoga and many more events too numerous to mention.

It was a great event and not dominated by BMW GS’s wannabe travellers (I say that as a BMW GS owner myself). The people who attended were the real deal and hadn’t just bought into the image of adventure motorcycling. Most of these folks made their own luggage for Gods sake. They are hardcore!

My cramp buster stops the heat getting through to my last two fingers on my right hand.

To fix this I have drilled holes in it which allows more heat through. The weather is well below zero at the moment which made for perfect testing conditions.

There is a noticeable improvement after the mod and so I can say this is a success. Has anyone else noticed the same thing?

before:

the problem:

the solution:

I was careful not to drill too many holes and thus affect the structural integrity of the cramp buster when putting it back onto the handlebar grip. :thumb