2007-08-25

Bombay's pub in Dawson City

Beautiful and warm day. A girl playing piano. The whole town is still sleepy, like if everyone was recovering from an hangover. No, that's just me.

I've been procrastinating for too long, I need too start this thread! It's the first time that I’ll write a ride report while traveling and it’s so hard . Riding most of the day, when we stop there seems to be always something better to do than sitting in front of a computer. Oh well, we’ll do our best…

(longish prologue)

Long ago when I signed up to my favorite motorcycle website AdvRider.com I remember entering in my profile for Dream ride: ‘South America to Patagonia’. Over the years I updated the profile for new bikes and such but the ‘dream’ stayed the same.

Lately I was starting to think that it would stay a dream for ever…

Then bad news happened: my company was being bought by a much bigger one and layoffs would occur. Stressful times, especially because I liked my job and team very much. But it could also be an opportunity! After a lot of thinking and discussion with my wife and friends we decided that it was worth taking the risk so I volunteered for the severance package. I will be thankful all my life to my wife for supporting me on this adventure!


Long story short, I planned to leave in a 6-months trip that would go from San Francisco to Prudhoe Bay and then after reaching the Artic Ocean, set the compass to the opposite direction and ride to Ushuaia. Yes, I’m aware that Alaska is not the most direct way to Patagonia but it was very appealing to me to do the Americas from tip to tip.

Being able to find the time and money to do such a trip is a rare opportunity so finding someone having that same opportunity at the same time to come along is really improbable. I knew however that I could join R-dubb and Eduardo who were planning a ride from Quito to Patagonia starting end of November.

A few days after making my decision “official” (that’s back in March) I received a call from R-dubb having drinks at Zeitgeist for an AdvRider gathering. I had missed the thread but hey, time for a little detour from my commute and here I am amongst a dozen or so AdvRiders. Obviously, quite excited, I shared with them my new project. Most were enthusiastic about such a trip but that’s to be expected from AdvRiders! However, Teryk was even more passionate than the others and made it clear that he would love to tag along. At this point, after a couple of beers and the novelty of the news I didn’t know what to think about his real commitment for such a project.

I have known Teryk for years and we had some memorable rides together. However, in the last years he became more passionate about bicycling and training for IronMan so he had no time left for motorcycle trips. We ended up seeing each other scarcely and it was pure luck that I had met him at Zeitgeist after so long. Anyway, I knew that he would be a great riding buddy so we decided to see how that could work.

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