Friday, February 25, 2011

AK trip

Ok so Obviously I didn't keep up with my AK motorcycle trip blog. I wrote most of it up for Adventure rider website and klr650.com but forgot about this.
So for now I will post a link to the ride reports I did on those sites until I can post it here.

Advrider.com Great site BTW Not a complete report.
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=594763

Saturday, April 10, 2010

More prep

Ok just a quick update. Got my Paris Dakar nerf bars in and installed. It protects the radiator if I drop it offroad etc. Plus it just looks cool.



OK here are our bikes. Dad's is the silver tank. Mine before PD NERF bars.



And then a pic with the bars installed.



Friday, April 2, 2010

Prep

Ok so we looked around a decided on the KLR's. Found two nice ones. Now what?

Well while looking into what we would need to take we have decided to go as light as possible. If we need something more we'll get it on the road. We bought some roding gear and let me tell you that stuff is not cheap. But if you crash it may save your life. While at our local Kawasaki dealer we tried on Tourmaster Transition 2 jackets. I'm used to just wearing my leather jacket and these seemed bulky. But thats all the armor. So since we could try them on we went ahead and picked up the Tourmaster gear. (BTW after riding with it a while I really like it) We bought pants and jackets. Both have a quilted liner and make cold weather comfortable. I have riden several times in 35 degree weather and stayed warm.

My helmet I had. Its a Gmax full face. I like this helmet but a wish it was a modular style. (I wear glasses)
Dad picked up a Vega modular it is very nice too.

I bought some waterproof boots. Not sure about them.

We also got tourmaster or cortech (same company) winter riding gloves.

I sold my other cruiser and ordered some accesories for my KLR. They should be here this week.

I am excited!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

2 Kawasaki KLR650's headed to AK

An overview of our trip.

Ok here is how this whole plan started. My dad and I work together. We've done some cool stuff together to include a Kayak trip to a lake way back in the woods away from everything. It rained on us the whole time. We had a blast.

Anyway Dad has a place in Alaska. He goes up every summer and has driven it several times in his truck. But he always thought a bike trip would be very cool. So since we work together we're always taking. A couple years ago we started talking again about this. I said how cool the trip would be. Well the economy changed our plans and it pushed us back a few years. Which turned out good as we had time to resaerch bikes etc.

Fastforward to a couple months ago. We had decided that we wanted to go on a bike that would handle well on the gravel roads we would likely run into. And gas isn't every mile like here. So we decided to get KLR650 dualsports. They seem to be a nice bike for our purpose. We are planning to leave at the end of May this year and truck the bikes to Montana. Then ride to his place in AK and I'll fly home. Then at the end of July I will fly back and we'll drive a different route back. The first part will be about 19 days. The second more like 10 days.

We started looking a new bikes a couple years ago. But ended up finding two low milage used bikes that were like new for slightly more than one new one... Got to love that huh!

Our bikes are a 2005 KLR (mine) and a 2006 (dad's) both bikes are red.


Anyway, I hope to write a little about our planning and the trip. We leave in acouple months. Although I won't have internet I plan on taking a pen and paper and writing notes and adding pics.
Also this is my first attempt at a blog so I hope it is ok.

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