Here is a little about the motorcycles and preparation. Chris and I have identical Motorcycles down to the color and year. It wasn’t planned for us to look like twins rolling down the highway. We had mutual friends but didn’t know each other when we separately purchased our motorcycles from John Horner at BMW Motorcycles of Southeast Michigan.
For my preferences, the BMW GS Adventure comes almost complete for these types of journeys. It’s a little heavy (subtle sarcasm) and tall but makes a decent compromise between on and off road handling for long distance traveling. Here are some shots of what was done to prepare the motorcycles. The Adventure and standard GS come with adequate off road protection. The exception is the need to add a little more protection to the headlight, radiator and those expensive titanium protruding cylinder heads. The latter got more protection from Adventure Design’s well thought out Engine Guard Extension bars. Additional lights, front and rear, were added to help others see us.
Working out a tire plan took some effort. We decided to start with a fresh set of street bias tires but switch to knobbies when we get to Peru, where we expect to do some serious dirt roads high in the Andes. Problem is they don’t sell the size knobbies to fit our motorcycles in northern South America. So we will be shipping tires from the US to a friend in Lima, Peru. Interesting enough the good old US Postal Service was by far cheaper than the UPS, DHL privateers. However, the tires haven’t arrived yet, so ….
Packing is another time consuming logistical challenge. The strategy is to get everything in two lockable side cases and a tank bag. The rear top case will stay mostly empty so that the tank bag can get locked up during restaurant stops in sketchy areas. Here is the obligatory picture of my gear spread out before getting stuffed in the cases.
Between Chris and I we have some of the same branded gear and some different. At the end of the trip we will likely do some type of product evaluation on our selection of “stuff”. -Harry
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