I plan to take my 88 r100gs from northern US to hopefullly to most southern part of argentina.

Still in full preperation to get the bike and paperwork ready. Slowly everything comes together, which is nice because my eagerness to leave seems to grow. Today i will go for a little test ride for normally two days to black tock state park in NY.


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This is a great travell!!


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Preperatiom are reaching their end. I have done all the thing on my bike i wanted to do. Turned out the oil filter change was not that difficult to do, at least if nothing happens to the bike in the near future. Two days ago i had a nice ride to Rome NY, and got a glance at what riding a bike for 8 hours means; yours ass get soar!


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Best of luck, Bram. I'll be vicariously following you.

Great having you stay with us the first night of your "BIG ADVENTURE!" Bram; good luck and we'll be following along. If you run into any problems along the way, let us know and we will do our best to help you out.

"The Ride Is Never Long Enough!"

JC/Jeff/SoPaRider & KC/Karen/SoPaGuider

'96 DR350/441SET
'07 DL650AK7 V-Strom (wee-strom)
'09 DR650SE (K9)

Bram

We just found a ride report on ADVRider that you might find interesting?!
Check out Silverfin; 2 up to South America on a Super Tenere. Page 1/post 1 has Carl & Kathleen already in Mexico on 5 November 2014. Go to page 12 and post 226 for useful info on traveling "South Of The Boarder!" We'll past on any other ride reports that we think will be of help to you over the days, weeks and months ahead!

JC/Jeff/SoPaRider & KC/Karen/SoPaGuider

South Central PA

First couple days: its great!
I rode off to NY meet mitch without any trouble but my generator light that would not turn off. I figure as long as the engine is running why bother. Had a great goat stew roti at mitch place and was feeling like the trip was really about to get started. Mitch had planned a nice route to PA. Here is mitch and his victory

That night we stayed at jeff and karen place were we had a great dinner and they showed us there collection of many different things: razors, picture frames you name it they had plenty off it. It was really nice to see how easy it is to get in touch with people who share the passion about riding a bike and doing long distance traveling. Next day we took if me still thinking every was going to be easy and most worries from other people where could be ingored and the ride was going to be nice and smooth. I mean putting 40k km on a car in a year does not give much hustle so why should a bike?
As we where heading to skyline drive i was confronted with the fact of how much of an unexperienced driver i am espacilly on curvy. Long story short i ended up on the pavement for several reasons at about 20mph. The bike took the hit and started up fine. Some air was leaking but mitch lucky had a piece of gum and he plugged the hole which got us back on the road with some delays. Here is mitchs gum


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and the safety bars that got a little lighter . Next was skyline drive or three hours of twisty road with beatifull landscapes. and a picture of jeff on the bike .
At the end of skyline drive my battery was empty/dead. Luckily mitch gave me a little lesson in mecanics and told me you can charge a battery with the help of any car and some jumper cables. This gave me enough power to reach the place he was staying at another couple of bike enthusiastics. I was able to give it a proper charger over night but was unable to reach my cousin tom who was just a couple miles away. It was great to get to a place where other people help you out with a meal a bed and some mechanical advice. At the end of a long day there is no energy left to take care of it yourself. Thanks you Nora and Ray i was very happy to be able torecharge myself and the bike. !


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Last day of riding before some days of rest. As i had fully charged the batterry i was crossing my fingers that it would hold the almost 400 mile ride. Ray had given me an adress of a shop that would be able to have a good look at the bike which i planned to go to as soon as i got to robinsville NC. It turned out that the battery did not hold and you also need to get gas from time to time. Micth ran out of gas without me noticing and i with my spare gallon of gas was not able to help him since i was ahead of him. As happy that i was to him helping me i was not able to return it when he needed it. Really sorry about that and i will shamefully carry the reputation of jeremy clarkson for the rest of the trip

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In the 70's it was a popular mod to use a garden tractor battery for more amps cheap, I think it needed to be a reverse polarity to be oriented right, piece of angle off the foot peg bracket for support.

After a weekend full of information in robinsville NC at the horizons unlimted meeting. I had to start worrying a about my chargung issue again. After 50 miles riding fine, the generator light was back on again and the next morning the shop i went to earlier was closed. I had just wasted 80 dollars on a fix that did no last very long. I figured i will try to ride to nashville and replace the diode assembly board myself based on some info found online with a replacement part from thunderchild. As i was blasting over the instate to Nashville at maximum speed (without wanting to stop in order to limit the battery usage at a bare minumum , my headlight off, and refraining to use my blinkers as much as possible) at 80mph a state the trooper flagged me down for the headlights. He did seem kind of disappointed when i handed over my dutch licence. And as I asked if he wanted to see my passport as well he allready handed my paperwork back saying "nah, just make sure you have that healight fixed and drive safely". It's nice to be abroad so you can pretend you do not understand and get away with it.
Now for Nashville there is not much i did besides being a tourist and waiting for the part. Of course from all the national holidays this weekend had one and i had to wait anorther day. Thursday i was ready at 9 am sitting in front of the mailbox. the old diode board was out and within two hours i had fixed my bike without needing a mecanic to send me an expensive bill for labor. Nice! it seemed that i was finally going to have a trip without trouble.
Friday october we are back on the road: tenesee, missipi and arkansas are on our way. It is amazing to see how the landscape can change in a dayfrom a twisty mountain road to a flat straight line that continues for an hour with only some curves to cut around the fields. How awesome my 1988 bike runs is nice to think about on a day that evolves as smoothly as it can with no major problems. On the downside of that i have not much to tell about the ride. When we got to get to helena arkensas whoever i start being worried again and hoped that our overnight stay not be to much hustle. As we pull up to the house gregg walks over with a in his hands and right there i knew this was a place were would get a nice rest. Gregg quickly talked us in to go see some live music at a local bar, which happen to be open for the first time and had an suprisingly interior which i would not have thought to find in helena arkansas.

Beside a large collection of old cameras Gregg is a fellow bmw r100gs rider and he had a newer 1989 model. As it turned out he knew that the lability of the airhead is not very big when it comes to the diode board and he had the part i had been waiting for during five days in his garage. What are the odds waiting in nashville for a part and our next host happens to have the part in stock and know a lot about the problem.

Next day we leave helena behind and another couples of enormous farms cross our path. Everything is so big and flat that you lose reference of time and space. You might see a truck approaching which is 10 miles away from you and you come across fields that stretch for more than ten miles. It gives a strange idea and suddenly i realize that is because the trip has finally brought me to an environment which is complety unkown to me. Driving for half an hour before crossing a town i start to think. How unconventient would it be to be stuck here with no gas having to walk to the next house to ask for help. You can probably spend three hours before your back on the road if you know how to fix any issue you encounter. Could i imagine getting a flat around here?? Yes i can because as it seems on this trip i am not able to travel for more than one day without a problem concerning the bike. Today it was a flat tire. And this time i though i knew what to do because i had prepared myself for this. It turns our that fixing a flat is not always straight forward and is not the moment to be cheap and cut the filler in two to safe material the plug will not hold for long and you will strand along the road again. And the CO2 kits? They are crap the vent could not hold the pressure and did not inflate the tire at all. Again there was mitch to the rescue who had brought a mini generator. Which i could directly branche on my newly installed modified cigarette lighter adapter. That i pulled out of an old car.

all together we had to stop 5 times to reinflate /check /replug the tires. . Turned out that a short smooth day turned into another adventure and we barely made it at mikes place before sun down. He took us to a local restaurant where I had some crocodile and local cajun food. . But without the obstacles the trip would not be so much of an adventure and it is good to learn/see no matter how much preparation the environment will determine how the day will go.

Low milage ride today. Before leaving shreveport and mike behind we have a nice breakfast at waffle house. Turns out fast food for breakfast is not that bad. Before we hit the road we have to find a tire shop to inflate my tire as is seems impossible to get the correct pressure with the compressors at the gas stations. BMW has made it such that there is very little space to put the compressor nozzle on the valve. Without a nozzle that makes an angle of 90 degrees it very difficult to get 40 psi in the tires. Another lesson i learned from the flat tire is buy a compressor from the beging. I wasted 50 bucks on a hand pump and Co2 cartridges that are good for trash now. Most people get a nice 10 dollar air compressor from wall mart and it worked as expectedt so far. The ride got us into Texas where we stop in the middle of an isolated road to capture that milestone. Nice thing about our long distance trip is the people you meet on the road and at gas stations. This guy we met in mineola was so enthousistic about our journey i though he would jump on his bike and join us right away. Nice! Arriving in dallas at my friend jacob and his wife lacey we had an nice meal and a place to rest for a day. The mexican border is coming closer and we use this time to figured out the best way to cross the border the smoothest way. Most likely will will stay in brownsville to cross first thing in the morning this Thursday. On our way there we make a stop near austin to get a rear tire for a good deal.
Sorry no picutres for now i will try to upload the later if i can find a way around the upload quota