Hello,
So yeah, still not too good at keeping this updated. In the last year or so I have done several small rides around the area.
I finally put a good set of 50/50 tires on the V-strom in February, so decided to take it out on a good off pavement ride in the mountains south of Prescott Arizona. Rode from Bumblebee up to Crown King and down the old Senator Highway to Prescott which was an amazing, but also insanely rough ride. Probably more than the bike was ready for, thankful for the bash plate, hit it good several times going over rocky steps down, and even up some hills.
In May I rode twice out to California for different events, once to Palm Springs and another to Burbank. Both times took a more scenic route home on back highways. Both trips were around 1000 miles each.
I did the usual ride up to flagstaff in May to go camping at the Overland Expo and first time I got to use my new tent (the old one had failed me miserably the year before at Expo.) I picked up a Lone Rider ADV tent and have to say I am really liking it. While at Expo I picked up a new and more compact air mattress and inflating bag from Big Agnes and later I picked up a new sleeping bag from Exped off the internet.
I then took a trip to the UK to attend the Adventure Bike Rider Festival in June. Rented a BMW GS750 on the edge of London, then rode up to the estate that the event occurs on. Spent 3 nights camping there enjoying the talks, music and hanging out with several people I had met at other events in the past and meeting new people who had done some amazing things.
After the festival I then took a short ride over to Wales and stopped in Llangollen for 2 nights. I rode from there to the coast to visit Caernarfon Castle, then out to Angelsey to visit a museum, then along the coast and back to the hotel, mostly in the rain.
Next day I left and headed south into the interior to visit the highest waterfall in Wales, and then down and along the western coast to the southwest corner for a nights stay in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.
From there I headed back into England and hit up another small museum and then stopped at Stonehenge before returning the bike to the shop near London and then spent the evening near the airport as I had early an flight next day.
And to finish out the riding year, I spent 4 weeks in Vietnam and Laos riding almost 2000 miles around with a group of people that included a few from the India trip again. Great time and also had about 10 days of time on my own where I rented another bike for a day trip, but then did mostly day trips in cars and boats.
I will be putting up separate blogs for many of those trips and of course still have tons of video going all the way back to the India trip in 2022 I really need to start working on (running out of room on the network to store stuff LOL).
I will be getting the Vietnam trip up first here in the next few weeks, its a big one, 128 pages of text that I have to get formatted and matched up with photos and some video perhaps. Will update here again when some of that stuff is done.
Will try to get some more riding after the first of the year, take the Himalayan out a few more times, but thinking I may end up selling it later next year, just not using it enough to bother keeping two bikes, and might even look at trading the V-strom for a different bike, see if I can find something that does the great job the V-strom 650 has, but fix the view weaknesses it has.
Maybe see you out there one of these days!
Till then.