gpskevin

News: The Trans America Trail has been updated from its original route to include options from LA and New York How cool is that? Ok so who wants to ride the route this summer? Or have you just been dreaming about riding. The info to ride this route is "Open Source" meaning you can just go to the Trans America Webpage and get the info for free. You can just download it and ride it however you like or modify it, what the heck? It also means that many people have contributed to making these new route extensions happen. So cool and thanks to everyone that loves the ride. The original trail has also been revised and includes high resolution gps files that will tell you at anytime if you are more then a few feet off the trail. That means only the riding is left. No worries right? OK so what are you waiting for: Everytime we say no to a ride that is one less ride in life.

For anyone wanting to enjoy this great route I have added Mount Rainier to the route and included some optional easier routes for those riders having an off day or simple wanting more relaxed roads. But best of all I have written customs gps maps for your garmin GPS. I have decided to just give all this info away for free. You can download the info yourself here: Washington Backcountry Discovery Trail Cool, open source rules: Thanks Touratech So start planning and enjoy the ride.

As a part of continuing to improve the map I request that anyone that discovers errors in the map or can suggest improvements to the maps please inform me by filling out the suggestion form: SD County Adventure Map Updates Your suggestion will help to insure that this map continues to be great and reflects the great riding found here. Updates are only of value if we make them that way. gpsKevin

I have long wanted to put together a complete map of all the cool roads and Dirt roads in San Diego County. Well I have and I am just sharing it with everyone for free. I believe in open source, and that there are many good people out there that will continue contribute to making it even better. A kind of Wikipedia approach to maps. This is both a printable Paper map that is accurate and shows all the great roads and dirt road in the county and it is a downloadable GPS background map that you install into your GPS unit so that you can simply ride around the county following your GPS and enjoy. It is way cool and can lead you on some awesome adventures. The information is free and I made a web page to make it easy to share with everyone. San Diego County Adventure Motorcycle GPS Map I would like to express thanks to everyone that has helped me with this project: Thanks for all your information, all your pre-riding and just plan support and fun gpsKevin

Randy: Yes sorry you missed it, Was awesome, 7 week of across canada. I don't know how you got cut out of the email updates, but you can see the final webpage here: Trans Canada by gpsKevin

Ride invitation: Yes You Last call the ride is only 4 weeks away. Ride starts Sunday 9/8/2013, Still time to join us. This is an scenic style adventure bike ride with a mix of remote Camping and Motels. This will be one of the great rides this year and it you are dying to explore BC Railway trails you might want to join us. Below is my Video invitation to you See the webpage below for details and ride signup. BC Railways 2013 I will limit the ride to 10 riders, and there are only 5 open spots left, so if you are interested you should consider deciding soon. If you have questions, you can either post them here and I will check back every couple of days, or you can send me an email directly. __________________ gpsKevin Everytime we say no to a ride that is one less ride in life

There are three spots left this year: Love to have some San Diego Riders join us: Maybe you all know some of the riders going: Visit the web page for more information and signup Roulette 2013 Kevin

Bagstr: The only weight class is if you miss this year, you have to weight one more year! Everytime we say no to a ride that is one less ride in life.

Chris: Thanks for the nice words, from someone as good as you at putting rides together that means a lot. BTW: all you have to do is retire and then the ride all you want looks great!

Great Rides: ROULETTE 10 is open to experienced riders I have 4 open spots in this year’s Roulette ride. You should study the ride and consider if you may be right for the Roulette. For those of you new to the Roulette this is a tough guy’s explorer ride one week long. This will be the 10 annual ride of the Roulette and this year it is in Washington State. The Roulette is an explorer Dual Sport ride that will include a bunch of singletrack trails and challenges. The ride is an explorer style ride in that the routes are not all proven. There will be some route finding and some adventures and stories that go alone with that. This is a GPS lead ride. You will need it and will need to know how to use it. The ride is limited to 20 riders and this year we have riders coming as far away as North Carolina. This is a one week ride that will be staged from our Lodge each morning. If you are an experienced tough rider and interested in this sort of thing I recommend that you study the ride description at: Roulette 2013 Washington Are you more likely to need help on a ride or would your friends say you are more likely to offer help on a ride? This ride if full of riders that are all more likely to give help. So if you are in that camp this ride might be right for you. Note: Ride is not a race attitude. Just a explorers discovery attitude. There is lots of camaraderie. Check out the Video from last year’s Roulette: These rides are big commitment if you have questions send me an email: gpsKevin

Sunday 7/10 Day 9: Hyder Alaska now! GLACIERS Today was by far the most beautiful day of the entire trip. We went into Alaska and saw some spectacular glaciers. In the morning we woke up and got ready for the day. The days plan was to go into Hyder, Alaska and see grizzly bears at an outlook spot and also view the three huge glaciers that covered the mountainsides. We headed from Steward BC into the small ghost town that was Hyder. We rode to the grizzly outlook but to our disappointment we saw no grizzlies. The Ranger said we were a week too early. We could not see any Salmon in the river. The Visitors center had the only grizzly that we would see. We traveled on up the 30 mile trail to the glaciers. They were absolutely amazing. I can’t even describe how beautiful they were. If you have never been to see one, I highly recommend it. By far the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life! Missy keeps saying: Dad this is awesome, this is the best thing I have ever seen in my whole life! We came across this sign, and of course Missy said, Dad lets go see. So we continued, right what could go wrong? This does not mean us, we came a long ways to get here, no turning back now. Turned out to not be too much, just more cool stuff On the way back we came across these structures, we were not sure what they were for. We think that this is where you hide from Grizzlies or maybe you pitch your tent on it. But it seemed really hard to get on. That was it for us, time to say good by to Alaska We went back down the trail and crossed the border back into Canada and stopped for lunch at a small restaurant in town. Our day was officially done but we decided to keep riding and take some miles off tomorrows ride. Saw another Black Bear, no big deal to us now. So we rode about another 150 miles and are spending the night at a cute little motel in Terrence. Great Day! Upcoming BC Railways Ride 2013 join us

7/9 Day 8: Ride Destination: Stewart Day 7 started out much better. The rain had stopped but we woke up to a 1.8 degrees C temperature. That’s almost freezing. It was so cold so we got dressed in all our rain attire yet again to ensure warmth and be safe in case any rain came along during the day. We saw another bear and it was walking around eating while we were taking pictures. We made our last gas stop at an indian village called the Gitanyow Indian Reserve. They had a long history of Totem Poles The route into Steward is fantastic: We rode all the way to Stewart BC and tons of people along the way have asked if we were going to get Hyderized. (This as we heard from people, is where you go to a local bar and you get a shot of grain alcohol. If you can keep it down you get a certificate and you have officially been hyderized. If not you must buy an entire round of drinks for the bar. You sign the bill and put it up on the wall of shame.) A fun little tid bit, but no I did not partake in such activities. As we drove the last 30 miles into Stewart the mountains were absolutely gorgeous. The mountain tops are snow covered with waterfalls flowing down the mountain side. Some are even covered in beautiful glaciers. Made it to Stewart and had dinner at the Silverado Cafe: Missy had the Pizza: After Dinner we stopped and talked to a group of riders working on a BMW F800GS. It seems they parked the bike and went in for lunch then when they came out the bike would not start. This was a group of 3 couples from New Zealand. They had shipped their bikes to the states and were all doing a vacation to Alaska. They had been working on the bike for several hours and it seemed as if it was getting no fuel. I took a look and agreed that it looked like for some reason the bike had decided not to feed fuel. The only help they could get was to hire a truck to take them and the bike to where? The nearest BMW dealer was 1000 miles away in Vancouver. Wow their dream trip to Alaska had been ruined. Latter I would learn that it was a defective Fuel Pump that BMW had known about. In the USA BMW was forced to do a recall, but in the other countries BMW did not do that. So these people were left on their own. It totally ruined their vacation. It seems like BMW was more interested in themselves then their customers. Wow BMW Bad! The day ended at the Ripley Creek Inn Complete with Chicken just running around the place. Went to bed starting to worry about my own BMW. That kind of thing can't happen to a BMW HP2 right? Missy could always save me on the Kawasaki! Upcoming BC Railways Ride 2013 join us

Yes it is from 2011. Summer July

Friday 7/8 Day 7: Ride Destination: Noralee Resort Day 7 was quite miserable as we woke up and it was still raining. So we put all our rain clothes on and went for the cold long day that was ahead of us. We encountered yet another moose and stopped to take some pictures. As the day wore on we were not going to make the entire route because it was just way too cold. So my dad told me a special secret about living in cold weather. We took a stop in the next town that we arrived in and found the nearest laundromat. We took our wet selves and bags into the store and sat everything down on the table. We talked to the owner for some time while we put stuff in the washers and took off our wet clothes to be dried. Now, the secret was that we didn’t really go to do our laundry but as we washed our fake clothes that didn’t really need washing we were actually getting warm. It gave us a reason to stay inside a warm place and regain body warmth. Our boots were leaking so we did got dry socks and did the grocery bag trick. Once nice and warm again we went on our way. The rain let up and the rest of the day was warmer. and as the afternoon wore on we came to our cabin for the night. The Noralee Resort, somewhere near well nothing. Plastic Bag still on Missy Feet, still going still smiling. Day was 250 miles, half of it in the cold rain, BTW the heated jackets and heated grips made a big difference. Upcoming BC Railways Ride 2013 join us

Thursday 7/7 Day 6: Ride Destination: Quesnel, 250 miles, BEARS, RAIN, and MUD Today was the best and worst day of the trip so far. This morning started out bright and early. It was a longer mileage day and so we had to leave an hour earlier. Our ride started off a little sketchy when we came upon a sign that said road closed due to wash outs. This was an inconvenience considering we were supposed to travel 160 miles on these roads and now our plans had changed. On the sign someone had hand written “We can go anywhere” (Steve this is for you. Under was signed Bigdog and Dingweed. Kevin says you know who they are.) So I proceeded to take charge of the situation and said “Bigdog….If he can do it, we can do it.” So we went for the trail anyways. And as a matter of fact, it was easy for us. We went right through everything. I just can’t understand why Bigdog had a problem with the trail. OK, the story from Kevin: I had known who Big Dog and Dingweed were, I had a conversation with Big Dog back in 2005 discussing the Continental Divide Ride. So I knew that these guys were pretty aggressive explorer riders. I also knew that we had about 160 miles of Dirt in front of us and then maybe 100 more miles of pavement. I was starting to feel a little like a parent here, knowing that I did not want to be stuck somewhere very remote fighting to get our bikes through something. And I could see that the weather was changing. So my vote was to turn back and take the easy path. But the girl was having none of it. She was very insistent that if these two guys could do it then we could do it. I explained that there were on WR250R's and we were on big bikes, you can't do the same rough stuff. Nope, she wanted to go do it. She kept saying if "Big Dog can do it we can do it." As it turned out about 20km up there was a canyon that had been washed out but there had been a crew working on it and so by the time we got there the road was mostly repaired. So no problem. "Thanks to Big Dog" making the note, if he had not done that we would have surely turned back. Back to Missy: Well anyways we were on our way and going down our original track when we came upon some cows that were just sitting, lounging around. So I went up to the group and all but one mother walked away as soon as I approached. So I went over to her with some food and pet her She was quite nice until she gave a grunt and then I freaked out and ran off. So back on the trail we were driving along and this is the best part of all, a baby bear and mother bear ran across the street right in front of us. The baby climbed a tree and the mother ran off into the forest. This was the opportunity for us to play with the bear. We tried to coax him down out of the tree but he would have nothing to do with us. We tried out favorite cat calls. We tried the name Midnight. We then noticed the mother was sitting near on the other side of the trees and then we decided that it was probably no longer a good idea to play with the baby. So we packed up and left on our way. But the bears were very cute. Check out the pictures! So now you’re probably wondering what the worst part of the day was. Well a little while after the bear the sky started to get dark and the air was frigid. Well it started to pour rain. And just our luck we still had about 200 miles left in the day. So we rode and rode sopping wet and cold and tired all day long. It was absolutely miserable. So that was our day long and miserable yet great. WE had to recall our words of wisdom from Keith Bennett, it wasn’t very fun now, but maybe someday we would think it was lots of fun. (paraphrased) I thought it would be fun to keep an animal count. So this is a list of the animals that each of us has seen. Seal: Kevin 2 Missy 2 Moose: Kevin 2 Missy 2 Bear: Kevin 4 Missy 2 Marmet: Kevin 20 Missy 20 Bald Eagle: Kevin 0 Missy 1 Antelope: Kevin 8 Missy 8 Deer: Countless Snake: Kevin 2 Missy 0 Upcoming BC Railways Ride 2013 join us