Schedules

Our schedule has undergone several reviews and revisions, but I think we've got a start date pinned down, as well as a projected end date.

In the beginning, we considered several options for this trip:

• round trip (KC --> Arctic Ocean --> Tierra del Fuego --> KC)
• two trips (KC --> Arctic Ocean --> KC on year, then KC --> Tierra del Fuego --> KC the next year)
• one way, long version (Arctic Ocean --> Tierra del Fuego over 6 months)
• one way, quick version (Arctic Ocean --> Tierra del Fuego over 3 months)

In the end, we settled on the last of these options due to careers and time constraints mostly. So, this will mostly be a driving trip, with minimal sight-seeing. We'll ship our bikes to Anchorage, where we'll meet them by plane. We'll head north from there to Prudhoe Bay / Deadhorse on the Arctic Ocean, then turn around and head south all the way to Tierra del Fuego / Ushuaia at the southern tip of the Americas. The last leg will be to turn back north and get to Buenos Aires, where we'll ship the bikes and ourselves back to KC.

To get an idea of what's reasonable, I sat down with Google Maps and a spreadsheet to create a schedule. I had in my head the parameters of driving 6-8 hours/day, 5 days/week. This would give us a bit of break time / sightseeing time, but keep us pretty dedicated to getting on down the road. Although the schedule prescribes an itinerary for each day, we'll be much more nonchalant about it when we get going, setting waypoints every week or so to make sure we're on roughly on schedule, but with plenty of flexibility on the day-to-day basis.

Another challenge is the Darién Gap, which is the stretch of land connecting Panama and Colombia. Although these countries are connected by land, it's considered impassible for the average Joe due to dense jungle, lack of roads, murderous humans, etc. Interestingly, there seems to be very little connecting Panama and Colombia. Crossing the Darién Gap is an interesting puzzle for anyone running the Panamerican Highway, with just a handful of solutions. Among them, we've opted to contract with the Stahlratte: one of the few boats prepared to take motorcycle and rider from Panama to Colombia. Unfortunately, when the Stahlratte announced its schedule for this year, it put another crimp in our working schedule, bumping up the schedule by three weeks into colder Alaskan weather or bumping the schedule back by three weeks, taking a sizeable bite out of Nick's school year. As we both would prefer to be pressed for time at the beginning of the trip and be able to take our time in South America, we've opted for the former of the two.

So, here are our projected key dates for the Pan-American Moto Adventure:

Date (2018)	Location	Notes
11 May	Anchorage, AK	Day 1: in the saddle, north-bound from Anchorage!
13 May	Deadhorse, AK	Day 3-4: Northernmost point of the Americas: Deadhorse / Prudhoe Bay
17 May	Dawson City, YT, Canada	Day 7: Cross into Canada and get ourselves a Sourtoe Cocktail.
25 May	Bozeman, MT, USA	Day 15: Back in the USA, but only for a brief spell.
30 May	Chihuahua, Mexico	Day 20: Cross into Mexico and put some miles between ourselves and the border.
7 Jun	Guatemala	Day 28: CA-4 country
8 Jun	El Salvador	Day 29: CA-4 country
10 Jun	Honduras	Day 31: CA-4 country
11 Jun	Nicaragua	Day 32: CA-4 country
13 Jun	Costa Rica	Day 34
16 Jun	Panama	Day 37
17 Jun	Puerto de Carti, Panama	Day 38: Board the Stahlratte for a voyage through the San Blas Islands to Colombia.
22 Jun	Cartagena, Colombia	Day 43: Disembark from the Stahlratte onto South American soil.
28 Jun	Ecuador	Day 49
4 Jul	Peru	Day 55
16 Jul	Bolivia	Day 67
25 Jul	Chile	Day 76
30 Jul	Argentina	Day 81
8 Aug	Tierra del Fuego	Day 91-92: Southernmost point of the Americas: Tierra del Fuego / Ushuaia
14 Aug	Buenos Aires, Argentina	Day 96: Trip's end

As noted above, these dates are all highly susceptible to change, as is the overall route. If we catch wind of sights we'd like to see, friends along the way, safety concerns along the way, etc., we may modify the schedule. We've got arrangements to get the bikes to Alaska by our start date, though, and are working on ironing out the details for the Stahlratte. These will be the big limiting factors, everything else is gravy.

Another month down

January is coming to a close, which is one less month between us and our departure date. After crunching on the info a bit, as well as the different options, we’ve settled on pushing for the earlier departure date. Based on the rudimentary schedule I put together, that has us driving north out of Anchorage on 11 May 2018. Based on my review of weather data, It will likely be cold…quite cold…but driveable. Fortunately, my heated gear has arrived.

I got the complete FirstGear set up from RevZilla: heated pant liner, jacket liner, glove liners, and socks. It all arrived in early January, though I have yet to spend the time wiring it into the bike. Hope to do that this weekend so as to get it done before it’s too late to test it out in cold weather here in MO. Our current 7-day forecast still looks pretty fair, but temps are bound to drop again before we’re clear of February.

Nick is working on setting up travel for our motorcycles to Alaska, and I’m working on coordinating with the Stahlratte and transport for our bikes at the end of the journey. Other elements on the docket: researching and obtaining documents necessary for each border crossing, looking into solutions for extra fuel (will be necessary for the Dalton Highway north of Fairbanks), and looking forward to the Sourtoe Cocktail in Dawson City.

Stahlratte schedule announced

Big news! Found out today that the Stahlratte has announced its sailing schedule for the upcoming year. What is a Stahlratte, you ask? Why, only the most reliable -- from the vast majority of accounts -- vessel to carry motorcycles and travelers from Panama to Colombia and back!

Problem, though: the announced schedule doesn't fit the timeframe we'd previously drawn up. Looks like we're going to have to bump things up or back -- three weeks or so whichever way we go. Decisions will need to be made...

It begins...erm...began...eh-hrm...will begin.

Here it is: the year we've been waiting for. The year we plan to spend 90 days motorcycling the length of the Americas, from the Arctic Ocean to where the Pacific and Atlantic crash into each other at the tip of Argentina. That's the 20,000-mile plan, anyway.

I first learned of the existence of the Pan-American Highway from a Oaxacan tour guide, who proudly announced that we were driving along a stretch of it back in 2014 during my visit to the far south of Mexico. Having recently watched Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's "Long Way Round" and "Long Way Down", it was no great leap to imagine making a similar trek of my own. But that's all it was: imagination...until I shared the concept with Nick, who not only saw it as reality, but made it seem like it could be so.

A year later, I had purchased my V-Strom, then there was an awesome weekend of ADV/off-road riding lessons with BC Moto Adventures, then a solo foray into the mountains of Nuevo Leon, and later a duo-trip to the same area with Nick. And new we’re just a few short months away from the real deal. More thoughts on preparations to come, as well as details of the planned trip, and – soon enough – details of the trip itself. From new through the departure and on through the return, I’ll plan on posting here on a regular basis. I don’t expect it to amount to much, but at least friends and family will be able to stay apprised of our progress. This evening: brushing up on Spanish with ClaroKC!, an excellent local conversation group. Everything has a purpose…