October 2018: Badger was last spotted in the flesh, in a garage in Victoria, BC, stretching his toes one final time before a planned winter hibernation. Estimated duration: 7 months (because The North).
May 2019 (aka T plus 7 months): Indeed, I do fly one-way to Victoria, BC as planned, however it's not to fetch Badger home, but rather to fetch a new 1988 campervan home. (Sidebar: 3,000 km mini-adventure roadtrip successfully executed.)
Summer 2019 (T+8/9/10 months): The repeat one-way flight to Victoria and return ride home is not successfully executed. Since earning my Class 6 endorsement in April 2010, this becomes my first riding season devoid of any two-wheeled moto-freedom. (Sidebar: But, went camping.)
May 7th, 2020 (T+19mo.): The long-anticipated day of flight reservation CGSWUF, which was set to take me back to Badger for a planned two-day maintenance campaign followed by a proper ride home. My vacation time was approved and I'd been developing a couple of route options, one southerly across the northwest USA (WA-OR-ID-MT) -- which had an "again" feel and was failing to ignite real excitement -- and one northerly via the "Inside Passage" ferry from Vancouver Island up to Prince Rupert, then inland, northbound on the Stewart-Cassiar highway, pitstops at Hyder and Telegraph Creek, to Mike's bunks in Watson Lake and then south and west home via Fort Nelson and Liard Trail. This northerly opton is the one I had loaded up in the beloved InRoute app and been whittling away at, but I was uncertain whether May was too early in the season for it, uncertain if Telegraph Creek would be accessible (I was keen to go in and stay a night, having blazed past the turnoff in 2013, but having the time to check it out this time), or if Liard Trail might be too miserably wet (my previous two-wheeled traverses of it all having been in August or September). Alas, the timing can be re-visited, because due to COVID-19, I cancelled my non-essential trip, which currently is all on hold.
May 10th, 2020 (today): The day the ride home would have begun (and all I got was this lousy keyboard and $241 in my travel bank).
- Building a slick scatter plot (below) illustrating how selected ADV bikes' gearboxes compare. I adapted this from my running "bike specs comparison" spreadsheet, and the plot reveals which bikes have taller or shorter gearing -- where a taller gearbox means you can ride more slowly in first gear, e.g. while picking your way through a tight trail in the woods, while also being able to cruise at highway speed with low revs -- and also illustrates what is, and isn't, possible to alter with sprocket tooth changes. In short: Bottom-left quadrant ideal, top-right quadrant not so ideal. To move diagonally from top right towards bottom left required internal gearing changes (e.g. If you've read that Triumph dramatically improved the Tiger 800's tall first gear in 2018, you can see that there.) To move diagonally along a line from top-left to bottom-right (and vice versa) can be accomplished with sprocket changes, not increasing the tallness of the gearbox, but tuning between a highway bias (top-left) and dirt bias (bottom-right).
- Discovering (with her, realtime) that my wife is a total Dakar freak, and watching (over her shoulder / while she controlled the remote) every Toby Price clip in existence.
- Planning that 30k maintenance campaign, and collecting a few specialty tools and small bits that'll be needed. Planned work is 30,000 km service items including oil change, spark plugs, valve checks, air filter, brake pads; replace chain & sprockets; and install a few new farkles -- driving lights and radiator guard -- since I did more shopping than riding in 2019.
- Nerding out in a PDF editor, adding full bookmarks to my 1190R factory Service Manual PDF version.
- Doing a deep-dive on my toolkit and spare parts kit, which frankly still were looking like the KLR kit that they originally were, and not like the 1190R kit that they now supposedly are. (Dedicated post to follow on this delightful topic!)
- Catching up on the b(ack)log. Those Ireland May 2018 placeholder entries have been populated!
- Exploring options to ship Badger home during COVID, so I could at least hang out with him locally. I posted an ad on the freight brokerage site UShip, which appears to be geared towards connecting freight carriers with civilians in need of one-off large-item shipments (e.g. you bought a vehicle on an auction website). Based on all my particulars, postal codes, mileage, vehicle model, and it's extensive library of past transactions, the website predicted an average shipment cost of about $475, with an expected range between $300-something and $700-something. "Okay, I'd entertain that." When the posting closed, however, I'd received one bid, for $2500+fees, from a user with zero feedback, citing a company name that the internet had never heard of. So... bust. It looks like NWT travel restrictions (which to the immense credit of our health officials, have succeeded in holding us at the 'containment' stage) will remain in effect throughout the upcoming summer. I've struck out with a couple of other movers and shippers, and the no-less-excellent Horizons Unlimited shipping database (which, while devoid of any trip records to Yellowknife, offers some great short-story reading and a cracking bookmark for future reference). Ergo, still scheming...
Hope this finds you finding your own ways to survive, ride, and/or cope.