One Girl's Love Affair with her F650GS

**lightcycle** · 01-14-13

We're currently on the road on a Round-The-World trip. For this journey, my wife got a brand new 2012 Sun Yellow F650GS which she absolutely loves. I'm not going to repost our blog, as you can visit it here: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

I just wanted to chronicle her love affair with the F650GS. It started about a year and a half ago, when we rented a couple of motorcycles to ride around Iceland. She picked up a white F650GS and immediately loved the ergonomics, light weight and perfect seat height for her 5'8" frame.

Westfjords, Iceland

Heydalur, Iceland

Northern Iceland

Myvatn, Iceland

Myvatn, Iceland

Myvatn, Iceland

Dettifoss, Iceland

Seydisfjordur, Iceland

Seydisfjordur, Iceland

Glacier Lagoon, Iceland

Glacier Lagoon, Iceland

F35, Interior of Iceland

F35, Interior of Iceland

F35, Interior of Iceland

Snaefelles Peninsula, Iceland

ICELAND!

More pictures of beautiful Iceland here:

http://www.RideDOT.com/iceland

**de100kb** · 01-15-13

Great pics Gene, I bookmarked your blog, but please feel free to update this thread (with more of those great pics) every now and then so we have a trigger to check your blog again.

**Kelsow** · 01-15-13

WOW....Iceland. My bucket list has this one word on it.

**notacop** · 01-15-13

When I have a chance to do life all over again, I'm going to opt for the free and easy, no responsibilities life of a traveler. Something about raising 5 kids to adulthood and paying taxes got in the way.
Just Dang the Bad Luck. Great pics of ICeland!
I don't think I'll be pouring over your blog. There is only so much watching other people having fun I can take. Time to go out in the garden and eat worms again!

**Kelsow** · 01-15-13

Originally Posted by notacop

There is only so much watching other people having fun I can take.

Amen to that. ugh.

**lightcycle** · 01-15-13

So, fast forward 6 months and Neda trades in her sport-touring R1200ST for this:

Our first stop on our Round-The-World trip, a visit to our GS buddies in Ottawa:

From our first blog post: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/1.html

**IanA** · 01-18-13

Gotta love the symmetry in that last shot! It sounds like you are hard on the heels of another couple, Simon and Lisa Thomas, who are still travelling around the world on BMW GS's just like yours. However, after 77 countries, 417,000 Km, and nearly 10years, it might be a while before you catch up! I'm sure you must know of them, but just in case - www.2ridetheworld.com I met them last year in Melbourne, absolutely amazing couple!
Good luck with your adventure, stay safe and enjoy!!!

**de100kb** · 01-19-13

Gene I've finished reading all of you blog so I thoroughly enjoyed it

You are a very entertaining writer and a very good photographer.

Will be following your and Neda's trip online!

**lightcycle** · 01-19-13

Originally Posted by IanA

It sounds like you are hard on the heels of another couple, Simon and Lisa Thomas

Haha, I don't think our 7 months on the road compares at all! They are definitely an inspiration though!

Originally Posted by de100kb

Will be following your and Neda's trip online!

Thanks! We'll put on some cool f800riders.org pics on here to stay on topic.

Here are some from the east coast of Canada, our first destination.

Riding though Old Quebec City

Neda stretches on the Gaspe Peninsula

More pics and writeup on: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**Tonya N.** · 01-21-13

Gene and Neda....this is probably the most fantastic blog I have ever read!! I literally have done very little work this morning because I got so caught up in your documentary and pictures! I really feel like I know both of you and would love to someday meet you! Neda is just such a natural beauty and I am envious of how lovely she looks in her gear! You both are just adorable, and it is very clear how much you love each other and what you are doing. I wish I had to guts to do what you have done. I can't wait for the next installment!

**lightcycle** · 01-22-13

Thanks Tonya!

Instead of us coming to visit you, you should ride down and visit us! Probably a lot warmer where we are right now!

**Tonya N.** · 01-22-13

Originally Posted by lightcycle

Thanks Tonya!

Instead of us coming to visit you, you should ride down and visit us! Probably a lot warmer where we are right now!

Oh, you have no idea how much I'd love to be where you are!!! AARRGGGHHH!!!! Hate winter!!

**lightcycle** · 01-28-13

We wanted to say good bye to the country we've lived in for so long, so we rode all the way out to the very eastern tip of Newfoundland:

Lake Quiddi Vidi, NL

Somewhere on the Cabot Trail

Cabot Trail

More pics and writeup on: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**Tonya N.** · 01-29-13

Have to check in with your blog!! Great pics!!!

**vproven** · 02-10-13

This brings back wonderful memories of my trip there years ago. Almost forgot how beautiful it is and how friendly the people are.

**SDDinNH** · 02-10-13

Originally Posted by vproven

This brings back wonderful memories of my trip there years ago. Almost forgot how beautiful it is and how friendly the people are.

You should do it again Vince - life is short. I'm headed back up there in August. Cape Breton and the Gaspe are two of my favorite places. Both are full of lovely people and great food.

See Gene, you guys are an inspiration for all of us to get out a little more than we do while we still can

**lightcycle** · 04-08-13

We're close to celebrating 10 months on the road, and 8 months since we left Canada. We miss it a little bit, but still look forward to seeing more of the world. Here's a little F650GS memoir of our goodbye tour across the country:

People think Saskatchewan is flat. They haven't been to the Big Muddy Badlands

Radium, BC

Kootenay National Park

Highline Trail, BC

Signpost Forest, Watson Lake, Yukon Territories

You can catch up on where we currently are here:

http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**Teep** · 04-09-13

a most awe inspiring adventure! shouts to you both!

-tp

**lightcycle** · 04-10-13

Something more recent:

Taking the bikes across the Darien Gap to South America... by pirate ship!

Nail-biting moment...

More pictures and writeup at: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/87.html

**de100kb** · 04-10-13

Hi Gene, I really love your blog, I check it every week or so. Please keep writing

**Kelsow** · 04-10-13

I re read the first 50 pages today. Awesome photography.
I must say though, in Nova Scotia you missed some of the most scenic roads in the area.
I know you can't see every road that all areas have to offer but I guess it gives you a reason to return.

**lightcycle** · 06-05-13

We got our bikes through the Iron Curtain of the West and into Cuba!

Cuban license plate - All nice and legal

Beloved Che Guevara is everywhere!

Rode all around the island

More pictures of riding through Cuba: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**de100kb** · 06-05-13

Yes I saw the story on riding in Cuba in your blog, cool!! Are you allowed to keep the Cuban license plates when you leave the Island? That would be a cool souvenir!

**lightcycle** · 06-05-13

No, we had to return them when we left the island.

**Teep** · 06-06-13

LOVE your cuba photos!!

-tp

**lightcycle** · 08-15-13

Said goodbye to Cuba:

Rolled into Antigua, a quaint town in Guatemala:

And relaxed for a little bit:

More pictures on our blog: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**de100kb** · 08-16-13

Hi Gene, nice to see you picked up the blog again. That Neda-burger looks better than those fotoshopped ones in the commercials! Ride safe

**lightcycle** · 09-23-13

We did a boomerang tour of Guatemala to do it justice, since we rushed through it the first time. These are the Sierra de los Cuchamantanes mountain ranges. Spectacular scenery:

Had a small river crossing when we tried a scenic backroad just outside of Panajachel. Here a local helps direct Neda through (subtitles included):

As always, the full story and many more pictures and videos here: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**ST404** · 09-24-13

Outstanding photo's.

**Tonya N.** · 09-25-13

Yay!!! Have to check in with the blog again...sweet!!

**soph9** · 10-06-13

fantastic...just found your thread and BLOG...Iceland is on our list too...Love to see another grrl LOVING the ADV way of life and you two are sure living it! Love it!

**lightcycle** · 12-23-13

After a couple of months riding around Central America (again!), we boarded a 100-year-old pirate ship to cross the Darien Gap one last time. It's been about a year and a half on the road and we're now ready to explore South America!

More videos, pictures and thoughts on our blog: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**lightcycle** · 03-22-14

Over four months in Colombia! Here's a sample:

As always, more videos, pictures and stories at http://www.RideDOT.com

**de100kb** · 03-22-14

As you might have seen I already left a message in your guestbook, you blog has been on my speed dial tab for over a year now and I keep checking for updates

**IanA** · 03-23-14

Any one who hasn't followed this delightful trail, just don't know what they are missing! Simply one of the most engaging, insightful and beautifully photographed bike blogs around. Love it!

**lightcycle** · 03-26-14

Originally Posted by de100kb

As you might have seen I already left a message in your guestbook, you blog has been on my speed dial tab for over a year now and I keep checking for updates

Thanks for the note on our guestbook, Karim! Glad you are enjoying the ride with us!

Originally Posted by IanA

Any one who hasn't followed this delightful trail, just don't know what they are missing! Simply one of the most engaging, insightful and beautifully photographed bike blogs around. Love it!

Thanks so much, Ian!

**lightcycle** · 07-30-14

An excerpt from our blog.

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/144.html on March 4th, 2014

Every morning before we head out to our next destination, we check our day's route on Google Maps. Then we corroborate it on our GPSs. We have two of them loaded with two different map providers, so we can cross-check our routes with each other when they don't match up. You'd think with all these checks and balances, we'd have very little problems with navigation. That is, if we'd bother to do any of the above...

Following our GPSs east

We've gotten very complacent with our GPSs. Cali south-east to La Plata seemed pretty straightfoward. A quick glance at Google Maps confirmed 180 kms on secondary roads. Okay, 180 kms, we can leave a bit later in the day then. Heading out of Cali was a bit hectic, but we soon shed the heat and the traffic and were out on the main highway heading south and all seemed well.

The main road eastwards starts at Popayan. Unfortunately, one of our GPS had calculated a "short-cut" before we hit Popayan and the other GPS didn't even have any roads east of the city! If we had bothered to check our route beforehand we would have noticed all these discrepancies...

Nice shortcut! Enjoying the twists and turns in the road.

The road started out great! Colombian roads have really surprised us after the very mixed bag in Central America. As a secondary road, the pavement was smooth and twisty and as far as my GPS was showing, the path wound its way around the hills like this all the way to La Plata. Sweet!

GPS doesn't actually show you what the road conditions look like...

As we rode further east, the pavement got a bit patchier. Nothing too alarming, or anything to indicate that we should turn back and seek another way. It also started raining a bit. We've discovered that our Heidenau K60 tires don't do really well on wet pavement, as Neda has had her rear tire step out a few times under acceleration. So our pace slows down to a cautious gallop.

Past the town of Totoro, the pavement disappears. It becomes a gravel road that's soaked by the constant rain coming down on our helmets. We do a little conference call in our helmets: Do we turn back? We're over 20 kms into this road, GPS is saying another 80 kms... Decisions, decisions. It's only wet gravel, so we decide to forge ahead.

Next come the potholes. Little ones at first, then they grow larger - large enough to swallow the bottom thirds of our wheels. You know when the road is so bumpy, your tits start to hurt? And I don't even have tits! We slow down even further to a crawl, picking a good line to avoid the holes in the road. We pass through areas of construction where the road is either being built or repaired. By now the rain is pelting down full bore and the potholes are becoming tiny lakes. At this point, we've ridden too far into the road to turn back. Surely there can't be anything worse ahead...

It got worse.

We must be at a fairly high elevation as the fog has become so thick we can't see 50m ahead of us. The rain has turned the road to muck and while we were riding through a fairly large construction site, RIVERS of dirty mud run sideways across what used to be the road. I watch Neda negotiate this "river crossing" and wait till she's safely on the other side to proceed. On my turn, the mud has pushed my line into a deep pothole and when I come out the other side, my front wheel hits the far edge wrong and gets deflected sideways. I lose all momentum and the bike is leaning precariously to the left, so I put a foot down to dab myself back up so I can throttle out. But all my foot touches is air.

With no momentum and the bike falling Oh. SO... SLOWLY.... past the point of no saving, all I can do is resign myself to watching the mud on my left get closer and closer. It seems to take a lifetime. I have all the time in the world to hop off the bike as it *sploooshes* down, drenching me in wet mud even though I try to distance myself from the timbered Bavarian lumber.

I tap on my communicator, "Um..."

Neda replies, "Really?! Seriously!?!?"

Drenched.

Thankfully, a construction guy has seen my clownish attempt at the mud river crossing and he comes over to help pick up my bike, so I call off Neda's assistance over the radio. With a mumbled "Gracias", I thank the guy as he shook his head and wondered what the hell we were both doing out here...

I called out to him and asked him how much further the mud went on for. He replied, "5 kms".

Quick calculation in my head: we can't be crawling more than 10 km/h so maybe another half-hour of this? Doable? I guess. Enjoyable? Ah... no.

Further on down the road, I come across this...

So, a couple of things about this particular off: 1) Neda is pissed. But not because the bike is down, but over the communicator I hear, "But I just washed it!!!!" She's angry because her bike is dirty. Yep. 2) She tells me that she didn't go down because of the mud, but because there was a fly on her nose and when she went to swat it off, she didn't notice the rock next to her on the right side of the picture. So while she was dealing with the fly, her right pannier hit the rock and knocked her bike around and then down.

"*$#%^&*!!! I JUST WASHED IT!!!!!"

If my bike could talk, it would be saying to Neda's bike, "LOL, you fell too..."

Now I know my Spanish is bad, but when I asked the construction guy how much further the mud went, there's absolutely no mistaking "cinco kilometres" with "quince kilometres"... But the mud did indeed stretch on for more than 5 kms. An additional 10 more, in fact. When our tires did finally hit wet gravel instead of thick, goopey mud, we stopped to survey the aftermath...

Damn you, you dirty GPS!

Might need another bath..

...and a new rear mud deflector...

Part of the reason why we stopped was that I heard a weird dragging sound underneath my seat. Thankfully we were going so slow, because when we pulled over, I found my rear mud flap had dislodged from all the mud that was collecting between it and the rear wheel, and it had ripped right off and found a new home right below the subframe.

I did some research later on and found out that this is common problem with the R1200GS and mud, and many people just go flapless. It's a good thing Neda leads most of the time, or I'd be constantly roosting her with all this bad weather we've been riding through.

It's kind of funny now that we've ridden through stretches of slippery mud, we're flying over the wet, potholed gravel roads, like it's nothing. Even my tits feel good. It's taken us over twice as long as we thought we'd needed for the day, but if the road stayed like this, we might make it to La Plata before sunset.

Or maybe not... Another obstacle.

This truck was towing a construction vehicle around a tight hairpin. The trailer was too long and couldn't make it around the turn without
touching the concrete guardrail. And by touching it, I mean absolutely destroying it! Pieces of the guardrail were falling into the valley below. And the funniest thing was the guy on the right was pouring motor oil on the guardrail to help lubricate the trailer's progress. Check out the picture above: a sledgehammer is going to help more than any lubricant will!

It took about 45 minutes for the truck to get far enough so our bikes could squeeze past him. As we rode by him, we noticed there was another turn just as tight right after this bend, but we didn't stick around to see how well he negotiated the next one! Too scared that guy would hit us up for our motor oil... LOiL!

Another break to check out the awesome scenery!

A bit of company on the road

Kawaii!

We pulled into La Plata just as the sun was going down for the evening. It wasn't long before we found a cheap but nice hotel right downtown and while we were busy unloading the bikes and checking in, Andrea the receptionist really wanted to get a picture with me. Not too sure why. I was covered head to toe in mud, stinking of sweat, rain and exhaust... I'm guessing they don't see a lot of Asian people in La Plata. So when she put up the bunny ears for the photo, I followed her lead - I'm not really that kind of Asian, but I tried to do my best Kawaii imitation for her. Forgot to wink though...

Another tldr video... Special thanks to Spyhunter.

**soph9** · 07-30-14

holy crap that looked like a nightmare but at the end amazing you got through...great update!

**Tonya N.** · 08-05-14

So the last post to the blog was in May? Or am I missing something? I hope not!

**lightcycle** · 08-08-14

Our blog is a bit behind.

Just posted a update that takes us to the end of May.

**Tonya N.** · 08-08-14

No worries!! I just don't want to miss a thing!!!

**lightcycle** · 08-20-14

Due to a family emergency, we're in Europe now.

Here's an obligatory F800 picture taken from inside the BMW Welt in Munich:

More pictures here: http://www.ridedot.com/rtw/165.html

**Tonya N.** · 08-20-14

OHhh...I caught up on your blog at lunch. Prayers sent across the pond to you both during this time!

**de100kb** · 08-21-14

Yes I hope things will brighten up for you both and Neda's family.

And congrats on 'the two years on the road' jubilee! Have you guys made plans where to ride once you can leave Croatia again?

**Tonya N.** · 10-03-14

No new blog post since September 16...Oh, I hope all is okay!!! Keep us posted, Gene and Neda! I miss ya!!

**Tonya N.** · 10-06-14

Yeah, a new entry for September 18!! Woohoo!!

**lightcycle** · 11-25-14

Thanks guys for your words of encouragement!

Here are some newer pictures, more F-twin shots in Italy for the board:

Pause for a break on the Amalfi Coast

Zooming through the narrow cobblestone streets of Urbino

Neda with her favorite bike on the Appian Way in Rome

Here's a video of us riding the Amalfi Coast:

More videos and pictures on our blog: http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw

**lightcycle** · 05-15-15

Hi everyone, quick update: our blog is currently in Africa!

Here's a video of our tour of Morocco, as usual more videos and pictures at http://ww.RideDOT.com/rtw

**TNT** · 05-16-15

Nice

**Discflight** · 05-16-15

You folks so seriously rock hey!

when you come to Australia...

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