There are two separate categories of cost: daily personal expense, and $/mile. No matter what your pace or route, your $/mile is about the same. Your personal expenses are the same if you move or stay put. Round trip is just more miles. Your choice of fun is your business.
$100/day is blind. Dumb. Sorry but $100/day means nothing. 13,000 miles of fuel tires oil breakdowns for two bikes and you're in Ushuaia. At 50 mpg you need 260 gallons. Fuel prices vary but you can estimate $4/gallon. That's about $1,000 for fuel. (I average about 40 mpg so I'd need 325 gallons, and $1,300.) I used up 3 sets of tires. I did 3 oil changes. I wore out one set of brake pads. I destroyed 1 set of side cases, one clutch, one fly wheel, and one starter. All of this was avoidable but really fun. None of this is related to time. For example, Vinny took a couple of years. Others have done it in a month. Some ride under powered mopeds and dirt bikes. You could actually do the entire Pan Americana on any bike- cruiser, sport bike, Harley, goldwing, big GS, antique, etc. If you wanted to race it, I'd suggest a monster tank. Your daily cost is just lodging and food. $15-$50/day per person is normal. Don't forget country-specific insurance and border crossing fees. Also notice they're independent of time. Panama/Colombia is $$$. Getting back by air: ask Sandra at www.dakarmotos.com. Your bikes would be cheap to fly.
Look me up before you leave Panama. I'll escort you around the Highlands, and cross with you at Rio Sereno.
Yes. $100 a day is a working figure. We have a set amount of money, when it's half way through (or we have enough left to fly/ship us and bikes back) we are done. We decided to make a budget and from previous experience and came up with a workable total figure for us and our family. It's not like we haven't done something like this before. My longest solo trip was 10 months. Our longest duo trip has been 70 days/13,000 miles un-interrupted. This will be at least double that. We feel we are up to it. Maintaining two bikes by myself is a fair amount of work. Still, I've been doing it the last 13 years (us as a couple) and almost 400,000 combined miles, so I ought to be OK. I've gone through the bikes pretty well and am confident they couldn't be any better. I'd say our biggest constraint is TIME, and unfortunately that is THE major factor in any undertaking of this type. We have chosen a time frame/money budget that works for us and our family. We are not coerced or forced, it's our own choice. We know coming on here we will have people second guessing us, calling us dumb and blind amongst other things. WE DON'T CARE. We are just a couple of enthusiastic motorcyclists with a goal in mind. We've failed and we've completed. We are happy either way. At our age our skin is pretty thick. After the RR gets underway we unfortunately (or fortunately) will not be addressing every second guess and opinion everyone/anyone offers. We have learned to ride our own ride. I can be as contentious as the next person, in fact I have quite a reputation for it. BUT, it's time consuming and not very productive unless it's a means to an end. Thanks for your mathematics bananaman, that is what started me joining in on this thread. Some of your figures I was unfamiliar beforehand with and now it's helping me a lot.
Oh yeah. I had a MAJOR breakdown on our 13,000 miler. It cost me $3000. I traded my bike in for another used one and carried on riding.
THIS: from post #38 'We have a set amount of money and 6 months max to get there and back (we may ship back).' $100 a day was a working number to come up with a viable total. DUH. Some days we spend $10, some days we spend $500. On 6th December we spend almost $2000. To be fair to ourselves we haven't included the Darien crossings in our $100 a day/to come up with a total.
If you think I'm trying to insult you by calling you dumb or blind, then you've never been in a garage, you stupid fucking fuck. And your skin isn't as thick as you think. What I'm trying to tell you, and everyone else, is that there's a minimum amount of time that you'll spend sitting on your ass in order to go any distance. It's easy to figure: take your distance, and then do some math to figure out how much time it'll take you to cover the distance at any given speed. For budgeting, take the total distance, and then do some math to figure out how much fuel, maintenance, tires, brake pads, oil, chains, etc that you'll need. Now you know the minimum amount of time and money you'll need just to sit on your ass and cover the distance. Now add up your border crossings and Darien crossing and Shipping home cost. Subtract the amount you'll need for the bike and fuel and borders and insurance and Darien crossing and home-shipping from your total $ available and you'll have your fucking-around budget. Divide your maximum fucking-around budget from by your maximum time available and you'll have your $/day. Good luck. And ps: I'm super jealous, which is why I call you thin-skinned fucking fuck. If you want somebody to be all like polite and shit, ask somebody else something in a different thread. For dog's sake, just look at this thread's title. The whole thread is a fucking joke. It's about a serious subject, but it's a joke. If you can't handle it, maybe you should get a BMW and ride it to starbucks. That's what I do. Today I had a 109 degree latte and one of those chunky cookies. It was good.
ANd here's another PS: I don't care if you don't think I'm funny. I think I'm funny and I'm the only person I care about (other then the people I actually give a fuck about). I spend my days herding cattle and trying to get my alcoholic meth addict employees to not fuck anything up completely beyond recognition. I'm lucky to have any time for this shit at all. And I just finished driving 1261 miles to-and-from Ohio to visit my daughter at her $60,000/year college. So I'm tired of sitting on my ass contemplating how much longer I'll have to sit on my ass. When I first learned how to fly, we had to use a type of slide rule to calculate things like windage and fuel consumption. I still have it and I still use it. Don't make me give you a lesson on how to use a slide rule.
Wrong on so many accounts. My math is easier. Have a goal in mind. Consult with my inner being, wife, grown children, grandchildren...how much time we choose to budget. Consult with the Mrs how much money we choose to budget. Have a guesstimate of how far it will go, but get on the WWW and tell anyone who is paying any attention in the Whole Fucking Wide World...."when the money is half gone or the time is half gone we are done regardless of distance travelled." We did ride our BMW's today. We did go for coffee. We did watch MotoGP at Newcombs Ranch Restaurant on Hwy 2, Angeles Crest Highway, Los Angeles County, California, U.S.A. We did use $29.16 worth of fuel. We did do a couple hundred miles. We did just do this on Thursday too (minus MotoGP from Australia). We did use a total of $58.32 on bike gas for these two trips. We did pretty much use up two days of the rest of our life. I used to herd used cars, hundreds of those fuckers, I retired in 2004.
Wellthen we'll get along just fine. Two people you should meet are the ones Rick posts about. Rick is Colomtnbiker. He's out of Carbondale or some other fucking gorgeous place like that. You're older than him which makes you awful close to dinosaur age, which is about my age but I'm not dumb enough to retire and waste me hard earned savings on trips with beautiful women. Oh, wait- most of this is wrong. Anyway, ring up Colomtnbiker. He's ok but Chris, the smart one, is the one to chat. Also Rick can fix a roof. Have fun. Don't skip Ushuaia. It's easy to distract yourself and end up spending a lifetime exploring any particular country. You wouldn't be the first to get half way through and then say fuck it, I'm staying here. I'm glad I didn't. I made it to Ushuaia and I have to say it was the highlight. Seriously.
We pretty much HAVE to make it to the end or the WWW will laugh their asses off and say "we told you so" Every trip we go on we find places to move to and live. I really wanted to stay in Mexico when I was in my 20's...sitting on a beach splitting coconuts with a wide eyed girl............ I decided to move to Southern California from the UK, you get better teeth and tattoo removal here.
We came to Mendoza for just two days, expecting it to suck. we have been in our gorgeous rented casa for a week, and can't bring ourselves to leave. whoops, got to get ready to visit another malbec bodega for degustacion. where does one go next after Mendoza? Staying in Argentina, I mean.
Excellent! Thank you for that recommendation, Julio! As long as the savings hold out, it feels really good to be back on the bike, again. All the best!
Not gonna lie, I love the doubters. On top of giving me a perverse motivation to show those bastards I can do it, I've made enough money on winning bets against them to cover crossing a couple of CA countries. Just gotta make it across the Darien without dropping the bike in the drink.
I guess Ludwig of the Rat guarantees no damage and covers it. They load right from the dock in Carti now. I expect Cartegana is inflateables and lifting and such.
