Oregon to Ushuaia on an XR650L

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by ONandOFF

Those messages are probably a result of so many people bringing up your thread in rapid succession. How's it feel to be so popular?

Crazy! And I thought I was just popular with the Colombians.

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by tvbh40a

Where are the penguins????

Enjoying the updates. Nice people all around this here world. I think your smile communicates more for you than any language. Portuguese coming up for you maybe?

Portuguese may be coming up. Depends on how much money I have left after I get out of Patagonia. I've heard that the visa for Americans to get into Brazil is a bit pricey. At this point, I'm just floating. No real agenda, just want to see as much stuff as I can before I go broke. And then I have to get back to the states and find a job.....

[Ulyses]

Originally Posted by purpledrake

I like the "Ulyses Slider" concept. I wonder if the friction from the plastic will grind down the chain, any more than rubber would. Please report on this sometime.

Will do!

[Ulyses]

Day 135 (February 28, 2013)
Puerto Notales, Chile
Day's Ride: 0 Miles

Dylan and I moved to the Erratic Rock hostel this morning as the Tin House was booked.



Luckily, I soon found that the owners were all from Oregon. As you can see, reminders of my homeland are posted everywhere:







They've even got a backyard that you can park your bikes in.



I spent most of the day prepping for the upcoming hike. Since I didn't bring a back pack or trekking poles with me, I had to rent them from the hostel. Renting equipment is not cheap down here; I paid about $50 for a five day rental. I also spent about $50 on five days worth of food. At these rates you might as well be back in the States.

I'm excited about the hike. It will be nice to get off the bike for a while, strectch my legs, and get lots of blisters! I'm so out of shape after riding for the last four and a half months; doing this hike may be a bad idea. Still, hopefully I get lots of good pictures and won't get too beat up.

The plan is to leave tomorrow and hike for the next four or five days. We are planning on doing something called the "W" route. The old RR will be dark for a couple of days. Hopefully I'll be back around the 5th. Cheers!

[Laird]

Bryce,

Thanks for all the effort and time you put in to share this incredible experience. Really had a blast reading through it and congrats on reaching your goal. I still chuckle thinking about your 'spicy gravy' experience, although I'm sure it wasn't so much fun for you at the time.
I'm just north of Toronto in Canada and itching to pull the bikes out. Just a little too much snow and salt at the moment. :(
I also have a treasured 07 XR650L and had the same issue as you're having with the slider. Fortunately for me I was able to replace it much easier than you seem to be able at the moment, although that looked like a cool repair you've made.
While chain tension may have been an issue for me since I was new to the bike last year (though I did check it regularly based on the Clymer specs) some fellow riders pointed out how dry my chain was. I actually heard a bit of a squealing sound off and on for a while. That's when I noticed the chain wearing through the slider and into the swing arm. I was also having problems with chain stretch, not when I first got the bike but a month or two later.
I was using a chain wax rather than a good greasy chain lube. I replaced the slider, started making sure the chain was always nice and lubed (I like to give it a squirt when I head out each time or two) and I haven't had the issue since.
Anyway, for what it's worth... :)

And I shot a couple of bucks your way to buy a few cold ones and pay for the gig of bandwidth I've probably used! :)

If you're ever up this way, I'd be honoured to buy you a beer or three!

Take care and ride safe.

Charles

[ONandOFF]

Cheers Bryce; sounds fantastic!

[beechum1]

Originally Posted by Ulyses

Day 135 (February 28, 2013)
Puerto Notales, Chile
Day's Ride: 0 Miles

Dylan and I moved to the Erratic Rock hostel this morning as the Tin House was booked.



Luckily, I soon found that the owners were all from Oregon. As you can see, reminders of my homeland are posted everywhere:

a Radioman Sticker just above and left of the patagonia sticker. Awesome.

[USMC0861]

Good eye beechum1!

[CloneBoy]

Wow good eye Beech



Bryce, been following yours, Kedgi's, and JDowns report since the beginning. So cool you guys got to hook up and ride together.

Thanks for taking the time to do the report.

[ONandOFF]

Originally Posted by CloneBoy

Wow good eye Beech
Bryce, been following yours, Kedgi's, and JDowns report since the beginning. So cool you guys got to hook up and ride together.
Thanks for taking the time to do the report.

What I have to look forward to! I'm working both reports from both ends. Some neat $hit. I didn't know about Kedgi's, so I'll have to mix that into my confusion... hehe... I mean building my dream.

[CloneBoy]

Dwight did a fantastic report

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=832336



Bryce is in it quite a bit, very cool to see the reports all enter twine

Very jealous!


Its awesome to see the same areas thru different eyes, different bikes, and full scale of emotions.

[Smithee]

Originally Posted by Ulyses

Day 134 (February 27, 2013)
Punta Arenas, Chile to Puerto Notales, Chile
Day's Ride: 153 Miles

You'll have to forgive me for the lack of pictures today, I forgot to put the memory card in my Japanese camera today and, unbeknownest to me, it was taking blanks during the entire ride.

Cheap Japanese camera!!! It at least should have given you this message on the LCD:

カメラにメモリーカードません.

[Smithee]

Originally Posted by Ulyses

True, but if the photos from photobucket won't show up because I'm using up all of my bandwidth, even if I switch to a new site, the older posts that are using the photobucket pictures won't show. So, since I paid for a little extra wiggle room with photobucket, I'll just keep using them rather than spend even more money on another service.

By the way, what does the bandwidth thing really mean? Is just that a bunch of people are looking at my pictures? Or am I just uploading too many?

This whole thing is kind of funny because it's actually my brother's photobucket account anyways. Congrats allvincullumyork, I just got you 20GB of storage on photobucket!

It's the people accessing the photos. Whenever someone views one of your posts with photos, they're downloaded to the viewer's browser from photobucket. It's made worse because sometimes people use the "quote" feature when responding to a post. If they include an entire post (one of my pet peeves on ADVrider), all your photos are reproduced in the reply. Over time it chews up a lot of bandwidth.

[beechum1]

Originally Posted by Smithee

It's the people accessing the photos. Whenever someone views one of your posts with photos, they're downloaded to the viewer's browser from photobucket. It's made worse because sometimes people use the "quote" feature when responding to a post. If they include an entire post (one of my pet peeves on ADVrider), all your photos are reproduced in the reply. Over time it chews up a lot of bandwidth.

as an aside, there is a plugin for firefox that does not display pictures twice on the same page, and additionally, if you're using autopager, will continue to do so.

http://bolty.net/nifty-stuff/the-adv...r-for-firefox/

You'll need the greasemonkey add-on. It doesn't fix stupid, but it helps save the bandwidth.

[Ulyses]

Well, what do you know, they have internet in a National Park! It´s about $4 for 30 minutes. I had to pay some overdue bills so I thought I`d drop a line in here.

There are absolutely droves of people here. Not quite the solitude that I was hoping for. Still, the views are incredible. And the blisters are painful. Doing nothing but riding a motorcycle for four months doesn´t really set you up for a 50 mile hike very well. Still, I´m having a good time. Talk to you all later!