I’ve been riding motorcycles my whole life, or at least as long as I can remember. Deby is a relative new comer. After decades of being a passenger she decided to take the plunge and get her endorsement shortly after her 50th birthday. As her primary riding instructor we started in the dirt with her on a (what else..) DR200. She had over 5,000 miles on that bike before upgrading to a BMW G650X Cross Country. To this day she says that was her favorite bike. Isn’t everyone’s first bike the best? I was riding a very underpowered Suzuki 650 Vstrom (not my best bike).
I didn’t start this blog until 2012 with the start of our first of three trips to South America. Before that I had a few ride reports on www.ADVrider.com. My favorite to go back and read is of our first “big” trip.
Donn and Deb Do Seattle to Moab.
My first post was in May of 2011. Everything about motorcycle travelling was new to us. This was before the modern days of Mosko bags or the latest Klim riding gear. Navigation was via a state of the art, for the time, Garmin GPS60 with a tiny screen.
We must have got the motorcycle adventure travel bug because the day after Christmas in 2011 we packed the bikes in a trailer and headed for our first Mexico trip in Baja. Again I posted my ride report on ADVrider. You can read it here:
It was our first time riding motorcycles out of the USA. Deby was still on her BMW Xcountry and I upgraded to a 2011 BMWF800GS. Everything about Mexico was new and unexpected. My Spanish was virtually non-existent, the GPS maps were questionable, no cell phones at all and the roads that are now paved were rough dirt tracks. Little did we know that we would be visiting Mexico every year for at least the next decade.
Evidently we needed to keep riding so in July of 2012 I started another Ride Report on ADVrider. This one was called:
Deby and Donn’s Rocky Rocky Mountain Ride – 4,729 miles in 21 days.
The goal was to ride a route called the Continental Divide Route (CDR). Interestingly, Deby and I re-rode that route in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
I suppose all of this was preparation for an opportunity that came up in the summer of 2012. Keith Thye, the owner of the BMW shop in Seattle was looking for a few people to join him on a trip to South America. We said we were interested and a few months later we were joining Keith, Dave Yaden and Michael Hansen on an epic three month trip riding motorcycles from Seattle to Argentina. In preparation for the trip I started this blog so friends and relatives could follow our travels. You can read about this journey by clicking the dedicated tab at the top or follow this link: https://advdonnh.com/motoraid-ii/
Most of the trips we’ve taken in the past decade are documented here. One notable exception is a trip to Alaska in 2021. I decided to post a live Ride Report once again on ADVrider.com. It’s a really interesting story about travel during the pandemic and probably at least worth looking at the pictures.
Alaska 2021 – We’re Goin’ For it!
It was a last minute trips and our latest motorcycles were not ready but we had in my shop the two very motorcycles we rode to the tip of South America in 2017. Fitting that they should transport us to the top of Alaska! My 2011 F800GS and Deby’s G650GS.
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Now, it’s 2022 and we are still riding the world and keeping this blog. I try to keep it concise and interesting, not too much blah blah as Deby would say. I also try to carefully note hotels, cities and roads in case someone else wants to visit some of the same places. I’m really grateful for all the people I meet who follow this blog and encourage me to continue documenting our trips.
Thanks for following,
Donn and Deby