Expedition 65 - South America Motorcycle Trip

On your deathbed you're never going to regret not working more. You will regret things you wish you'd done. Expedition 65 kicks off today and for the next 60 plus days we're going to be traveling through six countries and doing somewhere between 10 and 12,000 miles of backcountry travel. So please come along on this adventure with us and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we're going to. This is a group of us getting together to ride the vertical length of South America. Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. Welcome back and welcome to Expedition 65. A few years ago I had a chance to ride my motorcycle in South America with a group of other motorcyclists and in this video I'm going to tell you all about that trip and about the upcoming launch of the Expedition 65 series on this channel. In the fall of 2016 I rode with 14 other motorcyclists from Cartagena, Colombia down to the bottom of South America in a town called Ushuaia. It was a 65 day trip 10,000 miles long and that's what this video is all about. Over the next 12 weeks I'm going to be posting a new episode of Expedition 65 on this channel every week. In this video I want to give you some background about that trip before this series starts. So the trip really began with Jim Hyde from Rawhide Adventures in Southern California. I've known Jim since 2009 and he has a BMW off-road training academy and that's where a lot of the participants in Expedition 65 met each other and became friends in the process. And as the story goes they were sitting around the campfire one night dreaming about trips they would like to take around the world on their motorcycles and they all decided why don't they do it? Why don't they work together come up with a trip that they could all collaborate on and do it? And that's how Expedition 65 was born. I was invited to participate in this trip as a filmmaker. I was hired to document this entire journey which I did. I rode my own motorcycle. I carried all my filmmaking equipment with me and I made this series of videos that you're about to see on this channel. So I want to introduce you to some of the team members that were on this trip. The guys that I rode with day in and day out for 65 days. Some of them I knew from before and others were new friends that I met once this trip started. But I can tell you one thing the friendships that were forged on this trip will last a lifetime. All of us are still friends to this day and one of the best parts of the trip was riding with the guys that I rode with. So on a trip like this you're going to get a bunch of people with different motorcycling backgrounds and experience levels. Now all of them are experienced motorcyclists. They've ridden for many many years traveled many places around the world on their motorcycles and they were all capable and qualified of doing a trip like this. That said there are still going to be differences between riders based on their age their skill level their experience or just the kind of riding that they like to do. And so on a trip like this with 14 motorcyclists we had 15 at one time it's going to break down into different groups and I want to kind of introduce you to the team members with that in mind. So let's start off with the guys that like to ride fast that like to be at the front. Two of those guys would be Jason and Chris. Jason and Chris are really good friends. Jason is a power company lineman here in Arizona. A lot of bikes are probably capable of doing this but for reliability standpoints for a two-month trip I'm just so glad everybody is on BMWs. And Chris is from Newfoundland and now he runs a BMW motorcycle tour company in Costa Rica. Friendships we're making the tragedies we're going through is all part of the ride man it's all part of the ride and it's beautiful. Pablo and Tiberio are a couple of really unique guys. They're both really good riders and they both speak Spanish. Pablo is from Argentina although he lives in the United States now. He's an Argentinian and so he has a solid connection with that culture and its language. For me every day was spectacular. And Tiberio's family came from Mexico. He lives in the United States but he also speaks Spanish and Tiberio and Pablo their skills with the Spanish language and the culture were really important on this expedition. I get up every morning just I'm ready to go. Scott Brady was another rider in our lead group. He came with us at the beginning of the trip and rode through the first couple of countries. He's the publisher of Overland Journal and Scott Brady is just one of those people that has so much experience in overland travel around the world. I'm seeing a very high degree of competency and professionalism from the entire group but there's also no clearly defined leader. So in the middle of the pack I would count myself and Jim Hyde. You all know who I am and I've briefly introduced you to Jim Hyde. He's sort of the unofficial organizer of this trip. He's been riding motorcycles for years. He's an off-road motorcycle instructor. He leads tours around the country and in other places around the world and like I said he was sort of semi-officially the organizer of this trip. We're clearly not a team right now but we got two weeks to pull that shit together. And then there's Bill Whittaker. Bill Whittaker is one of my best friends in the adventure motorcycle community. I know him a lot from the backcountry discovery routes and he was the CEO of one of the largest agricultural companies in the world and he's a great friend, a really good rider, a diplomat, just someone that you enjoy spending a lot of time with whether you're on the trail or riding around the world. We just experienced one of the most beautiful places on earth and I'm glad to get to do it. And Evan Firstman. What a character. I can't wait for you to get to know and meet Evan Firstman. Evan was kind of like the troubadour or the bard on our expedition. He's a musician, he's a vocalist, a guitarist. He comes up with songs on the spur of the moment and he's an intensely charismatic and philosophical person. He was also sort of the social lubricant for our team. He's the kind of person that can just get everyone laughing even if you've never met each other before and so Evan kind of had a very unique role on that trip in the sense and he really brought a lot of personality to this expedition. The smile is the best tool that you've got. Then there's Alfonso or Fonzie as we like to call him. Fonzie is a friend of mine who's a photographer and he's been shooting commercial motorcycle photography projects for years and he was brought onto this trip to take pictures. I don't think we are a team. I think we're a bunch of guys on the same tour. We're all heading to the same place but we don't always end up in the same place. And let's not forget about the guys at the back of the pack. What a great group of guys. These are like what I call in my mind the uncles. So let's start out with Uncle Bill. Bill was like everybody's favorite uncle. He's a really nice guy. He's just a pleasure to be around. He treats you really nice. He always has good things to say. Has a great attitude and was a great guy to ride with. Of all the stuff that I thought might happen I must say you're right. That was not one of them. And then there's Dave. Dave was a quiet guy but super nice, super genuine and always looking out for everyone making sure everyone's having a really good time and just riding his own ride. I was feeling pretty badass making it through all that today. And then we have Michael. Michael is a commercial photographer. He was definitely into riding his own ride and someone that was really also enjoyable to ride with. I feel like we are a team going in the same direction but there's different ways to get to that destination. And then finally we have Chris and Colin. And what can I say about these guys? They were certainly two of my favorite people to get to know on this trip. Colin, he's the kind of guy that knows all about the history, the geography, the culture of the places that we're traveling through. He's the guy that did research ahead of time and would always be able to come up with interesting facts and figures and perspectives on the places that we travel to. He had a big role in organizing the route that we took. I think we've got some frazzled nerves, including mine probably. And then finally Chris. Chris was the oldest team member on our group and the person with perhaps the least amount of experience. He really only got into adventure motorcycling recently but he comes from a background of outdoor sports and recreation. He was a director of marketing for companies like Nike and Patagonia. Chris was a blast to ride with. I've never ridden with someone that's so open about his inexperience and yet enthusiastic about everything that's up ahead. That's the most spectacular 50k of mountains and dirt roads I've ever seen in my life. That's a brief introduction to the team members on Expedition 65. You're gonna get to meet and know all of these guys in the upcoming episodes. And now I just want to tell you really briefly about the bikes we rode on this trip. Everybody had the opportunity to ride whatever motorcycle they wanted to ride. There were no criteria about having to bring a certain type or a brand of motorcycle. But what happened is in the end everybody on the trip decided to ride a BMW GS. And I think you can look at that from the perspective that it makes a lot of sense that you're all riding a similar bike when you're on an expedition this long. You don't have to carry as many different spare parts for different motorcycles. You can share knowledge or collaborate on situations where things might go wrong with the bikes. And so for whatever reason everyone on this trip rode a BMW GS. They were all 1200 GSs except for mine. I was the only person who wasn't riding a 1200 GS. I was riding my 800 GS and it was probably the last big adventure ride that I took with that motorcycle and you'll see why in this series. One of the biggest and most unique decisions that we made at the beginning was to bring a support vehicle. And it was a hard decision to make but in the end everybody decided that based on our goals and the way we were going to be traveling that it would be advantageous to have some kind of a support vehicle for a group this large. And so Jim Hyde bought a Ford Transit van and the Quigley company converted it into four-wheel drive and then we picked up an expedition trailer to go along with the van. And our theory at the beginning was that we would use the van to carry some of our camping supplies and our camp kitchen in the trailer and that we would camp out many nights on the trail and we would use the the van and the trailer as kind of our base station. That way we wouldn't necessarily have to carry everything we needed on our motorcycles. We could put some stuff in the van. We would use the van for spare parts for supplies or to transport broken motorcycles as necessary. And so I'm not going to go too much into the van and how it worked out for us. You'll see in the movie but I will say from the outset that that was the choice that was made was to go with a support vehicle. And so we did have our Quigley four-by-four van and an expedition trailer with us. And this would probably be a good time to introduce the last two members of our team. Adam was the driver of the van and mechanical support. Adam was a really hard worker. He was really helpful for the rest of the team whether it had to do with getting luggage in and out of the van or fixing things that broke down along the way. Just so many things that could that could happen on a trip like this. Our group is a little scattered, discombobulated. We've had some communication breakdown. I think would be a mild way to put it. And then we had Jorge. Jorge was our chef. And I know before you jump in and criticize us for bringing a chef along that's exactly what we did. We brought Jorge with us. Jorge was such a great part of the team. A super fun guy to be around and an amazing chef. And when you're out camping in wild remote places in Peru or Bolivia and you have someone like Jorge with you to create a beautiful hot meal at the end of the day in the middle of nowhere, it's really a good thing. So when it came to my role on this trip as the filmmaker, the first thing I would say is that this is a group ride. This isn't riding solo like I did this last summer in the last series that you saw me produce. There's 15 other people that have their own priorities and their own challenges trying to get through whatever it is we're getting through. And so I sort of have to take a back seat to the overall group experience and do the job as best as I can to document everything that's happening without putting undue pressure on the rest of the team to meet my expectations when it comes to the filmmaking. I think we should film what we're doing, not do stuff to film. And so what you're going to see is my best attempt to document this trip, to document the journey, the chaos, the drama, the personalities, everything I could along the way. It's really difficult to get 15 guys with type A alpha, you know, egos and experiences together and actually follow any kind of Apparently we're all interesting people, but we're a shitty team. I don't think there's anyone that hasn't had an incredible adventure. And I think we will be bonded for life. So that's just about it. Expedition 65 is going to be rolling out. There's going to be a dozen episodes coming up. And if you want to see this film without commercials, I just want to let you know that it is available. It's been available since it came out on my Vimeo channel. I'll put a link down below. And if you want to support the channel by purchasing Expedition 65 through Vimeo, you can certainly do that. You can see it in its entirety without commercials, or you can be patient and just watch it here on YouTube for free as it rolls out over the next 12 weeks. If you're interested in off-road training through the Rawhide Adventures BMW Off-Road Riding Academy, I'll put a link to that down below in the description as well. I hope you like this video and enjoy the upcoming Expedition 65 video series.