Africa Twin Motocamping Gear Test: Campfire Building, Tusk Pilot Panniers and Chairs, and Snow

You gotta be smarter than the bag, McLovin. I'm gonna saw it up, we're gonna try to build a fire. We shall see. Play with it too much, you'll go blind. Literally snowing, you guys! So cool! Previously on Lost I'm out on the twin, about to meet up with McLovin. Hey, go in this, go in this. Let me get footage. These are the Tusk Pilot panniers, I'm testing them today. Uh, the forecast didn't say anything about hailing. Look at that! Just trying to collect firewood along the way. We're gonna hang out here for a bit. And now, the conclusion. We're gonna chill out and have lunch, but we're not gonna sit on the ground like a couple of scrubs. What are we gonna do? Well, fortunately, our friends at Rocky Mountain ATV sent me a few bonus items along with these panniers, so I have the Tusk Extra Large Folding Chairs, and they both fit in this bag. These chairs are not, I mean they're small because they're backpacking chairs, but they're not small backpacking chairs. But they're this big. I had that in there vertically, and I have two of them. Bam. So, we're gonna chill out in these while we eat lunch. I couldn't believe I got them in there standing up, along with my hatchet and my cigar boxes in here. I got all my camping gear except my tent in one of these. So I'm impressed with this size. 35 liters is a good size. Well, I'll take it with me when I set it up. Actually, maybe I'll just put it together right here. Gotta be smarter than the bag, McLovin. Or the chair. I think it must go like this. Ooh, you're fast. You're fat. We're gonna get you so muddy out here. Pretty stoked. Well, good are they if they just stay in the bag. The top one first because the whole thing is deeper. Or you could throw it on the ground so it's all muddy. Nope, not yet. They're gonna write McLovin on that chair so he has to use it every time. That's my guest chair. Like if you had a little brother, or you had a guest controller for your PlayStation, it was always the shittiest, third-partiest controller you could find. I'm still that guy. Yeah, and you wouldn't let them use a good one? It's the McLovin chair. This is not a how-to video. I don't make how-to videos. I make watch-me-not-fail videos. I make try-not-to-fail videos. Because the tension as well. It makes it sturdy. It's time for chillin'. These things are light as hell. I could hit McLovin over the head and it'd be like WWF. He'd have to pretend like it hurt. It has a cup holder, too. So, bonus. So I'll link these and the bags in the description, but I think it's sandwich time. McLovin's got a whole frickin' pantry. All I have is a sandwich and some almonds. He's campin'. But I brought the chair, so he gave me a soda. And I'm happy. Are we even? Oh yeah, look at that. Your outfit's very coordinated. Yeah. Almost like it's on purpose. On a reasonably dry, dead tree. We're on BLM land. You're allowed to harvest firewood. Just throwin' that out there. I'm gonna saw it up. We're gonna try to build a fire. And yes, there's a big pile of firewood right here by the fire, but it's all soggy and it's been here forever. The stuff that's standing up is dry because it hasn't been sitting on the ground. At least I'm gonna buck up pieces until I get tired of sawing. Could be any minute. This is my Agawa Canyon Boreal 21. Christmas present from my wife. Thanks, babe. Try to remember to put a link to that in the description. That's cutting pretty fast. I just think the blade needs to be tighter. Nice. It doesn't make short work of that. You wanna take a turn? You wanna give it a shot? It's fun. You might do yourself a favor and cut it right there. The narrower portion? Yeah. That's fast. Not bad. Last time I did this, I only brought my knife and I was trying to baton it all down. That sucked. Careful. Don't cut yourself in the head. So we're gonna cheat a little bit because I have these fire starter cubes and some fatwood stick and I'm gonna use both because there's not any dry twigs anywhere nearby. So we've chopped some of this stuff down pretty small kindling that we're gonna try to use but we're gonna try to just get the big pieces going. Bigger pieces like this. If we can get this stuff going, we'll be golden. The fire starter should light the fatwood sticks and we should be good. Although I have the worst luck with fires when it's wet. This fire starter will burn for 10-15 minutes so even if you screw up the initial attempt you have time to try and rectify the situation. Better breathe. That's good. Last time I tried to start a fire with my survival stuff, it was not easy but it was just a bunch of lower branches and small and there was so much outside surface area that was wet that even though I had split it open it wasn't catching. This is all flat and dry. We shall see. Once it's going, we'll celebrate with a cigar. I'm just gonna sit here and watch the master at work. I pretend like I know what I'm doing, which is sometimes the same. Come on, dude. Let's screw with everything. I can't figure out why my fires always go out. You think it's because I play with them too much? If you play with it too much, you'll go blind. I've been told. Well, this is pretty not bad. Fire's going. It didn't take too much effort. What did we spend? 10, maybe 15 minutes gathering and processing? Just one tree. I'm having a Mr. Puff Puff. Can't say the name of the object because you'd get demonetized but we call it Mr. Puff Puff around here. Fire's looking good. Looks good with the bikes in the background. I think the spot is promising because we went 12 feet into the woods and found this tree and so if we were gonna do an overnight and wanted to have a fire going we'd probably need 4 or 5 trees like that because it's all softwood and burns really fast. I'm gonna sit here and enjoy Mr. Puff Puff. Wish I had a whiskey right now but it's probably for the best because I have to ride my bike back. And then we'll catch up with you when we're packing up and we're back on the bike. Thanks guys. I just dumped this whole thing on the fire so before you fire safety people get all worried it's out. We're cautious. We want this place to be here. We don't want it to burn down. Giant loop pronghorn straps. Good sh**. These bags aren't waterproof but there is a dry bag inside. It was just like sunny 65 15 minutes ago. I'd like to thank mother nature for helping us put this fire up. Dry bag is sealed. My leather sheet is getting dirty. I don't like it. We're gonna get the hell out of here. All packed up on the bike. It's getting wet. So we're gonna get moving but Tusk bag is crushing it. No problem getting stuff out here. Getting in and out. Easy in and out. Back on and off. And we're putting those dry bags to the test. The fire as you can see is out. It's raining and soggy so I feel very confident that's not gonna turn into a forest fire. This guy he's not messing around. He's leaving his mark. That's right. Ooh your headlights bright. See? But we ride in the winter man. Riding season? What's that? That's all year right? Always riding season. Do you think these grip heaters will dry my gloves from the inside? Trying to be cool like my glove Oh yeah. You got it. Yeah. Ah there we go. Bike's heavy man. Not a kid. Alright I'm gonna practice my standing up going uphill I think. Ooh goggles. Thank God I brought them. Rub it in. We're gonna get hail again dude. Yeah I think you're right. So typical Oregon weather today you guys. We had sun. We had hail. We had driving rain. We had a waterfall. I just got into a rut and had to get out of it. We haven't met all the obstacles that mother nature wanted to throw at us today. Everything but snow. I wouldn't mind if it started snowing now. I feel like I could get out of here in it. So we are headed out and back probably because the weather's turning on us again. We found a clear patch in the middle which was good. And the real challenge, I mean I wanted to test the bags but the real challenge for today was I wanted to get out into some not pavement riding with the bags and the extra weight and see how it felt. I'm still intimidated and timid but now more than I normally am on this big heavy bike. So I call that a win. Gonna get better as we go. Oh, you found some mud. Muddy right there, yeah. Oh yeah. It just eats it up. It's like it's not even there. Nope. Oh, a cool shot of you though driving through the mist. Awful. Yeah. Oh, I'll tell you what though. Standing up. The squiggles don't feel so bad. I don't even notice them. Oh, okay. Holy **** did I speak too soon. Did it get a little silly? I got my front tire going sideways. I turned and it didn't. What did I say? We got everything with snow? Yep. Sleek for sure, which is half snow. Is a form of snow. Dude, I love that we get out and stuff like this. It is literally snowing, yeah. Because it's awesome footage and it just lends so much more credence when you're trying to give advice and people ask because we ride, man. We do it. It's not a garage queen. Literally snowing, you guys. So cool. What are we doing? I'm weather testing these bags, man. Oh, yeah. Awesome. McLevin and I are here. Shotgun Creek. We were chilling in 60 degree sun 45 minutes ago, half an hour ago. Now it is snowing. I sound like a teenage girl. It is snowing. It is 38 degrees and we are riding home another hour. It's snowing. I've never ridden the Twin in the snow. This is awesome and awful, but mostly awesome I'm choosing to believe it's awesome. Can you see those flakes? You've got to understand, it does not snow in the valley. It doesn't happen. We get one day of snow a year and we already had it. This is crazy and this was not in the forecast. I checked it. It was supposed to be nice the rest of the day. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video and please do not forget to be excellent to each other. Au revoir. Excellent!