1 - A Typical Start

I woke this morning with a fuzzy feeling through my head and body. I lay there for a minute trying to figure out why I felt this way; was it the late night, or something else? Wait, why did I have a late night? I stumbled out of the room I had been staying in at my folks’ place for the last week and remembered rather promptly as I toppled over on a sleeping bag laid out on the floor. I’m going to South America!! Today was the big day of departure, the day I had been anticipating for the last three years of school and summer work.

I looked at my phone to see that it was an hour later than my alarm was set for. Still not packed? Check. Colin’s going to be waiting, but I doubt he expects anything different. The milk poured over my crisped rice cereal which began to make pleasurable sounds as I sipped my coffee. This will probably be the last time I have fresh ground beans in some time.

I hurriedly stuffed my extra pair of underwear and t-shirt into a compression sack and tossed it in my saddle bag. I saw the large black ABS tube leaning against the wall that I was meant to mount to the front of my skid plate; this was to hold all my tools which were currently in a scattered pile on my dad’s work bench. Vice grips, a few appropriately sized metric wrenches, some needle-nose pliers, a ratchet, and a driver with some hex, phillips, and blade bits. A perfectly sized crescent wrench hung neatly on the wall, so it too ended up in my stash.

As I made the 10 minute journey to Colin’s house I recognized the extra weight up high and took note of it. I didn’t have more than a Jason-sized sliver of seat space between my large tank bag and my duffle – I’m going to need to do something about that.

Once there we both took the opportunity to do a couple last minute fixes. I had just replaced the touch screen digitizer on my old Zumo 450 GPS last night and needed to wire it and my 12 volt outlet into the accessory relay I had made on my trusty KLR, Mitzi. Mitzi was a wonderful girl whom I met in Buffalo a year and a half ago and had fallen madly in love with. She could take me anywhere, along with my camera equipment and camping gear. A guitar will join me down the road and I’m not sure what else I could possibly need for the next nine or so months heading for Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.

Meet Colin and I. I'm the one with the dirty muzzy.