Still wrapping up many details at home. The initial ride down the coast with CamoGreg was great!! Now I am anxious to get all the rest done and get on the road ……

Since I have been so busy preparing, grieving the actual loss of my wife Chris and packing the house over the past couple months I am a bit tired out. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

Started my week out going to my favorite BMW repair gut. Steve Prokopf in Dundee Oregon. Wanted to have them check out my bike, and talk about the upcoming round the world ride.

My R1150 GSA has over 80K of hard miles right now and will need some serious work to get it ready for the ride.


It is always great to hang out at Steves, and see his bikes and all the current restorations that he is doing.

Ground up restoration.

Some are just tune ups.. or ? But certainly riders that love there old BMW’s.

Then Wednesday I had to rebuild a fence with my neighbors yard (had put it off from last year!).

Tore the old one down quickly!

My Housemates (Cody, Ryon, and Jon) helping out! These are some great young men!!

After just a few hours, fence was done, all the old wood was cut up and piled.

Felt great to get this house project out of the way!!!

Then I drove up to Seattle on my way to Whidbey island. Stopped and had dinner with Friends, installed a hard drive in my buddies MacBook Pro. On the way up to Seattle I had an ADV guy call me about his F800GS that he had for sale back east. After so many thoughts about which bike to ride, the miles on my Big GS….I checked in with the local dealers on their F800gs bikes for sale.

Two of them had Demo models for sale. By the time I stopped at South Sound BMW they had sold their Demo. But Ride West still had one. Made an Appointment for Thursday AM.

After some serious discussions, and then negotiations we arrived at a price and some serious additions.

I am a new owner of an almost new F800GS for this ride.

It is always stressful dropping a bunch of money for a big ticket item…

But I know that having the lighter bike by 150 LBS will really be better in other parts of the world. No perfect bike, but one with much lower miles, and lighter. That was my main reason for the switch.

Thanks to Kerry, Dave and Omar at Ride West for your help!! I was there about 4 hours and appreciated all your time.

Then up to Whidbey Island to get a few items done that I actually came to Seattle for!

Worked on a few things and then needed to crash. Was really tired. Must be the combination of stress and strains of the past few months catching up to me. and it is not slowing down as I get the next couple weeks of obligations done. Have to get back to Portland this afternoon, to sell my old Honda CT90, and be in town for a Mens Group (for mens who’s wives have Alzheimer’s Disease) that I have facilitated for the past 3 years.