Notiers Frontiers 2 Up Around the World (KTM 1190)

Sooo...
This trip actually started a year ago from Chicago, IL on August 21st 2017 to our current location in Cuenca, Ecuador. Over the last year my wife-to-be, Marisa, and I have seen amazing sights, met wonderful people, and have gone down some of the best roads imaginable for a couple of kids from the plain states.

Marisa and I successfully survived the trials from the what seemed to be never ending list of problems from the moment I was no longer employed. We continued to cross the states camping as much as possible. A great tool that we found for the states was FreeCampsites.net. I had no idea that there was such a plethora of places to pull off the road and set up camp (sometimes on the side of a football field of a local high school) I am not one to bash an entire region of a country, but I will say things got very interesting and more intense one we reached New Mexico.

As a guitarist, some of my favorite lines in 12 bar blues progressions are the turnarounds. Little personal licks of emotion, dirty and gritty as they can be, that lead back to the main rhythm and comforting progression of the song.

Marisa and I had experienced moments of our trip that seemed to have led to unknown, improvised directions of dirty, gritty, and truly blues filled trials that have eventually led back into the standard patterns of our trip that we are accustomed to.

Marisa and I set up camp just outside the south rim about a mile off the main road. It was the perfect plot of land where deer meandered through the field surrounding us. Yet again, we were the only ones wild camping anywhere around. We figured we would make it home base for a couple days, and explore into the park a couple times.
The surrounding area had so many back roads to explore we knew it was a good location to call home.

One of the must sees while riding Cali is Death Valley, and it did not disappoint. The roads to and surrounding the National Park are absolutely amazing. While we camped, a group of riders (The PokaDot MC) were also camping, and one of them had an 1190 R (the meaner brother of my S). They told us of a couple different routes, and of one specific canyon that is well worth the effort for what it is.

Entering Mexico through Tijuana was an absolute nightmare... Coming from California, and the states as a whole, there are traffic laws, emission standards, and general rules of the road that are followed. This was all washed away in an instant. It was my first foreign country, besides Canada decades back, but what I imagined Baja to be was flawless beaches and Coronas for a peso... damn instagram and FB posts.. I realize we entered at a pretty chaotic crossing, but the shock and awe of the busy shuffling and overwhelming pollution was something that I never expected.

We took a ferry across the bay of California to Los Mochis. We wanted to see copper canyon, via train. We thought it might be nice to get off the bike for a while and sit back, relax, and ride trough some amazing territory on a slightly larger steel horse.
 

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In the Yucatan, we rode from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, and we visited beaches, Mayan ruins, and even Mayan ruins on beaches. We experienced the Yucatan's modernity, along with its ancient history and traditional culture in some of the most gorgeous and iconic settings on earth.

Since Panama was our last stop in Central America before heading into South America, and because we were so excited for the vast stretches of pure nature that South America had to offer, we may have not experienced Panama for what it’s worth. We rode through pretty quickly on the Pan-American highway and spent much of our time doing customs paperwork to get the bike into Colombia. In many ways, we were mentally checked out of Central America and already thinking about what was to come, and so for those reasons we did not take our time to appreciate Panama as we could have.​

Colombia - ¡Que Chevere!

A New Adventure Motorcycle Book

By: Tim Notier

If you only read one book this year that features a couple riding 2Up on a KTM1190, make sure it's 2Up and Overloaded - Chicago to Panama. 

We are creating a set of YouTube videos that cover the chapters of '2Up and Overloaded'. It is a kind of visual representation to go along with the book, or as a stand-alone series for your viewing pleasure.

This episode covers chapters 14 and 15 when we crossed our 1st border, and had our first drop.

For us, there's nothing better than crossing some border to a distant land and discovering unique cultures that welcome us to their awe-inspiring landscapes. But sometimes that's just not possible to do, and we occasionally find ourselves back in the Midwest. Back at home.

As with anything in life, traveling by motorcycle can sometimes test your patience. There are times when Tim and I feel like the world is plotting against us, and as if everything that could go wrong does go wrong.

I used to think Idaho was just full of potatoes. In fact, I never gave much thought to the state until someone told us that it was America's greatest hidden gem. And then more people told us the same. It took me a while to believe them, and to be honest, I still held some skepticism for years, figuring I might as well just go and see what they were talking about for myself.

Once again we had broken down, and once again, a dear friend was there to rescue us. This time we had a non-starting motorcycle in Boise, Idaho, and our savior was Brandon Lever. As I paced around fretting over our latest mishap, Brandon told me that everything was going to be all right, and that he had a good feeling about it. But I didn't believe him.