The KLR has most of the standard modifications, nothing special. I've ridden it on the Advanced Coastal ride with Rosensrides, spent a few months riding around the West, and ride a few dual sport rallies around South Carolina each year. I do most of my own maintenance and luckily it's still running. The KLR has a little over 17,000 miles on it. After the Labrador trip, I'm planning to ride the Great Divide Trail in August.

As for this trip, I'm just along for the adventure, to help tell the story and to keep out of trouble. I'm 55, retired, conservative, average riding skills, adventure seeker, the ladies find me handy instead of handsome.

I took a decade hiatus from motorcycles after running a cousin's 80cc Yahama through a barbed-wire fence. Luckily, neither the bike nor I was hurt, but my mom was a little upset when she saw my winter jacket. Got back into cycles shortly after graduating high school, but didn't take my 1st trip until the summer before my senior year of college when 2 friends and I took sportbikes on a 6-week 10,000 mile blue highway trip west to Cali, up the PCH and back east. In 2000, My father and I went on a 10-day jaunt down skyline drive and then west to visit family in Kentucky. 

Got the A15 KLR two summers later to spend a month riding 11,000 miles to Deadhorse, Alaska and back to Philly. Having endured slick rainy mud out of Coldfoot my 3 friends and I thought we were tough, until this little middle-aged Japanese guy on an overloaded Valkyrie rolled up to serve us some humble pie with his Japanese license plate and showing us his path through S. America.