Earlier in the year I went down to the US to talk to Helge (surely the most experienced distance rider alive) and extract valuable beta about the route ahead. It’s cool being handed down stuff by the pioneering ADV generation, in the same way as I had a coffee a couple of days ago with a woman, well travelled, who wanted to talk gear and stuff for her first adventure ride, in Laos.
In the same way I went down to see Helge earlier, for information, I went down to see Dan a couple of days ago. Long-story-short I flew down to Seattle and rented a car from there, about 185 miles (my bike is at Alyxmoto)
To Dan’s from the Seattle/Tacoma airport (it’s no YVR!), the green line
Lots of Americana in central and eastern Washington
Top subject on the rental car radio, on the drive, is ‘Canadian smoke” from the monster fires in BC, being blown south. When I got to Dan’s it looked like this. It was thick and smelt of burning
So Dan and I pulled an 8 hour shift working on OSM maps, GPS systems clean-ups, with only a short break for lunch. He’s the man, the top expert on GPS systems in the serious traveller, a tester for Garmin, and has consulted for Furkot for 2 years. In real life, he’s a retired engineer. I rode with him and Helge from L.A. to Guatemala. Dan has 100,000 overseas adventure riding, including riding an HP2 in Africa.
We talked about Garmin.
He didn’t defend them when I pointed out the shittyness of the experience with these assholes. As I’ve said before they’re the ride anti-Christ
But there’s extremely good news. A replacement for Garmin Basecamp that looks very good. Dan gave me an introduction to it. Wow, is it ever different. I’m going to use it in planning mode here for a while before I talk about it.
Just a random Furkot screen below. Also nice to toggle in and out of OSM vs satellite.
