Author: admin

Odometer  32,062 – 32,464 —  402  Miles (9764 Miles Total)

Cartagena, Colombia – Medellín, Colombia

I woke up not very excited about this long ride today. I packed up in a rush and shoved breakfast down my throat, loaded up the bike, paid for my stay at the hostel and got on the bike. I have been bouncing between Waze and Google on this trip. Waze has been acting really funny lately with routes but they are usually way better with ETA than Google is. I looked into it a bit on my ride out of the city and noticed it was on the avoid highways option. I turned it off and It said I had a 9:46 ride to Medellin. Not bad. I think I might even be able to shave 1:30 off this ride even though Waze pushes hard with the ETA for fast drivers.

I finally remembered to put my earplugs in, I threw my shirt in the sink at the hostel to keep me cool and I was ready for this 10 hour ride. It was pretty hot and boring for the beginning. I slowly started to climb up into the mountains. Daniella told me not to wear my full gear since most of the ride would be hot but shit she was wrong. I stopped for lunch about 4 hours into the ride at a nice little restaurant on a mountainside. They spoke no English so lunch was sort of a surprise. I got a lovely chicken soup with another dish of rice and chicken with a salad, two cups of ice tea. It was delicious. Everyone was staring at my bike the whole time and trying to figure out where I was coming from. I went around the back of the restaurant and took some pictures of the mountains behind it.

I got back on the road and I kept climbing and climbing. My Garmin GPS said I was at 8500′. It got cold quickly. The temps went from 90 this morning to 50 very quickly. It even started to rain right after lunch. I pulled over after the rain got pretty bad and threw my pants and boots on. Now I was cozy and I was dry!  The roads were really slick and back before the rain I was causing through a town, I hit a wet spot and my rear tire kicked out pretty hard. I was almost high sided but thankfully I rode it out. The wet roads were very slippery on this side of the mountains. I was taking it easy remembering I just crashed a few weeks ago because of the rain. I stopped for a few pictures here and there. The scenery was so beautiful I was in heaven. The roads kept climbing into the mountains and at one point I rode right into the clouds where I was in thick fog for an hour or so. On the ride I saw a bad accident. A guy on a scooter without a helmet drove into the back of a pickup truck at about 40-50mph. The tailgate of the pickup was fucked. This guy bashed his head in and definitely would not survive. There was blood all over the floor by the time the ambulance came. I got the hell out of there I didn’t need to be around this. I can’t believe how many people here ride without helmets.

I pulled into Medellin at about 5pm or so. There was so much traffic but the temps were perfect at 70 degrees and it was cloudy while raining a bit. My bike was pissing me off again. It was running really really hot while I was doing about 20 in traffic and I had to keep turning it on and off to keep the temps down in traffic. It’s time I bring this thing to the BMW dealer here and let them take care of it. I’m sick of working on this coolant issue. The coolant flush needs two people really. One to work the bleeder screw and one to keep pouring coolant. I couldn’t quite do both when I was in San Gil. I’ll have to make a run to BMW in the morning and see what they say.

I got to my hostel and the vibe felt so good so I booked three more nights right off the bat. I dropped my gear off and put the bike on the sidewalk. I got on the computer and looked up things to do here. I found a salsa school in my area which is one of the nicer areas of Medellin. Thanks to the Dutch girls who recommended this hostel. I also was told to do the free walking tour of the city. So I signed up for that and it was tomorrow at 9:30am. I got in touch with a paragliding school to rent gear and fly over the city in the next few days.

I went for a walk to the salsa school to book some time. I ended up buying ten hours for the next few days at a good rate so I’ll be doing 2-3 hours a day of salsa. I went for a walk to a few bike shops since there were 10 in a row near the salsa school asking for help with some work on my bike and one of them mentioned a BMW shop down the block so I’ll be going there first thing in the morning. I went for a walk back to the hostel to work on the blog a bit and then I got hungry. I asked the woman at the hostel for some tips on where to get good food and she sent me to a place by the salsa school. I walked back up the hill and holy shit was this the best meal I’ve had in a long long time. A risotto dish with chicken, a Peruvian ceviche dish, a coke, a Pisco sour, and a wildly delicious fried Oreo with ice cream for dessert. I went back home and then got invited out to a little event the hostel had at a bar. Gringo Tuesdays. I went out and met some other gypsies like myself and we chatted until about 11pm and I decided it was time for me to go home. I was exhausted and ready for bed.

I’ve been having some issues with planning the rest of the trip which I might as well talk about now.

Odometer  32,010 – 32,052 —–  42  Miles (9352 Miles Total)

Cartagena, Colombia

The girls last night invited me to go see them at the beach today and I decided I would take them up on the offer since it’s so hot in the city here. I’m starting to realize that once I leave here it’s going to get cold very quickly in the rest of the countries I’m going to so time to take full advantage of the sun. I went downstairs to work on my blog while waiting for my breakfast to come out. While I was working on my laptop I heard this girl speaking Serbian on a phone call with her mom. When she hung up I said good morning in Serbian and I saw the look of terror on her face. She was thinking oh shit did I say something I wasn’t supposed to since I didn’t think anyone could understand me. haha

We chatted for a bit. Her friend popped up. They were from Montenegro but live in Amsterdam now. I was actually talking to them while working on the blog yesterday and of course the topic came up quickly between the both of them and other people about Americans. It never ends. I loaded up the bike and headed down to the beach while stopping for a bunch of water because the girls didn’t have any down there and everything was too expensive. The ride was 56 minutes but I got there in 35 with the stops. I parked on the dirt road before the parking lot hoping I wouldn’t get a ticket or my bike stolen or something. The girls said it was a 35 minute walk to their hostel on the beach so they got moving. As soon as I got to the water to start walking their direction I couldn’t believe this water. It was some of the nicest water I have ever seen in my life. I was not expecting this. I was so happy!

I made the walk down to them pretty quick and met up with them at this hostel. I dropped my stuff off in their room while they ate breakfast and we went for a long swim since it was so hot. The water was so clean and blue I wish you all could see it. Once we got done swimming we decided to go for a long walk to the other side of the beach. We stopped for some food and Josefine started bargaining for prices. My god is she freaking good at it! We got a red snapper for nearly the same price as Danielle got us in Santa Marta on the beach. The food came out in about 5 minutes and we stuffed our faces. Saskia is a fancy eater and hasn’t ever used her hands before to eat food. I told her to drop the shit and use her fingers. I taught her how to eat a fish the right way since she was a bit slow at it! Sorry Saskia! haha

We devoured every piece of the fish we each had and then went for a swim to clean our faces off. We went for a long walk to the end of the beach where there were a bunch of boats parked. We swam in the water for a while. The girls got up on my shoulders and stood up and jumped off. They were having so much fun. Josefine just broke up with her boyfriend of 4.5 years two nights ago and the last two months of her trip have been some lows from what Saskia told me. It was nice to see her forgetting about all of that and just having a blast. Saskia said she hasn’t seen her smile and laugh like this in a while.

We got some ice cream on the walk back. I got two cones of course and the girls love how I get double dessert everywhere we go. We finished the walk back to the hostel and got to lay down. Josefine came out for a swim with me and we were trying to balance on rocks in the waves. She said she needed more core strength so I took her to the beach after 30 minutes in the water and gave her some ab exercises to do. She loved it and hated me for it. Saskia was just lounging around reading her book the whole time. They started bargaining with a guy that would take them on a plankton tour later on in the night time. Jesus christ these girls have no shame in bargaining it’s the funniest thing ever to watch.

We went out for some more food while we watched the sunset on the beach and took some pictures. We chatted for a while over dinner and then before it got dark we parted ways. I’m going to miss these Dutch girls! We might be able to meet up in Ecuador in a month if the timing works out though so that would be nice. I made the trek back to my bike and had to deal with a ton of traffic of 4 million people leaving the beach. It was an eerie ride home since there was nothing between the beach and the city for the most part. I got home safe and jumped in the shower. I ran downstairs to work on the blog a bit before I was going to get some street food and before I knew it I made friends with two people.

Alina is from Canada but lives in Chicago now so we took a ride into the city center to get some street food which she was skeptical about. Once she saw the line for the place that had Arepas she was convinced it was good. We chilled out on the sidewalk for about 30 minutes waiting for the food to be done. Of course like everyone else we chatted about all kinds of things. We got our food which she ended up loving and went to get some ice cream. We took a long walk to the other side of town to the new city center which was surrounded by a huge stone wall which we got on top of and walked around for a bit. It was getting late so we decided to head back. Maybe 5 blocks from the old center where everyone hangs out I noticed a man with a really really nice clean ironed white shirt. He was dressed really nicely.

Something felt weird about the way he was walking. He was walking ahead of us but pretty close to my side and it was sort of aggressive in a way but not really. I kept an eye on him for about a block. Another block later he was doing the same thing but walking sort of sporadically one second in front of me the next behind me. I put my hands in my pockets to protect my phone, keys and wallet. I didn’t say anything to her as we just kept walking. He did this for about 5 more blocks. At one intersection I acted like we were going to turn and he did as well. Ok this is getting a bit weird now. We kept walking minding our own business. As we came to the center where we just saw a Michael Jackson performance while eating ice cream 1 hour ago I noticed he was there doing another one. There was a huge crowd around him so we were walking with a bunch of people surrounding us which were other tourists. We all turned left to go around the center and the white shirt guy was in front of us looking back at us. I grabbed her and stopped to turn right to try to get in the crowd to watch this guy do his performance. As I did that he stopped and started pushing through the tourists we just turned around from and started following us. I said to her there’s a guy following us for the last 5 blocks and this is the third time he’s changing directions to stay with us. I pushed her through the crowd and we walked to the left and I told her to sit down in an open area in front of the crowd. We sat down and I explained to her what just happened and I looked back near the opening we just snuck through. I see white shirt guy with his arm around a guy wearing a blue shirt and he starts to whisper in his ear and he’s pointing at us. I stand up and make eye contact with them and stare them in the eye to let them know I see them. I stare at them for about 10-15 seconds and they’re staring right back. Well fuck

Blue shirt guy starts walking over to us and gets behind us. I grab her and lift her up and we walk right in the middle of the performance and out the other side. I tell her to go to a bar across the street and we will go inside if they come over to us. We waited out front for about a minute while I was scanning the crowd for them but I lost them. Two people walked up that she knew from another hostel and she explained to them what just happened. I gave her my phone keys and wallet and I walked back into the performance to go look for them. I really wanted to see what they were going to do since I didn’t have to worry about the shit in my pockets falling out if something happened.

I walked back into the crowd looking for them but nothing. They were gone. I went back over to her friends and her and we decided to go for a walk. We walked a block over and ended up hanging out there till 1Am just chatting about so many things. They gave me a lot of places to visit in Colombia which I was happy about. I got pretty tired and they walked us back to my bike where we rode back to the hostel. I parked my bike inside and said goodnight! I haven’t had an adrenaline rush like that in a while. Those guys really had me jacked up. I wonder if I will see them tomorrow night since I’m pretty easy to spot here. We will see what happens.

Odometer  32,000 – 32,010 —–  10  Miles (9310 Miles Total)

Cartagena, Colombia

I made plans last night with the girls to go to the food market in the morning for breakfast. I got up a bit late and enjoyed laying in bed and went downstairs for my free breakfast cutting it close to my 9am Crossfit class I was going to head out to. I made it just in time but with a full stomach. The class was stupid hard and I knew this was going to hurt. I hung out for a bit waiting around since every class always starts late. I partnered up with a guy and we hit the workout hard. We almost finished but didn’t make it. I realized it was Saturday after class was over and it all made sense to me. Saturdays are the hardest classes at these damn gyms. I wasn’t prepared for this!

I hung out for a bit after class and talked to some people while stretching and doing a little ab workout as well. I put my helmet on my sweaty head and headed back to the hostel to meet the girls. I worked on my blog for a little while waiting for them to get ready and then they disappeared so I decided to head down to the market at 11:30 or so to check it out before we all went down. I pulled up and it wasn’t nice at all. Just more fruit stands like you see all over the city anyway so I got in touch with them and told them it wasn’t worth it. I got back to the hostel and we decided to walk into the old city to get some food there. Little did I know I was about to be hanging out with these girls until about 8Pm.

We walked down to the old city and ended up sitting down for some street food. We got ceviche, I got an arepa I tried to get last night but they forgot about me and I didnt want to wait any longer. The girls got some coffee, I got some cups of lime juice mixed with mandarins. It was so hot out I was covered in sweat and my shirt was soaked. We sat down on the sidewalk with a bunch of food and drinks and stuffed our faces. We chatted and chatted and chatted about all kinds of things. They admitted I was the first American they have actually talked to or enjoyed talking to since of course no one likes Americans anywhere! hah. I feel so special.

It was nice having some deep conversations with someone. It’s been a while since i’ve done that. After we got done eating we walked over to this delicious cafe where they have some incredible pastries, cakes and desserts along with the best coffee I think they ever had. We sat down and I ordered a chocolate cake with some caramel chocolate cake as well with some coffee. We were in heaven. We talked about life in the states vs life in Europe. We talked about psychedelics. We talked about where we have been and where we’re going next. They had a lot of interesting questions and thoughts. It was so much fun talking to them. Josefien was 27 and she was a physical therapist, Saskia was 24 and she was just getting done with school. They were both from the Netherlands and Saskia actually lives two blocks from where I stayed in a hostel for a night before I visited my friend Adam in the Netherlands.

They were telling me their experiences meeting Americans on trips and Jesus fucking christ its insane how many bad things people have to say about Americans. Day after day after day. I didn’t think it was this bad but it’s really bad. They seem to think it’s America or the highway and everything is the best there, they never want to adapt to another country. I know people like this exist but I didn’t think they were the type to travel. I always thought 90% of these people stayed in the US and did not travel but boy was I wrong! Literally as I sit here typing this I just met two girls born and raised in Montenegro but live in the Netherlands now and after a minute they started talking about the same thing.

After we stuffed our faces with a ton of cake the girls wanted to go shopping for bathing suits. We were talking about watching the sunset at the castle here but it was a bit too cloudy for that. So I followed them around for a bit, taking a few pictures of the old city. While we were out and I was waiting in front of a shop I pulled out my phone and opened Facebook. There it was. Another fatality on the Base Fatality List. I scroll down a little bit and there’s some pictures of the legend Jimmy Pouchert. My heart hurt a bit. Jimmy has been BASE jumping almost as long as I have been alive. He was big in the sport and has been around and alive for so long you didn’t think he would ever die in the sport. But as always you got proved wrong thinking that way. Jimmy taught me how to BASE jump along with his wife Marta in 2008. Such a special bright soul he was. That news ruined my day and I was bummed to hear the news.

I talked to a buddy Jake to see if he had any pictures from our course we did with him so I could post something nice but he didn’t have any. Jake wasn’t in our course. He was in another one but hung out with our group when his course ended while ours was still going on so he was in some of our pictures. All of my pictures were on my hard drive at home. I always think about it but the group photo we have from our first jump course is turning into something other people always talk about. Most of the people in our picture are dead. At this point the only people alive are me, Marta, and this woman Cate who worked for NASA but quit BASE jumping a while ago. I was in California a long time ago on a trip with her and Brian who she learned to jump with. Brian died with 2 other good flyers on the same jump. The leader took the wrong turn flying between mountains and they had nowhere to fly out of to open their parachutes. They all died. Brian had bad head trauma and we thought he might survive but he didn’t. Cate quit shortly after that, I quit a few years later.

Would I be dead if I kept jumping and pushing it the way I did when I was younger? Most likely. Everyone dies doing this and it makes me hate some of my good friends that still jump. Do they think they’re better than the best people in the world? Do they really think they’re going to survive this shit if they didn’t? Little do they know but they’re not nearly as good as the ones that are dead. I mean these guys that died are some talented athletes. That mentality is what made me quit too. I started thinking about this all the time. Am I better than some of these guys that died? Not right now I’m not and if I’m not that what does that mean for myself. I’m glad that mentality worked its way into my head. Maybe its why im still alive right now. 13,500 skydives, 500 BASE jumps, a ton of dumb shit I have done and im still alive. Im happy with those numbers and quitting BASE jumping. It’s just not worth it anymore.

Anyway I tried to put those thoughts aside when the girls came out of the shop and not let the whole thing ruin the rest of my day. We walked around some more and Josefine and I decided to head back to the hostel while Saskia kept shopping. We got back to the hostel and she said her sleeping pad had a small leak in it and she asked me for help to test it out to send the company pictures of where it was leaking from so she can get a new one. 15 Minutes later I found the hole and patched it up so she was good to go with it for the rest of the trip. She was so thankful! It was such an easy fix how has no one fixed this for her yet! We hung out in the pool at the hostel and chatted about motorcycles and traveling for a while. Saskia showed up, they ate their dinner that they left in the fridge and called an Uber to get down to a beach about an hour away from where they were spending two nights. They invited me to meet them there tomorrow so I’ll probably go enjoy a beach day there since I should try to get darker than I already am! Hah

I took a ride into the old city and had a bunch of street food. Some girls bought me drinks while I was just sitting on the sidewalk eating my street food which cracked me up. I didn’t speak any Spanish so that was that. I had some ice cream, made some phone calls, ate some more food and walked around for a while. I got back to my hostel, laid down after having my sleepy chocolate potion I had last night and passed right out.

Just some shots of the girls for memories!

Odometer   31,835 – 32,000 —— 165   Miles (9300 Miles Total)

Minca, Colombia – Cartagena, Colombia