Austin Vince
It's always an adventure, right?
If you've spent any time finding information about riding motorcycles beyond your local city limits, then you are bound to run into Austin Vince's work...he's completed 2 round the world trips (RTW) Mondo Enduro and Terra Circa and as far as I know was the first to record them and edit them for TV (with no support vehicle I might add). In fact, he was a consultant on the Erwin McGregor and Charlie Boorman's Long Way Round/Down. All of this to say, I have an enormous respect for this British man as he has been an inspiration and a hero for the riding I do.
So, last Wednesday night in Seattle Touratech USA hosted Austin at the Freemont Abbey and what a swell time of food, beer, stories, and laughs it was. If you've ever watched Monty Python...take that Brit humor and multiply it by three. :-) So, the plan was to ride 6 hours from where I'm shooting a project here in Idaho and to arrive at Seattle in time to shoot the Austin event and ride back the next day...well, fate chose otherwise and as I came in to Seattle's rush hour traffic I started to lose my clutch. I started trying to run possible scenarios over in my mind as to why the clutch wasn't lasting more than a few seconds, and sure enough, I look down and there is my clutch hose oozing liquid every time I squeezed the clutch lever. And by the time I was about 1 mile away from Freemont, I lost all compression in the hose thus rendering the bike unrideable in city traffic. Luckily, Tim, sole proprietor of Lowside towing, was out and about and was able to swing by and pick me and the bike up in the rainy Seattle weather, plus, he even dropped me off at the Austin event, pretty cool. As fate would have it, due to all the craziness Paul the GM at Touratech offered me a couch, and I ended up drinking bourbon with the guys and swapping stories through half the night...great times not soon to be forgotten. The next day, with the help of Dave, some local friends, and DucSea they were able to track down a clutch hose for me and I changed it in a parking lot, got the airbubbles out of the line, and then rode the whole way back to Idaho that night in time for work the next day.
@Duc998rei It was a 1 night seminar about adventure motorcycle riding, so Enduro I guess? :-) @italduc thanks! I hope you get a chance to meet Austin, quite the guy. @flynot I'm glad it was nothing major too...and I will admit, the trip really taught me to go with the flow, and humbled me once again with the kindness of friends.
@Duc998rei What do you mean?