We ride along in a could of white dust at times so thick it can hide an on-coming car or the rider creating it. It permeates everything, our clothes, the mechanisms of our helmets and plasters itself to the sweat we create riding these roads.
We have been travelling south, through Patagonia, traversing the national parks on the dirt. There is a technique and a mindset to this riding. We stand, our heads meters above the ground, propelled forward on a bike that is moving in many directions and all the time. The back end slides and the bike bucks as it travels over sections of hard packed washboard or loose gravel. Everything is counter intuitive. To counteract the washboard, and to save your bones being dismantled by the vibration, you travel faster. That means you arrive at corners, with their gravel overcoats, at speed, which means you need to brake…. Thankfully some genius at BMW has created a program that deals with this idiocy and brings the bike to a suitable speed in a reasonable manner. Not that it feels like it while it is happening.
We are passing through the most amazing scenery, Scotland and Norway combined and inflated. Tall mountains with white tips, huge and steel blue lakes. This is a beautiful country and still a wilderness, hence the roads we ride. We start again tomorrow , white coated cloud makers heading to the end of the world.
peteryder2003 