So we did it!
We shelled out quite a bit of dough and got our Redverz Atacama Motorcycle Expedition Tent. It’s even bigger and more spacious than we thought! Last night we set it up and today we spent a few hours checking out how it’d feel to be living it for a good amount of time. We even blew up our air mattresses and dug out our sleeping bags to make sure that everything fit in cozily. You can see how huge this tent is in our picture below. Stefan at 6ft+ can easily stand in it…
Here I am snug in my Coleman cocoon sleeping bag. Ok, I lasted in it for about 3mins as our sleeping bags are rated for 5 degree weather LOL!
Stefan standing easily in the motorbike “garage”. I can stand pretty much anywhere in the tent…
We couldn’t pin the tent out to it’s largest capacity, but it easily covers 3×4 meters. The front most compartment is where our motorbike panniers/gear will be stored. This allows for our “living” space to be completely mud/dirt free.
Massive and numerous ventilation openings so that it is also appropriate for hot weather. 3 pane linings for the windows and doors to block out insects, sand, cold and direct sun. It truly is an all season tent!
So that was our ONE STEP FORWARD…
Our TWO STEPS BACK experience has to do with our motorbike.
As you know from our previous post, our bike has been out of service for the past few months due to it needing a part that is currently out of stock.
We found a replacement for the part, while it is the correct part, the connection doesn’t quite fit on our bike as BMW has changed the shape of the gear shaft.
Ahhhhh!!!! >:(
Fortunately, our awesome BMW mechanic (the owner of Tart Motorrad ) is a positive guy and he figured he could do something to get the part to fit on the gear shaft. The electronic connection was all good, as our bike happily turned on when connected to it, but it really was a situation of getting the slightly “wrong” puzzle piece to fit in the puzzle…
We put our bike in his garage in the late afternoon of the 11th of November and we were hoping he could work his magic on Saturday and that we could go for a ride on Sunday…
That was not meant to be. We got a call Saturday morning that a fire broke out in his garage late Friday night and that 8 BMW GS1200 were destroyed and that our baby was damaged… Luckily, no one was hurt as it was in the middle of the night.
OH MY GOD!! Seriously, if we kept our baby for one more weekend and didn’t insist on it going into the garage on Friday in hopes of riding out on Sunday we would have missed the entire accident!
We felt horrible for ourselves and our friend. He’s been awesome during this whole ordeal and is assuring us that he will take responsibility for the damage on our bike and that our baby will be the first he will repair. He will also take responsibility for the 8 destroyed bikes while waiting for the “slow as molasses” insurance claim to be sorted out. We really do hope that he can claim insurance soon!
One of the 8 totally destroyed bikes
Seems like our bike only sustained superficial damage. But we won’t know till it is run through a full and intensive diagnostic test. High heat could also damage electronics. We’ll post an update when we know the full extent of the damage…
So that’s where we are right now. We’ve had a string of bad luck and we’re hoping that we’ll have some better news soon…