June 18 2007 Let the adventure begin.....

The Red Bull Tour

This is really simple... a motorcycle ride from North to South. That is as far North as a permant road goes to as far South as a permant road goes in the Americas...

We'll take as long as it takes and do this tour in "legs". We'll be traveling from Prudhoe Bay Alaska in the North to Ushuiaia Argentina in the South... Here's a diary of the first leg, Calgary / Prudhoe Bay / Calgary... The second leg will be down the spine of the rocky mountains on dirt roads. We'll cross the continental divide many times, starting in "Eureka Montana and ending in Antelope Wells New Mexico... Leg 2 happens some time this fall... wish us luck.

Leg 1 of the North South "Red Bull" tour begins like this.

Greggy comes over to my place we change oil on his bike, move his shifter up a notch and are ready to “giddy up”.

We check the communication stuff and are not getting it to work well and the throttle locks (cruze control) for this ride won’t be at Anderwerks until some time this AM, we think.

So off we go to Anderwerks. Our intent to get an early start evaporated with the late arrival of the throttle locks thanks to DHL. However, Dave Anderson and his crew help us install our new throttle locks, tune our radios and we are off… for real. It’s 2:00 pm as we leave the City… oh well at least we are on our way…

You can just feel the fear of young Greg Wilson as he starts the journey. Where are they going, what is "Grampa Mark" going to do to me? (Jon Lee)

We go to Red Deer fuel up and get some Red Bull for the push north. Drayton Valley via Rimbey and it starts to rain. We do a stop and make sure we are good to go and push ahead. With in 10 km the intensity of the rain storm intensifies and we begin to hit hail… it accumulates fast and before we know it we are riding on 1 ½ inches of nasty hail… it only lasts for a few km’s and we just push through it… “... did you know that Red Bull gives you WINGS”!

Next stop Mayerthorp. Fuel up bikes and people…. More Red Bull and we are off. Greg tips over in a parking lot. We rip it up to Grand Prarie and fuel up / more Red Bull too. We make a stop to get our picture taken with Greg’s favorite little furry animal and continue to Dawson Creek, find accommodation and crash … for the time we had on the saddle we got lots of miles done and had a solid day.