Pre-trip preparations in Fort McMurray

June 14th 2012 fiiiiinally came around, like sweaty Jehovah's Witnesses beating their pamphlets and bibles on our door, and successfully teleported Mark and I from Melbourne, Australia to Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. 18 months of talking and emailing and online shopping and planning and pissing off girlfriends and finally the four of us were together (2 dudes and 2 bikes that is). We celebrated with scotch and toast, we sat on their backs and bounced up and down, rejoicing in the silent mechanical submission and then rode them like freshly stolen prairie horses.

Punishing the steed before it's even done anything wrong

Matt's Bike

And what a better location to work on bikes than Brent's pristine 5 acre property on Draper Road - a 6 car garage to spread out in, a mouldy old trailer to watch Metalocalypse in and an outdoor toilet to poo with a view! We started by spreading out all our possessions, writing some lists, and sipping scotch while nibbling more toast. And it was all good man - completely free from regular world obligations, like a millionaire's child without the money, or a bum with 3 trolleys full of cans.

Brent's Farm

The view from the fire pit

We had lots of parts to install on the bikes and lots of mods to make, but it wasn't all just fun, we made sure to take some time out to enjoy the finer things in life, like jet boats and 2 stroke dirt bikes.

Cruisin on The Clearwater with CCR blaring

The Elders frying up our chips at our river-side camp

Performing my co-pilotly duties

Trevor the Woodchuck lurking in the rocks by our campsite

Our campsite for 2 days out on the Clearwater River

8 pound walleye pickeral - was delicious!

Bout's Harber Craft jet boat - a back country exploring machine

Matt after an AWESOME 6 hour trail ride on Carlos's KX250 2 stroke

Finally finished the prep!

Mark likes big loads

Setting off for the first day of the trip

And a video...

Yesterday we rode 600km from Fort McMurray to Red Deer in awesome summer sun, with Carlos and Kirsten along for part of the ride, and it was great. Mark's rear suspension caught menopause and is now very saggy, so we're currently considering upgrading the suspension of both bikes to get some more N/m's in our lives. So stay tuned!