Preparations

It's hard to believe, but in two short days we will fly to Riga to begin our Epic eurasia motorcycle ride.  For those who haven't heard our incessant chatter about this trip, we plan to spend about 69 days touring and riding our BMW GSA Adventure motorcycle from Riga, Latvia to Hong Kong, China.  In between we rise ride through Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Mongolia, and China.  

The trip, arranged by Ayres Adventures, was in the planning stages for almost 18 months, and should be an amazing 13,000-mile experience.  The entire route is pre-scouted, with the best available accommodations and many unusual and interesting sites along the way.  

Ayres Adventures has also provided a great set of folks to support this trip.  We will be led by John Jesson, our head guide and guru.  Janis Cimins, a Latvian and experienced rider, will guide and assist in Russian translation.  Mike Meyer is a paramedic from California, as well as an off road riding instructor for BMW North America. Svetlana Malygina, owns a travel agency in Moscow. She helped plan the route and will also serve as a guide.  Somewhere along the Chinese border, we will pick up the required guide for that part of the trip.  It's going to be awesome!

Our rider packets and swag arrived the other day.

We will travel with 11 other participants, so 17 people overall.  Most are from the US, but we have one gentleman from Switzerland and a couple from Indonesia. We'll introduce everyone to you in the days that follow.

Many of the riders will also contribute to an overall trip blog on the Ayres Adventures website - found here, and will include a Spot tracking map to see where we are in real time: 

https://www.ayresadventures.com/epic-journey-2015-travel-journal/

So stayed tuned.  We will fly to Riga on the 28th of July, meet our fellow travelers on July 31st, and go boots-up for the Epic Journey on August 1, 2015.