Packing time...

My bike is still in the box, but now it's time for Tom to begin that process himself...



The gear is slowly being sorted, assessed, and packed away in the panniers, and then into boxes, ready for the flight to Anchorage.



This time Monday, we'll be at 30,000 feet roughly above Montana, as we make the 6+ hour flight from MN to AK...

But for now, it's time to head out as Tom is getting a haircut and I'm gonna browse around Target whilst he gets cropped.

Then it's off to REI for some last minute gear shopping (hell yeah!) and maybe a naughty bite at ARBY'S..!

More to come soon...

Cheers y'all.

RWK.

OUT!

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Location:2nd Ave S,Minneapolis,United States

Gear sorting, bus rides and catching up with friends, old and new...

Having had a good, long, much needed nights sleep, I was up at 0830 feeling a heck of a lot fresher than the night before.

Tom was at work already, so I busied myself with sorting through my gear and getting the various items ready for boxing up for the flight to Anchorage.
Tom is almost ready for boxing up his gear too, with the faithful ping-pong table being the gear sorting platform as usual..!




My bike box had been opened, as expected, by the TSA, but I didn't realize my pack had been opened up also... And it appeared that everything had been thoroughly poked through and emptied out... Things were all back there, but stuffed in any which way. Unfortunately, they'd also opened up my handle-bar bag to search through that. The bag, when being closed, requires it to be held closed first before being zipped shut... They hadn't done that.




They'd yanked on the zip to close it, and in the prices snapped the zip right off... Dammit! So now I need to shell out for a new bag.




It took me a moment to figure out why they'd gone through the entire pack so thoroughly, even though everything usually goes though the x-ray... I'd packed a zip-lock bag of glucosamine joint-supplement pills, so I reckon that must have shown up and caused the initial alarm bells...




Around 1030, I made my way to catch the bus into town, where I met Tom, his friend and colleague Elaine, and we all caught up with the one and only Roadwarrior Gordy for a great lunch at Kieran's, in downtown Minneapolis.








After that, I checked out cellphone plans at AT&T for a while before meeting Tom again for a good yarn, snacks, and few drinks at Dan Kelly's with a whole bunch of Toms work colleagues.








It was a great afternoon, with a great turnout. It was a lot of fun to meet Toms friends, share stories and see how valued Tom is, and strangely, how concerned everyone was about him surviving this adventure..! Haha.
So now it's time to rest up, update this journal and get ready for a big day tomorrow... We'll be hitting my most favorite store in the whole wide world... REI..! YEAH!!
Also, it'll be the World Premiere of Roadwarriors 5: The Pacific Crest Trail at Jim & Diane's place, so we're looking forward to that too.
For now, this is RWK signing off... (But if you're really lucky, maybe RWT will make the odd post at some stage too..!)
Seeya.
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Location:2nd St NE,Columbia Heights,United States

Back in MN..!

It's been 4 years, but I'm back in Minneapolis, staying with my good mates, Tom and Steve.

Steve made the 30 minute drive south to meet me at the airport and help lug my bike back to the car.




Now to stay awake long enough to make it to a regular bedtime..!


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Location:2nd St NE,Columbia Heights,United States

Tokyo bound...

Yay..! Not only did my camera gear and tripod breeze through the metal detectors and not an eyebrow was raised, but my earlier request to possibly move seats from being jammed right in the middle of the middle of the plane has been granted...

Aisle seat! MUCH better...

Ok... I think this is enough Facebook-like boring-crap posts...

If something exciting happens,maybe I'll post about that... Bit otherwise, it'll be the events of hitting the 'Sota, seeing my fellow Roadwarriors, and the adventure proper!

RWK.

OUT!


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Location:T2 Basement Drive,Changi,Singapore

A tape measure..!?

What the heck?!

I've never had my bike box measured before... But that's what happened as I checked it in at the ANA counter.

I had already cut the box down to regulation size... Give or take a centimeter or two... But it would seem that that cm or two was important!

The total linear limit is 203cm. My box added up to be 205cm... Dammit. And for a moment there, the blood pressure started to rise as it looked like they were going to make something out of those 20mm of extra box...

Luckily, one of the supervisors at ANA is a damn fine fella, and said it was OK... They could see I'd cut the box down and taped it up well, and he joked that the tape had added a tiny bit if extra dimension to the box, but they'd let it pass... To put it mildly... PHEW!

So now I'm sat at my gate, waiting for it to open and to go through the metal detectors...



I have my mini CF tripod with me, and a TSA print out that says they're OK to go as carry-on... I really hope that rule holds!

Fingers and toes crossed!

RWK

OUT!


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Location:T2 Basement Drive,Changi,Singapore

Four years in the making...

As well as catching up with my MN mates, we will be having the world premiere of Roadwarriors 5; The Pacific Crest Trail.




What with work and travel, and a slight case of creative block, it took me a bit of a while (3+ years... We ended the hike in late 2009) to edit the many hours of trail-footage down to a finished movie...




Featuring Spencer, Stacie, Will, Christa and Ryan, as well as Tom and myself of course, the video shows our time on the trail and showcases the amazing, tough and diverse scenery that we saw as we made out way north over 2600 miles... I can't wait to share it with the guys I made those miles with.




For the ride Tom, Will and I are about to undertake, I'll be concentrating more on still images than video, but between Will and I, I'm sure we will be posting some small video clips too.
More soon!
RWK
OUT.
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Location:Hougang Street 92,Hougang,Singapore

Packed & ready..!

Gear... lots if it. Hiking and biking gear, plus a fair mix of both.

Sorted... Weighed...Packed... Unpacked... Re-sorted...Re-packed... Weighed... Unpacked... Re-re-sorted... Re-packed... Weighed again...

That's how it's been going for the past day and a half..! But I'm finally happy to say everything is packed tight and wrapped up safely.





The cardboard bike box I got from the local shop was kindly filled with a bunch of foam padding, but was quite a lot bigger than the permitted total 80 linear inches, so I had to get busy with my box-cutter & some hot-glue, but now it's down to size and everything is slotted in.

Both my bike box and backpack are under the limit by at least a kilo each, so I've got room for a few things to bring back if I need to.

This time tomorrow, (which will be 'today' again..!) I'll be sat in Minneapolis, chilling on the new couch in Casa de Emme... My second home!

I'm looking forward to seeing the whole Emme clan, as well as catching up with a true original Roadwarrior, Mr Gordy Stremke..!

More pix and progress updates will come soon...

RWK

OUT!


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Location:Hougang Street 92,Hougang,Singapore