RubiKon Adventures: Our Life Behind Bars – Father & Son Doing Time in The Northern Frontier

Day 1: GrizzLee’s Story

Yukon Johann giving the thumbs up.. time to go.

Gretchen - Locked, loaded and ready

A border scare.

Johann’s bike died just after crossing into Canada. No power, no indicator lights. All the fuses checked. It was hot thought and the Dakar seemed to be extremely hot. Probably form sitting a t standtill in the heart while running and waitng to cross the border. In any event, a 2 hour trip into Abbotsford soon followed as I tried to locate a new battery. No lusck. I did stop at a Honda powersports store and a John Deere tractor/supply house. Both palces checked the battery and both places said the battery was good. Hmmm.. you can’t image the explicatives that were running through my mind. I had spent about $2500 getting the bikes ready. Tune –up, tires all the fluids changed… I spent several man weeks into preparing for the trip. When I came back to the border, Johann was gone , but the bike was still there. The Canadian border guards invited him inside. Did I mention it was HOT!! Itr was about 20 degrees cooler inside. I got the tools and installed the battery, hoping that it was an over heated, chip, sensor or even a bad battery connection. Hooked it all up and turned the key…. YES, YES, YES!! The bike started. WTF!!! I didn’t care. Subsequent, starts and re-starts all went w/o a hitch. So we threw caution to the wind and took off towards Mission B.C where we headed over to Hope and then up towards Lillioeet. What a beautiful ride. I was capturing it all on my GoPro and stopping to catch a few pics. We arrived at Downing Provincial Park around 9:30 that night only to find the park closed. Fortunately, the area near the boat ramp was available and several others were all huddled in there. So we got some free camping right on the edge of Kelly Lake that night.

Tearing the bike apart at the Canadian Border

Day 1 : Yukon Johann’s Story

It’s Not an Adventure if Nothing happens!

All was going very well all the way up to the border into Canada. The line was very long and made a long wait for us to get to the very front, at this time the bike felt abnormally hot, I was just thinking it might be because it was just around the mid 80’s. we got to the front, turned off the motorcycle just temporarily so I can show the border guard my I.D. The time came to start the bike back up, turned the key, flipped the switch, and pressed the starter button. Nothing happened! I looked down, the kick stand was up so I knew that wasn’t it, the key was on, starter was on and tried again, just killed the bike even more. Now none of the lights would come on, after a couple of minutes dinkin around on the bike, I finally decided to push it over to where my dad was. We took apart the bike and came the conclusion that the battery must be dead. I waited at the border with all of our gear beside me while my dad went out to see if he could find a battery. He told me he found one, but the places he went to checked battery and said it was perfectly fine. He finally came back after a 2-3 hour wait. We plugged the battery back in and started it up, no problems, started up like it did at home! There is nothing different in my perspective for the rest of the day to Downing Provincial Park.

Going up the Fraser River Canyon

Lilooet in the evening sun

Hoping for good karma- e always travel with mascots

Day 2: Yukon Johann’s Story

A Fantastic Ride with a Disappointing Event

We got to bed pretty late last night, I think it was around 11 pm. And didn’t wake up until about 7:30 maybe. We made breakfast which was a delicious, a breakfast skillet. We packed all our things back into the bikes and took off for our next destination. We went on a new route, one neither of us have ever been on, and man am I glad! It was stunningly beautiful through there, I’m not sure if my dad got any pictures of it, I sure hope so though. It was a very beautiful ride with one complaint… it was so freaking hot! Mid 80’s all day and in some areas it got up into the 90’s with high humidity… this made it kind of hard to enjoy the ride as much as we should, but I made as much as I could of it and had a great time. We are camping just outside of McBride today and ready to ride on into Prince George. This brings up the “Disappointing Event” at our camp last night, my dad recently discovered that he forgot his bag for the Go Pro, which unfortunately had a lot of his stuff in it that was absolutely necessary for us to have in order to get video. Anyway, it was a good ride and I’m looking forward to what tomorrow brings us, thanks for following our ride thus far.