When I was getting ready to leave I looked over my should and saw Sam Manicom (on his new bike) and I thought to myself “what are the odds of that” I had planned the whole weekend to track him down and bumped right into before the show had even officially begun. The day before the event I went to go check in and do a bit of a recon so I would know the basic lay out of the area. While the cabins are very quaint I feel I may have missed out on a few things by not actually camping at the event, and would have had more human interactions if I would have camped. The Arizona Mountain Cabins had a discounted rate for Expo attendees and the cabins had heaters, electricity, Wi-Fi and NO TVs and as such sounded like the perfect place to “camp”. Also please keep in mind I wasn’t sure how the ankle was going to hold up so camping for me (even though it was included in the price of the ticket) was absolutely out. There is a reason I have over 1,500 nights in Marriott and probably closer to 2,000 nights including all hotel brands and only ~75-100 nights camping. In short I know about most camping products and one weekend a month and one week a year for the last 5 years I have camped and I have started to dislike it. I was an employee of the Coleman corporation for over seven years I my oldest son is an Eagle Scout and youngest is currently a Bear Scout. I despise camping which is odd but I speak of the dislike of it often. I just figured that its all part of the overlanding experience and if you cant find your class then how the heck do you ever plan on doing a proper border crossing. its all a bit of a free for all on what to do and how to get around and where to park. In hindsight I would probably do the same thing again because there was no check ins for any of the classes I went to – no one really was checking to see if you attend what you sign up for or not or will kick you out if you didn’t register. However once I got onsite I quickly realized the Website was correct and started skipped a bunch of stuff to walk around and just check things out. I duly noted it then went ahead and jam packed my schedule. The website specifically warns you not to jam pack your day registering for too much and to allow yourself some walking around time. You must register online and then based on how soon you registered relates to how soon you can sing up for classes with the earlier registers being able to sign up sooner. If you know nothing about Overland Expo here is a primer from what I figured out. The plan is to ride a couple of thousand miles out to Flagstaff hang out with some authors have a look around at Overland Expo and then come back and see how I hold up. If your reading this and your asking yourself “ who is Ted Simon” then we may not be able to be friends any longer. Now in full discloser this is all a bit horrible because I didn’t realize Ted Simon was still alive it turns out he was 88 and still doing these book signing and presentation tours. Then I found out the Ted Simon and Sam Manicom would be there which made the trip sound much more interesting. I had been hearing about Overland Expo for some time on Adventure Rider Radio and an idea started to form about how it might be the perfect test ride to see if my ankle (which had been shattered a year earlier) would hold up for a long distance ride.
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