Working as part-time motorcycle journalist is easily the best “job” I’ve ever finagled my way into. My side hustle with Gear Patrol, Bike Exif, Craftrad and VICARIOUS Magazine affords me fantastic opportunities to explore hidden corners and dusty paths all over this world. And, ever since I was introduced to them on a trip through Eastern Oregon (watch on YouTube), Velomacchi has played an integral part in many of those escapes.
I’ve lugged countless riding essentials across the pond into Spain, Portugal, the Isle of Man, Ireland and numerous provinces and states using the Velomacchi 50L Hybrid Duffel Travel Backpack as my carry-on friendly luggage of choice. With the backpack straps deployed, even the most snarky of TSA agents continuously wave me through so I needn't worry about lost riding gear when I land. And I can fit everything I need for a bike launch in there without a worry.
Most recently my nerves, bike and gear were put to the ultimate test when I made the trek home from AltRider’s Conserve the Ride event last year, in Woodward, PA. Exhausted, hungover and sore from two amazing days of camaraderie and hustling my Triumph Tiger through the trails winding through the Seven Mountains area I pried my eyes open to a deluge of biblical proportions. Worst of all, that storm seemed to hone in on me and followed me for eight of the ten hours I needed to get home.
I was soaked through before I even hit the interstate. And my mind was splitting time between focus on the road and worrying about my camera equipment stowed in my duffel -- my tent, tarp and all the other wet bits had been stuffed into the panniers, so I only had dry space available in that Velomacchi Duffel.
When the sun finally came out about thirty miles before the border, I stopped to check just how waterlogged my Canon had become. Unlike my soggy self (and the passport I’d stashed into an advertised “waterproof” pocket in my jacket), everything stowed behind me in that beautiful bag was bone dry. A sigh of relief and a small prayer for an easy going border guard and I was on my way.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I like better than to strap that duffel to the back of mine or somebody else's bike and take off on another adventure. But the truth of the matter is that, like just about every other wanderluster out there, I need a 9-5 to fund some of those exploits as well as everything else life has to offer. Thankfully, my day-to-day as a construction inspector doesn’t have me strapped to a desk: it lets me travel all over my fine city of Toronto.
And once the streets thaw out, that means the cage gets parked and one of my bikes becomes my sole mode of transportation. Of course, working from a mobile office has its own challenges. I need to carry just about everything most of you see on or in your desk, and then some -- and panniers alone won’t cut it: I need to lug those essentials on foot too. Thankfully, Kevin and his Velomacchi minions heard my cries and developed the 40L Speedway Backpack. I can stuff everything I need to do my job professionally (and pretty damned stylishly) inside its waterproof cocoon to take it comfortably everywhere I’m needed to be.
The 40L Speedway Backpack handles my EDC like a champ.
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Keep up to date on Matt's travels and articles with the links below.
Articles: Muck Rack
Instagram: @mattneundorf
Twitter: @NeunRulez
Take a closer look at the 40L Speedway Backpack & 50L Speedway Hybrid Duffel Travel Backpack Matt trusts.
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Partnerships that made the adventure possible.
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Velomacchi is proud to have sponsored Shawn and his mates on their adventure and the are thrilled with the release of his movie.
Hạ Long is the name of a stunning bay in Vietnam on the South China Sea and translates to "Descending Dragon".
In this film, follow three Americans as they "descend the dragon", riding down the length of Vietnam on small dirt bikes from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). They explore America's involvement in the Vietnam war, get lost near the Laotian border, are detained by the Vietnamese military, explore jungle mountain roads, party with the locals, visit Khe Sanh, crawl through the infamous Viet Cong Củ Chi tunnels, and learn a little about the people of this amazing country.
Descending Dragon: Hanoi to Saigon by Motorcycle from Shawn Edmondson on Vimeo.
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These are my self proclaimed titles while I ponder “what’s the next destination” as I humdrum my way through another traffic-filled commute, backpack strapped comfortably across my back while the rain sheets down, all around. Water, the worst enemy to anything electrical, is kept at bay with this magically waterproof material that Velomacchi uses on their bags. I’ve had just about every conceivable weather situation with these bags and they’ve yet to let me down. In a world, so full of uncertainty, it’s good to be able to count on the simple things to work. Clearly someone put some thought into this so that I don’t have to, while dodging cars and SUVs on the highway.
Back to my daydreaming: Where to next?
Before I can decide where to go, I need to decide what to take with me. After over two decades of riding motorcycles, there’s one thing I’ve learned when it comes to the subject of “what to pack”: Less - keep it simple and pack the essentials. I used to pack two or three changes of clothing when I knew I was going to be gone for weeks on end and realized that I barely touched anything other than socks, underpants and undershirts. My motorcycle safety gear stays on my body for majority of the trip and it’s not terribly difficult to find a laundry facility to clean up all of the unmentionables.
So, let’s go over the list:My favorite duffle bag swallows up most of this stuff and what doesn’t fit in there goes into the backpack along with a few healthy-ish snacks in the front pocket of the bag. I carry a little under 2 gallons of water in a RotopaX container and the Velomacchi 50L duffle bag straps down, neatly, on top of that. Everything tucked in and out of the way in less time than it takes for most people to put on their helmets. Did I mention it’s all waterproof? This matters a lot to me since I am a proud resident of the unbelievably beautiful Pacific Northwest. On a mission to see sunny beaches, one may come across a thunderstorm or two.
Be prepared, not disappointed.
I have hard bags that secure and lock onto the bike, sure, but my rainy commute daydreams involve being off of the paved roads and into the backcountry discovery routes - the path less traveled. Less is definitely more in this scenario as the constant rattle, bump, jump, hop, and skip of the path less travelled has a tendency to loosen hardware, at the very least. At the most, I may tip over, and I don’t want to find out what it feels like to get my leg caught under a hard aluminum pannier.
Time to pull out the maps and scour through to see where this adventure rig will end up. Idaho looks very interesting, but Oregon beckons and I’m drawn to the Cascades with their trees, rivers, waterfalls and the mighty high desert, east of it all. There are a few close friends who ride bikes very similar to mine, if not the same model, and we’ve made a pact that this year, 2019, is the year of the Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) with promises of views, comradery, fireside laughter, and enough memories to satiate us until next year.
So, as my rainy commute comes to an end and I pull the bike into the garage, I smile at the bin that’s full of my camping gear and trusty bags with the promise of adventure with friends who’ve become brothers through thick and thin. All it takes is the right partners, the right gear, and the right attitude to get out there and discover yourself in the dirt roads of this beautiful country.
Follow more tales from the road by Shahin Alvandi at braaping.com.
Faced with a long legal battle for financial compensation…. we did what anyone else would have. We came up with a plan and resurrected it so we could once again enjoy the small Italian coupe. It would now forever become something different. Its purpose in life would no longer be a canyon carver - dicing it up with Porsches on beautiful roads in SoCal. It would now be our car version of a scrambler. A 2-wheel drive Italian menace for dirt roads.
My name is Iliya Bridan, I have a twin brother Nikita Bridan and together this is our story. We are both car designers living in the hustle of a town called of Los Angeles. We work in bringing future cars to reality for our companies, pushing the boundaries of what should be possible is what we do every day. When we get home our true love has always been working and driving vintage machines. So when faced with the dilemma of what to do with a smashed alfa we did what we do best. We sketched it out and started figuring out the specs of the parts we would need to create our vision. Larger knobby tires. Custom roof rack, and most importantly custom suspension.
The suspension on the car is ever evolving as the trips got more ambitious. Currently the suspension is custom fabricated to support 8 inch Fox coilovers with remote reservoirs front and back. The whole rear end has also been redone with custom lengthened T-bar and spherical bushings to fix all the geometry issues (axle angle, trailing arm length and wheel arch centering), that come with raising a car not meant to ride that high. This makes the ride exceptionally good over rough terrain, but not so good on street driving!
Although our daily commute is in the traffic nightmare of LA freeways, we still try to drive the classics as much as we can, even the dropped alfa. It hilariously looks particularly out of place sitting next to minivans and soft crossovers on the jam packed 405 freeway with its knobby tires and battle scars, gas cans and spare tire strapped down to its roof rack. To most it probably looks like a crazy apocalypse machine, getting looks and stares from regular folks with occasional thumbs up from fellow enthusiasts.
It never fails to make any trip memorable.
Having chased classic alfas through the canyons on this setup has proven to be interesting. The body roll, mixed with the crazy knobby tires makes for very vague steering input and puts plenty of heat into the tires under high speed driving. On one such trip when everyone was getting gas, I was off to the side watering down my tires to cool them down. They had gotten so hot they were practically melting. Once cooled down the chase was back on! This is what we do, our love of classic cars and desire to get away from the city means that as soon as the weekend hits we are always driving somewhere to explore new places.
Through our time in LA we were always road racing / canyon carving based and as such we only drove paved roads and hardly ever went off the beaten path to explore the wilderness. This all changed when our alfa got dropped and became our safari vehicle, it changed our perspective forever. Our first trips were small and simple. Learning our way around the car’s limits and even more so ours. The car handled it all beautifully, always being ready for more and more. As we built up our off-road knowledge, we started doing camping and overnight trips into the wilderness.
Trekking to places we could never have gone in any of our other cars. And this is when the true beauty of what the new and improved alfa is became clear. It would show us a new world full of new friends, new places and countless adventures that created experiences we could never have even imagined before the infamous drop. We were only seeing a small portion of the beauty while staying on paved roads, but thanks to a hard luck past of our Italian scrambler, we could now experience the true vastness and beauty of the places we visited.
As of right now, due to the intensity of our work schedules, our trips are weekend getaways only to the soft sandy trails in Joshua tree and palm springs area. Here we hit the trials, sliding hard during the day, doing donuts and climbing mountains such as Toro Peak. Enjoying every bump and drifting each corner before retreating to a bar in palm springs for drinks to call it a night.
When we get a chance to go on bigger trips, we head up further north to Alabama Hills area between Death Valley and Sequoia National Parks. Here it's more of the same. Driving onto unknown trails and climbing hills with no knowledge of what lies ahead. The excitement of looking at a faraway mountain and saying let's climb up that trail and hours later reaching is intoxicating. As is the seeing the joy and bewilderment of true off-road guys waving with excitement to ask “what kind of car is that?” Adventuring in the car has been life changing a truly amazing experience.
As our trips grew so did the equipment and requirement of stuff to take supplies with us. Documenting the trips has become a hobby of ours, as such, our gear consists of tons of photography equipment, cameras, laptops, drone, etc.…. but also tools you’ll need to be able to survive in the wilderness with a car that’s 45 years old.
Toolkit, toolkit, toolkit! One of the joys of old cars is they need attention in particular the carburetors require a lot of work when climbing up steep high mountains. This is one of the many reasons we carry tools with us, to adjust and tune the carbs to the elevation, thinning as we gain altitude. The Velomacchi Speedway Tool Roll houses all the tools we need, space for 130 pieces to be exact, in a form factor that is tiny and easy to carry around and stows easily in the car.
We also always carry three 50L Speedway Hybrid Travel Duffel Backpacks with us full of gear. Due to the clever straps and usability that’s been designed into the bags, we can strap them onto the car in multiple ways depending on what we are bringing along for the trip. We have mounted them to our custom-made roof rack with ease as well as had them attached on the trunk of the car.
The Velomacchi Speedway Impact Tablet and Laptop Sleeves to protect our valuable black screens are a no brainer, allowing us to not be worried about any damage to our toys even under the bumpiest roads.
Our Velomacchi gear gets the job done every time we go out and we know the construction will hold up to the vigor’s of any trip. Easy to clean and keep everything inside clean as well. Couldn’t ask for a better bag to have on our little expeditions. The gear has never held us back and just like the little alfa are more capable than we are at the moment.
And with that we go into ever new adventure willing to push further, to test the limits further and when life gives you lemons, always smile and make some damn tasty lemonade. This is the spirit of dropped alfa.
]]>The sounds of the jungle -- chirping, barbling, screeching -- contrasted with the typing from the laptop. I leaned closer to the screen to get a better view. The Vietnamese military officer pecked individual sentences into Google Translate, turning the laptop toward us each time, checking for our understanding. We nodded, eyebrows raised, eyes widening. It slowly became clear why we had been detained and escorted back to our dingy hotel for this interrogation.
You have violated Vietnamese law.
You have entered a restricted area.
You do not have permission to be here.
It is very dangerous for you here.
You are 1 km from the Laos border.
We will take your passports and your visas.
You will stay here in this hotel and you will not leave.
We have questions for you to answer now
Ok, sure, this all sounded fairly bad. But was it “apologize profusely and pay a small bribe bad”, or was it “start crafting a bamboo shiv bad”? A barrage of questions followed, translated painstakingly, one sentence at a time. Who do you work for? Why are you in Vietnam? Why did you come to the Laos border? Where did you get these motorcycles? What work are you doing here? How did you hear about this country? Who do you know in Vietnam? What is your job? We kept our answers brief and accurate, but tried to avoid responses that might be problematic. What were the wrong answers to give to military officers in a communist country who have detained you for entering a restricted area?
How did I know about Vietnam?
Well, my father did two tours here as a Special Forces Army Ranger fighting the North Vietnamese in 1968-1969. That was almost 50 years ago, but I assumed this was still a wrong answer. Instead, I cheerily typed “I read about traveling to Vietnam on the Internet!”
Why have we come to Vietnam?
Oh, we’re recording everything we see with several tiny, head-mounted spy cameras and filming interviews with Vietnamese citizens. This also seemed like a wrong answer. Instead, I typed a less incriminating but still truthful variation: “We’re just tourists, here to visit your beautiful country!” For some reason exclamation points felt helpful; enthusiastic innocence!
You look anxious
Don’t be so anxious.
Seriously? It was now dark and it was clear we weren’t going to be getting dinner. As the interrogation continued and my stomach grumbled, I thought back to the events that lead up to this moment. How the hell did we get here? Why did I have to watch Papillon on the airplane?
My riding partners Dan Galliher, Kevin Bleything, and I left Hanoi a two days earlier. Our plan was to ride our rented Honda XR150 dirt bikes more than 2,500 km to Ho Chi Minh city in less than two weeks. An ambitious pace, but this wasn’t our first rodeo. Over the past several years, we’d completed motorcycle adventures from Seattle to the Canadian Arctic Circle, explored the Icelandic Highlands, and ridden from New Delhi, India over the highest passes in the Himalayas into the Ladakh region near the Chinese border.
During each of these trips we filmed our ride, our experiences, and also interviews with the locals to learn about their country, culture, history, and perspectives. The result are three motorcycle adventure travel documentary films; our crude attempt to share our experiences while paying homage to the likes of Anthony Bourdain, Michael Palin, Warren Miller, and Werner Herzog.
So we travel with a lot of gear: tripods, cameras, microphones, batteries, cables, tools, and everything else you need to travel light and fast on tiny motorcycles across Vietnam. We needed to access our camera gear quickly and efficiently while protecting it from heavy jungle downpours, bumps and scrapes, and the incessant grime of the road. We were riding 8-10 hours a day through challenging and diverse conditions, so backpacks would have to be very comfortable and specifically designed for riding motorcycles.
To meet these needs we turned to Velomacchi. We selected an assortment of their backpacks, duffels, pouches, and storage cases to keep our gear organized, protected, and accessible:
Dan and Kevin chose to use the tie down straps to secure their 40L Speedway Backpacks atop their duffel bags on the back of their bikes. Because I needed quick access to my camera gear, I wore my 40L Speedway for the entire ride, with the 50L Speedway Duffel strapped to my rack.
Nothing gives you a feel for equipment like living out of it for two weeks on the road. In that time, my Velomacchi gear became part of me, my routine, and my riding experience. The 3-point rotating harness system and magnetic sternum coupler on the 40L Speedway Backpack is nothing short of genius. The harness kept the load stable, comfortable, and easy to quickly remove.
Deceptively simple, the Storage Cases and Tool Pouches are elegantly designed. They’re sized to stack neatly within the backpack and duffel. Their tough material and easy-to-grab handles enables them to slide easily in and out of these bags. Quickly getting to the bottom of my pack was an organized, clean operation, that kept my gear safe. This came in handy whether I was looking for a battery on the shoulder of a busy highway outside Da Nang or quickly dumping the contents for airport security in Dubai.
With all of our gear securely stowed away, we headed south from the bustling traffic of Hanoi. We decided to head west into the mountainous jungle, following a small, twisty road that ran south along the Laos border. We got lost near dusk and rolled into a very small rural village looking for a place to stay and a hot meal. The people here looked and dressed differently than those we had met so far. These were the indigenous people of the highlands known locally as người Thượng (Highlanders). They were extremely interested in us: our gear, our bikes, our backpacks, and our cameras all drew curious stares and warm smiles. We were having a great time, exploring the local market, shaking hands, and making friends.
That is, until we were approached by two men in military uniforms that wanted to see our passports. They spoke no English but it was clear they wanted to escort us back to our hotel, to see our passports, and to ask us a few questions.
After a sleepless night under house-arrest, filled with disconcerting snippets from Papillion playing in my head, we woke with the roosters. We secured our Velomacchi gear to the backs of our little Hondas, hopefully waiting for the return of our passports, and prepping for a quick exit from this remote village. After an agonizing wait, and just as I was calling the US Embassy in Hanoi, the officers returned with the laptop:
As you know, you have violated Vietnamese Law.
However, because you did not know, you will not be sanctioned.
We will return your passports and you will go back the way you came.
May we take some pictures of you?
A wave of relief washed over us and I finally stopped imagining what a Vietnamese prison might be like. I assumed they wanted our photos for some official purpose, maybe to hang on the office wall next to the mugshots of other suspicious potential foreign agents. No, they wanted selfies. Lots of them, with each of their phones. After handshakes, hugs, and highfives, we rode back through the dusty remote village, down the mountain, to continue towards our final destination: Ho Chi Minh city. We had a long way to go and our adventure in Vietnam had just begun.
]]>Henry Crew first popped on my radar one afternoon when I was surfing through Bike Shed London’s Instagram page. This young guy was on his way to becoming the youngest person around the world on a motorcycle and he was doing it on an atypical motorcycle that wouldn’t normally be used for such a journey. Being a Scrambler Ducati fan myself, I was immediately intrigued. Upon finding out that he was raising money for a cause close to my heart, The Movember Foundation and he would be riding across nearby Australia in his journey, I was inspired. I had to get involved, I had to move.
A plan began forming in my head and after some phone calls, emails and advice seeking, I found myself signed up to join Henry for the entirety of his Journey across Australia. I too would be raising money for Movember and Riding a Scrambler Ducati Desert Sled for the journey. It was all a bit surreal, exciting and yet daunting at the same time.
One thing I realized right away was that great causes attract great people. In the lead up to the ride I was able to arrange some support from several generous companies, including the amazing team at Velomacchi. They ‘got it’ immediately and after discussing the trip with them they put together a pack of carry and storage solutions which would take me and my critical gear from Perth to Brisbane over some 7000 km of scorching pavement, jagged rocks, dirt, dunes and pristine beaches.
The centerpiece of this kit would be their 28L Speedway Backpack along with:
My spirits lifting already as I touched down in Perth, I made my way to a friend’s house which would be base camp for a few days while Henry and I got our gear and bikes sorted for what was sure to be an epic. There waiting for me, was the Velomacchi support kit and like a 4 year-old on xmas day, I was tearing into it with gusto immediately. My first time seeing the gear in person, I was relieved to see the high quality material and design touches on each piece that not only looked great but were comfortable and functional. This would be critical as I would be living in/with this gear all day every day for the next 3 weeks.
Our Desert Sleds all geared up and smiles on our faces, we kicked it off leaving the pounding rain in Perth, riding south through Margaret River and across some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen to a place called Esperance where we ‘tested’ the bikes out on the local beach.
From there it was a long day of high speed backcountry action as we took a short cut up to Balladonia before setting our tires on the sealed road again as we tackled the ubiquitous Nullarbor. Home to the longest piece of straight road in Australia and not much else, the Nullarbor became a blur of hot days days, mile after mile of emptiness, gas station lunches and Kangaroo Carcasses rotting on the road side. Greener pastures awaited us as we wound our way through a somewhat ‘stabby’ feeling Port Augusta and south again hitting some beaches near Robe and weaving through seemingly perfect forest trails near Mt.Gambier. After negotiating our steeds along an overcrowded Great Ocean Road, we arrived Melbourne where the bikes go some much needed TLC and we spent some time with the stellar team at Movember.
With the big city feeling claustrophobic after only a couple of days I headed out on the final stage of the trip that would include an amazing high country gravel road through the Snowy River valley to the alpine town of Jindabyne before turning back to the coast with a days long freeway run to the best city in the world, Sydney. I could have stayed here for much longer but I managed to tear myself away from this great city and complete the final run up to Brisbane.
Through it all, I kept the Speedway Storage/Medic Pouches and Speedway Impact Storage Case in my tank bag with other essentials, so I could have quick access to my GoPros, chargers, hard drives and memory cards out on the road. No fussing around, all the good stuff you need to support gathering content well protected and organized.
The Velomacchi Speedway Tool Roll was equally as effective, well-proportioned and thoughtfully engineered for the task. It rode in the Ducati’s tail bag and came in very handy when we had to ‘adjust’ my luggage racks after a fully loaded jump went a few feet past the intended landing ramp and for some trail side shifter ‘manipulating’ after some close encounters with the rust colored terra firma.
The Impact Laptop Sleeve lived in the back pack for 3 weeks providing excellent protection as the whole assortment of gear and bike bounced over outback trails, got dragged in and out of hotel rooms and endured a few ‘bike naps’ for good measure.
The Velomacchi 28L Speedway Backpack was the star of the ‘gear entourage’ and performed extremely well throughout. All claims Velomacchi makes about its features and performance remain intact and its clever chest latching system and unique strap design got attention everywhere we went. I got so used to wearing it in fact that the couple of occasions when I made a quick run without it felt unnatural.
It was truly an amazing experience and even though I had found that bit of light and inspiration I was looking for, parting ways with my riding partner Henry and the trusty Desert Sled that Ducati Australia had been so kind to provide, was most certainly bitter sweet. Feeling a bit melancholy as I walked to my gate in Brisbane airport, I must say that the Speedway pack, slung over my shoulder made me smile as it I knew was coming along with me from now on and no doubt, it had plenty of room for more miles, smiles and memories yet to come.
Mike Gilbert is the Executive Director of Beatnik Motorsports in Blenheim New Zealand, and avid adventurer and a modern day beatnik.
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