Santa Barbara to Buenos Aires, and then some...

Loaded the new bags with bottles of water to better simulate loaded weight and set out on a cold windy ride through tight turns and broken pavement. Did the mountain loop around Santa Barbara and within an hour I was able to throw the bike around - but it is getting heavy. Just a few more modifications and its ready to roll south. Nick via BlackBerry

Bring a gift, good cheer, and your moto for a lazy ride from Santa Clause Lane to Goleta via Montecito and Santa Barbara. All proceeds go to charity and everybody's a winner at the 20th Annual Santa Barbara Motorcycle Toy Run. Nick via BlackBerry

View of Santa Barbara from my back Deck. Testing ability to post photos and messages to this site via email using only my Blackberry with its incorporated camera. The site reformats everything automatically and posts. Click on an image to see full size. Nick, via BlackBerry

In case you hadn't heard I'm heading south in January. Leaving Santa Barbara en route to Buenos Aires via about 12 countries on my moto. Should take a couple of months. I registered this domain and set up my blog today: eventually i'll migrate this to the url: DondeEstaNick.com (to be spoken in a strong mexican accent and pronounced with "nEEk". hopefully i'll figure out how to blog and upload fotos directly from my blackberry while on the road... mucho mas funner! Last night I loaded my new Garman Zumo 550 toy with two shitloads of maps and some tunes; so far it's pretty impressive; it's entirely too polite when it talks to me. Today I installed some new ProTaper handle bars (the stock ones bend when I tested gravity last week) on the moto and hardwired the GPS mount. Since I was running wire the length of the bike I ran an extra set for... something. The Zumo is an interesting toy when installed - i hope it works as I'm not bringing any maps - g...