Overland Expo – Road Trippin’

May 27, 2015

(For a stock status update, jump to the end of this post.)

Overland Expo

Man what a road trip.  3,200 miles down and back, including the AZBDR portion on bikes.  This was kind of a cool milestone for us as a business, because last year’s Overland Expo was our very first show as a company, and the first time we’d actually shown our designs to anyone in person.

Got the trailer all loaded up.

Two full days of driving, about 20 hours total.

We were greeted with something you don’t really expect in Arizona: snow!  Mixed with rain. Friday was friggin’ COLD man.  With weather like this, it was amazing that some customers were actually out & about.  A good opportunity to demo how waterproof the bags are.  Everything inside stayed bone-dry throughout.  And despite the snow/rain, we actually wrote some orders!  OX attendees are a hearty bunch.

Things cleared up on Saturday/Sunday and the booth stayed really busy throughout the weekend.  It was really cool to reconnect with customers who we’d sold last year and who had been thrashing their bags all over the world.

Threw the new Reckless bags over a bunch of bikes.  We didn’t find any it doesn’t fit on.

We were situated next to the guys from Aether Apparel.  They have a cool vintage airstream that’s been converted into a mobile store.  Not only were they nice enough to let us use their mobile wifi for payment processing, but they also kept the single malt and beer flowing all weekend.  Like the way these guys roll.  And loving my new jacket.

Lee and I did a wedge fit on a Rally Raid rack on a KTM 690.  A bunch of customers have done this bike/rack mount themselves, but this was the first time we’d done one personally.  Not difficult, and a nice way to pass some time in the trailer while it pissed down rain and snow outside.

Thanks so much for all the support.  We had a great time, connected with a bunch of cool folks, heard some awesome travel stories, geeked-out on all the crazy bikes and unimogs, drank more than our share of whiskey/beer, and most importantly got a whole bunch of ORDERS!!!

AZBDR Trip

Sunday night we packed up the booth, loaded the trailer, packed up the bikes, and spent the eve hanging out with a bunch of cool folks in the OX campground.  Monday morning, Andrew, Lee, Dusty, John Murakami, and I headed out for a few nights on the AZBDR.  There is some really awesome big-bike dualsport riding to be had in this area.  Here’s a few pics.

On the way home, we stopped at the Alvord Desert to hang out for the long weekend.  When we first arrived it was mostly covered in water, then the playa surface dried out once the sun came out.  Truly one of my favorite places in the world.

Stock Status

For those of you waiting on product, the first shipment of the season is currently in the air.  Assuming no customs issues, we expected it to land in Portland next week.  We’ll start shipping outgoing orders as soon as we can get it unpacked and through QC.  Orders will be filled in the order received.  On some items – like the Reckless 80 – the air shipment is already oversold, so a portion of the most recent orders will have to wait for the ocean shipment.  We’ll have an update on that as soon as possible.

Note: the Backcountry 35 Panniers are currently in stock, however we expect to sell out again before the restock order arrives in early July.  If you need them for a trip in June or early July, it’d be a good idea to order now.

We added an “offset” option to the Backcountry 35 pannier kit for customers with asymmetrical pannier racks, where one side sticks out further than the other to accommodate your exhaust.  The offset kit includes 1 25L pannier and 1 35L pannier.  The right/left side offsets depend on which side your exhaust is on. Note that if you order the offset option, we can’t ship until the restock order arrives in early July.  Whereas orders for the symmetrical kit are shipping now.

The BMW rack adapters are now available for sale on our website under the hardware category. They’ll ship out next week.  We have limited quantities.  Lee has been working on getting these ready for sale.

Dusty has been using this home-made adapter he’d attached to his R1200GSA (Oil Cooled) with hose clamps and zip ties.

We got him swapped out with a new adapter.  Found a fit issue right away due to the closeness of the muffler, and ended up drilling through one of the Touratech mounting tabs to get him home to Colorado. Lee is sourcing a new fastener to correct this issue.  Shouldn’t affect the other two adapters (F800GSA and R1200GSAWC).  In the meantime, drilling through the tab, while a bit inelegant, works fine.

Dusty & John: so awesome riding, exploring, camping, and hanging with you guys.  Let’s do it again soon.

The Mosko team is officially back in the office.  Hope the rest of you are out riding!!