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HE DOESN'T RIDE WITH THE WIND

he is the wind - meet KAZE

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how to impress you here quickly...

korean guy ships his royal enfield to chile, rides it throught the south america to alaska. 

if that's not impressive - you are dead, we'll continue without you

 

:) meet kaze 

this fella is not new to long rides on 'questionable' bikes. questionable for most of you out there. he has done europe - starting east in vladivostok, ending west in portugal on his 125cc sym wolf!

one cannot put a bigger check mark on an achievement of such proportions.

as monumental as it gets. he called that trip JUST GO ver(sion) 1

it took him 6-7 months for that monster of a trip. all the credits to him for that one.

i mean look at it! vladivostok to lisbon. come ooooon!

i hope you start to sense who we are dealing with here

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JUST GO version 2

this blog is about enfields so let's talk about the trip he is currently on.

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he calls is JUST GO ver2, featuring his royal enfield classic 500, named Furiosa :)

 

at this point south america is done. he left seoul, south korea around july 2017,

shipped the bike to chile, (cost him a small fortune as he said) and the big trip started.

it took him around 7 month-ish to get up here to NYC where we met

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he managed to rack around 10,000km riding back home in south korea.

so it takes a person 35,000km to get up to nyc from chile, down to the most south point and back up. his odometer showed impressive 45,000km (around 28,000 mi) when i met him

kaze arrived. my phone beeps and i see a message on fb 'i'm here'. i glanced out of the window and there he was. dude on enfield, across the street, lighting cigarette like a boss. i found out it was from his stash still from mexico. cheap ones. he was in shock to buy cigarettes for 10-12 bucks in NY :D

i offered him to stay for few days, relax, fix the bike. and all that time we talked about were bikes and riding mostly of course. then insert beer. and talks about dreams and chasing them.

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in slovakia we have a thing. we offer bread and salt to a rare visitor. it is an ancient slavic custom from the time of the Great Moravian Empire, still done today for special occasions

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i have a rare visit. but i'm not in slovakia. we are in new york so i greeted my guest with delicious pizza :D and beer.

we eat, we drink, we talk. after his trip version1 aka conquering the europe and euro-asia he had 6-7 years break. work, life, make money, all that stuff. time came for making a new trip.

kaze 'knew' enfield from his another trip even before the european moto bonanza. he traveled india for 3 months on foot, he saw the bike there and loved the look of the bike

(where did i hear a similar story, hmm link)

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when it was the time for serious preparations for the new trip - he started to research if his pick number 1 - the enfield - would be able to make this sort of a trip.

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he said he found one rider in korea who did a big trip on enfield and contacted him for tips and advice. the traveler tried to do the same trip from vladivostok to europe but...

he had to end his trip somewhere close to east europe because of no enfield parts.

the piece that made the guy get stuck was  - rear sprocket. you destroy that and you are basically done.

if you want to do some serious distance in remote areas - you have to schlep that thing with you.

so kaze started with journey with one of those as a spare for south america :)

 

i can tell you it is not a small part. it's big and it's freaking heavy

#1 john's cycles

we had nothing pre-planned for his visit but things just happen here. it's new york (brooklyn, queens) :))

we managed to do 4 cool stops

every saturday i go to see one special place. john's cycles in woodside which i think is the oldest + longest open motorcycle shop in manhattan / brooklyn / queens area.

open by brothers john and bobby but at this time bobby is the one taking care of it now.

it's a place of legends for me.

when those dudes start to talk their stories, i try to keep my jaw closed

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it was saturday, kaze was here - he had to go with me to my ritual saturday coffee at john's

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kaze was impressed. the guys from john's cycles know me as the only madman riding enfield. i have some share of good stories and good rides they heard about. but kaze upped the game and

impressed everybody there version 2 :) and he nicknamed bobby 'maestro' . bobby does look like that.

the maestro of engines