Day 3 started a little late as we had to fix Taylor’s front forks, which had met with an untimely collision with some mud and sand the day before. He rode about 100 kilometers on a skewed front tire, which just made the sand at night a bit harder, so it was a miracle that he didn’t go over again.

After an amazing breakfast from the Swanepoels, we made great time on smooth roads from Kurungu to Loiyangalane, this day resolved to stop and eat lunch, refill the water and relax for 30 minutes before we did the last run to Sibiloi. Now, the road to Sibiloi has always been an adventure, and it didn’t disappoint us… It’s about 125km from Loiyangalane to Sibiloi, and it’s full of massive boulders, though those had been cleared and a beautiful road put up the incline of the escarpment.

Again, we made good time for the first half of it. Then, Philip took a bit of a tumble on the open sand flats. There’s a real tricky bit of riding where the sand becomes talcum under you with little warning. He hit a patch and as he went down hit his hand on a rock. A bit of blunt trauma treatment later it was decided that he couldn’t ride any longer. This left us in a bit of a bind as no others in the vehicle knew how to ride a motorcycle.

We were about to hoise the large Honda 650 XLR onto a passing Kenya Wildlife Services vehicle. Right before we lifted it, Fady decided he’d give it a try…

Fady is some kind of superman. He learned to ride a motorcycle on the sand flats at 5:30pm and rode for the next 3 hours into the night through the African bush. It was quite amazing really, I’ve never witnessed anything like this before, and know that I could never have done the same. Your first 3 hours EVER of riding a motorcycle are done in some of the harshest terrain – at NIGHT!?

Needless to say, we’ll be providing Fady with a certificate of excellence. (special note from Fady: “Smurfy don’t kill me”)

We were the final vehicles into Sibiloi National Park last night. It was about 8:30pm and we were completely exhausted. Now, you’re normally not allowed to bring motorcycles into any national park in Kenya. However, this time the warden made an exception, as long we agreed to ride straight to the camp and not ride them again until we left. I can’t tell you how good that made all of us feel and we owe the KWS a huge note of thanks for taking so much good care of us last night. In particular, a gentleman by the name of Sode was exceptional and I just wish all government employees were as pleasant and helpful.

Once past the gate, we drove down a road until we literally drove into Lake Turkana. After we backed out of the water, the KWS guys showed up again, along with Andrew Nightengale – someone I know from staying at his farm with my family a few years ago. He pointed us towards a place right along the lake a few hundred meters away.

Once again, exhausted at the end of another African bush night drive, after a full day on the road, we set up our tents. A few bowls of my wife’s chili later (promptly announced as the “best food ever” by everyone), with some Dickel Bourbon whiskey as a chaser, we collapsed into our tents and slept like the dead.

Well, yesterday was exhausting. 14-hours of driving and riding later and we pulled into Kurungu.

We roared off at 6:30am from Nanyuki, only to have a puncture an hour later, that cost us almost 1.5 hours due to complications. This had a ripple effect that meant getting to Laisamis at 1pm. Rain hit us in Laisamis, and softened up the soil on our way to Ngurunit. That slowed us down a great deal.

We had about an hour left of daylight by the time we hit Ngurunit, some of the most amazing scenery you’ll see in Kenya, but we couldn’t stop for pictures as we had to use all the daylight possible for driving.

Night driving is hard anywhere, but it’s harder when you’re in mud, deep talcum-powder sand and rocks. We had all of that and we did it for 3 hours in the dark. There were a couple layovers, but thankfully we were going at a slow enough speed that no one was injured – and no bikes were put in too bad of a condition.

There were times where we got so fatigued, and then were staring at that single beam of light on a bumpy dirt road, so that the hard angles all looked like a gully or hole. Made for slow, stressful and hard riding.

Here’s where I get to say thank God that I grew up here in Kenya since I was a little boy, with the Swanepoel family (originally from South Africa). Father and son live up north here, and they welcomed us late at night with a warm meal and a roof and beds.

This morning we woke up to hot coffee, 800mg of Ibuprofen, bruises and soar arms/shoulders. Yesterday was hard. Today is harder. We’ve got a fairly easy go of it to the lake, then it gets hot and hard as we ride alongside the lake to Loiyangalane. After that, it’s even worse, so we here, with boulders. We’re about 30 minutes behind schedule, but I think we’ll make it okay, and hopefully in the daylight.

This morning finds the BRCK team in Nanyuki, only about 3-4 hours outside of Nairobi. The same place we were supposed to be having breakfast yesterday, not today. A rather inauspicious start happened about 30 kilometers into the trip when the Land Rover decided it was going to have some cooling problems.

After two hours of working on solutions, we realized that this Land Rover just wasn’t going to make it. Too bad, as it had two tanks and better range than most. Fortunately, Fady Rostom (of Ark/Bonk) is traveling with us. He offered up his Land Rover 110, and we quickly got in touch with a mechanic in Nairobi who put a roof rack on his vehicle in about 30 minutes.

1pm found us with all equipment unloaded near Thika town, on the side of the road. 5 tires were changed from one Land Rover to the other, and we repacked the new vehicle. Finally, we were on our way (again)!

In hindsight, what was extremely disappointing at the time ended up happening about the best time we’d like to have seen a problem like that develop – in the beginning of the trip near the big city, where we could still make a change.

We got into Nanyuki in the evening, after a nice cold rain hit us, much to the chagrin of those of us on motorcycles with only mesh jackets on. Taylor had his full rain gear (who we had been making fun of earlier due to the heat), and while we froze he rode in relative comfort. Dinner was at Barnies, and then a shack that makes and sells the best cheeses that we’ve ever found in Kenya, called Silent Valley Cheese. 6 kilos of cheese later we found a house owned by a friend to sleep at for the night.

This changes the stages of our trip, and now we’re very glad that we built in a buffer day for the drive up to Lake Turkana. We’ll still arrive the day before the eclipse (Oct 2), but in the evening instead of the morning. Our route now entails an early morning offing from Nanyuki, final fill up of fuel in Isiolo, then off road around Laisamis towards Ngurunit and on to Kurungu and Soth Horr for the night.

This next section along the edge of the Matthews mountain range is one of the most scenic places in Kenya. We’ll stop along the way for some pictures, and then get into Kurungu in time to test the Wilson amplification antennas. The point of these amp antennas is to extend the range one can be from the mobile phone tower to get internet connectivity. We’ve used one before in Lamu, now we’re trying it in the bush, and with the BRCK.

Details to come next week, but just something to share with everyone over the week.

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BRCK shirts out in the world

Here’s the lovely Chirstopher Neu of Tech Change (@neuguy) sporting his BRCK shirt. If you love your shirt(s) tweet them to @brcknet and we’ll share them on our tumblr.

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BRCK Prototyping, Powered by Sugru

BRCK stickers and T-Shirts ship today!

We keep saying that the BRCK Engineering team is working feverishly to meet our kickstarter deadlines and today we get to show you what some of the fuss has been about.

This is a 3D print of the final design for the BRCK’s case, careful observers will note that it’s a bit taller and the port covers don’t come all the way to the base anymore. 3D printing is an amazing tool in modern product development and it’s super fun, but it’s not perfect. The process is a constant compromise between speed, durability, and accuracy. You never get to have all three, but on the other hand, nothing else gives you the same feedback in such little time.

Most of our prints in this process have been done at Incept3D on an Objet printer. Objet prints are fairly brittle: a little too much force and they snap or even shatter. Not the sort of situation one typically thinks of when your making a device made in and for Africa. But the upside is, if you can make a rugged and durable case from an Objet Printer, then your final case will be that much the stronger for it!

You’ll notice the vertical ribbing on the inside of the main case comes up and actually locks into the top plate making it almost function as a solid block. We’re especially proud of some of the little features like that.

Now that we’ve gotten to a point were we can throw brittle prints around the room with little concern, we’re just about ready to cut our injection mold tools and make the real things!