Have you been following the latest season of world moto traveler Itchy Boots’ adventures on her YouTube channel? If you have, then you’ll know that this season, she’s riding through Africa. She and her trusty Honda CRF350L Rally, Alaska, took a ferry together from Spain to Morocco.
Since she arrived on the continent, she’s ridden through Morocco and Mauritania before arriving in Dakar, Senegal. Besides being the spiritual home of rally racing, Dakar is a bustling and vibrant city, with access to bike parts and regular maintenance items that might not be so easy to obtain in outlying areas.
For those reasons, as well as important logistical considerations such as obtaining the necessary visas to travel through the upcoming countries that she’ll be crossing, Noraly decided to take a break from sharing videos for a couple of weeks to get things in order. For those of us watching from afar, it’s an inspiring vicarious journey, but it’s important to remember that it’s also her life—and that she’s posting these videos while she’s out on the road. Most viewers who have commented have left kind words of encouragement and thanks for sharing her journey with the world, which is the kind of thing you love to see.
In this video, Noraly assists in some much-needed maintenance for Alaska, as riding through the Mauritanian desert was pretty rough on the bike. If you’ve ever gone to a beach, you know that sand can get everywhere—so just imagine spending days riding across a desert, if you haven’t done that kind of riding before. Among other things, Alaska received an oil change, a coolant check (and it was super low, so it was good that they checked it), an air filter cleaning, and a fuel filter check and clean.
The fuel filter was full of grit, as Noraly suspected after her days spent in the desert—so it required a thorough cleaning as well. New sprockets, new chain, a new set of tires, a new chain guard—it was a major service, but doing this kind of riding takes a lot out of a bike.
Luckily, Noraly found her way to a very well-stocked shop called Mad Bikes in Dakar, and she was able to assist the shop in getting Alaska roadworthy for the next leg of the journey.
Once the bike was all sorted out, she rode off to her accommodation for the evening—and from here on out, she estimates that she’ll probably be riding into a new country once a week or so. As she showed us on a map, the next few countries are comparatively small. We look forward to seeing more of the world through an Itchy Boots lens as she rides through it.
