Prodigal Thumper
Prodigal Thumper
Central America by VZ400
GO TO COLLEGE. GET A JOB. GO to graduate school. Get a better job. It's the American dream, right?
Not for Mark Miller. The 23-year-old Oregon State grad and part-time motocrosser had other ideas. So he saddled up his Yamaha YZ400F ("You can get anything licensed in Oregon") and set out for Mexico.
“I went down to Copper Canyon with a group of guys from the Oakland Motorcycle Club and ended up riding all through Baja,” he said. “I went everywhere. Then, I caught the ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan.”
Miller wended his way through Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. “My intention was to go a little bit farther, actually dip into South America,” he admitted, “but I
didn’t want to chance my luck on a bike that you’re not really supposed to be doing this stuff with.”
Other than a cracked carb slide (“I made a replacement out of plastic and glued it in place”) and a leaky waterpump seal, the mildly modded motocrosser proved nail-tough. “I’ve got 15,000 miles on it,” Miller said. “I didn’t even get a flat until I was back in the States.”
In all, Miller spent more than four months on the road, all on the cheap. “I had a backpack and a sleeping bag,” he said. “I lived off $15 a day.” Only winter snowstorms curtailed his plans. “If it hadn’t been February, I would have gone up the East Coast and hugged the Canadian bor-
der back to Oregon,” Miller related. “I’d like to try it again. Or maybe go to
Africa. That would be neat. Definitely Europe, too.”
Look out, world.
Matthew Miles
