Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Outside the station, I found a woman standing at the bus stop. I doubt that she was much over fifty, but she had a grey and shrivelled appearance, a 40-a-day face and a head wreathed in a cloud of cigarette smoke

Sounds like it could be a line out of a novel.

sv-wolf wrote:No DR again this week. I was expecting to pick it up from Wells on Monday, but some of the mods Gabe had ordered for me hadn't arrived, and the work had not been completed. Delivery dates were out of his hands, he'd said, when we first talked about timescales, and he'd warned me this might happen, but I'd closed my eyes and hoped things would go to plan anyway...

Don't feel bad: we had a bike in the shop for 11 weeks last fall, waiting for parts to arrive via slow boat aus dem Vaterland.

jstark47 wrote:
Don't feel bad: we had a bike in the shop for 11 weeks last fall, waiting for parts to arrive via slow boat aus dem Vaterland.

Ah! Not sure you should have told me that, JS. One of the parts I am waiting on is coming from Germany.

I'm excited to see what the DR will look like when it is transformed into a 'proper' overland adventure bike, but I'm not really too fretful. I still have the Blade if I want to get out for a ride.

I'm planning on starting the journey in the middle of March. That's two months away. As time goes on it is starting to feel real; until now it was all a bit of a pleasant fantasy. There are still loads of things I haven't yet done. It would be truer to say that there are still loads of things I have been putting off doing. As excited about this trip as I am, I also find the whole thing pretty scary. When I think about my own comfortable home I'm reminded that travel involves discomfort, insecurity, uncertainty and vulnerability, all things I will have to come to terms with. I will be heavily dependent on circumstances and other people. Wow!

Not easy for someone with strong control patterns.

I've been examining the nay-saying voices in my head - the parts of me that would quite happily forget about the whole trip and settle for a quiet retirement, lounging on the sofa reading sci-fi novels and having political arguments with people on facebook. What I've discovered about these voices though is unexpected. Deep down, I'm not so bothered about the more obvious hazards: the usual risks of riding; likely problems with my diet; getting into various kinds of conflict; or falling ill in remote places. All these I can either cope with or come to terms with. What really bothers me - what scares me - is that I might get cold. I don't just mean a bit cold; I mean permanently, seriously cold! As a skinny guy I have no natural padding; I have always felt the cold badly. And as I get older I feel the cold more and more. When I'm cold, I'm like a lizard: I stop functioning: my brain ceases to work; my body, too. I get stuck in old unhelpful patterns of behaviour, and I don't respond well to sudden changes of circumstance. That could all add up to a problem. Apart from that, the aim is to enjoy the trip, not to challenge myself or my limitations - at least not unless I get something out of it. I don't have a great deal left to prove.

These thoughts are a very lively concern at the moment because we've recently had a spell of very chilly nights and frosty mornings, here in the UK, and they have left me feeling miserable. I know that when I'm camping or travelling, I adapt to cold weather: I don't feel quite so overwhelmed or demolished by it. I know that being out and about and having an aim and purpose in cold weather is not as uncomfortable as sitting around in a cold house. I know that. But right now I am feeling chilled and miserable, and these thoughts are weighing on my mind.

My original plan was to avoid cold climates by heading south to Mediterranean Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia), Iran, India, and South-East Asia. I am still determined to go to Turkey, the Caucasus and Iraqi Kurdistan which as well as being warm are also low risk. But Turkey and the Caucasus have recently become a political cul-de-sac with no exit except back into Europe. To the north lie Chechnya, Dagestan and North Ossetia. War has retreated from these areas, but violence remains endemic and the risks to travellers remain exceptionally high. I don't mind taking some risks, but the odds here are not good. To the east, across the Caspian Sea lie the Central Asian republics (the 'Stans'). Uzbekistan welcomes visitors, but there is no direct access to it from the Caucasus. The only ferry across the Caspian goes to Turkmenistan which doesn't like westerners and it is hard to get into. To the south is Iran. Iran is safe and civilised, and very beautiful. I would love to visit Iran. But for political and commercial reasons, it has recently become very expensive for British travellers. Our own dear Foreign secretary, Theresa May, is holding up the restoration of diplomatic relationships with Iran by insisting that it takes back a bunch of migrants to Britain as a pre-condition for negotiations. A charming soul, Ms May. A great lover of humanity. (Not! In case anyone did not pick up the irony.)

It may not be impossible to travel in Turkmenistan. I've recently found an agency that claims it can get visas but, as in Iran, travellers are required to pay for a minder while in the country. That is costly and could eat heavily into my budget. So I'm still thinking about it. We'll see.

The other possibility is to ride to Turkey and the Caucasus and then loop back into Europe, turning first north and then east into European Russia. After that I can head into Siberia or Central Asia and Mongolia. These places are not so cold in the summer - even Siberia, south of the Arctic circle has hot summers - but their summers are short. That means I would need to time my route carefully. There wouldn't be much room for mistakes. But putting myself under time pressure was never part of the plan: I would have a plan but not a fixed one and it shouldn't be a race. So - I have a conundrum.

I'm still working on this.

All the reason you listed sounds like you really want to go somewhere else.....why not wait until the regions are safer...and go somewhere else this time instead. We give you permission.

As for the cold....you can wear a down jacket under your riding gear. Or you can get some electric heated gear.

LOL. Yeah I know, Blues. I'm just angsting. That's all. Just letting you know what's on my mind. I certainly intend to wear plenty of warm gear if I need to. And when I think about it, Mike's news, a few years back, that Calgary was enjoying temperatures of -57, makes a Siberian summer seem positively inviting.

But you know, these places are quite safe. I'm in regular contact with people who are or have been riding in them. You shouldn't read too much into the propaganda that gets pumped at us through the western media - it really is propaganda. The Muslim world is vast, and the Middle East is a huge area. It's not all overrun by terrorist fighters, terrorist governments or terroristic military interventions from the West. There are many places where life is going on as normal. I know two round-the-world motorcyclists who tell me that the only place they ever felt seriously unsafe or threatened was in the USA. And I'm probably safer riding in most parts of Iran than I would be in the centre of Nottingham, England which has a big gang problem. It is all a matter of perspective.

That is not to say that there are no dangerous places. I wouldn't like to spend too much time in the Mexican Sierra Madre for instance, where the most common cause of death is homicide, the second is car accidents and the third is cirrhosis of the liver, but once you know that, you can plan your route accordingly. And I'm definitely not heading into Southern Iraq or Syria. I have no intention, for example, of asking a group of ISIS fighters to bunch up so I can get them in a photograph. I'm no hero or twenty-year-old squaddie. I have an acute awareness of my limitations. And I'm certainly not planning to put myself in danger if it can be avoided.

On the other hand, I don't want just to settle for a trip round western Europe. Europe has good roads, good restaurants, decent hotels, liberal laws and, for an EU citizen, free health and dental care. But I've been there, and experienced that. There's a much bigger world out there: bigger than the European imagination can encompass. My European image of the world is no more than a cultural legacy arising from an accident of birth. But from the little travelling I have done outside Europe, I know it is a false image, and often as wrong as it could possibly be. Human beings have many ways of living together and caring for one another, many ways of making life rich and meaningful. They have many histories and many cultures. I want to see how things really are outside the comfort zone of my European imagination, and come back and share that with others.

Here's something to consider. Judging purely on images presented through our TV screens and newspapers, who would have thought, for instance, that the Palestinians are one of the world's most highly cultured peoples? We have one image. Here is another.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXrGr- ... g&index=21

(The guy in the middle is Wissam Joubran, not a suicide bomber, but one of the world's greatest instrument makers, an acknowledged master of his craft.)

OH GOD! I've just discovered that the bike club I belong to is organising a send-off celebration for me. I really now have no room to chicken out. This is happening!

Hope they have a huge gift of cash for you... LOL

LOL. I doubt that, Doc. The club don't have a lot of money. They plan on organising a get-together on a club night, probably the Tuesday evening before I leave. That's more valuable to me than money. A lot of people I know and like and have shared a decade of motorcycling with will be coming together to mark the event, and that will stay with me. Though I'll be on my own a lot during the trip, I will be sharing it with them on the inside, and it won't feel quite so solitary. March 12 is the big departure day - so long as everything goes to plan. I'm just beginning to realise how many things I still have to do to get ready.

Thanks for that link. Of course after that one, I had to listen to others....

They are terrific.

The "oud" sounds very mystical.