General Blog
November 2, 2007 at 7:33 pm | Trip | No comment
I’ve decided to change this to a general blog, as spiritual realisations only come to me every so often.
Anyway, I’d better introduce myself briefly, I’m a 21 year old IT professional, I’ve been working with the same company for four years and I’m sick to death of it.
That’s why 8 months ago I took the decision to pack up from the UK and move lock stock to Italy and live without working.
My house sale completed today, I’m now the proud owner of £32,000 with which I shall change my life.
A few weeks ago I decided that my original plan for simply back packing around Italy would be too frustrating, I wanted my own transport.
I could take my car, but it’s big, guzzles fuel like nobodies business, and though reasonably reliable is still comparitively expensive to maintain.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a motorbike!
This may not seem like a huge decision, but I’ve grown up in a family where bikes are evil, they must be avoided at all costs and sitting on one is tantamount to slitting your wrists while sitting in the bath.
Like I always do when I decide something, I’ve started to read up on the subject, a lot.
As it turns out there’s an absolutely massive following of people who take holidays or years out or even like I am sell up and just head out, all on bikes!
I started off by reading ADVRider.com, and went on to read “The Long Way Round” featuring Ewan Mcgregor, which lead me further to “Jupiter’s Travels” and “The Adventure Motorcycling Handbook”, neither of which I’ve really got my teeth in to yet.
Needless to say, due to my upbringing I don’t currently have a bike license, but no matter, I have until March 2008 to bring my plans to fruition (my official leaving date at work is February the 29th, rather fitting since I’ve been working there just over 4 years!).
My test is booked for the 4th of December, and coincidentally, my (one and only) biker mate’s car test is on the 6th of December, as you might imagine if either of us fails we’ll be taken the piss out of mercilessly (god forbid we both fail!).
Telling my friends over the past few months about my plans to leave has generated significantly less incredulity that I would have imagined, perhaps they don’t believe that I’m actually going to go through with it.
It’s fairly easy for me, to just up and leave, having a mortgage is only a mental barrier and a matter of a few months paperwork.
I’ve been moving around my whole life, by the time I was sixteen I’d lived in 16 different houses and 3 or 4 different countries, so I don’t have what you’d call a rooted past to tear myself from.
Though this time will be more difficult than previously, as I have to leave my girlfriend behind.
Doubly hard is that I can’t talk to her about my trip at all, at the mere mention of “Italy” or “March” her responses become curt and angry.
I told her from the very beginning of our relationship that I was going, we only met in June (a few months after I’d made the decision to leave) and I knew I had to be upfront with it, lest it be seen as a betrayal later on.
It’s amazing, I’ve gone as far as booking a bike test, selling my house and officially quitting my job (signing the piece of paper detailing my ’sorrowful resignation’ this morning made it seem much more real), but still I’ve made no real plans as to what I’m going to do.
I know I’m going to ride down there, probably take the ferry to the arse end of France otherwise known as Calais, after getting out of there as quickly as possible I may briefly flit into Germany to have a swing round the Nürburgring; I’ve always wanted to go there.
I also have an ex-girlfriend who now resides in… somewhere or other, I forget where exactly… But I’ll probably find out and visit her as I’m sure it’s roughly on the way to Italy…
Is contentedness an illusion?
November 4, 2007 at 12:57 pm | Philosophy | No comment
A few months ago I was talking to a friend of mine about my plan to exit the country stage right.
He said to me that I would probably be missing the UK and rueing whatever country I was in after a few months.
I pondered on this for a little and realised that although it was almost certainly going to be true at times, that it was absolutely irrelevant!
Nothing, nowhere, no-one is ever perfect and whether you’re focusing on something’s faults or its virtues depends wholly upon your mood.
If you take my friend’s view, which appeared to all intents and purposes to be “Your life still won’t be perfect, so why bother?” then you will probably rationalise your current situation as “as good as it gets”.
It may even be partly true, you may have by a manner of metrics a fairly good life, but it’s all for nowt if your prevailing feeling is one of boredom or frustration.
As Winston Smith (1984) observed, if your mind screams out that a situation is unacceptable, that it is wrong, not the way things are supposed to be, then despite the insistance of those around you, you’re probably right.
I was proverbially twiddling my thumbs at my desk the other day, vainly trying to pass the hours while simultaneously attempting to look like I was doing work (even though I had none!) and thereby justifying the exorbitant salary they’re paying me to do fuck all, when I remarked upon this situation to a friend in a similar position.
He wasn’t a colleague, infact he was a Norweigan living in Ireland doing first line support for IBM, a good friend of mine and one of the ever dwindling number of people that I can talk to about things of this nature without being called a self-righteous posh git with more hot air than a collection of politicians on a publicity drive after a vindaloo.
He was experiencing the exact same thing, for each day was a mindless drive of mixture of interminable boredom and incessent frustration with the repition of our tasks.
This can’t be right? Can it?
We can’t be supposed to spend our lives waiting for our annual holiday, our weekend or even our evening (which are further filled with the endless maintenance required to live).
I’ve heard the phrase “If all you’re doing is the same old thing, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen to you”.
Which pointed at your average office worker will doubtless raise a chuckle or a murmur of agreement before they go back to ignoring it and finding excuses as to why they keep doing the same old thing in order to justify their unhappiness to themselves or to trick themselves into believing that they are infact “contented”.
There’s wisdom in the old adage that you can’t expect to be happy all the time.
Infact, I think the pursuit of happiness is a false pursuit.
Everyone wants to be happy, but we can’t all be happy all the time, it’s compeltely impossible.
Contentedness is merely coming to terms with repetition.
So what should we persue?
Interest!
We can’t be happy all the time, but we can be interested all the time.
Life is a fight against boredom for meaning.
What meaning we choose to strive for is our own choice (albeit influenced by those around us and a million other factors), but what we should not do is settle for safety.
Obsession
November 10, 2007 at 8:15 pm | Bike, Trip | 1 comment
It consumes my every waking hour, trivialising what’s in front of me and turning tortuous the daily monotony of work.
I read every scrap of travel writing I can find, Striking Viking’s ADVRider.com Thread, Jupiter’s Travels.
Amazingly enough Ewan Mcgregor’s “Long Way Down” started a few weeks after I’d made my decision to do this trip by bike, so I’ve been keeping an eye on that as well; and although it’s quite far removed from the unsupported adventures of less famous riders, it’s quite interesting nonetheless.
Vital for entertaining me at work in a job that started boring me more than two years ago to the extent that I actually found another job!
Though I was inticed back with a significant salary increase.
I’ve been stressing about two major pieces of equipment for my journey, my bike and my camera.
I don’t think it really matters which bike I get out of the choices I’ve narrowed it down to.
Namely a Honda Transalp (current frontrunner as some-one at work’s selling a cheap low-mileage example), a Honda Africa Twin or a BMW GS650.
All of these bikes will do what I require, I simply have to find one that’s in good condition.
I want to find one soon, but I have to sell my car first to raise the cash, as although I have plenty of money in the bank, I want to preserve the sancitity of it as long as possible, as through previous experience I’ve learned that “I’ll just borrow this little bit of money from my savings for the time being” quickly turns into “Fuck! I haven’t got any savings!”.
This will dissapoint my girlfriend somewhat, as since she doesn’t drive we’ll have to either walk, taxi or pushbike everywhere once I sell my car (that and she doesn’t want me to get a bike anyway as she reckons I’ll kill myself).
But unfortunately from here on in my girlfriends wants have to start to take a little bit of a back seat.
It makes me feel cruel, as she’s kind enough to late me stay with her until the day I leave for Italy.
I am helping her though, she’s under-educated to the extent that she’s not strictly independant and this has lead her to depend on a string of abusive boyfriends.
Trying to resolve this requires a… certain amount of patience, but is rewarding nonetheless.
She does hamper my planning and personal activities somewhat, as if I’m not paying attention to her she sulks with the traditional “What’s wrong?” “Nothing!” but with the most transparent body language you’ve ever seen.
However the poor girl hasn’t had much go right in her life and is the sweetest thing you’ve ever met.
I went to see a BMW F650GS today, 3 hour drive to and from and the blasted thing didn’t start first time, so I have grave reservations about it, plus the 5% the salesman was prepared to knock off the asking price didn’t impress me much.
Inspecting it was a brief glimpse into how far I am out of my depth, I know almost nothing about bikes, and being outside of my zone of knowledge trying to blag it ended up with me rushing the inspection, I don’t think I really learned anything about the condition of it bar my baseless opinion that the sprockets seemed a little rounded and the identification of a rather dodgy looking wire outside the fairing.
F650GS Dakar
November 11, 2007 at 11:15 pm | Bike | No comment
Dakar, Dakar, wherefore art thou Dakar?
Whatever kind of bike I want, starting off with an Africa Twin then a Transalp and now an F650, they seem to be bloody light on the ground.
At least near to me.
I can only go and see one of these things a week as they’re all so far away that I can’t go there after work, and by the time I go and come back on a Saturday, it’s too damned late to go out to see another one!
Looks like my car’s worth less than I thought as well!
Less than £2k is what they’re being advertised for on autotrader.
I’ve put mine on for a bit more hoping that four new tyres and a brand new service will see it safe for a few extra hundred…
Oh well, I’m not exactly strapped for cash so I’ve not got anything to moan about, it’s not jeaprodising my trip.
I’m kinda suffocating personally… Kim is being incredibly clingy and I can’t bring myself to tell her off for it or try to extricate myself as I feel so guilty for staying with her when I’m just going to leave her in a few months, even though she knows it and she’s known it from the start it just… eats at me…
I have a bike!
November 17, 2007 at 10:56 am | Bike | No comment
Well, I decided to buy the F650GS Dakar from the place 3 hours away.
It was about £600 cheaper than the equivilent ones (which were scarce at best anyway) and I decided to take the risk.
On tuesday I took a half day and went down to Hein Gericke to kit myself out with gear and ended up spending £830 without even getting a helmet or gloves!
Still, it’s very good kit and I did find the helmet I wanted, I just figured I could get it cheaper online.
And I did! A good £100 cheaper at that!
It was due to arrive on Thursday (the day before my bike arrived) but apparently the Lynx courier didn’t get to me before his shift finished and thought “fuck it” and just took it back to the depot.
So Friday rolled around and 11am was the scheduled delivery time for my bike.
I was hoping the helmet would arrive before then so I could take it out for a brief spin!
But of course sods law was on perfect form and it arrived at work 2 minutes after I’d gone home to meet the guy and my bike!
.. Still took it out for 2 minutes without a helmet though…
Anyway, of course this being winter, by the time I get home after work it’s pitch black and I can’t take the bike out even though I’m happily geared up, so I wait impatiently for the morning.
And WOOHOO, why the hell didn’t I get a bike before? (Other than the fact that my dad would/will disown me of course!)
This is ridiculously fun.
To start off with I’m a little dissapointed by performance, then I look down and notice that even though the engine is screaming (by my Ford Mondeo standards) I have another 3,500 revs to play with.
I line up nice and straight and twist the throttle.
Holy mother of god I thought my eyeballs were going through the back of my head.
And this is SLOWER to accelerate than my Elise, how does that one work?
For the most part I took it nice and steady though, a good bit of practice for my DAS over the next few weeks!
More biking
November 18, 2007 at 10:44 am | Bike | No comment
It’s amazing you know, you never see a bobby on the beat in your life, then suddenly you see three in two days!
Still, I’m not doing anything to arouse suspicion so I just give them a nod and ride on by.
My ride yesterday was a bit unsure, an early change-down and using the rear brake instead of the front brake had the back end twitch a couple of times.
But today was a lot better, lots of observation, happy gear changing, but I need to build up my speed a bit, being overtaken by cars is not quite the idea; plus I hear examiners are very strict about ‘making progress’ and it’s quite easy to fail by doing 55 in a 60.
I’m pleased with my Hein Gericke gear, today was much colder than yesterday and had a big wind blowing, but despite this the jacket and trousers kept my torso and legs at exactly the right temperature.
I really fucking need a pair of gloves though, these fingerless cycle gloves not only provide somewhat questionable protection vs 70mph tarmac, they’re also bloody cold!
Also, walking boots… not windproof! But my motorcross boots should arrive tomorrow, though it could be interesting going to pick those up from the post office, bet they come in a box that could house a baby elephant…
Complicated!
November 18, 2007 at 6:27 pm | Trip | No comment
Good lord…
There’s so much to consider in planning this trip, training, packing, paperwork, money, route, equipment, each of which sounds do-able until you split them down into their components at which point they proliferate into about half a million different considerations!
I had damned well better be able to get carnet “Insurance” rather than have to put a deposit down, as at 500% of the bike cost (for Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Iran) that’s £10,000!
Maybe I can tell them that it’s actually completely knackered and really only worth £250?
Even so, I’ve been looking at what I need to do with regards to upgrading my bike…
So far I’ve got
Airhawk Seat Cushion
Touratech Pegs
Bash Plate?
Rear Shock?
Crash Guards
Panniers + Rack
Centre Stand
Upgraded Side stand (length + footprint)
Rims?
The ones with ‘?’ are ones I’m not convinced need doing…
These are based on
http://long-way-home.blogspot.com/2007/01/bmw-f650gs-bikes-tips-and-our.html
http://www.dhpmoto.com/Trips/Baja%20Dec%202000/2001bmw/2001_bmw_f650_dakar.htm
and
http://faq.f650.com/GSFAQs/
Panniers are looking to be riiiiddiiculously expensive, the UK vendor of choice for aluminium panniers seems to be Metal Mule who give you a very reasonable price of £224 for the panniers and somewhere around £200 for the rack.
That is until you realise the £224 is PER PANNIER (who the FUCK buys one pannier?).
Ok, fair enough, that’s kinda what I’d expected… But then it’s an extra £23 per pannier for anodising and another £8 for fucking handles which beggars belief (not that £8 is a huge amount it’s just.. who the fuck buys luggage without handles?).
Touratech are the manufacturer of choice when it comes to touring gear, but their stuff sure as hell aint cheap.
I wish I had some more resourceful mechanist contacts who could make up some of this ad-hoc…
All in all, my budget is starting to look rather piffling, but I’m determined to do this and I’m convinced that I can live for practically nothing by camping every night (so what if I can’t find a camp site, screw it, I’ll set up in some-one’s front garden!).
I’ve booked myself on a couple of ST John’s Ambulance courses, pretty cheap on the whole.
I also plan to do some basic combat training (not particularly with the intent of using it, more to increase my confidence in hostile situations), though I’m going to see if the TA have anything the general public can attend.
As I’m not really convinced by the real world application of Martial Arts after a story my dad told me about a couple of his mates (Black belts in Karate or Judo or somesuch) who were living in Hong Kong at the time, going out to the docks looking for a fight and basically getting their arses handed to them by a couple of street fighters.
Still, not telling my dad about this whole bike thing is getting interesting, as I’m going to have to go and see him and other family over the christmas period.
When I go to visit him I think I’ll park up at the train station and give him a ring to come and collect me.
When I go to visit the rest of the family… Well, the question remains as to whether or not they can be trusted to keep it from him, my feeling on the whole is that they can’t, so I’ll probably pull a similar trick.
But… I thought you didn’t have a license?
November 19, 2007 at 6:32 pm | Bike | No comment
I rode to work today for the first time.
When confronted by co-workers I made up some cock and bull story about how I got my license at the beginning of the year, but kept it a secret in order to make it a surprise (I did something similar last year by not telling anyone about me buying a Lotus until I drove up in it, which leant some credence to my story).
I have my doubts as to whether my direct colleague was fooled by the story as he knows me quite well, but he said no more of it and I sincerely doubt he’ll make trouble about it.
Everyone else on the other hand just accepted it, as generally speaking people choose to believe what’s easiest.
The ride to work was fine, perfectly controlled no issues, though queuing at junctions I haven’t quite got the hang of yet and stalled once.
The ride back however was nightmarish.
I’ve never ridden at night before, and even though I only finish at five, at this godforsaken latitude (ie; Milton Keynes) at this time of year, it gets dark virtually before you’ve had breakfast (hyperbole? nay sir!).
I’ve equally never ridden in the rain before.
Tonight I did both, I hated it.
It’s the fear and loathing of inexperience, I eyeballed every draincover and every painted white line with dread, as though they conspired to throw me off my steed and bring my first dose of riding related pain.
Coming upon the home stretch of the journey I accellerate hard for the first time as I’m satisfied I have a straight line and hear a tap, tap at the back of my head.
Flexing my jaw I realise… Fuck… I haven’t done up my chin strap.
Not only does this completely nullify the point of having a helmet and worsen my fear of falling off, it’s also an offence, and flying long and wild behind my head like some traitorous tail of felony it’s sure to attract the attention of any sharp-eyed copper that might pull in behind me.
I ponder pulling over in a bus stop to do it up, but quite apart from the fact that I have such limited visibility that the unlit bus stops only appear to me mere metres before I come to them (a turn into which would surely invite an impromptu meeting with the car behind), a lone biker pulled over in a bus stop is even more likely to attract attention than a flapping chin strap.
I decide to press on and make it back home without incident, wondering to myself what the big deal was.
During the day I continued my theme of doing as little work as possible and researching my trip instead (it’s quite a thing to be paid to plan your trip is it not?).
I went through the seemingly endless possibilities of upgrading my bike, in terms of protecting the engine should I drop the bike, protecting the sump from damage when offroading or simply running over debris on the road to the panniers.
I’ve decided to go for Jesse panniers, even though this means importing from Germany, it ends up slightly cheaper than ordering from the UK manufacturer (though I do need to investigate potential importation charges, I’m not sure if they apply intra-EU).
De-catting the exhaust has to be done at some point, and through the faqs at F650.com I’ve discovered it’s reasonably easy to do without BUYING anything if you have access to welding equipment (not that I do, but I’m sure my friendly local welder would oblige given £20 and a couple of beers).
De-catting the exhaust this way doesn’t result in any increased noise (slightly dissapointing), but the real reason for doing it is to allow the bike to run on leaded petrol, as if you attempt to do this without de-catting, you’ll very quickly end up with a blocked catyltic converter to the extent that the engine won’t fire up (so I’m told at least).
Still, this is a job to be done once I’ve got some time (and light) on my hands, as I need to investigate how easy it is to take it off to give to the welder.
I also rang up the RAC’s Carnet department, apparently a Carnet is only valid for a single year, so if I’m to do as planned, I shall have to have a new Carnet issued on the exact date I enter Australia, else I’ll have to do all sorts of complex jiggery pokery regarding extension of stay on an expired carnet with switchover to a new carnet, which is apparently very difficult and best avoided at all costs.
Tomorrow signals the start of my DAS (Direct Access) rider training.
To ride there I’ll most likely park up at a nearby restaurant (which I scouted at the weekend) and walk the extra few hundred yars, as I feel that letting on to the trainers that I’m riding a bike illegally would probably not be the best idea in the universe.
Still, I should prove more competant than they expect from some-one who’s ‘not ridden since his test’!
Training
November 29, 2007 at 8:48 am | Bike, Trip | No comment
I’ve been without the internet for a few days now, changing from one provider to another.
Doesn’t make much difference to life in general, but it has meant I’ve not been updating the blog so regularly.
It shouldn’t have made any difference to that though, as I’ll be without the internet on the road for days at a time, so I should really get into the habit of offline blogging (using Word at the moment *gasp*).
I’ve been on a couple of days more training for the bike, had a new instructor called Martin who I didn’t get on with, who was insistent on late braking and following him closely (he didn’t actually let me lead at all!) and considering that the biggest issue of mine he identified was running a bit wide at junctions, his blat through the countryside was not very instructive.
The next session however was with Chaz again, who I get on with much better, he restored my confidence and gave me useful information on how to get round my junction issues and took me somewhere we could practise them.
I bought Kim a helmet and took her out for a very brief ride last night.
She absolutely loved it. She’d told me that she’d been on her mum’s boyfriend’s bike before, but never expressed any particular enthusiasm for it (in fact, initially she said she wasn’t going to get on it at all!).
However once we’d done a quick circuit of the housing estate and the briefest possible dual carriageway section, she was grinning from ear to ear.
Having a pillion passenger was much easier than I’d expected, I was quite apprehensive about the effect on my balance at low speeds, but she did very well and it wasn’t an issue at all.
I had a bit of a scare a few days ago with my panniers, as Kiwibob (the German redistribute of Jesse panniers) hadn’t replied to my emails for three days , and when I tried to go to the website I got a 404 page not found error!
Still, after the weekend I pinged him another email and he responded saying that he’d shipped them that day (as it had taken the full 5 days for the bank transfer to go through, why the hell do they bother saying 3-5 days anyway? We all know it’s always 5!).
On Wednesday I got home to find that the WP rear shock had been delivered, but the panniers had been bounced back to the depot as no-one was home.
This posed a bit of difficulty as I had no way of transporting them home having sold my car.
My mate was kind enough to offer me a lift to go and get them, however I was a bit dubious about his car’s ability to pick them up as his boot is significantly full of subwoofer!
As a result I decided to pull a sickie the next day at work, saying that my back’s playing up and wait in for UPS instead.
I’d decided to have a quick look at my shock absorber, not that I’d be able to discern anything from it, merely because I was curious.
However I discovered that they’d sent me a shock specced for the F650 GS as opposed to the GS Dakar!
This basically means that the amount of travel the spring has is significantly reduced, which would make it less capable off-road (the whole point of buying the Dakar being it’s improved off-road vs the standard model!).
To their credit, the company (Full Travel Suspension) acknowledged their mistake and arranged for TNT to pick it up today and promised to sort it out as soon as it arrived and send it back for Saturday delivery!
So all good then! I’ve got two mates coming round on Saturday (potentially, at least one of them should make it!) to help me fit the shock and panniers.
Things are progressing nicely!
I need to start sending off for Visas, but I just can’t seem to get round to it, oh well, at least I’ve managed to get my dad to send off my mum’s birth certificate so that I can apply for my second passport.
I’m pondering explaining my plans to my dad when I see him at Christmas, but I still don’t know what his reaction will be. It could be that it was my mum that was completely anti-bike, it’s quite possible as my dad was always far less over-protective than my mum…
I’ve started worrying again about how Kim is going to cope once I’ve gone.
I’ve been trying to get her to make stronger friends with the people she works with, which was going quite well as last month I cajoled her into organising a night out with everyone, and despite a few hiccups with her getting upset about everyone else changing the venue without her approval it went quite well.
Last weekend we had another night out with her mates from work.
It wasn’t going well, even before the night itself she blew up at work when her friends kept teasing her that she and I were joined at the hip at the last outing.
On the night itself I thought it was going much better, I tried to encourage her to hang around me a little less and get into the group a bit more (which was helped by me going to the bar and having to wait half an hour to get served!).
However at about midnight I just got back to the group with pint in hand to find the guys had gone to the other side of the room to play pool, leaving me with Kim and the girls (fair enough really, I didn’t know or establish a rapport with any of them), then when the girls went to join them, me and Kim were left standing on our own somehow.
She then reached into my inside pocket and pull out her wallet, phone and keys (which I was keeping for her as she had no pockets or handbag) and walked out of the bar!
Abandoning my pint (which I was enjoying inordinately and only had two sips of) I trotted after her asking where she was going.
“Home, you go back to the bar with your friends”
This puzzled me somewhat as I knew nothing about those people and would never have even hung around with them had they not been friends of Kim.
As it transpired Kim felt that they’d been ignoring her and blocking her out (which, may have been the case to a small extent, but I being the social butterfly that I am was used to that sort of thing).
For some reason this caused her to vent her frustrations on me (the first time she’s done that, hopefully the last too).
She walked straight past the taxi rank declaring she was going to walk home.
I trotted along her angry striding gait cheerily chiming in that I’d come with her.
She kept ranting about how they were ignoring her and that she should just give up on people and commit suicide (she says this in moments of frustration, though even at the time she admits to having no real intent on doing any such thing).
I was getting a bit pissed off at this point, as interwoven in her insults at her friends were insults and insinuations against me when I’d done nothing wrong in the slightest, so for one of the first times ever I raised my voice to her and demanded to know why she was taking it out on me.
I sat down at the side of the road and she squatted in front of me, looking me hard in the eyes.
“Shall I pack your things when I get home?”
“Why?”
“Because this is the end, isn’t it?”
I said nothing, I wasn’t worried, I knew she didn’t mean it and my momentary anger had passed.
After a few minutes of silence she seemed to realise what she’d said and started to calm down.
I stood up and hugged her, and after a few more minutes she conceded that maybe it would be best to get a taxi (a wise move considering we live some 3 miles away and it was midnight Saturday!)