Jo Ackroyd’s Big Biking Adventure

I’ve made a terrible error!

To make a rough measure of where I want to go and when I will be there I have taken a map, imagined that England is travlleable South to North in 7 days and translated that to any other country, on the basis that Europe is equivalent in road structure and so 7 days is ok and Easten block would mean 10 days.

So 3 inches is 7 days in Europe and 10 days in Eastern Block.

From this a spread sheet has told me rough dates and the nature of access into a country.

The other night I got a map out, a detailled map of Kazakhstan and started to examine where to stop.

Oh my god! I have no chance of travelling this road in 10 days not because its a rough road, although that is true, but because I’ve not realised that the roads are not straight!

Of course I knew the roads werent really straight but what I thought was 100km is more like 350km! I didn’t anticipate that amount of wobble!

I need to replan but I now have the constraints of the visas I have applied for.

I can see now how Panomoto took a year to plan his trip, but I like my wobble and I will have to think on my feet and adjust as I go.

Still I wish my measuring hadn’t been quite so wrong!

Expedition Preparation

The simple things are seemingly so easy but in the end they take the lions share of your time.

I have this idea that I need to focus on the many tasks in front of me. I need to compile my lists and start with the most arduous and idiocyncratic tasks first because they will take organisation and time and mental acumen.

So off I go, trying hard to live up to my own expectations of delivery, to manifest all the things my imagination conjures and in the right space in the right time and to the right quality. The reality is, it never happens. Then I persecute myself for having not delivered the goals I should thought of as casual and could have drawn in by crayon, fuzzed around the edges and simplistic by design rather than the bold hard black marker pen I’ve drawn the detail into.

So, I either have my backs and fronts and ups and downs and insides outsides around and sprung and that then means I confuse the simple with the complex, because its always the simple that’s just buggering up my life. It’s the easy simple crap that’s just not working.

4 bolts for a BMW - we all know AF threads will not fit! So why did they give them to me?

2 fork seals each a cm too big.

Camping gear and patience because its snowed and been returned and needs ordering again…

There are so many of these simple bits that planning and organisation slip over like a stream running over pebbles leaving them unturned and un motivated to fit into the bigger pond.

How do you know when you have planned and thought enough. How do you know you have considered all the right things?

How would anyone else measure their success in a task that is quite so undefined as the one that faces me now?

Is preparation an excuse because I cant measure up to the ideals of spontinaety?

Do I persuade myself that I’m quite an individual but really I’m hiding behind ordinary.

Spectacular is and extra ordinary word.

I feel as though I have been bleached by long hours in the sun, I’m colourless and worn, frayed and a little tatty. In the last year I have been both entertaining and entertained but currently, the bleached, dried grey and weary has taken its toll and i feel as though the spring in my tigger has been lost.

I’m sure its not far away.

Confused as I have been and will continue to be, I do now know that I prefer myself as Spectacular and Extra ordinary than I do as grey and sun worn.

NO matter what the cost I prefer me as me and not as the model citizen others predispose me to be.

Look forward to finding the spring. I enjoy being eccentric, I enjoy the fun it invokes, I don’t enjoy the lack of humanisation that is commensurate with it.

Next time yo see a tigger, also see the difficulty that tiggers face - because they are the only one.

Expedition Preparation, Random Thoughts

Where to start…!
The Russian Visa
Y’know I said it didn’t feel right, well it wasn’t!
See, the negative feelings have come through and buggered it. I should have thought lucky thoughts!

The visa application has been returned to me with £15 left to pay, now, the web states a fee and a postage and a service charge is due and my maths is not that bad! They also said any member of the EU has a lower fee but did not mention the UK as a member of the EU. So I sent in the higher fee and asked them to put the extra to charity if need be.

What a mistake, they must have smelt my cheque book was open. Still, lesson learnt, think positive; this visa will now be expressed through and returned in good time to get the next one on its way too.

Time

Time is becoming tight, it’s never as important as when it’s lost, the moments before its’ gone are frought by panic and distressed thinking. I should focus on what can be done now and how to fix the impracticals later. I find it’s a very rare occasion that stepping to the side isnt actually a step forward. Any desicion and action is better than a moment lost.

Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran

Since Turkmen, Uz and Iran are all tied into the same agency for delivery of LOI’s and Turk cannot be issued until both Uz and Iran are in my passport and Iran don’t allow motorbikes in their country and they have a 4 week wait for approval and must be stamped by an Embassy Consulate after a telex from Iran is recieved…well you can see the problem.

Turkmenistan has similar issues. Foriegn tourists cannot travel freely around the country and must be escorted by Turk guides, at a cost of $200 a day plus expenses. On a positive note, the agency has suggested that if I have a spare helmet he could ride with me! Good idea if I could afford the weight. But they also suggest they might have others travelling by this route by then that could share the cost.

Look at a map, Uz is splitting Krygystan and Tajikstan, the Pamir Pass is in Taj. I’ve had to state a destination and Port of Entry and Exit for Kazakhstan and I’ve stated a border to Uz.

China travel has come in at £1855 minimum along with re registration of the bike, that so, then I should go through via a different route and aim to not enter Uz until later. It means crossing Iran twice. Unfortunatley the Visa has been done for Kazakhstan and the exit port defined. It means going clockwise through the ’stans and not anti clockwise as I first intended. Got to re arrange if I’m to cross the Pamir Pass. This would be easier if I could get a double entry visa for Uz, but you can’t get them!

Advice from an agency is dont worry, pay the border bribe. I like this.

Think positive!

India

Indian visa has gone in today. Other than not having a referee in India I dont foresee any problems, it should be back in ten days. The Indian referee may be a grey area…

Bhutan and Sri Lanka

Lets not worry about these!

Passports

Apparently my reason for an additional passport is not valid with the IPS. This is my third application and so far all of the people at the IPS have given different advise, but this time Im talking to the woman that actually does the processing so be nice and see what happens.

I was being the incredible patient Jo and…

She rang me and dropped big hints on how to get an additional passport, at least then my third application was not in vain. A fax of an itenary to them and whooppee, today my second passport has arrived! It seems you only need to intend to travel to two countries that have a clashing entry policy and thats it!

A quick fax of dates and countries and two days later, here it is…thats how Im having Russia and India processed at the same time.

I mustn’t make any mistakes with this though, some of the visas need to be in the same passport!

Still to come…The Helmet Experience

Why did the Forks go so wrong?

Grippers and their help

Continental Tyres being sent to Poland

Final Camping gear

New Rear Carrier

Return of the Welded Front End

Windscreen Repair

Braided Hoses

Venom Hand Protectors Disappointment

Expedition Preparation, Visa's

Just a quick note to say how fantastic my new helmet is!

It’s just great, yellow and black…and FREE!

Thank you Pheonix - you’re both good fun and very generous. Without Shift It Pete it wouldn’t have happened so thank you Pete too.

I got an extra visor and some Fog City’s - have you tried them? Me being me I wouldn’t usually be goffered into spending money on double glazing for a helmet…but now!
Wow they are fantastic! They do just what you want them to do -no mist, no holding your breath just clear vision.

I’ve given up on the front forks, I’m ashamed to say they got the better of me!
When my patience returns and I don’t feel so foolish I’ll tell you how they beat me!

Equipment, Expedition Preparation

I sent of for the Russian Visa today. I can’t help but feel there is more to this and I’ve missed a huge bit.
I must get Iran sorted; I just shouldn’t wait any longer. Now there is a job for tomorrow.
The bike is going together slowly so I’m becoming more cheerful, I only wish I knew more about mechanics. My Dad is a mechanic but I know little about his trade.

I’m thinking that every step forward helps though and when you rebuild a bit of the engine, a tiny bit, it may be small and very easy to some, it’s important to me to understand it and the part it plays in the whole engine. As such I think Im begining to learn two things. Patience, coming back the next day to start afresh smile and make it work and engines and how ‘feeling’ a bolt is just as important and tactile a trade as holding a pencil and designing a solution.
There is no compensation for understanding and since I have half an understanding of both, perhaps I’m best placed to bring the two together. I do have faith, faith in true tradesmen, those people that ‘feel’ their trade.

On another note. I’ve realised my age. I’ve realised Im no longer young but don’t want to realise just how much I’ve missed. I think often about fate, karma and being reincarnated with a knowledge from a past. I do wish I had someone with wise advice, but I don’t and to be fair, neither do you.

I have what I have as life experience, its been placed as my line by a fate I had no control of until sensibility struck. Some have it strike early, others late. Now my choices are my own and I have no one to blame but myself. Ironically I also realise that this has been the case for many years but only now has the clarity made me think, see and feel.

That’s why some the of the day has past. It’s a quarter to twelve and the choice of midday dinner is upon me.
I’m dissappointed by my conquests and as a man perhaps I’m less than others. My friend said something lovely tonight though.

She measures relationships in quality and content and not by quantity. How unusual to measure by depth and not by count.

If this is the measure of a man and in my case, what a beautiful analogy, then I agree.

I have the most incredible, fantastic, lucky and foolishly, happy, smiling, giggling history to pull upon. In which case my few conquests, I am very,very happy with. I love their face as they smile, their teeth as they grin and their giggle within their giggle. I’ll remember these as my last kiss rather than those days we left each other.

These are some of the things I will remember as I travel and be thankful for.

xxx

I’m alone and feel alone, but I have a faith that this is a short stop in my life. Pass encouragement to those that need it.

Communication

The visa has come back from Kazakhstan Embassy!

Horay!

And its come just in time for me to pick up my passport from the Post Office and take it to London today.

I’ve dropped into the Kygystan Embassy and the girl did the whole thing for me and will return it by Friday! That’s just excellent news!

I found the embassy after a long tube journey and although I’ve been before, I came out the tube station and had no idea where I was in the world! It doesn’t bode well for world wide travel does it? Hidden beneath my brolly I walked down to the Embassy and remembered I was supposed to give them an envelope to have my passport posted back.

Now where would you find a post office in the rain and in central London?

Turn right and there it was! All the fates and omens are making this easy. Either that or else I’m easily pleased

The envelope for special recorded delivery came to £5.05. How do they justify that? What will that buy in Kyrystan do you think?

The door looked good, solid wood and held itself with authority, complete with electronic control, which was efficiently opened and lead into a white sterile but 1970s corridor. The double door to the left said reception but looked more like the entrance into a white Melomine MFI wardrobe.

Could be the entrance into world of Narnia made of plastic and fitted for free if you visit on Boxing day. I’ll have to remember when I’m in Kygystan to look out for more evidence. Small folk with hooves and a talking lion.

The reception was small and dotted with maps taken from a tourist information booklet and copied when the toner was running low. The girl behind the desk hid away behind the counter behind some more tourist info. Im quite sure they were strategically placed to hide the hours she must play solitaire or surf the net waiting for the next punter.
The other good news was she was incredible! Besides efficient and smiling she was quiet the stunning foreign secretary type. It’s here that fantasies start and stop!

I hope there are more like her! She was very sweet, kind, patient and so fit!

Fantastic!

If my passport is returned by Friday I can send it off Friday daytime and get a Russian visa started.

Turkmenistan is quite a different story.

I thought I would walk to the Turk Embassy.

Maps.  They are so misdescriptive of real life.  I hadnt thought it might be a few miles and now my feet really hurt.

No, I dont need GPS and no, I’m not going to be walking round the world.

I got to their offices munching a steak and stilton pasty that I tasted over and over all the rest of the day, they were really shabby just on the outskirts of Soho. I couldn’t work out how to get in so I rang them and burped stilton flavoured questions about visas down the phone.

They answered the phone and were grumpy because I’d interrupted dinner. The Consular Section was not in. How rude I thought!

They told me over the phone to look on the web but the web doesnt work and the links die! I’ve been trying for two weeks!

Even the Letter of Invite company/agency web address doesn’t work.

It must be me!?

See if any of you guys can get further than me?

It needs to be the UK embassy and the LOI has to come from the Regional Sparts and Toursim Department.

I’ll try to email them tomorrow and get some sense of it all.

At home I looked again and got just a little further. It also seems they charge for a Transit Visa and the charge on the border for 3rd Party insurance that’s non negotiable, finally they charge on the border for motorcycle crossings and I can’t deviate from my planned route in any way!

Really are Tourist happy huh!?

Expedition Preparation, Visa's

So the update on the valve clearances…
See the pics

Seems the manual is wrong, BMW printed off their service data sheets that they use in the workshop and the tolerance for the valves is 0.25 to 0.33 exhaust and 0.03 to 0.11mm for the inlet, which means of course that mine are spot on at 0.3 and 0.05.

So to rebuild the rockers and the rest…

10Nm for the timing chain guide…oops…I didnt put loctite on so I took it off and applied some powerbond and wound it back in until, crack, I split the bolt.

The bolt is 10mm but shanked to a 6mm thread half way down, not anymore.

The half way down thread is set in the head block and the bolt head is in my hand!

Bugger - I’d picked up the wrong wrench, it wasnt the torque wrench.

So I decided to drill it out and fit an extractor, but I snap that in the bolt.

So I drill out at the side of it with a bigger extractor and snap that next to it.

Now extractors are carbon steel - so there is no drilling them out.
what to do!

The threads are lined in the aluminium block, So Ive started drilling out the tread liner.

Apparently, in all the years of trading, BMW have NEVER, EVER ordered a 10mm shanked bolt to suit this!

Well.

We will see how we get on. My brother is thinking it over and has the patience I never had!

Could you imagine how up tight I am at this point!

A good thing is Im not super tense, Im thinking,’ Its all a learning curve.’

My other brother would say its character building. I hate that!

Update on the Goodridge hoses.

Dont ever ever ever use them!

I went to an interesting guy at East Midlands Hydraulic Hoses who is ordering the ends, custom making the hoses, giving me extra hose to do a few bits and is using hose ends that seem very similar to plumbing compression fittings but stainless and smaller.

The advantage being they are reusable forever!

If the hose wears or bubbles, you replace the hose but the ends last and last and last!

And all for less than a single rear hose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Petrol filter

£72 plus VAT!

Not getting that. So I thought fitting a prefilter might be a good idea but in the Carbon filter is a regulator and apparently it sucks with a force that will shred a pre filter.

Shame really cos if I get bad fuel…!

Uncategorized

Apparently every 6000 miles the bike needs the valve clearances checking. Cheap enough to have done but I thought while it’s in the living room…

It’s easy enough to check, but the tolerances are no where near the required clearances.
Top Dead Centre is ok to find, the valves are ok to check but the exhaust is running at 0.30mm which is borderline to the manual, but the Inlet - I don’t understand.

The nearside inlet opens at 0.05 and tight, the offside at 0.05 and loose but the manual says 0.1 to 0.15.

Now I expect the valves to wear a greater clearance but the bike has only done 9000 miles and the exhaust is floppy and the Inlets too tight?

I don’t get it!

BMW for advice tomorrow.

Need to ask them about other stuff too, like EBC brake pads I’ve fitted but not convinced of their performance.

Goodridge brake hoses - don’t do it! Don’t put yourself through the immense torture to find just how wrong they are!

The standard hose replacements just don’t work, the front is about 100mm too long (good job I have bar risers to fit!) and the back…

I fitted one and found I couldn’t tighten the banjo under the rear shock, so I took it off and did this first then fitted to the calliper, it’s so tight and strained I’m worried that as the bike sits and the suspension sags it will strain, let alone there is no free play to allow the take up of slack in the chain as the rear wheel is adjusted back.

So I rang Motorworks…Fab stuff!

They know Goodridge are not always that spot on (read between the lines!) and even though I’ve tightened and torqued they will take back the hose and refund. But I do want the hose!

Tomorrow I go in search of a made to measure service.

That’s very good of Motorworks though, especially since the packaging says to check the length before you torque up the 14mm stainless heads.

Loobman - fantastic! love it!

Loobman chain oiler, could anything in life be so simple? Sure there are a couple of drawbacks but still, cheap, simple, use any oil or lubricant including olive oil, buy one right now!

If your the sort of person that needs technology, really needs it and can’t see the beauty in simplicity, if you don’t want to see a bright inventor succeed just becuase it’s a worthy idea…go and by one!!!I think Dean and Lucy are shell shocked. Either that or they are waiting for a punch line.

Dean has just passed his test and I’ve given him my VTR1000F2 for the year. Well he has to learn on something, you may as well start with a real bike!

Lucy will love it too. I imagine it as the romatic weekender away they could smile about later.

Also saves me £250 in insurance while I’m away and it could do with an oil change, I hope he is careful though, I don’t want to be responsible for something nasty by trying to providing a mutual benefit thingymagig.

Equipment, Expedition Preparation

The panniers are good, they need a designers touch, an inventors flourish, but for the most part, they are good.

I think Bernie could do with a ‘Jo’ the idea has a great pair of legs, some tiny tweaks and the panniers could compete in a higher value market. For me, they will be just fine. I don’t intend them to be pretty for long! And they don’t need the higher value bit until the deal is done!

It’s good to see alternatives in the market, there are only four manufacturers and they all seem to hae a vanity about them that these modest young panniers don’t have. They’re simple, functional and look like they want to get dirty!

All in all, they look like a good deal, a little dissappointed the top box was expensive by comparison…but there is time to work out the details.

The good bit about the whole thing is…Bernie is a talking guy.

Not the sort of guy you can take for a ride, he is smart enough to avoid that, but he is personable and perfectly open to chat about little tweaks I want to make them do a little extra in terms of function.

I like that. I like the fact the answer is not ‘no’ before the question has been heard and considered. Few people keep an open mind for the duration of a discussion.

There is a great adventure about to start, I feel perfectly normal, incredibly grey, not like myself at all.

What a great place to start from!

Im starting in the blocks with a grey day, a dull voice, a cloudy sky and neither fear or excitement.

If I’m so even now, the experience will be something spectacular, not only will it be the me I expect to be - Up Down and the typical BiPolar oddity I need to be - but also thrown into the mix will be extravagant events, people and adventures.

I’m beginning to be worried I’m not prepared enough, but also I’m begining to be excited about going…every day I go to work and I’m surrounded by the misery of the aggresive personalities around me I look forward to a year of making something positive, forcing a smile into a situation if I have to, but I’m not going to be persecuted by the ‘company cloud!’

Faith.

Positive Faith.

Equipment, Expedition Preparation

I’ve stopped feeling extra-ordinary and started to wonder about the mundane.

Is this how you all feel everyday of your lives?

I want back the strangeness, the unusual, the fantasy that was the life I led in my mind. Not because of the outward effect or the reason of the entertainment value it donates to others while supporting my conscious ideas of life, but because - the wrong reasons - because it was fun!

Never knowing what my next thought was to be or where I might find myself, the strange irrevicable descisions I could make and lay at the door of outragous thinking was, to me and to life, fun.

How many other people have the opportunity to not comply and conform to a predecided social tumour thats enforced only by the extent of its infection?

Now I feel very un-unusual.

I’m in the waiting room of life.

A passenger in a car Im not driving.

Is this because of the trip planning beginning to fail or is the failing of the details because of the onset of a negative mood?

It seems the circumnavigation of Afganistan through China is both expensive at $1855 for four days journey and full of wonderlust. The idea, the concept of a journey through China mixed with anticipation of  whether the Chinese guides will actually turn up at the border and not double their fee creates the wonderlust.

The alternative is Iran.

Iran is £120 for the Letter of Invite and since I would travel twice through here, it’s double the fee. Consular fees are £95 a trip and Iran only allow small motorcycles so there is a chance I will be stopped at the border for a 650 cc bike thats not allowed through their country.

To get to Iran I would need to travel through Turkmenistan, which is both unstable, unreliable and however politically complex, augmented in complexity by its consular procedures.

Unfortunately I have already stated my entry and exit borders for the Kazakhstan visa which complicates to mean I’m constrained. Further bound by Uzbekistan which according to the Agency I dont need a Letter of Invite for but for which the Embassy say I do. A Letter which will cost £120 and is only for single entry  - another constraint.

If my intention is to stay even close to true I would need double entry in Uzbekistan to go through Kazakhstan and in Uzbek, on into Tajikstan and experience the PamirPass before back tracking to Uzbek and tempting fate in Turkmenistan.

The danger is of course once you have set your route, you cannot return. All visas are single entry, all passes and fees non refundable and thereby, I can’t come back the way I went in. In some cases, ever.

A Russian visa can only be applied for whilst in your home country and Iranian visas do not allow for motorcycles. Potentially, it could go terribly wrong and I alone am flown home from a country which prophesies to be ‘tourist freindly’.

I’m lost without a map. Yours is geographic mine is emotionally eccentric.

I feel the complications are without a doubt mine by design and mine to decipher, but I also cant help but feel so particularly alone. Part of this trip is to gain strength through ambition and goal achievement, but to get there is a lonely quest.

Perhaps these twists are part of the fate that will make my year interesting, maybe they are there to be fought against to feel the reality of the world I’m living in and to change it for a sparkling, glitter filled enigma of joy thats reserved for cheerleaders and college frat parties, but of course in a more traditionally English way that might be the thought of as a lovely cup of tea at the end of a hard ride.

Perhpas we have a western idea of ironing out the creases of anally planning a trip that in any other country is the result of bribes and midnight runs for the border. An idea that we dont understand until we are part of. It could be by this relaxation in our tense ideals I find the thrill I need in life.

Expedition Preparation