Jo Ackroyd’s Big Biking Adventure

There is a feeling of warmth, something warm and comfortable. I feel a softness, a fur, a warmth that’s comforting in the same way the fetal position under a duvet can make you want to stay in bed for another hour.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but the warmth is my extended belly sitting in a wholesome position on my thighs while I read Sam Manicoms motorcycle adventures while eating breakfast on the toilet.
I’m not sure what is more disturbing.

Eating while reading or the fact I’ve put on weight.
(Could be the toilet and reading thing too.)

I’m hoping Peter is telepathetic and is going to ring and offer to take my passport to either the Uz embassy in London, or the Taj embassy in Austria…I have a preference!

Peter. Yes I mean you! Hello ! I feel as though we have little opportunity to talk but will hold you as a friend nevertheless. One day in years to come we will pick up a conversation as though tomorrow has not been quite the duration away from yesterday as it has been but becomes closer in our minds than the calender shows.

Oh, and I don’t really need the passport thing going on!

I have had some bad news today, the springs from Hagon aren’t going to be here till Tuesday, delivery is getting later and later and the worry is not so much the springs being delivered as how long it will take me to fit them and get it wrong and learn and get it wrong and ask and eventually get them right!

Tony at Hagon has a talent for making bad news palatable! When he told me, I couldn’t fault him. I believe he is trying and being thwarted.

What a great word, thwarted!

Can you imagine a life without the boundaries and fixtures we are held by today. Can you imagine giving up on the values you carry so dear to your heart now that have been instilled within you from not only society and up bringing but also years of descendant indoctrine?

It’s not only this that’s holding you back but you.

You hold yourself in such high esteem and judge your success by the view others hold of you that to succeed in anything that really matters to yourself is to be released from a bondage that holds not your body but your mind.

To be seen to move away from the value that’s placed upon you by others is probably the most difficult desicion to make in life.

It follows you and therefore needs the belief few people can give. It follows every day, we all do it, we call different lifestyle choices as Pikeys or Hippies not realising that what we are doing is judging the life style choices of others as not acceptable to us because of the life we expect and not the life we believe but because of the life we endure.

I’m hoping to go and learn that I shouldn’t judge.

I have no reason to endure. Life shouldn’t be endured as much as enjoyed. Three letters that make more difference than any amount of positive thinking.

Gradually, I’ll leave behind with every mile moving from what we might have to endure, to a riasing of my smiles to what I hope to simply enjoy.

Expedition Preparation, Random Thoughts

To hold hope in your heart and realise your ten years too late for an occurrence that should have dominated your younger years. Not this trip, simpler. More ordinary. A girl.

But I’m also enthused by the queries and smiles Ive found tonight.

Today, I’ve been part of a meeting where I had the opportunity to sit back and view the life and decisions others made through the eyes of a stranger. They not only followed a process that was random, but were so unrelated to the strangeness of their remarks, in the world context that I am about to follow, that I had to, well, snigger.

I’m quite obsessed by a thought that’s unhealthy. While finding Faith I might forget to discover more about love.

Beautiful glints in your eyes, marvelous smiles and fantastic curls in your hair.

I must think more about Pakistan and a single rather than double visa, that would mean an ‘in’ visa while the ‘out’ would be variable by design of the process. I should imagine myself in Kaliningrad because I’ve naively discovered its part of the Russian Federation states and so I doubt Ill be able to travel through it. Visa is single entry for the wrong month…

Why is the MSR hydration bag black when in hot countries where it will be needed this will absorb more heat than it should?

I’m so incredibly ill at ease with a life that’s difficult in all the wrong ways. Now is my opportunity to discover new sides to a life less ordinary.

I’m privileged and must remember my privilege carries a cost of realisation. I must remember that the cost is the reason for the going, the being and the pushing forward to a something new and undiscovered.

Expedition Preparation, Random Thoughts

I’ve had a dream that cooking needn’t be a chore, my pots and pans need a stroke of ingenuity to make them truly work at a level of efficiency Reverend Stirling would be proud of.

Have you seen the Wikipedia page for Stirling engines? They are fascinating and the Rhombic Drive Beta version Stirling Engine is quite sensational…

Take a look. It’s a very ‘Male’ engine

Any who, off topic, I’ve been thinking how to cook with one pan. Apparently the boredom of food from a one pan cooking stove can drive you to excessive chumba eating elsewhere. So, I’m thinking how to make this thing work.

More to the point, I’m looking at the different to lessen the focus on the normal.  I’m pulling away from the ordinary and diverting to something else so I can imagine everything else is OK.

But to be more positive, I’m looking and spending time thinking of other things while my subconscious works out the detail problems of the now.

Both views are equally plausible, I like the latter but there is a disadvantage to this, that time passes while details are worked out in a less conscious state - as an old manager used to say; many times too often, “It’s a worry”!

Now and again I loose faith, or should that be FAITH!

I’m disappointed that the forks are not working yet, wrong springs, I’m upset my brake lines aren’t complete, I dont have the new K&N air box for desert travelling to help protect the fuel system, the electric modifications are not coming together.

To explain further, I don’t have the skills but I’m trying. I’m learning. My concentration has gone to pot - can I remember what it is I might of already learnt!!! Who knows.

I suppose if we were to consider the Buddhist view, when I need the information I don’t need to ‘work it out’  I only have to remember what it is I have already learnt.

Crikey - might take a while!!!!

The visas are not happening and I can’t find insurance, I have to keep working at work, I have to give a lecture on Friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I need help but don’t know where to look, I’m feeling both helped and lonely in the same moment.  Ive had a great weekend with fantastic friends. It was quite memorable for many reasons, the bar dancing, the pole dancing, the local dignitary…or the food.

I need to recover FAITH!

Any ideas?

Living alone is hard, but preparing this kind of venture alone is more lonely.

But that’s the whole point isn’t it? If you were to help, you would undermine some of the purpose while reinforcing the rest. Your help would be appreciated and would restore FAITH that people have a good nature. But, would detract from one of the purposes - to restore self confidence through delivery of new skills.

Oh Dilemma!

Communication, Expedition Preparation, Random Thoughts

Indian Visa

I became excited about the Royal Mail ‘missed post’ slip as it must mean a Visa has been returned to me.

I got up early and went to the Post office collection point and picked up my passport, only to find the Indian visa returned because -oh I feel so shy to say - it’s foolish… I hadn’t signed it.

Attention to detail huh! Im having trouble staying focused.

In my defense, the bit of the form where you sign was tiny, miniscule, it was not large enough for my quill and too large for my needle.

It was hidden under the contractual text, a sliver of white against the dark misery of contract law.
But on a good note - guess what this means!

I may have made a mistake measuring the ‘Stan countries but this is my opportunity to repair the timescale I had roughed out. Since only two of the ‘Stans are fixed, Kazkhstan and Kygrystan by the visa process, I can change dates form there on and now India isn’t fixed I can change that too! So all’s well again with the trip times, I’ve lost 2-3 weeks from the end of the trip but to be frank, the lower Countries approaching the Congo in Africa were begining to worry me.

Globalstar Sat phone

Apparently two satelittes have fallen into disrepair, buggered from space. They have been that way for 18 months so the Sat 550 phone isnt going to be a worth while option. Should I be a stranger in a strange land, go somewhere and try to stay out of touch, how does the rest go…I cant remember.

I guy in a phone shop suggested a phone to me thats open to networks and I could buy several sim cards and work out a tariff spreadsheet for each country. I would but I can’t help but wonder if he got it right. Not because I doubt him, but of course I do, but because he looked like he was 12!

I’m going to mull this over and see where I’m led, but time is against me so I’m going to have to think quicker than usual.

I’ll only take 5 days to mull this one over!!!!

Communication, Equipment, Expedition Preparation, Visa's

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

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

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