Jo Ackroyd’s Big Biking Adventure

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

Tomorrow we will see if the panniers fit!

They are coming and I hope it works out. I’m concerned about them being right. If they fit, there’s a cheese and pickle sandwich in it for him.

1. The price is fantastic, but then a bargain is only a bargain if it suits your purpose pefectly. I have some concerns.
2. The locks and hasps may not be up to much.
3. The hinges too could be too ’small scale’ to be robust.
4. There has been talk about ‘balancing’ the look and I hope this doesn’t mean losing the offside exhaust can, after all I’m hoping its there for more than just looking right. Also want to make sure the the complete pack is just right for the job.
5. The last bit is, I want it to accept some modifications. I have this idea it could be adapted to also make a pillion seat frame that could carry 2×10 litre jerry cans of fuel. Would be nice if it also came apart to make a low level camping table with drop out legs.

Sounds like I have high expectations - I do but anythings possible.

…if anythings possible, I wonder if it could also turn into a shovel, two poles with screw together billets and the carry top becoming the blade of the spade…why?

‘cos you gotta poop somewhere and that usually means you need a hole.

Expedition Preparation

Time’s getting on and I’m more confused by Visa requirements than ever before!

Letters of invitation, referees, proof of health insurance.

I have just realised that I should have been doing more, sooner, harder and with more gusto.

Y’know when your at school and exams are on their way, a week before you start to pretend to revise and when the days upon you, you panic, write some rubbish and come up with an awful lot of imaginative thinking.

I’ve been to the Embassy this week for Uzbekistaaaaaannn and Kryryrgystahn and I get the impression this travelling lark isn’t going to be simple.

The good news is, things are starting to happen.

I’ve got a Letter of Invite to Russia - I hope!

And tyres look likely, a date has been set for the helmet fitting, I’m looking seriously about insurance and I’ve just realised that things are going to happen.

If only work didn’t get in the way of my trip organisation.

If only work didn’t get in the way of my thinking, my mind, my dreaming and didn’t bind.

I’m waiting in the wings for a performance about to start, knowing that the starting act is killing the audience.

Expedition Preparation

Panic 1,
BMW parts haven’t arrived, seems the Goodridge hoses are on back order so none of the parts have been sent, but i placed the order in the Christmas break! Good job I dont know what I’m doing otherwise I’d be really up tight.
Panic 2
The made to measure front carrier system (cough - home made jerrycan holder.) Is nearly complete and needs an aluminium TIG welder. Gotta find someone quick so theres time to make other plans if it doesnt work too well. Ill upload photos for you to rate! You can buy something to do the same job from Touratech, but the basic unfitted unpainted version is £1500!
Panic 3
More injections on Friday - oh Lawdy!

2 cut fingers:

Cut from the manufacturing process of turning a kitchen sieve (£4.50) into a headlight guard, bicycle pedals (free from my brothers friend - thank you it was an ingenious idea!) into footrests, aluminium mesh into a radiator gauze (£7.00 from B&Q) and the special (thpecial) front carry system. Again I think photos of this stuff would be good huh?
One finger was mine, one my nephews, Ryan.

Does Richard Branson have to put up with cut fingers or do you think he has people to cut their fingers for him?

Thats true hedonistic delegation to aspire to!

No, I like it. I like doing, thinking, making do and mending, seeing a radiator gauze for £87 and making it for £7. I know I get frustrated and frustrate, but that’s it isn’t it?

The process, the involvement the people the thoughts the ideas and encouragement are the point.

That’s what keeps us all going, isn’t it?

1 reason to continue:

Because its within reach and man is the only creature with the capacity to dream, wonder and endeavour.

Expedition Preparation Expedition Preparation

I’ve just been for the innoculations, the nurse was a bit grumpy, apparently she’s had a bad day!

She’s had a bad day!  I was about to be on the sharp end of a needle!

Although I gave her an itinary two weeks before - and we talked on the phone about it -  the day had sent her in a spin…

After talking in my calm reassuring, trying to be nonchalent kind of way we started to get into the subject at hand. You have to be calm in these situations…because if youre not…SHE’S GONNA HURT YOU!

I thought it was the proffesional thing to do, y’know put her at her ease…

We chatted about Rabies, always a winning subject with the girls I feel -
‘But you’re not going near animals that will carry rabies in your group so you’ll be ok, you don’t need it.’
‘What group?
‘The group your travelling with…’
‘Huh?’
‘You know as part of your organised tour, you will be quite safe.’
‘No, I’m going alone…’
THunK
‘MEDIC! …ANYONE …HELP…’

Well - it was kind of like that, maybe she didn’t hit the floor with capital letter quality thunk.

Maybe, well, yeah, it was actually more of a lower case impatient huff.

Seems some of the jabs need to be over three months, so time is short, actually time is negative but she came up with a plan to hurt me over regular intervals of 7 days 14 days and 28 days.

I couldnt help but notice. My history catching up with me I suppose. Details. She washed her hands like a five year old just in from digging for worms and about to have fish fingers and chips for tea, she turned the tap off with her hands and not her elbows, the design and position meant she couldnt reach that far with her elbows. Not without hitting her furrowed brow on the cupboard set anyway. She was tall enough to do it with her knees though. It would have helped my increasingly high pitched voice to drop an octave if she had used the non conformant wash hand basin and not the treatment sink to wash. It was a worry that the needles were left on the worktop and the swabs were dry. Still, not dry for long, all that blood does have a lovely hue. All this and Im not in a third world country yet!  Ignorance is bliss.

I thanked her for hurting me, nervously averted her eyes and wandered out the door. How very English I thought. I’m in mild pain and suspicious of your technical competence but say nothing, smile and mutter my thanks, knowing I have to be polite because you have two more opportunities to infect me. I got in the car, thanked my stars for air conditioning in January. Still, didn’t “really” hurt

I’m not convinced she really knows what shes doing, but y’know sometimes you just have to go with it. And that’s the point of the whole event isn’t it?

Faith - you have to put your trust in people and events, and needles of course, trust in the now…

oh dear!

Expedition Preparation Expedition Preparation