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It was another fun weekend playing in the garage.
Its starting to look mad in a cool dakar kind of way.
Photos to follow tomorrow.
Another superb write up Radar, I wish I could articulate myself so well.
But you have done such a good write, Im thinking of going next year with the Mrs Splat, we are sold already.
But I think I would rather ride there with the Beemer and use my own bike for the week. Do you know if this is possible….anybody?
The gods of travel are smiling upon me today.
I now have 1 fresh transit visa for Turkmenistan in my passport
They are legendary difficult to get hold of and there is a breakneck deadline to cross the country in time.
But Ive got it, it’ll make my Iran and Uzbekistan visa’s in a couple of weeks go much more smoothly
Im still waiting to hear if Tehran thinks Im a spy or not!
Thanks for the bump Radar, this is basically the rally blurb, needless to say Im taking the difficult route.
And with adding China as well I am having to cross the Gobi…..Twice!
The Mongolia Charity Rally is a pan-continental drive across five mountain ranges, two deserts and more barren and inhospitable lands than you care to shake a gear-stick at. Starting in London, the final destination is the capital of Mongolia, beyond the Gobi desert, Ulaanbaatar.
On 5 July 2008 teams will set forth to the sounds of a traditional Mongolian Naadam festival in the heart of London, complete with fermented mare’s milk, some fine music and a crash course in traditional Mongolian wrestling and archery. Once off the island the road is your shepherd – you could choose to take in the delights of Poland, Ukraine and Russia, or boldly point your vehicle in a southerly direction towards Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Whichever road you take, you’ll be faced with a wealth of makeshift mechanics, border bribery, mutton kebabs and pure unadulterated adventure, before passing into the realms of immortal glory at the finish line in central Mongolia.
And once there I give EVERYTHING, including the motorcycle away to the rally charity. I am alone and unsupported across half of the globe on a 20 year old 200,000km Jellymould CBR1000.
And I cant wait.
TBH, I have been too busy to get excited.
I have just hit my 3 month mark and I have started with my visa’s.
I am waiting for authorisation from Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As soon as my authorisations are here I can start to apply for visa’s.
I am very dissapointed at my efforts so far to raise money for the charities. I am an imigrant here in Belgium, the closest equivalent I can give is if a Polish guy in your village started asking in broken english if you would sponsor him! My corporate product sponsorship has been going great, just the charity sponsorship is going crap
And that is the state of play with the bike up till today!
But news of a different kind. There is one other guy on the rally who is also trying to enter China with his car, an American version of a Suzuki Swift called a Geo. He is a cool guy, a bio chemist and canoeist and together we are going to help each other cross Mongolia and the Gobi to get to China together.
Yeah and……………..?
Check this out, we think that this may be a guiness book of record moment, will this be the first outrigger canoe to cross the Gobi [
]So basically, I am crossing the Gobi on a jellymould CBR with a mad american bio chemist trying to get in the guiness book of records with his outrigger canoe and together we are going to have a beer on the great wall of china!!!!
YEAH BABY!
So the bike came back on Friday (yesterday) and to get rid of some fustration at not raising 1 penny for charity and me having to commute 5 hours everyday to Brussels and back for basically bugger all, I decide its time to start bending some metal!
After a lot of bending, some swearing and a whole load of puzzling around.
Badda boom badda bing, a 30 litre jerry can rack appears.
I got it all sprayed up today and it will be fitted sometime next week.
And say nothing about the state of my workshop, there hasnt been enough hours in the day to tidy up!
So the EWEC expo week arrives (last week).
This is me explaining the the British Ambassedor of Belgium what the hell a bike is doing at a wind expo!!
All in all a tricky week, I got interviewed by Japanese, Korean and italian TV. Had to give a couple of interviews with green energy magazines and generally had to try and justify what my bike was doing there!
Apparently my sponsor was happy with how I conducted myself in interviews and with the EU Ministers, so in that respect it was a good week.
As for raising money for the charities I am riding for, it was bad. My sponsor had me in a stranglehold, it was their week, not mine!
Not one euro raised and a whole week in a sea of suits, it could have been better I can tell you.
Just to give you some background…….
My sponsor makes transmissions for windturbines, they like to be seen as a green company and I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to ‘green up’ my journey. I am all for this, I have kids too.
So how do you green up 15,000kms of petrol burning on a 20 year old motorcycle without a cat?
It was time to do some homework, Let the googling commence.
After one week or homework and a lot of reading, I think that I have cracked it and I am ready to tackle any tricky questions for journalists at the expo.
My greeness it a tri pronged attacked.
1st. E10 bio fuel, my bike and all cars and bikes can run on this 10%bioethaline/90% petrol mix and this reduces carbon emissions by 10%
2nd. Fuel additives, I will be using fuel addatives to try and increase my fuel range and decrease my CO2 emissions.
3rd. Carbon offsetting. It has been calculated to offset my journey I would need to plant 26 trees. I think 26 sounds too few, so I elected to plant 100 tree at the new factory in Tianjin. Apparently 8 in Chinese is lucky and 88 is double luck. So I will now be carbon offsetting by planting 88 trees in China.It was then decided by my team sponsor that I would be good eye candy at their trade stand at http://www.ewec2008.info
Here is the bike leaving with strange men for the European Wind Energy Conference!
The tart, she’ll go with any old strange men!
But after this my mates think that she is too cool to be the fridge….she is now the Freezer!
But back to the Fridge………..
My billet handprotectors had arrived, but they were not made for the Renthal twinwall, I cant complain, sponsorship is sponsorship, some modifications were needed.
Jobs a good un!
In the meantime and after much discussion with my team sponsor, it was decided that I would be riding to China for them. They are building a new 200 million euro factory in Tianjin near to Beijing, I have been asked to carry the company flag or the foundation stone of their new factory.
Very few people have ever ridden their own motorcycles into China, this is a great honour and challenge which I readily accept.
So now I am to be Hansen Transmission ambassedor from Belgium to Tainjin, China…….Bloody fantastic!!
Back home and more stickers were put on, then it was time to get some publicity photo’s for my sponsor Hansen Transmissions.
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