Northern Lights

Another Tour Comes to an End

The bikes are with the shipping company, the Northern Lights ride is over. Contrary to our preconceptions this has turned out to be quite a hard leg of the worldbybike trip – primarily because of the length of the riding days we set ourselves. Our daily average hours riding turned out 20% more than other trips and that certainly has tended to wear the crew down a bit. The climatic change was dramatic – from the chills of Iceland and Nordkapp to the searing heat of the Caspian and Black Sea regions, as well an inordinate amount of rain in the first half of the trip, the climate has been anything but sanguine.

Almost 18,000 kms in under 2 and a half months has been a significant riding load and while the roads weren’t as testing as parts of Africa, Australia or the Himalayas, the peculiar nature of Eastern Bloc tarseal – a mix of seal, patches, potholes, and gravel – is something we won’t quickly forget. And no accidents or health issues, not even a real puncture made it a particularly fortunate expedition.

The crew has been a particularly happy one on this leg, with no tensions whatsoever arising. Hard to know why – whether it’s because at under 3 months the ride is more manageable, or whether the changes of personnel prevented anything festering – who knows, but is was great to be part of this team.

BMW’s F650GS Dakar Proves Itself Again

The BMW Dakars have proved once again they are bulletproof – day after day of being flogged and not one moment’s hesitation from any of them. We’ve completed several major expedition rides on these bikes now and they have been just outstanding. Comfortable to spend all day on, strong enough to carry rider and luggage, good torque in the 80-100kph range, no engine failures whatsoever and minimal maintenance. These are ingredients of a successful bike for this type of marathon riding and the Dakar has proved itself time and time again. We are sad indeed to see the end of the BMW 650 GS Dakar line – it has been a great machine and its Rotax engine just amazing.

However life moves on and with this bike no longer available we prepare for the next leg (Gringos Across the Amazon) of WorldByBike with a clean sheet of paper and thankfully there are a few contenders to succeed the F650GS Dakar – the new (Rotax-built parallel twin) BMW 800GS, the Yamaha XT660Z Tenere (single) and the Honda XL700V TransAlp (V twin) – all are in our evaluation sights.

Tea with Queen

What better spot to land on England’s shores than the white cliffs or Dover. It was howling a gale so we didnt hover long and retreated to savour a Pint with FISH and CHIPS in town. It was amongst  these wonderful tastes and smells that Gareth recalled his regret of not finishing the Africa ride at Buckingham Palace in the heart of London. All were keen to brave London traffic and so a new course was set and it went surprising well. London has it’s green zone and congestion zone but we rode on through as motorcycles are exempt.

Once in Westminster “Zumo” gave us one wrong turn and it turned out to be a blessing for we arived at Buckingham palace to find a Police cordon just three cars in front. It was the Changing of the Guard!! We were off our bikes and doing what Tourist do .. just that we were in the middle of the street … After the guards had passed we lingered (while the traffic went bye) until a bobby came up cheerfully saying ” you know what i am going to say don’t you”. 

Onward up The Mall we rode to Trafalgar Square for team photo. Then it was back to Buckingham Palace just in time to be stopped for another parade. It was shortlived for the green light was given and Gareth was caught still running around the middle of the interection taking shots and the rest of the kiwis were fiddling with kill switches and clunking into gear. Much to the amusement of other tourists….. taking shots of us taking shots. The constabluary heaved a good humoured collective sigh.

Photos of our meeting the Queen are here

I’ve been busy

There is always an excuse not to write blogs about our trip, and that is mine.

We haven’t had a day off the bikes since Astrakhan, at the end of our North South traverse of Russia.

We had 3 currencies in a day, 6 countries in a week and when we got to the amazing towns and cities in the afternoons, the last thing I was going to do was tap (slowly) on a computer.

We got out of Russia with-out paying any bribes, found a farm road into isolated Transdneistr, sort of a country as it is not quite part of Moldova. We had to pay to get out of this one though. (three times)

After my swim in the Black Sea I spent an evening with a lovely Vera who brought a translator along and quizzed me ( in detail) on life in NZ and whether she would find a good man if she comes to NZ.

In Iassi (pronounced Yash) in Romania, after the boys had retired for the night, I wandered the streets watching the vibrant night life. There I met the wonderful Oxana when I wandered into an antique shop.

She greeted me in Romanian, then proceeded through the languages to the East until Russian, no real luck yet. Then she started west with Hungarian, German, French and eventually English. We sat around an exquisite table, and talked most of the night, her old boss delivered us pop-corn. 21 years old, economics graduate trapped between antagonistic regimes that won’t allow her a passport or visa. Her parents from different countries and she was born in another. It is a complexity that we in NZ are fairly sheltered from.

We also managed to see the newest member of our world family, Heiko a  German student who lived with us in NZ has married the gorgeous Astrid and they have since had energetic toddler Robin. A lovely few hours were spent admiring him.

Enough rambling. We went to see the queen, we all got back safely. Now I’m up into the flood ravaged North of England to do an Expedition Medicine Course.

Can’t wait to get home (ONLY A WEEK) to cuddle my grand babies, and have a bubbly with my girl-mates

Worldbytunnel

The motorways have had us crossing Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France very quickly. It’s not easy riding though with trucks galore and fast cars in the fast lane on your tail. Calais appeared with us all intact and it was vote time. Ferry or Tunnel ? Tunnel won out cos no one had been on it before and this of course is supposed to be an adventure!. 

This is an impressive operation. We arrive through massive parking spaces, queue lanes, booths and flyovers etc that lead your vehicle train side, a silver slab sided snake. They start us driving into it. It’s double decked but we get the bottom level.  Being on bikes it’s easy to hop off and poke around before being reprimanded by a yellow vested budgie ( officlal). So chastised we ride on .. here’s some pics of that event.  so we park our bikes and naively go in search of the dining car. Ha! no such thing.. we are sealed in our tin can and stand/sit for the journey - understandably so too .. it’s only 30 minutes ( though it’s a long time to hold your breath). It was smooth and efficient - you virtually drive out straight on to the motorway to London ( but Dover calls for us).

Only gripes.. not much of a view from our window seats.. and Roger felt he would have to sell one of his BULLS to pay for it. Actually 112 Euro.. beats swimming. Check out the happy couple…. after 10 weeks on the road ..still a happy couple.

A Visit to the KTM Factory

A dream come true for Chris, it would have been for Tony too if he’d not been called home, and MOD probably would have come on the Northern Lights Trip if he’d known a visit to the KTM factory was to be included. It was worth taking a day out to train down from Frankfurt to Mattighofen, Austria and back – just to see Chris’s face as he got to touch each engine, each bike along the way as we walked the plant. Yes the WorldbyBike family has its share of KTM aficionados and when that orange bike or that KTM logo is in sight, all logic is put aside – it’s just love.

The KTM (Kronief, Trunkenpolz, Mattighofen) story really is a wonderful one. These days it sells only a few less bikes each year than BMW – 92,000 versus 108,000 and KTM’s market really is primarily the off-road one – enduro, motocross and adventure bikes – of which it has a 55% market share. Its first production year was 1953 and like Harley Davidson it went bust (in 1991) before the big revival occurred and the serious commitment to excellence in off-road competitions came through – from Moto-X to Paris-Dakar KTM has stamped its authority on this segment (has won every Paris Dakar since 2001!). We toured its R&D and competitive racing facilities – very impressive, with hordes of young bucks from designers to engineers to test riders, making the facility more like a tour of Google’s campus than a motorcycle facility.

And to cap it off, we suddenly were greeted by, “Gidday, you’re Gareth Morgan aren’t you?”. It was KTM’s first on-road test rider who’s been with them for a week – one Rodney O’Conner from Taranaki, track racer of note. It’s a small world and Kiwis are all over it!

KTM has been expanding into the on-road segment over the last few years with its Duke and RC8 series but unfortunately for the WorldbyBike team it has yet to produce a bike in what we’d call the Expedition Ride section – light enough to have genuine off-road capability, but with a strong sub-frame for luggage, reasonable fuel capacity, and comfortable seating for day after day of high miles. Its 990 Adventure Bike is too big and it looks like its 690 Adventure version won’t be out until late 2010. So there is no product yet from them for us to consider, but clearly with their off-road pedigree being so strong, we can’t wait to have something from them to consider.

Photos of Chris\’s day in the candy store can be viewed here

Hitler’s Poland – Krakow and Auschwitz

Our last act before leaving Eastern Europe, was to visit the wonderful city of Krakow and in particular the Jewish Quarter where soon after the Nazi’s invasion of Europe in 1939, Hitler’s Gestapo turned this area into a walled-in ghetto where the citizenry had to wear armbands, and were then removed to go to forced labour camps and ultimately to be exterminated. After Krakow itself we then visited Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camps where not the citizens of Krakow were murdered around 1.1 million people in total shipped in from the surrounding area of Nazi-occupied Europe, about 90% of them Jewish..

We’ve spent several weeks now learning of the micro-nations that populate this part of the world, some of whom are struggling for self-determination – such as in South Ossetia, Transdneistr and Abkhazia – and others who live in fear that they’ll wake up one morning and find they’ve been invaded by neighbours who have a history of aggression. It is difficult for us – from such a remote and unaffected part of the world – to appreciate the shadows that so many of the world live under.

The Nazi regime of course, has been by far the most inhuman and oppressive to operate in these parts in modern times, and a visit to these sites which became little more than a livestock slaughterhouse where the staff attended each day to routinely murder thousands of people, is something we struggle to get our heads around but nevertheless which amply demonstrate how a mix of maniacal and terrorising leadership is capable of converting everyday people into instruments of mass murder and torture.

That alone, is the lesson that these sites of reminder should teach us about ourselves as a species – we are capable of the most grotesque acts.

Photos of Auschwitz and Burkenau here

Slovenko

We passed into Slovakia yesterday, through a checkpoint charlie ghost town, weeds growing around the buildings. A sign of past control and the freedom and unity of belonging to to the EU. It was a great days riding too through back country roads and forests and ending up here in Levoca south of the Polish border. The area has been inhabited since the stone age (even the Mongolians got this far) and used to be quite a commercial center. It’s a walled city with 14 century , renaisance and all manner of architecture. ABC .. Another B…. Castle/Church to visit this morning.. will check out their torture techniques!

Transylvania

I was working in the lab …. – or so begins the Monster Mash song. And that was the tune ringing in our ears as we rode into The Alps of Transylvania, en route to the famous castle of Vlad situated at Dram, deep in the heart of this territory nowadays part of Romania, but in the past part of Hungary, Austria and even independent. The real Count Vlad, on whom the movie character Dracula is based, certainly had peculiar habits – carefully driving stakes through the bodies of his victims – in a way that ensured he didn’t sever the spine and the hapless one took several pain excruciating days before they finally expired.

The area has been home of various tribes over the ages including the Huns at one stage and of course the Goths. As we get ever closer to Dram, the fields are full of witches hat haystacks, the locals riding around in their horse-drawn gypsy-style carts, and every second one seems to be wielding an exaggeratingly curved pitchfork. Naturally as we pass we give each a wide berth, being so vulnerable to heart piercing as we are on bikes.

Then there it is – the castle of Dram. Every bit as Goth as the movies and Dracula comics represent it – sitting as it does between two peaks. A home fit for Dracula indeed. The Transylvanian Alps (aka Carpathian mountains) are a wonderful motorcycle ride – in fact we talked about them being better than the Tail of the Dragon in Tennessee with 70 kms of corners and (s)witchbacks and a climb of 1500 metres, roads that are pretty rough and mad Romanian drivers all making them one of our top ten motorcycle rides in the world.

Transylvania photo album

A Day with UNICEF in Romania

Leaving Moldova for Romania we soon arrived in Iasi (pronounced Yash) where UNICEF had organised a couple of field visits for us. They’re always a highlight of these motorcycle trips and you get a unique perspective on the country you’re passing through. In this case our organised programme was interrupted because the area had suffered bad flooding in late July with many homes swept away by swollen rivers and a few people lost their lives in the process. So the Romanian government, UNICEF, the EU Emergency Response Unit, the Red Cross and some other NGO’s had responded to the crisis. We visited one of the affected villages with UNICEF who were delivering relief supplies. Though it was two weeks after the disaster, the sun was shining and the countryside looked a picture, you could see where the rivers had vented their anger.

Second visit was to a Baby Friendly maternity hospital where the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF have instigated their breast-feeding programme – a programme based on empirical results that demonstrate benefits to both mother and child from this course – as opposed to feeding formula. Romania, with its recent terrible history of child neglect, orphans and abuse, has understandably had a very low rate of breastfeeding. Under the communist regime mothers were hurried back to the factory – being production worlers first, parents second. So the education programme has had a challenge but infant mortality rates, child abandonment rates and the birthrate itself are all on the improve as the programmes have kicked in and the economic welfare of the people has risen.

In fact the average maternity hospital stay in Romania is now 4 days and rising which casts a shadow over the trend in New Zealand where it continues to fall as budget priorities rank maternity care a lower priority than previously. Indeed as mothers continue to be kicked out of hospitals in New Zealand it won’t be long before WHO and UNICEF have to intervene in the New Zealand scene.

Photos from our day with UNICEF Romania here