Getting sorted......sort of

“The Shed” has got some nice new shiney bits to go on her. Vern at Project VND has sorted a bunch of stuff out on the sub frame and handlebars and Sandra has ran around getting them powder coated, all looks fantastic, So all that needs doing now is to rebuild the bike.

Just to give you some idea of “The Sheds” current condition.

The eagle eyed of you will recognise my almost fanatical obsession with keeping surgical theatre cleanliness to my working area, each tool has a place…….. Usually scattered all over the floor.

Well hopefully she will look much better in a day or two.

The large tank (for those of you who know or care, its from a 1150GS adventurer and carries 31 litres of fuel, hopefully some 300miles plus) is in the final stages of repaint we will stick a logo or web address on it then lacquer it…… Big thank you to Rich for all of this.

ONLY 137 DAYS to go…….. PANIC, PANIC PANIC

The Shed - Part One...

Now the choice of bike for our trip was not a simple one, with very limited funds, the need for reliability and ease of maintenance meant that most “state of the art” computer controlled gimmickry was out of the question. What we needed was a strong plodder that I could maintain, that was simple to use and would carry all of Sandra and my stuff with tent and accessories for a year.

We also needed to have a good support network, the ability to find a dealer in any part of the world so we could order bits should we need them.

Honda looked promising from a support point of view Honda are everywhere in the world, I also owned a couple of Honda dirt bikes and loved the build quality.

However nothing seemed to fit us….. So that ruled Honda out.

I wanted to stay away from modern BMW’s much too complex and much too expensive for us. However an older one might do the trick. After all there had a shaft drive and not the old fashion chain drive most motorcycles have, I was told by everyone that shaft drive is much more reliable and needed much less maintenance then those pesky dirty chain drives.

After much perusing over spec and reading stories of travellers we finally decided upon a BMW R1100GS, First build in 1994 or so and kept in production till around 1999 theses things had a reputation for the reliability we were looking for.

‘The shed’ (about the 20th R1100Gs we had seen) was bought from a rather odd farm near Hartlepool in the north east of England. It was twelve years old (1996 vintage) and of a dubious background. It was a bit of an old girl. It was cheap and with a bit of TLC, it would be fine…… I hope.

Having given it a quick service we had our first long trip on her. Our honeymoon, were we went down to Morocco and back. The Shed did a great job actually even though the clutch started to slip two days before we left.

Well, she did ok except that on the way home (some 300 miles from the French coast and the ferry), “the Shed” decided that the final drive (remember the GS has a shaft drive) had done enough work and promptly made it redundant by letting all the oil out of the seal and depositing it all over the rear tyre. This made the last 300 miles very interesting. Stopping to fill the drive up with oil and not being able to tilt the bike over on her right side due to a very slippery rear tyre.

Anyway we made it home. It costs £800 pounds for a new final drive; you can buy a lot of chain and sprockets for £800 so my faith in shaft drives is dented a bit.

On our return from our Honeymoon it was time to get serious and get the Shed into shape for the trip. Final drive replaced along with a new clutch (you have to completely dismantle the bike to fit a clutch) and replaced all the filters and oils.

Looking at our route I believed we needed to carry as much fuel as we could so I have fitted a much bigger fuel tank.

Panniers were going to be the next issue. The shed came with a set of plastic panniers which was fine for short trips but for one year…. Not a chance. Lots of companies sell so called “touring” metal panniers and I looked at them all. To be honest most of them where disappointing until we stumbled upon Vern and Project VND (http://www.projectvnd.com/).

Vern builds proper “round the world units” panniers the size of aircraft hangers. Vern also offers advice and help with them and is certainly one of life’s great characters. The panniers are tough and strong and will do the job beautifully.

However when you stick two people on a bike and fit monster panniers it’s advisable to strengthen the bike frame too, something else Vern also helped out with.

I will let you know how the bike is shaping up over the next couple of months.

The Start!

Well I’m Brian, Married to the wonderful Sandra a little later in life than maybe the world should have planned, but never the less here we find ourselves.

Originally from the north east of England I left school as soon as I could and have had lots of different jobs in different parts of the world before settling down in the south of England.

I have always travelled either with my work (Aviation) or when I could, on the motorcycle through Europe, The later was historically undertaken with a bunch of chaps collectively known as MMTS (see link on this web site).

But it’s odd to see how a life can change direction and move in a completely different way, I have always loved travelling and have always wanted to take “the” long motorcycle trip but have never been in a position to even contemplate it… seriously, “things” have always got in the way, that is... until I met Sandra.

Sandra you see, should have been the voice of reason, the person who tells me to stop being silly, to stop dreaming and to think of more important things in life, She does none of these thing just keeps saying “lets just do it"

………………………………. so this is all her fault.

You see since we met we have travelled though Europe on our motorcycle on our own, much to the annoyance of the team MMTS members where in the past I was very vocal on girlies not being aloud on any of our trips….. Now I would never travel without Sandra…. Funny old thing, Love, innit?

Heading rapidly towards 50 years old, we have both decided we should do one big trip that will "get it out of our system"

So now in middle age with a reasonably successful career in aviation behind me, Its time to take a the plunge

(Those who know me will be throwing there arms up in despair saying he was always rubbish at work).

However those who work in aviation will understand that it produces a certain breed of individual. Mainly cautious types who always plan carefully, carry out tasks thoroughly and with minimum risk always checking and triple checking his (or her) work.

Mistakes in aviation can be costly.

Now, stay with me on this, if your life is spent in this environment,

Planning a trip like this is a torturous nightmare where, given my background, I just know that anything and everything is going to go wrong, that every part of the bike will fail, we will get lost all the time and will need all kinds of medical and mechanical help. And it’s my job to make sure we have a recovery plan for each eventuality.

This has made me a paranoid schizophrenic

It’s only when Sandra looks at me as though I have two heads and can’t understand why I’m worrying about things that haven't happened yet, that any sanity is added to this situation, and of course she is right.

Which makes Sandra, the perfect travelling companion.

Let me give you an example. Two days prior to going on our honeymoon last year, a 2800 mile trip into Morocco on "the shed" (the name given affectionately to our bike), we where travelling around Hampshire two up, when the clutch on "the shed" slipped badly after a slow left hand bend. "Bugger" I said over the intercom clutch is knackered. We might have to change our plans and take the other bike.

Sandra said “it was nothing” and she should know.... she always knows. “Let’s still take the shed and see what happens”.

We did, and all was fine.. of course it was……. Sandra said it would be…. Man! she can be annoying.

And that's why we are so good together I plan everything (it’s my job) Sandra sees the world very differently to me, being a nurse, she excels when things do go wrong (that’s her job) perfect match!

What else can I say about myself? Two fantastic kids Michelle and Alex both adults now and making there own way in the world. Both absolutely wonderful people, who I love very much and will miss more than I could say whilst on this trip.

So this is our adventure and each of us will be taking a very different journey. It is unsupported (except for those family and friends who have worked so hard for us and offered help and assistance, you know who you are and we thank you.) and mainly unplanned. This adventure has no itinerary (damn it!) we will just to go as far north and as far south as we can get, see the things we want to see and try and keep upright. We will be updating everyone through this site as often and in as much detail as possible

I will update my personal blog here and Sandra on the other blog page; you will be able to read just how differently each of us sees the same things.

We will (of course) need contact with people and you can contact us through this site.

Lets see what happens…………………….