Touring the planet

After countless days of waiting (Ok, about 53 days – it may as well have been an eternity) and a few phone calls, countless jibes from others saying the bike was on the Rena (yes, they all thought it was funny and they were the first to say it) I got the phone call from Ken mid Friday morning I had been waiting for.

Documents were being sent to him by the shipper, he would forward them to me, and I would take them to Mainfreight in Otahuhu, pay some fees and collect the lovely Jessica. ...

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Yeah, fine, OK, so I’m dragging out the trip by one more blog. Look out for the book and souvenirs coming to a store near you. We’re gonna commercialise the hell of out of this. I can see the headlines now… “Harleys survive a trip with a BMW”.

Well, if you’re still reading my blogs, I’m impressed. By now you have read more than 98 pages of writing (I write the blogs in MS Word first), in excess of 64,500 words, and viewed more than 2,200 pictures. Originally, I wrote my blogs ...

The alarm rang at 7am, but I was actually already awake, waking with a start at 6.55am, thinking I might have slept in. I wanted to sleep however, so I snoozed the alarm twice. Fortunately, I didn’t sleep any more, getting up, having a remaining apple from a previous breakfast, for breakfast. I chucked all my gear into my combination of bags, as I needed to re-pack at the warehouse anyway.

I was down at the bike and ready to go by 8.15am and we left at 8.30am for the warehouse. ...

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The alarm rings at 7.30am. What was a good idea last night, to perhaps follow the group into LA is now a real bad idea. I reset the alarm for 8.30am. When it rings the 2nd time, I get up and have the complimentary breakfast in the office. It’s cereal, pastries, juice, the usual stuff.

Back to my room, I spend an hour and a half writing blogs. The extra effort is paying off, and I only have 2 days to write. I still need to post most of them however. I then pack, and taking advantage ...

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The alarm was set to ring at 7.30am to have the bag at the van before 8pm. Dave was up and about, opening the curtains, turning up the TV and generally making plenty of noise shortly after 7am, so sleep was out of the question. I turned off the alarm and took the bag down to the van, where plenty of discussion was taking place. It was a strange morning… there was seafog and it was… uh… what’s the word again? Cold, that’s right.

The bags for the San Francisco ...

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The alarm rang at 6am as planned. I got up at 7am… that wasn’t the plan. Once again, I silenced the alarm instead of getting up. Oh well, headed to the main building for the complimentary breakfast, receiving comments of surprise at seeing me up (it’s not that unusual is it?) and some of the others were busy having breakfast.

I packed (yeah… watched some SVU at the same time) and gassed up on the way out of town. As usual, prepay was required, the attendant saying ...

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I was vaguely awake when Murray and Anjum were getting ready, some stupid hour like 5am. We’re heading through Death Valley today, and it’s strongly advised not to be crossing that during the middle of the day, so we’re starting early. Even the afternoon is no good, as the temperature simply continues to rise throughout the day. Death Valley is one of the hottest places on earth, as it’s below sea level and the heat is trapped in the valley.

Murray and Anjum ...

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That cursed alarm is going off at 8am and it won’t stop. Unfortunately, I had to put it on charge last night, so it’s not by my bed, instead it’s on the table. I stumble over and turn it off. Murray is in the bathroom, and Anjum wants a shower, so I sneak a quick break between them.

Downstairs for the complimentary breakfast, this time there are also pancakes and yoghurt, so I have that as well. We were planning to go and shoot some guns this morning, but Ken found ...

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