HALF THE WORLD CHARITY BIKE RIDE
TRIP REPORT II, Cold, Dark & Big
From John and Sharan Brown....
Hey ya’ll, as promised here is the second instalment of our “Big Charity Ride” trip report. Much like the first report we haven’t actually gone anywhere yet! But, nevertheless, there are some funny things to pass along. We’ve been here three weeks now and as well as preparing the bike, my family is having a good time taking Sharan to all the local tourist spots in North Yorkshire. Days are short at this latitude and even I did a double take when it got dark at 3.45 in the afternoon. Don’t sleep in late or it will be dark before you finish breakfast!
So Sharan and I arrived back in the UK at Newcastle airport. As we stumbled out of the arrivals terminal into the balmy English morning two things became obvious; (i) having come half way round the world, no one was there to meet us and (ii) it was a bit chilly, and for the first time in four years I could actually see my breath as I breathed out. Point number two was brought home to me when I turned to Sharan and noticed that she was suffering from acute hypothermic shock. So yes, growing up in Malaysia where the coldest it gets is 25 deg C and snow is something that happens on TV had left Sharan woefully unprepared for the English winter climate – more on that later. Not to worry, 15 minutes later mom and dad rolled around in the car and found us in the airport cafe where we had taken shelter to eat Cornish pasties.
* John is constantly ribbing me about being the little Indian girl from the village, so I was hell bent on proving him wrong by telling him I was tough enough to handle English weather. The first time I stepped out into the cold, I thought, ‘Hey this isn’t so bad, I’ve got my fleece jacket on, I should be fine!’ Oh how wrong I was.. Oh so wrong.. in the three weeks I’ve been here, I haven’t removed my socks (my gorgeous diamante-pedicure hidden forever from admiring eyes), I haven’t taken off my fleece jacket (it’s the stinkiest item of clothing I have now! phew!), my nose hasn’t stopped running, my feet are constantly cold, my hands are icy all the time. If anyone had told me that I would get used to not showering everyday I would have laughed at them and called them nincompoops (twice a day in KL - minimum). But now I’ll merrily ignore the fact that I smell worse than dolly the sheep just to avoid getting wet.. brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! So yes I proudly admit that I am indeed a little Indian girl from the village, I’ll say anything now if it means I get to sit in front of the fireplace and stop shivering!
Quirks in the English life that I find endearing:
1. How the weather forecast for tomorrow is the highlight of the family’s evening. I love hearing the collective groans from the family about how grim it’s going to be the next day (rain, sleet ice snow rain rain rain rain sleet snow). Nobody gives two hoots about the weather back in KL (sun sun sun and more sun, the occasional rain then sun sun sun sun sun.. if you get my point).
2. How it gets dark at 4pm. My body is hardwired to fall asleep 3 hours after it gets dark – that’s the routine I had back home, healthy living and all that. So when it gets dark at 4pm, by 7pm my body is telling me to go to sleep (coz my body thinks it’s already 10pm..) and I have to try my damndest to not fall asleep in my soup and appear lucid to my father-in-law till it’s time to go to bed.
3. How breakfast is at 12, and lunch is not a concept and everyone has steak for tea at 6pm and dinner is .. well.. also known as tea.
4. How my mother-in-law digs out her finest cashmere tops and makes me wear them just so I won’t freeze. Also courtesy of MIL – pink fluffy booties, thermal underpants, fleece jackets, boots, skirts, socks, woolly jumpers, gloves, bobble hats, sheepskin jacket (now in John’s possession).
John:
Mom and dad had bought the BMW 1200GS motorbike that we are using for this trip five months ago so naturally the first thing that I wanted to see when I got to my parents house was the bike. My first look at the bike went like this; first the garage is not heated and the garage felt like an ice chest – it was cold, the light bulb in the garage kicked out as much light as a geriatric glow worm – it was dark. The bike itself was wedged between stacks of dusty plant pots, old radiators, paint pots and a hopelessly cheerful bright red lawnmower. It was big – with the top box on the bike comes up to my shoulder and the cylinder heads stick out like those nasty blades on chariot wheels – one of them got my shin straight away as I tried to squeeze myself between the garage debris and the bike. So hello BMW 1200 and “how the hell am I going to ride that”!
I am now convinced that the “B” in BMW stands for behemoth!
“Does this lifeboat make my Behemoth MW look small”. Our bike parked next to the Scarborough lifeboat.
Job number one was fitting the two aluminium panniers and coffin sized top box to the bike. I found that by far the best and fastest way to do this was to ask for my brother Chris’s help, make some vague encouraging noises while staring at the “Germanic” instructions from Hepco & Becker and then stand back and watch him do all the work, with me handing him the occasional spanner or screw driver. Two hours later, hay-presto, I now had a bike with a full set of luggage fitted – thanks Chris.
Sharan:
When I first saw the bike, my first thought was how cool I was going to look wearing my awesome bike gear and my pink helmet and waving to everyone as John sped along. Then John told me to get on the bike. I had no idea how to do it with all the panniers in the way. Lift right leg first – wham! I hit my knee against the box. Ouch! Second attempt – lift right leg higher (gosh the boots are heavy), oops I think I pulled a muscle in my groin. Third attempt had me yelling at John to get off the bike, getting onto the front seat of the bike (hop hop lift-leg swing-leg wham curse hop hop and finally get my leg across the bike, sitting down and reversing onto the back of the bike while John held on to the handle bar while suppressing his guffaw. Needless to say, once I get on the bike now, I will not get off it, not even for a toilet stop.
John:
Our first try getting both of us on the bike. Success! Now to make it move...... engage warp drive Scotty.
A thought on bike maintenance. As I look at this Behemoth-MW I am somewhat worried that I don’t even know how to check the oil on this bike yet and the thought of removing part of the cylinder head to adjust the valve timing makes my blood run cold. It is well known by some of my biker friends that most of the times that I have tried to “repair” or “adjust” something more complex than a light bulb on a bike has resulted in it costing me an “arm and a leg” to get my “adjustments” repaired by a skilled mechanic. So as I stare at this mechanical monster I find myself a little apprehensive at the thought of breaking down in say - Mali! Since I am not likely to become mechanically competent in the next few months I am therefore ignoring any possibility of this bike breaking down – ever! That takes care of “bike maintenance” for the next 12 months.
Sharan:
For a chick, bike maintenance means wiping off the dirt from the mirrors just so I can check my hair out before I put the helmet on, and wiping my seat clean before getting on the bike. What’s an oil filter? Is it something you use to filter sand from oil?
John:
Job number two was the test ride. At this point the bike was as wide as the German battleship Bismarck and now looked even taller, bigger and generally “massive”. The bike is so tall that I have to duck my head to ride it out of the garage otherwise the top of my head hits the garage door. Anyhow, not to worry, on I hop in my brand new Hein-Gericke riding gear, plug in the electric vest and away I go off over the North York Moors. It a brilliant blue sky morning and I head off on a road that is called the Yorkshire TT by the local riders. It’s a brilliant road through the heart of the Moors and ends at the picture post card town of Helmsley.
Sharan and the bike on our shake down ride to Scarborough. It snowed on us on the way there!
The bike handles awesomely at anything over 3 mph so I try to keep it moving while I filter traffic. A couple of hours later and I am back home loading up Sharan on the bike for the first test with two of us on board. I am totally amazed by this bike because there is almost no difference in the way the bike handles with one or two riders. Any other bike I’ve ridden with two up results in the front end getting a bit light and vague and the response in corners becoming sluggish. Not so with this bike, it stays balanced and responsive with one or two riders or two riders and half a ton of luggage. So no worries about the bike, as long as we don’t hit too many traffic lights or stop signs between here and Argentina we should be fine!
Our first day long ride out was to Scarborough, about 50 miles south along the coast. Scarborough is a great old Victorian spa town and has been well preserved for the last 200 years. We had snow on the way there and sub-zero frost on the way back but the actual day at Scarborough was warm and sunny.
We are now planning our first multi-day shake down ride to Scotland. One of our biker friends – Tara (Raboomdea) lives up in Edinburgh so next week we are packing up the bike with the full regalia of expedition gear and riding up to ‘sunny’ Scotland for four days. Tara did mention snow on the hills already so we figure that if we can survive the Scottish winter then we can survive the Altiplano in Chile!
Over the last three weeks I’ve learnt one thing about setting off for these sorts of round the world rides, or any other expedition for that matter. You have to take one thing at a time. Do one job, get it done, then move on. While you’re doing a job, just do that job and don’t think about the next one. The reason for this is that there are a lot of jobs to do; maps to read, visas to apply for, vaccinations to get, ferry schedules to sort out, spares to buy, batteries to change, friends to visit etc etc etc, the list is almost endless. For this trip we have lists of “to do’s” and the lists keep growing and shrinking almost at random. So if you don’t just take one job at a time it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and disheartened. A few times over the last few months I have stopped and let the list of jobs and commitments scroll through my head like the credits from a movie. That’s a bad thing to do. I honestly think that if you get into the habit of scrolling those “jobs” though your head instead of staying focused that you might never leave home!
Sharan :
I get wistful when I look at tourist brochures here advertising flights and holidays to SUNNY Kuala Lumpur..but I’ve figured that if I don’t do this now, I don’t think I ever will. Looking at the bike and wondering how much fun it’s going to be to live life on the road with no routine to worry about.. no borders, no bills, no job, no deadline, no bosses, no rush, just endless horizons and the never-ending possibility of adventure. So what if I never look like one of those hot girls walking around with shiny hair and perfect nails and make-up and Jimmy Choos on? Give me my bitch bike boots and a waterproof jacket over nice leather skirts and porn star heels any day!
That’s all folks. Next trip report, sunny Scotland and more interesting photos, I promise.
(And i'll post some photie-Raboomdea xx)
