Ever heard of a bad idea after 6 beers?
Well, what started as a planned trip through Europe with my mate Curt, ended in a planned 39 day mad dash through Africa from Johannesburg to London. Oh yes… with a 30kg offroad freezer strapped to my GS adventure. With four pizzas inside them.
Look… maybe it was more like 12 beers.
Some backround is probably required at this point.
I run a pizza franchise in South Africa and have been riding a GS for about 5 years, which is the same time I have been riding a bike. A have one broken leg as evidence of my learning curve and the destructive force of a boxer cylinder head as it gently comes to rest on it’s side after a 120kph back wheel slide. I don’t try that anymore.
My Dad is 64 and rides a standard 1200 as the adenture is too high for him. He too has a broken leg for his efforts. And collarbone. And wrist. All in one accident.
Then there is Curt, which is where all this madness started. He lives a cushy lifestyle in the UK and used to ride a 1100S. He has been riding most of his live, but never set a footpeg offroad. He doesn’t have a spleen as part of his leanring curve when a truck ran over him and his bike. He reckons it wasn’t that bad because he got a free helicopter flip (he can be pretty tight) and a succesfull MVA claim, which he used to buy a car.
Jay is the reallky odd one. We asked him to be the support vehicle for this trip which he graciously declined and instead the thought that we nay have more fun then him, prompted him (after at least 6 beers) to buy a 1200 adventure and join us. The thing is… Jay had never ridden a motorcycle in his life. Not even a scooter.
This also meant that we had no support vehicle… bet hey who needs a support vehicle? Not after 6 beers at least.
Then some way through our planning we had the daft idea that we could get some publicity by delivering a pizza to the South African ambassador in London. And wouldn’t it be great if we tried to set a record for the fastest motorcylcle trip from Mandela Bridge in Johannesburg, to Tower Bridge in London. (again, I fear more than 6 beers were behind that idea) And that’s how I ended up with a 30kg freezer strapped to the back of my bike, and just 39 days to get it through the 15000kms of beuracray, gravel, sand and dust that is Africa.
So that’s what this ride report is about. Four riders, four pizzas, and our attempt to overcome our own ignorance about the magnitude of getting four GS’s through Africa and Europe.
Although we do have a website it would be a cop out for us to just point you there so we will post the ride reports and pictures from the site here. If you do want to go to the site the url is
http://www.theepicscooterspizzadeliv...a/progress.htm .
A disclaimer: this is not punt about the business but rather an attempt at sharing what must surely be a dream for any male with red blood coursing through his veins. I am starting to send this from half way through Africa, Aswan in the southern tip of Egypt. Since we are still on this world record stint, time does not allow for a complete rewriting of the reports so I will post them as they appear on the site. Jay takes credit for most of the ride reports, and curt and I share video and picture duties.
So… back to the story.
The Route
The route roughly mimics the route an F16 would take were it delivering a pizza from JHB to London. Straight Up! The route will see us travel through eastern Botswana, the length of Zambia and then into Tanzania. Kenya next and then onto the Ethiopian highlands. From there the plan was to head east into Sudan, doing our best to avoid (or ride over) the bandits in the region. A short 18 hour ferry trip takes us into Egypt and then once we get to Cairo we head east along the coast of northern Africa through Libya and into Tunisia. At Tunis we hop over the ocean in a ferry that drops us off in the home of pizza – Italy. In Italy Luigi will deliver a pizza to his 94 year old mother celebrating the 40th year since Luigi left Italy. After that we traverse the Italian Alps and push through to Paris, after which the next stop will be London.15000km. 33 riding days. Over 500km per riding day. 4 sore butts.
Our departure from just below Mandela bridge was the stuff of wet dreams - police escourts (for all the right reasons this time) and speed!
This is the vid from our departure.
http://www.theepicscooterspizzadeliv...a/pod/pod1.htm