A couple of things came about after my last blog. I has some comments I will clarify for you.
First Ewan and Charlie... I bought the DVD right after their trip. Of course what you or I saw is only the tip of the berg, much edited out in the process. Having watched the vid and seen the television series of same, it was obvious the "boys" were excited prior to departure. A little apprehensive maybe but still enthusiastic.
This was all before KTM backed out, (an understandable, but poor decision on their parts) Mongolian problems, the mud, the overturned SUV and the Road of Bones. By the time the team hit the USA in Alaska and south through AB (surprisingly both were 'bumped') by inattentive car drivers in Calgary, confirming what I already knew for years, Cow Town is not a particularly safe place to ride/drive...
The trip to New York state was pretty straight laced. Mostly freeways and not having to worry about right hand drive, a piece of cake. You'll notice there is virtually NO footage of the N.A. part of the trip.
Having traveled long distances myself over my riding career, (like twenty two countries in Europe over 7 months in '08-'09) you usually go through phases. There is the route planning of course, the actual road/trail portion. There's the packing, rethinking then repacking... for example. Can't rule out it's many Murphy moments, and of course there is the downer of heading home, the final leg usually where you get hit with the unexpected killer tornado/snow storm/apocalypse etc etc to deal with.
Maybe your Harley broke down (I'm kidding!!) Maybe your BMW GS ADV anvil fell over and you suffered a hernia picking it up.
I find that the last day or so, maybe the last week if its an especially long trip, that's when your concentration lapses, where you let your guard down a wee bit, your back is aching, your wrist feels like is welded into one position... maybe you just want Scotty to beam you home.
WHEN we met the boys, they were way past their euphoria state, their butts hurt... and if a Scotsman happened by, they would have ganged him!
It was pretty obvious to me especially having spent long miles in the saddle, they were ready to leave the bikes and fly to NYC. Rock bugging the shit outa them, they were either too tired or too polite (A couple of Brits? Nah... I don't think so) to say so. They were ready for a soft North American hotel experience.
Sure at the end of the flic with the fam damily, the publicity, the JOY of it being over, they were back in control and pumped. When we met them , they were more deflated.
The other comments were on my idea of a multi use sidecar.
I had an actual side hack in the 80's when my kids were small enough to both fit in there. My Round the world trip wouldn't have been with a Velorex bolted on though, nope... what I had in mind was a tubular framed bolted welded/together steel open unit that would have light weight modular box storage for what you could expect to deal with on such an epic ride. The uniqueness would have been its ability to change the hack from right to left and even behind by undoing a few nuts and bolts. By my estimation the unit empty of gear, would have weighed under a hundred and twenty five pounds. High tensile chrome moly would have been tough enough and of course in the event of a mishap, could be welded even in remote locations.
I wish I would have kept my drawings but the again... I'm no engineer or artist (but I do have on my wall a Red Seal Machinists ticket) To my knowledge nobody has ever down this.
Okay enough...
On to New Brunswick, something a little closer to home...
No comments:
Post a Comment