BACK shortly after the last dregs of ice age retreated into the Okanagan/Kootenay lakes, I had a young English lad sign up for the National Motorcycle Training program I operated then in Fort Mac Murray. He was 17 at the time, I was a very young Chief Instructor at 23.
Being from the UK, throttle twisting was in his blood. In fact I'm told on good authority that the first two words he said wasn't Mommy or Daddy but a simple single... 'Ton Up'*
Dave and I lived just down the street from one another in Calgary some years later. We'd visit, swap biking stories, when I left town I entrusted him with stacks of Bike mags, many sports oriented and some British.
Fast forward 6 years...
 |
| Dave with Camel and Izzy... ever helpful... |
Avoiding FaceBook as it were a plague, I'm kinda out of the loop and I don't actually mind that. I figure if someone wants to talk to me, I have a
'smarterthaniphone' ,
email addresses and can text using more than a single digit! Hey... I can even write an old fashioned letter and post it!
In my 'Inbox' I begin getting text messages and FB email.
Dave as it turns out is headed to his home in Cow Town via the The Long Way Back. I'm intrigued, after all I met Ewan and Charley purely by accident in 2004 at a local hotel in Great Falls Montana, where I was taking in the Charley Russell Museum with my California buddy Rock. I remember them as being beat, worn down and anxious, after all, they were soon to end their epic trip.
As I said, I begin having these messages coming in as in a 'mayday' or 'sos' from sea. Turns out the young lad was indeed on his LWB!!
Dave was here in Woodstock Ontario, then later in Woodstock New Brunswick and showed up at my digs on the Island in between, I think, Friday night! He looked a little like the "Lone Ranger" except a dark version of such. His Trigger was not Golden Palomino but Coal Black and dubbed 'Camel.'
 |
| Ever creative, that's a map of Uzbekistan in 10-40 |
It's a very long story, over half a year but in a nutshell, some friends were going to ride the world Ewan and Charley style... but without the free stuff and no back up, which as it turned out was somewhat crucial.
Somewhere in Uzbekistan one of the riders lost his paperwork from an open tank-bag, that is passport, registration documents and pretty much everything you need to avoid jail.
I'm told you don't want to be in jail there.
He was fined, the bike was confiscated and the other two riders suffered a crash among other mishaps and complete with broken body parts one of them, and the bikes were stored in one of the Stans... I forget which one, (but in my defense I am in my sixties.) The confiscated bike, well confiscated remained confiscated.
Dave bought the bike for a song and dance, or maybe just a song couldn't have been a dance, he's really not a dancer, I'm not sure, but the deal was he had to take possession of it there in the impound and get it home his-self!
Fast forward
... paper work in hand he shows up and suffers through the legal/shades of former communism stories, greasing palms along the way, and there were plenty of palms I suspect.
So far so fair.
Then he lost substantial time and as such he had only a few days to ride clean through Russia. They are not very liberal with their rules, and you don't want to be in a Russian jail!
North to Murmansk and onto Norway, doing a huge loop in the process ending up in the UK where bike and body were deposited in the belly of an aircraft headed to Canada.. bike... not body.
More fast forwarding:
 |
| Camel coming home. |
 |
| True to it's breed, the Black Camel holds 70 L of fuel in three tanks. |
From here, he doesn't turn west, but east... and rides the Cabot Trail! From there he's been meandering home doing long miles with the Camel skirting storms and winter warnings and as far as I know at this particular moment, he is close but no cigar lighting just yet.
Now... did I teach this kid something back in '78 or what?
 |
| Test riding the Black Camel |
No comments:
Post a Comment