Getting closer.

[caption id="attachment_72" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The bike in front of the Russian Consulate, Sydney."][/caption]

Well things are moving along. On last Friday I finished at work for 6 months and also collected my Russian visa (a 3 months and double entry visa – officially called a “business” visa but might be more appropriately called an extended stay visa ). Collecting the visa was remarkably anticlimatic – after all the sweating about getting the visa, and some of the scare stories I heard, the process was remarkably straight forward and the consulate staff in Sydney very charming and efficient.

 

Then on the weekend it was time to do all those final little jobs on the bike (mainly trying to find final mounting points for my spares) and giving it the final pre-trip service which was basically an oil change and fitting the new tyres. Fitting the tyres exposed a slight flaw in my trip preparation – I pulled the rear wheel out only to find there were all ready three puncture repairs on the rear tube. Not how I wanted to start the trip, and this was Sunday afternoon and no where open to buy a new one. Then I remembered I'd fitted a new tube a month or so ago to my sons bike – so it was off with its wheel and a quick swap of tubes. I say quick but that wasted an hour and it was that sort of afternoon, everything I touched seem to have a minor, but solvable problem; so what I had planned as an easy few hours work suddenly took all day.

 

Even with theses milestones in place the trip still had a slightly otherworld feel, something that is happening but not really involving me, then “wham” today

[caption id="attachment_74" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Gone!"][/caption]

the reality I'm really going to do it hit with a rush. It came midway through crating the bike up in preparation for taking it to the air frieght forwarding company tomorrow.



Suddenly I really believed it was going to happen – and I also realise the amount of stuff I still have to do before I go. This is going to be one busy week. Some of the more critical things left to do are:

• Get my own plane ticket to South Korea


• Transfer money to appropriate account so I actually have some money for the trip, and


• Organise my own going away party.