The bikes been stolen!

Title says it all.  Woke up this morning ready to load the bike for the big off.  Repairs all complete nothing else left to do; world is good.  Looked out the window and there is the cover and my tank panniers on the ground complete with a cut chain but no bike; world is suddenly bad.

 I'm now over the shock and doing what I can to get it back - but the odds are long. I've contacted the local press and local radio has put a story on the hourly bulletin (thank you Swansea Sound) and that has led to one sighting in Swansea city centre (the Australian number plate is a give away) so there is some hope.  Also hoping the local evening paper will run the story and photo's tonight.

So if you are in Swansea area please keep a look out for the white, green and blue bike featured in this blog and last seen with an Australian number plate NSW 37.  it is also missing its windscreen as I have picked that up from the road near the house - presumably ripped off as they hot-wired it.

Part 2 starts - re-building the bike.

10th December 2011 I finished my last trip - Vladivostok to the UK - and I remember the mixed feelings of the day.  Elation, I had made it by motorcycle over twenty six thousand kilometres and five months of wonderful experiences, but depression - it was all over.  On that day somewhere in the rain in north Wales I made a pact to myself that it wasn't finished - that it was only the end of part one.  Well part two has now arrived and I've decided to head to north Africa for a couple of months.

To let this happen, and to also to allow for future parts 3, 4 where if all goes well I'll finish looping the world, over the past four months I have completely reorganized my life. I've resigned from my job, sold my family house and generally sorted things so most commitments keeping me in Australia are removed. All this has been helped a bit by both my sons, Jack and Duncan, also now being impacted by the wanderlust bug and being off traveling the world and generally doing their own thing (thanks boys!).

First task has been to reactivate my travel bike. After the last trip it had been left covered in my father's garden in the UK, but about a year ago during a brief work trip that took me to the UK I stripped it down and shipped the engine and frame back to Australia so I could rebuild a very tired engine and reactivate it's lapsed Australian  registration.

With the engine re-built and registration sorted out the bits were shipped back to the UK.

 

 

 

And then with the kindness of my father, whose car was evicted out of his garage to stand outside for a week in some very wintry Welsh weather the bike has been fully re-built and is now running beautifully.

 

 



 

 

My actual departure is about a week away since whilst the engine rebuild appears to have been successful the one part of the bike that hasn't survived the layup is the front brake - a perished hose making performance decidedly dodgy- a new one is due soon which should then make future rides less "interesting".

 

The plan originally was to do a full trans Africa, north to south trip, but a few issues many to do with my under-estimating the time and stress in selling the house and doing all the other preparations has made that difficult to achieve this, so now we have a modified two part plan: part 2A (this trip) should involve:

• A week or so of January 2014 looping parts of the UK to make sure the bike rebuild is truly successful and making sure I have brought all my gear.
• France, Spain (and maybe parts of Portugal) .
• Catching the ferry to Morocco for a bit of unstructured exploring.
• Return to UK late February or early March to layup the bike again for a few months
• Back to Australia for 3-5 months to sort out a few things and save some money
• Then Part 2B - a full trans Africa trip.

Hopefully this blog will be updated regularly during the trip so you'll be able to find out how I get along (the hopefully mainly refers to the fact that I am trying to do all this via a tablet rather than a laptop and it is proving a slightly trying learning experience).