Day: 27
Date: 28/4
City: Waynesboro, Virginia
Miles ridden: 220
Cumulative miles: 970
We packed the bikes and left Washington around 10:30 and arrived at the entry of the Blue Ridge parkway after lunch. It started to get a bit cold for most of us. I don’t know what Val’s new motorbike jacket (the one she purchased at twisted throttle) is made off… When we stopped, we were all cold but Val was saying she was hot… We should see if the jacket glows as well at night 😉
Anyway, we had the technology, so we hooked up our new heated liner and gloves and from then on it was toasty warm. Since it looked like it would start to rain, we also put on our rain gear, and were setup for anything. After the first couple of miles we encountered a bear mum with her two cups to cross the road. Before I got the photo camera out, they disappeared into the scrubs.
The bear mum minding her own business.
Later on we saw some dear on the side of the road and crossing the road as well. Since the speed limit is 35mph, it was no problem to stop in time to let the Dear cross. When we climbed up the hill, we started to ride through clouds, so we reduced the speed even more to avoid dear rash;)
Did I mentioned the heated vests and gloves?
It makes riding so much more enjoyable when you don’t have to shiver on the bike. Since it was cold and sometimes drizzling, we decided to skip the camp ground and go for a motel.
Day: 24
Date: 25/4 -26/4
City: Washington, District Columbia
Miles ridden: 0
Cumulative miles: 757
The plan today was to go to the Smithsonian, Val felt a bit unwell and stayed home. So Wombat, Sigrid and I had a 20 minute walk to the train station. The area was nice, the houses were well looked after, so nothing really justified the dark picture drawn by the lady at the front desk yesterday evening. I also noticed that there was no graffiti on the train station or in the train. It all looked very new and clean.
The train ride didn’t take long at all, only about 20 minutes. When we arrived in Washington, we made our way to the Smithsonian and passed some impressive buildings. I’m sure we could have easily spent another week here without getting bored. There are American Archives, the International Spy Museum, 19 different Smithsonian museums…… We had to cherry pick. We picked the ‘National Air and Space museum’ and the ‘National Museum of the American Indian’ for our 2 day visit. When we arrived at the Smithsonian, we were surprised to find that the entry was free. We were stunned when we looked at the entrance hall; there were replicas and original sof different space modules and airplanes. It took some time before we could move on to the next area.
Below are the Gemini 4 and Apollo 11 command module.
A model of the Viking Lander
and some exhibition about the entire American Space race/program, the beginning of flying, a whole section with physics experiments that explained why airplanes fly, Space shuttle project …., in fact so much that we only got to see the first half of it the first day! Around 17:00 we were asked to leave. It was still daylight so we had a look at the Washington Monument (closed due to earthquake damage) and the ‘White House’.
The Diddles and us in front of the White House.
The day was gone in no time. After a nice meal in an Irish pub (and some Guinness) we hopped back onto the train and walked from the train station to the hotel.
The next day, the four of us got on the train to Washington to look at the 2nd half of the Smithsonian and to spend the rest of the day in the ‘Nation6al Museum of the American Indian’.
One of the interesting parts was to walk through the Skylab workshop to see how the Astronauts worked and lived in there.
There was as well an exhibition about the history of aircraft carriers, which took much longer to go through than we thought. After rushing through the last sections of the Smithsonian we went to the’ National Museum of the American Indian’ which was not far away. The surroundings and the building were impressive
As usual we did not have enough time to see it all, but it gave us a good overview and we earmarked Washington for another visit 😀
Day: 21 – 24
Date: 22/4 – 25/4
City: Washington, District Columbia
Miles ridden: 207
Cumulative miles: 757
As the screws and the bracket for one bash plate were lost during transport, B&B sent a new set via express post and we got it yesterday. Bjoern is finally fitting the second bash plate!
Meantwhile wombat is fitting the screen extension on their bikes:
We where testing the heated vests, note the look of total satisfaction on Bjoern face
And our motorbike titles arrived finally too:
We’re also getting used to the strange signs, like this one:
which is ‘turn left to turn right’…
We also arranged the first service on the bikes
Had some relaxing time with Stephen’s family, here is Katherine with our Diddles and Mr Guinness (the dog).
Some beer at night:
And now, finally, the last day arrived! Val’s and wombat’s bikes are at Stephen’s house, ours are still at the workshop- so we’re off to the workshop, Yee-harw, bikes are ready!
And as an extra for todays update, some pictures from the family who hosted us for almost an entire month!
Karen and Sarah:
Colleen and Kathrine:
Karen and Katherine:
Stephen and Karen:
A MASSIVE Thank You to all of you!
And with that, it’s back to our preparations.
Apparently, this should all fit onto the bikes… uhm…
Oh, and so it does!
After some drama with our failed attempt to send stuff back we finally left at 3:30 pm for Washington!
Here’s a shot of us storing the last part of our luggage: the diddles.
We are finally on the road for real!
All bikes fully packed:
We arrived in Washington at around 19:00. When we checked in, we realized that a policemen in a car was watching the boom gate of the hotel. The lady in the office assured us that since the officer has been there, they had way fewer problems:-). When we asked her if we could go for a walk to get something for dinner, she strongly discouraged us from walking in the street at night.
So tonight we got all of our gear into the hotel room and put a chain through all four bikes!
Karin (Stephens’s wife) and her daughter Sara dropped us off at the New Yorker hotel. The traffic was frantic and I was happy that I didn’t have to drive on the first day. I was impressed how Karin managed the car around the busses and trucks. It reminded me a bit of the traffic in Delhi.
When we arrived in the Hotel, our friends from Germany, Gabi and Mathias were already there. We had a short walk in the neighbourhood and had a burger in one of the small shops. The surroundings looked like stage being prepared. I guess watching American movies does /that/ to you 🙂.
The view from our window is quite nice.
The next day we had a invitation to visit the New Yorker Stock exchange. Gabi did her magic and organized it. She originaly tried it from Berlin, but all she got was ‘No visitors after 911’. Then one night she watched TV and saw Manuel Koch reporting on the current stock exchange movements. She emailed Manuel and he was nice enough to organise a tour for us. We were really impressed. Having said that, we had to follow a dress code. This meant buying a new shirt, tie and trousers for me, since we forgot to pack them. Sigrid found a shop called ‘Century 21’ which opened early enough for us and it was described as the insider tip for value for money clothing. So I got my Christmas presents earlyJ.
After the stock exchange we hopped onto the free Staten Island Ferry which was passing the Statue Of Liberty. The Statue is currently under renovation so we couldn’t get onto it, so passing with the ferry was the closest that we got to go.
In the evening we paid Times Square a visit. On the way to the square we discovered an M&M store, it was really fun to stroll through. We were amazed what M&M merchandise are available, from soft toys, to fridge magnets, T-Shirts ……
I know the blog updates are a bit slow at the moment, but it is hard work to spend the whole day strolling through New York. In the evening we can’t write the blog.. no we have to sit in a pub and review the day over a beer or two.
Hopefully the updates will be quicker as soon we pick up the bikes ~ which should be the 10th of April 😀
During our farewell party, we got the news that Anna and Niko had a baby boy! He’s 47cmd and 2870g. Yippy! We are grandparents now, seems like everything is happening before our trip starts. Today we (Greatgrand parents, grand parents and uncle) flocked into the hospital and had a look at the new addition of the family.
Our trip starts in 22 days, 4 hours and 53 minutes – but who besides the counter on the right is counting?
It’s currently 6am Sunday morning, I can’t sleep anymore so I thought I update our blog. Yesterday night we finished the major task of finishing Fort Knox – our study – so our new tenant can use it. Sigrid managed to turn our shed into a portal: It seems you can stick everything in and there is still space for more. But maybe I should start a bit earlier, like about a year ago.
Roughly 1 year ago we started to make a detailed preparation plan for the trip. There was still one major question to answer: What do we do with our house? We knew we had to rent it out to allow us to go on our journey. The question was: Could we rent it out furnished? If not, what to do with our furniture and all our other stuff? After talking to some real estate agents, we realised that renting a furnished house would be not easy. The real estate agents didn’t like to look after a furnished house either.
So, we had to rent our house unfurnished, but where to put all our stuff? The shed, that we built a couple of years ago couldn’t hold it all – as per usual, a shed is always too small. Then, while we were looking for a solution our oldest son came up with a perfect idea, he and his buddy would rent our house while each of them rent out their own house. The advantage for them is that our house is closer to the city, so they save travel time each day and they are closer to their friends. They pay less rent to us then they get for their houses and we save real estate agent fees and don’t have to store out our furniture.
Bingo! A Win – Win situation. That made everything else much easier.
Next we looked into the safety aspect of our trip a bit, and thought doing some sort of self defence could be an advantage (we are both no fast runners, so we needed something else). Our youngest son recently joined a club that teaches Krav Maga, an Israeli self defence style, and we were impressed how much he took home after a couple of lessons.
So we thought we quit our gym for a year and join the club. We did it, and after 9 month of training we took a lot of useful techniques and behaviour pattern home, which we’ll hopefully never need to apply. Having said that, we are aware that we are far from being perfect in these techniques, but the whole course made us thinking about dangerous situations and what we can and can’t do. Anyway, since this course had only one cardio lesson per week, we noticed that our trouser started to shrink. Did you know, eating chocolate makes trousers shrink?!? I guess one never stops learning…
So we decided to go back to the gym for 2 month where we had been for about 10 years before. We finished our 2 month with our dungeon masters and the trousers fit again 🙂
And, the biggest, greatest major news hit us 7 Month ago. Niko and Anna adjusted their life to suit our travel plans and decided to make us to grandparents. ONE Month before we leave. Well, currently we are waiting for telephone call any moment, maybe that’s a part of the reason why I got up so early today :-).
During the last year, we were chewing the ears of off all our friends. (Talking about our trip, not literally!)
Doing it long enough, we infected two of them: Brian and Val (aka Wombat and IT). We have been riding together for years and enjoyed each other’s company during a couple Ulysses club AGM’s. They decided to join us for the first 5 Month of our trip; which means we’ll do the America and Canada leg together. Then, as we vanish into Mexico (hopfully temporarily!) they stay in Canada/USA.
To make the paper work easier for them (remembering only one surname), they added a bit of excitement and got married 6 Month ago, and they are still going strong :-). So they had to plan their wedding on top of all other things required for the journey, which was for sure a major challenge. They did a marvellous job and the wedding was one of the most enjoyable that we had been to.
The trip planning together was really enjoyable too. We had plenty of meetings, spent hours looking at our route, decided what’s possible to see and so on. They also pointed out a major oversight: the weather. The temperature when we visit the Niagara Falls is on average zero degree Celsius, which makes camping a less errr… ‘fun’, option. Worse, the long range weather forecast for Rutland in Vermont – the place where we are picking up our new bikes – is some minus degrees and snowing. Great…..
The reason why we decided the buy the bikes in Rutland? Well that’s a separate story alltogether. But we’re here, you reading, me writing, so why not tell it now?
At first the plan was to purchase and register the bikes in New York, where we start our journey. Well, 6 month ago, we started to look for a dealer who would sell us the bikes for a good price and would do so some modification to the bikes. (lowering the bike, fitting other springs to compensate for the long range tank and the luggage rack and so on)
We found a dealer who would sell us the bikes, but during the conversation we found out that foreigners can purchase a bike in New York, but they can’t register it. Yeah. Really.
That, of course, was a major blow. It’s hard to go on a motorbike trip without registered motorbikes. Searching the internet and calling the DMV in New York showed that the dealer was right. We really can buy the bikes but we really can’t register them. To cut the story short, we found that each state in the USA has different rules for the registering a vehicle and that Michigan and Vermont are kindly allowing foreigners to register their vehicle. Michigan is too far from New York, but Vermont is only 500Km away. So we settled for Vermont and found a very supportive dealer in Rutland.
So that’s why we ended up with bikes in Vermont, with the slight overside of snow :D.
But we are lucky, it seems like Rutland has a heat wave this year! The predicted temperature is 14 degree C during the day and +1 during the night. A couple of days ago, I was talking to the sales manager and he confirmed that all our parts – springs and a stators – have arrived, are fitted and he is just waiting for our luggage racks to arrive. The racks are currently sitting in our garage here in Australia and will be picked up by a courier on Tuesday, along with all our other stuff (Camping gear, tools and bike add-ons) which we don’t or can’t take on our flight.
Hmm, I think that’s it for the moment. A nice and short update. I guess the updates will come a bit more frequently now.
Ahh, that reminds me, our homepage took a major step towards the final stage. Our oldest son, Simon, added the capability to our blog to displays our current position in 15 minutes intervals, so everybody can see immediately where our current position is.
We purchased the spot device and the service to make our position available on a separate map, but the integration into our blog needed some tweaking 🙂
(Or as he says, where the spot is. But we don’t plan on being too far away from the spot…)
Things are coming together, well 22 days 2 hours 5minutes, there is not much time left.
We arrived in New Castle at about 14:00. We registered and then called Wombat, following the direction to the reserved space at the campground. Pitched our tent and had a look around.
This was actually Julie’s birthday, so in the evening we walked to a nice pub to get some food. Unfortunately the pub didn’t have any meals on Mondays. So off we walked a bit further (miles and miles) to get to the RSL. The food and beer were great, but just before we left we heard a pounding noise on the roof. John was brave enough to have a look outside, and it turned out to be rain, lots of it.
After we all finished our meal we went out, waited for 10 minutes and decided that the rain wasn’t easing. So Wombat organised a big taxi which didn’t come, in response Val ordered 2 taxis. They came and we all got home via Maccas for a night coffee, but dry.
John got a phone call that his tent has given in to the rain. When we arrived at the site, it was only one side that has collapsed, the rest was fine. We temporarily fixed it. Wombats and our tent leaked a bit at the front zipper, but the sleeping parts were dry.
Today we went on a Tour with Wombat, Val, John and Julie. We went to the wetlands, then the aircraft museum/base, which is where Wombats used to work.
Tried to find a spot to swim in the ocean, but the first one was full of green seaweed. We moved to the second beach, which was a little better but had still lots of seaweed. However we went into the water anyway.
Got up to see the sun rise (that was early). After we stopped shivering, we got back to the room, packed, had breaky (bacon and eggs) and left at about 9:00. That’s really early for us. I was aiming for Adelaide that day, but Sigrid came up with the idea to take a picture from emus, goats, sheep and cattle that we would find crossing the road, as well as some ponds that formed during the last rain. So progress was a bit slower, but we took nice pictures. Stopped in Broken Hill to buy some magnetic oil sump plugs. The Suzuki dealer knew what I was talking about, but he didn’t have it. We went to the Information office to find out if they have maps about dirt roads in S.A. They didn’t but they had pamphlets that showed some unsealed roads. So we settled for them and bought some fridge magnets as gifts, went to a gallery to purchase some more souvenirs before heading off to Burra. On the way we found some police escorting 50 or so Finks. We had a small break at a road house, Sigrid had a nap and then we did some bike maintenance. We oiled both chains and removed the access oil from both air filter outlets, all by ourselves. We arrived in Burra just before sun set. The caravan park didn’t have any cabins, the historic accommodation where pretty pricey, so we settled for pub accommodation. Arriving at the pub, we got the room key but the room had not been cleaned.
Got another room and when I put down all the luggage that we brought up, Sigrid noticed something fall from my ear. My golden computer-mouse earring was missing, and the lock had just fallen to the ground. So we jumped on the bike and traced back our steps. Sigrid found my earring in front of the camp ground office. We went back happy, had a nice dinner and went up to our room to update this blog.
The plan is to do ~100km of dirt road and then head home.
Talked to the other couples on the campground about the noisy night, they said they heard it as well and were thinking on us. We talked to an older couple that traveled around Australia in a bus, and they encouraged us to travel as long we can. After all that talking and another bath, we left the campground relatively late.
In Pilliga we enquired about the road condition at the police station (well we passed the house of the police man) The Policeman told us that the dirt road to Junction would be ok but couldn’t tell us more about the dirt road to White Cliff. Went into a coffee shop, had a coffee and Sigrid discovered that a screw on my old pair of glasses was missing. We fixed it with a bit of bread wire from the shop assistant.
First 32Km of dirt road with the bikes fully loaded. Road was graded but some sand patches were there. After a couple of kilometres I remembered to let the tyre pressure down, which improved the stability of the bike quite a bit. We were just happy that we managed the road without dropping the bike. In Burke we went to the police station, since we couldn’t find the information office. The police woman described the direction to the information office, but she realized as well that it was past 17:00, so the office would be closed. So we asked her about the dirt road to white cliff, and she confirmed that it was closed. Thus the only way was via Corba.
We left the police station, filled up and set off to Corba (150km). It was raining on the way, and we saw an Emu, goats, sheep and kangaroos on the road, so we took it really easy. In Corba we looked for a Motel, but we couldn’t find anything for under 100A$ (125A$/night). So Sigrid found the camp ground and we book a carbine with en suite. On the way to the lunch, we discovered that Sigrid’s back foot peg couldn’t be folded out any more, so I dismantled the foot peg and lost the spring and ball on the ground (in my defence, the ground was fine crushed stones). We searched with the torch but could only recover the spring. We headed to dinner at the RSL, but they just closed the kitchen 5 minutes before we arrived. So we went into a pub instead and had a great meal.
