A lot of the usual million things to organise such as medical/motorbike insurance, Carnet de Pasage (the bike’s passport), tropical inoculations etc. have been sorted out and hopefully nothing has been overlooked.
Obviously the condition of the motorbike is a priority and, once again, the wonderful team at Maddocks BMW in Bray have taken care of everything. They have looked after me so well over many years and I have always had great confidence setting off on a journey knowing that the bike has been given a very personal and considered servicing.
(Above Grainne, Avril, Janet, Tom and Gary bidding me farewell)
The motorbike has been thoroughly mechanically checked out and, after a bit of debate about which tyres to use, we agreed on Tourance original. The alternative was a pair of Karoo 3 but, although better suited for gravel roads, we felt that the Tourance would be better able to last in excess of 10,000km. Hopefully this is the right choice as I don’t fancy the tyre rubber getting down to the smoothness of my head – Baldy Biker does not go well with baldy tyres!!
At this point in the blog it’s time to give the bike a name. This simply makes mentioning it easier as it would become a bit tedious to keep referring to it as ‘the bike’ or ‘the motorbike’. So, as before, and although it is a different motorbike, I am going to stick with the name “Simba”. It was a lucky name on the last African journey and hopefully will be again.
Next step is to get Simba over to James Cargo in London so that they can transport him on to Kenya…
ZIGZAGGING AFRICA BY MOTORBIKE 