Fair weather bloggers..

With snow and ice pretty much everywhere at the moment we've been back in the car this week for commuting to work. Not very hardcore, but when it's optional, then about zero degrees is our limit. With moving to and decorating a new house, it's as good an excuse as any that we need to transport bits and pieces back and forth anyway. The fact that we passed a motorcycle accident last night on the way home backs up the decision too. Thankfully no-one looked hurt, just dark slippery roads and traffic queues combining to bad effect.

Continuing the eBay bargain spree of half price panniers and budget Touratech risers, I picked up a practically new Givi tank bag with map window etc for £20 and a cheap camera mount for the video camera for £6. Looks like the bikes are going to be totally covered with all manner of gubbins and farkly goodness.

Off to Motorcycle Live this weekend which we're looking forwards to. First time for both of us, so we'll see what it's like. Be good to bump into a few of the adventure touring guys that seem to be frequenting the event and hopefully grab a few freebies at the same time.

While I'm on here I'm post a couple of links to other touring movies that people have recorded recently. First up: Brainrotting - Graham Styles rides the Americas on an F650GS:

http://www.youtube.com/user/easyg1409#p/c/6A5CC063F32FFB67/0/rmXxLdRenug

.. and London to Syria 2010 - 4 guys on very different bikes ride to Asia:

http://www.youtube.com/user/EnduroAlexis#p/u/15/DQj3oOmTFCI

Enjoy.

P's pannier pictures!

I'm p!,these are my pannier pictures.........lol

Well happy with these babies :), thanks to Marks stealthy bidding on eBay I can look forward to dry knickers on the morocco tour...lol,lol, as they will be kept away from the elements in these...lol... A few stickers and I will look like an adventure bike ridier ;)

eBay Lottery

Another quick kit update after a productive weekend on eBay. Paula managed to get some half price BMW panniers, finally deciding the dilemma of what luggage to get for the F650. Should turn out to be a good result as we'll side step the worry of soft luggage burning on the high level exhaust and 3rd party hard panniers sticking out too far. The racks are nice and simple and cheap too, which is a bonus.

The second eBay success was some Touratech bar risers for the Transalp for £12. Bargain! Hopefully that should get the bars somewhere more comfy for me and make it easier to stand up on the pegs without having to stoop down too much. Tourateching my bike on a budget, who'd have thought!!

On the Bookcase!

Thought it was getting a bit dry on here, too many stats and facts and all that.. (and definitely not enough riding!!) so today we got a peak at some of the stuff that weighs down our bookshelf...

We got - Europe on a shoestring - although I've no idea how much shoestrings are worth in Euros these days. OS maps, books on Wild Food Foraging, adventure Motorcycling - of course. Loads of Britain books - big fans of the place! Books on the weather, language phrase books, wildlife and photography books and several adventure books by the likes of Lois Pryce, Ted Simon, Simon Bealby and Ewan&Charlie. All very handy stuff for some motorcycle touring.

Lots of online reading too. Recently found this account of a solo, winter trip to Morocco - http://ineptandalone.wordpress.com/ Taken later in the year than ours is going to be, not that we're fair weather bikers, but I think we're hoping for a little less cold and rain!

HOW COLD?!?...o.O

Very is the answer!.... the last two mornings have been icy and extremely cold indeed, forgot to cover the bike and took ten mins to get the key in the lock...doh! I do have to say though that the ride home more than made up for it, on an A road in Wiltshire, low laying mist both sides of the road so it felt as if I were riding across some mystical lake, sun sliding into the earth ,burning a brilliant deep orange, sky a multitude of colours.....smile on my face, ....I love riding my bike! x

Wanted to share this too...my birthday card made by Mark :) I can't be that old if I'm still jumping pyramids! lol

Other pressies included were a well needed fleece buff to stop my nose dropping off,a fantastic travel journal for morocco and lots of chocky hearts to keep my strength up :)....thank you babe x

Exciting!...

As Mark has said, the old girl has had a few issues but forks done now, a job taken on by my friendly motorcycle mechanic up the road, dear  Charlie from Wheelers bikes in Shaw....grand job as always! pointed out i need new front pads too but they will last through the winter then we'll re-shoe the old girl front and back before we off on trips...Exciting cause we seem to be getting money in the bank and this show on rails equipment wise...looking forward to the show, 'sept all the sexy bikes I'll want to take home ...guess I can settle easily for a sexy biker instead though ;) lol........WANT TO TRY OUT NEW TENT IN THE SNOW!...lol not sure our equipment is up to that though..Booo!

Motorcycle Live!

Ordered tickets to Motorcycle Live at the NEC the other day, from some money I was paid for some PC fixing. What with promises of adventure, dual sport being a big thing this year and it being bigger than previous years I thought we could give it a try. See if we can't get some advice, look at some clothing, lids and gadgets and - if it's anything like the motorshow used to be like - blag as many freebies as possible!

Looking at enduro lids for Paula, who's old Arai is definitely well past its best before. With the Arai and Shoei models being out of budget, been looking at HJC, Airoh, Uvex and Helds offerings. Both of us really liking the HELD 7810, but hesitant to order one online without being able to try any of them on. Hoping that they might be around at the NEC.

Managed to get hold of a new Vango Omega 350 tent for £90 too, pretty much the same style as the one we use now (3 pole tunnel) but with lots of better features, better quality and with a bit of luck - actually waterproof! Depends how extreme we're feeling in december, but we might even camp out on the way back from Birmingham! (okay so it's not exactly the Eiger, but hey we have to start somewhere)

Also dug up this photo of the bikes after our off-road day..

Looking suitable muddy and battered. If I learned anything from hitting the deck a few times it was that the Transalp with intermediate style tires does not do wet mud. At all. Gravel and the rest was all good, but if we hit mud in morocco it'll be feet down - slow and shuffling I think. Would be nice to fit knobblies, but then not sure how they'd cope with the thousands of miles of road we have to cover.

Update

Received our MS Society fund raisers pack the other day, including t-shirts, pannier stickers and sponsorship forms etc - all in a lovely flashy KTM orange. All should be great to raise some awareness and try and get some money together for them over the next 10 months.

As far as other news goes.. We've been pretty busy the last few weeks, we photographed a wedding for a friend to raise some money for the tour which was great fun and turned out really well. We've both aged a year, with both birthdays in two weeks, complete with essential touring gifts changing hands - including a new fleecy Buff for P and some pannier stickers and a Kodak Playsport mini-camcorder thing for me! Suddenly I seem to have turned into a gadget magnet! As much as I did't want to take too much electronics, it'll be fantastic if I can capture some decent footage of the trip.

Paula got her forks re-sealed and a glitch with the rear brake light switch ironed out, so she's sorted and running smoothly again. I still have heated grips to fix and a Scottoiler to fit, but with no garage, dark evenings and busy weekends they might have to wait a while longer.