Category General

Mar 16 2017

First Aid for Motorcyclists

There is one section of our upcoming trip that fills me with trepidation and excitement all at the same time. It is Mongolia. We are planning on crossing it from southern Siberia in the north to the west of the country back into Russia. That means a vast area no roads, just multiple tracks across the Mongolian steppe and many, many river crossings. The area we will travel is very remote in places with challenging terrain so we need to be self sufficient. It is important we are as prepared as we can be.

When we decided to embark on our RTW trip in 2014, we were not in our home country, we had no bikes, we had no equipment, we just had an idea and off we went.  This time it is different and we have had a few months to plan it. We now have an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, an EPIRB – the ResQLink model. If we are in absolute dire straits, we press the button which sends a message via satellite with our location coordinates and rescue arrives, eventually. We have better boots, which will provide more protection when the bike decides to take a nap – our new Sidi Adventure boots with hinged ankle for comfort, but no lateral movement for ankle protection. And finally, we went on a course last week end which we should ideally have attended before our round the world motorcycle trip in 2014. But considering that trip just happened, it is not too surprising. Better late than never!!…

We attended a First Aid for Motorcyclists course. It is not a full first aid course – that, we did separately a few years back. This one is more of an motorcycle trauma and accident scene management course which complements a standard first aid course. The training is designed to give us practical and relevant skills in trauma managenent first aid.   What should you do when you first arrive on the scene. When should you move the body. When should you do CPR. How do you remove a full face helmet. How do you move the person. How do you provide emergency first aid. So many tips, drilled into us several times over the course of the day, with many practical exercises. “Life over Limb” is drilled into us!

The course organisers got the idea of creating such a course after a traumatic personnal event: they were riding with a large group of motorcyclists when their best friend had an accident.  Everyone there had different opinions on what to do and especially on whether CPR was warranted. Nobody took control of the scene.  Eventually, CPR was given, but too late and their friend, while he survived, ended up with brain damage.

The course was quite confronting at times, with real life images and situations. The memory of Anthony’s accident back in December 2012 came back and hit me like I hadn’t expected. Luckily for Anthony, he still has no recollection of his accident. My eyes start welling up, my throat in a knot, my stomach churning, I feel sick, doubts creep into my mind. What are we about to embark on?! Anthony and I glance at each other – the same thoughts enter our minds. The course is very practical, raw at times. More practice, more emphasis, more examples.

But by the end of the day, I feel calm and confident. No more doubts. But peace of mind.

We highly recommend this course for anyone riding a motorcycle, whether rider or pillion. Here’s a link to Tracy and Roger’s courses in Australia https://www.firstaidformotorcyclists.com.au/

– Anne

Mar 4 2017

The other way around?

March already! While we have been busy planning, drawing up schedules, checking websites, reviewing visa requirements and generally getting more organised, we are get closer to departing from Australia, under four weeks to go and I can hear the ‘tick’ ‘toc’ ‘tick’ ‘toc’ of the clock getting louder. Anne is ahead on the packing front, ready to depart now and I have a vague mental pile of what I need to take. The action list seems to be like the tide, it appears to be retreating, then rushes back in again, higher than before as we identify new tasks. All this activity has been focused on heading out across Europe, through Iran and the ‘Stans’ and onwards to Mongolia. However………

A week ago we suddenly realised that we would be in Iran and the ‘Stans’ during Ramadan which is from the end of May to the end of June this year. The main reason we are returning to this region is to spend time with friends, which would be more difficult for them during Ramadan (when eating and drinking during day light hours is not allowed). We have been so focused on weather, visa and associated timing issues, we missed this additional dimension. At the same time, I had been discussing airfreight options with Air Canada both to and from Canada ahead of the release of their 2017 ‘Fly your Bike’ program.

As we walked last Saturday, for our usual morning constitutional, we both realised that all the issues we had been considering, Ramadan, air freight options, ferry capacity from Vladivostok to South Korea in July, crossing Europe during upcoming elections etc, could be ameliorated by a change of direction!

We are now going round the world (RTW) from East to West instead! Unwinding our previous trip in a directional sense. No more sunrises in our eyes, just sunsets.

So we will ship the motorcycles back to Montreal, where we completed our 2014/15 RTW trip, with Air Canada in mid April. We will then head west across North America to the west coast and then ship Streak and Storm to South Korea, take the ferry to Vladivostok and overland back to Europe via Mongolia, the ‘Stans’ and Iran. All in the same timeframe we hope. The flight to Montreal is booked for the 13th of April and we need to wait until 30 days before departure to book Streak and Storm, a normal air cargo procedure.

It may seem a little strange, so close to our departure to turn everything around, but the ball of visa spaghetti that Anne has so eloquently drawn and written about can be untangled in many different ways one strand at a time.

We have always said that it is easier being on the road dealing with the challenges: visas, shipping, routes etc as they occur than tackling the sometimes overwhelming task list we seem to build before departure. Our change in direction really only affects our sequencing of visas, we will now do more of them on the road. (Pity we had already paid for and obtained our Letters of Introduction for our Iranian visas which are now obsolete due to the change of dates.) The other advantage we have is that having undertaken a similar trip before, we are comfortable in making this decision based on the experience we have already.

We also had my annual medical heart checkup this week. I felt like the proverbial hamster in the wheel while on the treadmill doing the stress test, fast running out of puff as the speed and angle of attack were increased, seems the gradual rate of increase approach of the past has been changed. The good news is that I did not collapse and get flung off the back to become another stain on the wall and the specialist saw no changes that would require action or an adjustment in my medication. A clean bill of health and good for another 12 months. He wished us a good trip and I will see him again next year. Excellent news, always good to tick another box.

How will it all turn out? You will need to stay tuned for further instalments over the next seven months.

– Anthony

Feb 20 2017

Two steps forward…

In January 2016, the US congress introduced a new law, effectively immediately, requiring anyone who had visited either Syria, Sudan, Iraq or Iran since 2011 to apply for a special visa to enter the US. The Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) was no longer relevant, whether you had obtained it prior to this new law or not and we could no longer enter the US under the visa waiver program. As we had travelled through Iran in 2014, this applied to us. Having first responded to their 9 page questionnaire, with 156 fields to complete including whether we were terrorists or going to the US for the purposes of prostitution, we booked an appointment at the US Consulate in Sydney and had our interview last week. The security check, requiring us to leave everything behind except our wallet took the longest amount time, especially as I had a tiny pen in my wallet. The security lady was not happy with me, especially when I couldn’t think what metal object I hadn’t taken out! Anyway, the whole process including the actual interview took 40′. A breeze. The interview itself entailed just 2 questions and we learned about the guy’s father’s passion for restoring old Triumph motorcycles!!

Anyway, the interview took place at 8am Wednesday and exactly 2 days later, our passports with new US visas were hand delivered to us at home. We opted for a 5 year visa, valid 90 days per entry. Fantastic.

The other win we had since our last blog was getting our 2nd Australian passports, valid for the maximum 3 years allowed for 2nd passports. That will make getting our visas a little easier.

So how’s the visa spagetti going? This is what it looks like:

Untangling visa spagetti

Untangling visa spagetti

Uzbekistan, which had announced abolishing visas as of 1st April 2017, decided to defer this until 2021, so we now need a visa again.

The rules about obtaining a Carnet de Passage (CDP) from the UK have also changed: The RAC in the UK had stopped providing the service, so we started liaising with ADAC in Germany, and looking into another one, TCS, in Switzerland, but I found out last week that a new organisation in the UK is providing CDPs so we can no longer use ADAC. This time, we only need a CDP for Iran and the prices involved in obtaining a CDP are quite steep. With the cost of the LOI, the visa, the trips to the consulate and the CDP, is it reasonable we wondered, for such a brief visit? Our time frame, to make it to Vladivostok before the cold weather comes, means that we can only spend a few days in Tehran to visit several friends – no time for too much sightseeing like last time. So I started liaising with someone well known and recommended by motorcyclist travellers in Iran, Hossein who can provide a CDP at the border for you at a cheaper rate. But the duration of the CDP and cost depend on which border you enter Iran from… We had planned on entering from Turkey, but the CDP through Hossein is only valid one week – way too short to cross the entire country and spend time visiting friends. So via Armenia it will be.

In the meantime, I started the process of getting a Letter of Introduction (LOI) for Iran – the first step in getting a visa for that part of the world. This is a piece of paper provided by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a tour agency working on your behalf, for a fee of course. The problem I encountered this week was Australian government regulations preventing financial institutions sending money to Iran or for matters relating to Iran… Another thing to work around…

So have we got our route worked out? No more than we had a month ago as all still depends on Turkmenistan and whether they’ll grant us a transit visa. Before we can apply for that, we must have the visas for Iran and Uzbekistan ones. But if we don’t get, it will mean we can’t go to Iran, so that visa will be a waste. See what I mean about this spagetti?!

Route options with closed borders

Route options with closed borders


And just to add a bit of excitement, my service provider in the US has migrated my business site and emails to another server and I have been tearing my hair out with that for weeks now. ‘Nugh said on that.

Some excitement of a different kind. I know we will faced with many opportunities of eating mare’s products such as mare’s cheese, mare’s yogurt and milk in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. Mongolia’s traditional beverage is airag, fermented mare’s milk. How will I survive with my bad lactose intolerance. Time for some research. I found out that the reason I can eat plain yogurt is because the enzymes in yogurt break down the lactose for me. Maybe I’ll be ok with airag then I wonder, if am ok with yogurt?!?! I decide to try over-the-counter lactase. If it works, I can take that while in Mongolia especially. So I gave it a try at home. I start with a lovely creamy chocolate mousse, taking 2 lactase tablets just before eating my desert as per the instructions. I was totally fine, up to 10.5 hours later – normally I react 8 hours later. Then it was touch and go, but I did manage to keep it down. I am very happy and keen to try the next test. I give my body a week to recover. A week later, time for something usually lethal for me. Something with cream and lemon. I decide to take the tablets 10’ before the ‘test’. I lasted 7 hours before being horribly sick. It took me 36 hours to recover. That was a complete failure. Rats… Another reason to perfect my Russian and Mongolian. I have prepared 2 A4 pages of various words and expressions in Turkish, Georgian, Armenian, Russian and Mongolian to help me out.

We are slowly ticking items off our list of things to do. A very exciting one was to find new boots – I did not fancy going through rain or crossing rivers and having wet feet as I did on our last RTW trip. After much research and trying several different models, I settled on a pair of Sidi Adventure 2 goretex boots. So comfortable!! And with much better support than the old boots.

Sidi Adventure 2 boots

Sidi Adventure 2 boots

Our pre-trip fitness regime includes a couple of walks a day and a weekly trip to the Gold Coast’s Main Beach for some boogy boarding – a fun way of getting your arms and legs a bit of a work out.

Happy times at Main Beach

Happy times at Main Beach

Suddenly, we have just 5 weeks before we leave. Still so much to do, most importantly Anthony’s annual heart check up – it is 8 years today that he had his heart attack while riding a motorcycle in Bhutan. We will forever be grateful we rode our motorcycles around the temple 3 times to cleanse our sins – a clean sheet, so only got a small zap from upstairs… followed by a quadruple bypass that was life changing.

Anne

Jan 1 2017

2017 where next?

The New Year’s champagne has ceased to flow, the last party streamer has fluttered to the ground, and the party music has finally been silenced, now 2017’s pristine calendar waits to be filled with good intentions. While we have only been back for six weeks settling in and our good intentions to paint and redecorate our home, have drifted to the back burner as the lure of the open road once again fills our minds. Yes we are planning another motorcycle trip in 2017.

Before I reveal our plans for 2017, I thought it might be of some interest on how we went about reaching our decision. For those who just want to know the route and not our decision making process, just scroll down past the next paragraph and picture.

We had fairly quickly decided that we wanted to undertake another long distance ride after going to Spain last year. Given the milage on ‘Streak’ & ‘Storm’ we feel there is another long trip before we may need to undertake serious work on them. So out comes the A1 sized paper book we have used over the years for planning purposes and I add a small clutch of coloured markers. Let planning commence! A somewhat inaccurate map of the world is drawn and four possible routes snake our from the motorbikes home in the UK. Pros and cons of each option are discussed and the inevitable action lists are drawn up.

After much discussion we each independently rank the four options and find we both agree on the same first choice. We are drawn to this option for a number of reasons;

1: the chance to revisit some friends made in our 2014/5 RTW trip, no we are not repeating the same route;
2: the attraction of spending more time in sparsely populated regions;
3: visiting new places we have had on our list for some time;
4: returning to a region we last visited in 1985; and
5: the trip to last no more than six months.

How early planning evolves for the 2 slow speeds.

How early planning evolves for the 2 slow speeds.

As you can see, our options included Europe to Cape Town and a circumnavigation of Europe, neither of which we felt was quite what we wanted to do this year, so we have chosen to attempt a Northern Round the World (RTW) in the summer of 2017! Phew there it is out in the open, RTW again, sounds so simple when put this way as I sit on the couch typing away, but based on previous experience, there will be a lot more to do before we start. Motorcycle maintenance, route planning, visa acquisition and a host of others items that I have already forgotten from the last trip and will need to review on the blog for reminders.

Our plan is to travel, subject to getting the appropriate visas, via Turkey, Iran and the ‘Stans’ again, Russia, Mongolia and on to Vladivostok. Ferry to Korea, then plane to Alaska and then ride to east coast of America and then return to the UK. We plan to depart the UK by mid April returning towards the end of September.

This timeline, if adhered to, should allow us to complete the journey in the Northern Hemisphere summer, but it will be tight. Any untoward delays or forced detours could impact our ability to complete the trip before winter’s icy fingers start to reach out. This adds a little extra spice to the challenge we are setting ourselves.

We are now drawing up our ‘to do’ lists and from there start to build an action plan. As we do, we will keep the blog updated on our pre trip progress. Have a great 2017!

– Anthony

Dec 24 2016

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Wishing our family, friends and followers a merry Christmas and very happy and healthy new year 2017!!! Let there be peace and joy in your life and in the world, like the other evening in Brisbane (turn your device vertically if you can, to see the whole video below).

Love to you all and stay tuned for more adventures starting April 2017.

Wherever you are, stay safe out there!

Anne & Anthony

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