Saturday morning is not the most opportune time to have a mechanical problem with your motorcycle in Sicily. As Antonino our tow truck driver said, “Nothing open till Monday”.

Sunday morning and with my ankle the worse for wear we start to consider our options. The boat has sailed literally at 9am to Sardinia. Our carefully constructed week ahead with non refundable ferry and hotel bookings has evaporated. We cannot see Storm until Monday. Maybe the gear change will work then? Can the gear change lever be straightened? How easy and quickly can we get any replacement parts? All this is going through our minds along with dates we need to be in Switzerland and back in the UK.

I had also spoken to my friend Bob in Cape Town, who is very knowledgeable about motorcycles and the bits inside. He enlightened me about “selector forks”, their use and a possible reason for first and neutral working and not second and above. Separate selector forks, did I get that right Bob?

What is different from our RTW trips is that we have active comprehensive motorcycle insurance. When we have been a long way from home with other minor mishaps, we find the best local mechanic and fix it. However with this appearing to be more than just a bent gear change lever, and our timing constraints, we may need a different approach. I am able to make contact with our insurance brokers contact point on Sunday but they can only take my details. Nothing will happen till Monday.

On Monday, being proactive, we head into Palermo to seek out the only BMW Motorrad store we had found doing a good old Google search. A small workshop with a single mechanic. Parts, we learn, when identified, will take a minimum of three to four days to arrive. Even if Storm could be examined today, any fix is a week away. Useful information. I do see an F800GS with the clutch cover off, all the possible spare parts are in there. No, I only took photos.

I get a message and contact number for the insurance company later in the day and we start the process. Their preference is to recover the motorcycle to the UK and then I think they have control over the repair process.

We have a jumble of thoughts, ship back, fix here, how long, travel to Montreux and back without the bikes then, if fixed, ride flat out back to the UK. Cost, time and riding and my ankle injury are all in the mix. We have literally agonised over this. Plus Shengen time restrictions and possibly pushing the 90 day limit on this trip.

Anne had contacted some motorcycle forums and we had a range of comments and advice, some of which made us realise that often, when we form an opinion about something, we probably do not have all the facts and someone’s actions may be influenced by those unknown facts. We should not be too quick to jump to conclusions. In our case, timing of a concert in Montreux and our return to the UK (for Anne’s mum) were the main issues.

Back to us now: after mulling the options, we will get the insurance company to ship Storm home, but that means we will have to pay to ship Streak home. This decision was not easy for us to take and did not sit well with us. We both struggled more than we expected. We have always gone to a local mechanic in the past, dealt with our technical issues ourselves on the road. We kept having to remind ourselves it was the only option due to our commitments. Given the likely cost, Anne is already looking for job opportunities when we get home.

We have developed a plan B and will leave Termini Imerese on Friday and head to Switzerland, sans Streak and Storm. Sad to end the motorcycle journey this way and leave Streak and Storm behind but that is the most practical option for us at this time.

I would like to take a few moments to reflect on our two visits to Sicily separated by the wedding. After the first part of our visit before the wedding, we had seen many faces of people in Sicily: very helpful when you are trying to negotiate a junction by stopping to hold up traffic when they do not have to; ignored by staff while trying to negotiate a card payment at the petrol pump; and unpleasant when they snatch the parking ticket from your hand after they run up to you with a second ticket and ordering you to leave why you say you thought that using one car spot for two motorbikes you should not be double charged; trying to extract extra Euros out of us at a hotel despite the confirmed booking details.

After the accident, we spent almost a week in Termini Imerese. Shopping at local stores, eating and drinking, walking the streets and getting a real feel of the place. The tourist interaction and the local interaction were completely different for us. I realised that making assumptions about a place and its people without spending the appropriate amount of time can lead to false impressions.

We loved the local shops, neighbours attaching shopping to cables to pull up to the top floor apartments. Little gifts from restaurants you have returned to. Kids running around the square while their parents dine nearby. “Buongiorno” to everyone. Cars stopped in the street to converse with friends and acquaintances while invariably holding up traffic, moped parking priority outside supermarkets, the gelato store, which opened in 1955 and all the customers we saw were adults, including me.

This is the life we love seeing on the road, not the tourist packed centres with their obvious attraction. Sicily could have been one we misunderstood by travelling too fast and only seeing the tourist “sights”. A simple “off the motorcycle”, a little time and our perspective is changed. Anne has been wanting to travel more slowly, spending more time in places for a while now but we tend to pack so much in our plans we don’t always get to enjoy, appreciate or understand the day to day life of locals enough.

We need to remain true to the 2slowspeeds and afford the time to experience a place and understand it better. Thank you Termini Imerese.

– Anthony & Anne