Hydraulics and good vibrations

I spent Wednesday walking Prague and snapping away. One of the first places I saw was a restaurant and jewellers called Kingstone! Later I went for a meal in a small courtyard restaurant. The waiter spoke German and offered me a 'typical Czech dinner. It was pork in a brown gravy with slices of dumpling that looked like bread with cream and cranberries. I did not like the gravy at all. I have tried many Czech beers but nothing was really outstanding. Still, the atmosphere was fabulous and I will return one day. Thursday morning I packed and went to ride off when the clutch lever just flopped to the bar. The Hydraulic fluid had gone. Now I was suspicious of a leak as I had had the bike serviced just over a week before. The hotel receptionist was extremely helpful and after a few miles walking I was back with dot4 fluid from a petrol station. Cost me a fiver. I topped it up but did not bleed it so it was a right fandango to ride with just a few millimetres of play. Add to that my misreading of the google maps and I ended up taking the old Highway6 out to Germany instead of the new Autobahn 6 directly to Nuernberg! It deposited me 50 miles to the north of the A6 in germany. The route was so tortuous and diverted and ripped up by endless roadworks that four hours later I cheered with relief as I saw the big sign declaring 'Freistat Bayern'. I had made it to Bavaria! I rode to a petrol station, tanked up on fuel and Nurnberger Bratwurst and a Weissbier. I had to cancel my visit to my former boss and ride all the way to Offingen (near Augsburg in southern Bavaria). My son-in law has a well equipped workshop there. He's designing and building a very specialised drill rig. It uses sonic vibration to drill through very difficult terrain. I managed to find the slave cylinder and bleed the clutch that evening. It's very satisfying to do maintenance work on your bike. Normally I am too lazy to bother. At the restaurant that evening I chatted to two lads who were WALKING from the very south of Germany to the far north of the Country. They were dressed in the traditional clothes of a journeyman (apprentice builder). People seemed to like that they were keeping the tradition alive and helped them in any way they could. Friday morning I spent servicing the RSV and learning all about Paul's rig. He invented a new type of slurry pump and I stayed to see it tested. I was late getting away and then I hit major traffic on the A8/A5/A6. It began to pour down so I dodged under an overpass with some other bikers and slipped on my waterproofs. A bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted but I needed to minimise the soaking. Needless to say 15 minutes up the road on the way to Mannheim the sun came out and cooked me! I've worked out how to control the weather. If you want rain for your garden - light a BBQ. If you want sunshine put on rain gear. I couldn't make it to Brussel so I called my friend and then found a hotel in Aachen for the night. Wienerschnitzel and Weissbier fixed all the aches and I started my calculations for fuel consumption on the trip. I first called at a small hotel named Goering! It was full. I think I'd change the name if it was mine! Saturday morning saw me up at 6am and riding fast in the cold air to Brussel. Now as much as I like Brussel, it is the most difficult city in the world to find your way around. Every roundabout has 20 streets coming off of it and the street names are so long and the sign (if there is one) so small that you have no chance of reading it. I went by instinct and memory and managed to get within 2 minutes of Lionel's place before resorting to calling him for directions. It was great to see him again and after a few coffees he kindly drove ahead of me and put me on the E40 to Calais. Two hours later I was boarding the ferry for home. Where, of course, it was pissing down. I had a good chat with some BMW R1200GS riders and we all had to pull in and pull on the rain gear. It stopped raining.
Home, pub, reflect, calculate, download over 200 photos, sleep like Rip Van Winkle. One thing I learned, my next trip will be a relaxing tour with Extra Mile Bike Tours! The next weekend is the Bike protest ride where we can all pretend we are hippies. That's the next blog.

Then we take Berlin...

It would be hard to ask for anything better. The sun was shining and at last the temperature is summer grade instead of arctic. My tank bag/tail pack arrived the day before departure. I had spent hours running around looking for a tank bag in case it didn’t arrive but hated the strap-on tank bags. Way too messy and complicated and even they wouldn’t work on the RSV.

I was none too pleased to realise that it has a plastic tank. Even more irritating was to discover that the dealer who sold it to the previous owner had done a PDI and not even noticed that the filler cap assembly had no seals. Petrol poured from a filled tank on hard acceleration and, trust me, a burning willie does not make for a fun ride. I will get the proper gaskets but there was no way to get them before my first big ride. So I used a huge O ring from some tractor oil filter. It’s not a perfect fit but it seems to have done the job. I was averaging about 40-42mpg and the first tankful on the ride to Dover averaged over 50mpg. That was at speeds of about 80mph for 90% of the trip. The M25 was flowing nicely and THAT was a miracle akin to turning water into wine. Tanked up and booked in I rolled to the ferry with no passport checks and was ushered onto the Sea France ferry within 5 minutes of arrival by biker-friendly staff. I'm a member of MAG and booked through Sport Travel Solutions (Julie Warnes) after reading her advert and saved quite some money.

Sea France had solid fixings and a clean, modern, spacious ship. I chatted to a few bikers. Some riding to watch MotoGP at Le Mans, two French lads that had just completed a tour of England and Wales and a well-travelled Buell rider and his partner that were touring the Rhine. The English are a bit reserved in answering questions about where they hail from so we laughed when we eventually discovered we were virtually neighbours! Off I wandered amongst 10 million school kids from all over Europe and grabbing a cold beer sat at a table looking at France and listening to Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger on my MP3. The sun was still shining!

I had pre-booked my hotel in Duisburg and agreed to do my best to be there by 8:30pm. I was off the ferry at 5pm and had to do 380Km in 3 1/2 hours.  Not a big problem...until one learned that it was a European bank holiday and that some twit in Antwerp managed to stuff his car into someone else's bloody 'baby on board' 4x4 barge. As my sister says, "I hope he had the courtesy to kill himself". 50Km of 'Stau' and I get to crawl through at 20Km per hour! Once out the other end of the nightmare I hunkered down behind the screen and leathered it. It's not all that pleasurable across Belgium. There are only 40 ton articulated lorries from Poland and Slovenia on their motorways. Solid walls of these behemoths prevent anyone from entering or exiting the motorways!

I finally managed to make the Netherlands (I call it the Never-never-lands on account of the boredom). There I noted that all humans in a car are TOWING. I mean TOWING. Trailers, caravans, fold-down-tents, anything as long as they tow something! I now know that Dutch babies are born with an "anhangerkuplung" (towball) on their arse. There does seem to be a competition between how many bicycles you can attach to the rear of your Volvo and how upright you can sit as you tow your caravan but in general the scheme is simple. Bring Germany to a halt by towing things at a slow pace.

I finally entered Germany at some ungodly speed. Well, it was actually quite modest but on an Aprilia RSV1000 120mph FEELS like 280mph. All my mental calculations to stay awake worked as I rolled past the Duisberg 'Chemie Fabrik stink' and a bit beyond that pong found my hotel. Very nice for the price. As the landlady rushed out for her night out I sauntered to a pub for Frikedelen (hamburgers with nothing but mustard) and a few Weissbier. The people were so friendly it was embarrassing.

Saturday morning I enjoyed a superb german breakfast for old times sake and headed off to see an old friend near Bielefeld. I got there on time to find he had a very clean Yamaha 750 V-twin Super Tenere. We rode to his new house in the forest and then said our goodbyes. 400Km to my daughter's apartment in Berlin. It was 2pm. Could I make it for my estimated 6pm? Try 6:05 mate! And it would have been 5:30pm but for Google maps!

So I managed Berlin at the said time and really liked it. That city needs a few visits to get it all. My daughter Stephanie and her husband Paul took me around on Sunday on a mountain bike with a hatchet for a saddle but even the medeival torture machine couldn't spoil the day. I was most amazed by the number of canals/tributaries/rivers...hence the map link as I remembered just how important rivers are in European history. No river? Your a NOBODY DUDE!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elbe_Einzugsgebiet.png 

 During one of our walks to a really cool Sunday market we saw a baby bird learning to fly. I patted it and as I took it's photo the mother flew down and fed it a grub! The poor little bugger flew into windows and cars but was learning quickly. It reminded me of my riding...crash, try again, crash, try again. The Sunday market was packed and my favourite was the 'beach bar'. Soft sand, cool beer and live music. Check out the photo of the 'Ordungsamt' chap. It means Orderliness Bureau! Only in Germany eh?

Then off to Dresden where I tried to warm up at a petrol station en route and met Peter the Aussie pilot with a 1951 VW Beetle. Dresden was lovely but my stop was just for a few moments to snap some pics. Then on to Prague. I stopped near the border to learn that as a motorcyclist I did not need to buy a Vignette for the motorways for 10Euros. (£2,000 I assume by today's rates - I renamed the GBP as Great British Pesos).                                                                                         The flat, boring roads gave way to increasing hills of serious height and beauty. The roads here are very good as motorways and even the rougher small roads are in FAR better repair than Britains A roads. It's unbelievable to suddenly view England as a third world country (try 4th world). The bike has been perfect but as I entered Prague in rush hour the clutch hydraulics began to play up a wee bit and gave me a few anxious moments as the bike tried to imitate one of those bucking-bull rides at big BBQs. Arriving in rush hour with a grabby clutch and looking for somewhere to stay (cheap) had me a tad stressed for 5 minutes. I spotted some 'apartments' and enquired. Cheap, 10 minutes from the old town and I can cook for myself. Cool. The fact that my Aprilia is right opposite a Police station has me smug as a bug in a rug.

1/2 an hour later I was off with my camera in my now ripped jeans (damn!) as my leathers aired in a spacious room with TV and WiFi. Endless lanes and gorgeous buildings soon had me lost but not worried. I was opposite the Florence Police station so I didn't need to memorize Vrdlakbkyzchy...

After another glorious day it's started to rain so I decided to spend the evening with a few Czech biers and some Moldavian red wine in my cheapo apartment. I'll cook some pasta later. I have a million photos of Prague (A MUST VISIT CITY) and I really loved the views in Dresden too. How beautiful it must have been before Churchill ordered it's destruction (Retaliation for the bombing of Coventry) is beyond imagining. Hence the map (I LOVE maps!) of the Elbe that starts here and flows to Hamburg. (Not McDonalds you duffers! The original city!) By the way, I'm enjoying an ORIGINAL Budweiser (Budvar) beer! Looks like Anhauser-Busch even stole the logo!

I'm not keen on the food here. The tins in the supermarket have that 'eastern' "soviet troops in the trenches" look and seems to be mostly fish of suspicious origin. Smoking is so common that all you hear in adjoining rooms is the splatter of lung-chunks against walls. It's easy to spot eastern slav guys. They look like avatars through the fag smoke...Borat has nothing on my political incorrectness eh?

I was too busy gawking at the architecture to Czech out the Czicks but this city has a lot of nice looking ladies. The problem is - they speak Czech! OMG is this an UGLY language! I have taken photos of some posters and signs. The best was a political poster (one assumes) with the slogan  of Vrzlidgy pidgy! That's as close as I can come. Brzldvky vldsaziky prznatsky says it all. Everything ends in the letter Y. See my blog photos (coming soon to a cinema near you) of Mezy Hot Dogy available at all good petrol stations. One assumes mustard is available too...

Reading your little free hotel map is beyond mortals with an IQ under 4678 but the people like English and it's amazing how many speak it well enough to help. I use the sun to navigate.

Well it looks like I am facing rain for the last 2 1/2 days of my ride but I'll bet I scoot through untouched! hahahaha. My froggtoggs suit kept me warm on the ride south from Berlin so if it keeps me dry tomorrow then all's well. I'll attempt to post a photo album of my trip. I say attempt as these web blogs are horrific to work with.

Hope you are all safe and sound and happy and very jealous...

As we say in Prague... Vczsky mldgvisky brnosknzgky. Go figure.