Motorbeurs

This weekend will be the largest annual motorcycle event in the Netherlands. The motorbeurs in Utrecht. It actually starts on thursday, so we went yesterday. Hoping to find some of the equipment we will need for our world trip.
But it turned out rather disappointing. There were very few tankbags; and even fewer that suited our needs. Tools we're mainly aimed at workshops and not so much at traveling. And the available clothing didn't meet our requirements or were very expensive. So we ended up buying only a pair of rain pants for Marianne.
We did have a pretty good time though. Met some people. The guys of MotorTrails (http://www.motortrails.nl) provided us with some information about travelling in China and Myanmar (or should we say around). And finally we bumped into Sjaak Lucassen who already did a 5 year journey around the world on a R1 and is now planning to ride the polar ice (http://www.sjaaklucassen.nl/). Sander greeted him a bit too amicably and the poor man probably didn't have a clue who we were. But what the heck...

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Everything must go

In a desperate attempt to get rid of our belongs we just visited a local fleamarket. And although we sold quite some things, we still went home with boxes full of stuff. Mainly books, videos and puzzles.
Not particularly surprising, for our modern digitized society. Who bothers to have cabinets full of books and videos, while you can download those things from the internet and read or watch them on a tablet?
And what kid is going to do an old fashioned jigsaw puzzle, while it has playstation, xbox or wii? Probably the elderly can't even remember what a jigsaw looks like. :)

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Ready to go

Well at least the bikes are. Hmmm, come to think of it not quite...
The stainless steel pannier racks we had manufactured by a local welder; did not fit the bikes and Ton had some serious doubts about their offroad capabilities. So we decided to have him weld a couple of new racks, the next couple of weeks.
Today we finished the bikes themselves however, by installing steelbraided brake lines and some other small modifications. For now we plan to give them a test run, the 16th of march. During this (UGSC) weekend, we will be testing all our equipment.
Our bikes, the MSR Holler tent and hopefully our new pannier racks.

Some pictures of Marianne's bike:

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Transalp vs. R100GS

And we thought spring was almost coming... Boy could we ever be more wrong. Totally not knowing what februari would have in store for us. Friday it started snowing. Forcing Sander to stay at work to avoid traffic jams.
Saturday about 6.30 in the morning we left home. Ice particles were gently floating in the air, reflecting the light of the lampposts. On the radio we heard the lowest temperature in Holland for 27 years was measured pretty close to where we live. Minus 22.8 degrees centigrade. What happened to global warming?
Can't wait to ride our motorbikes and spew some polluting fumes into the atmosphere, just to help mother nature heat up a little. But frankly, riding a motorbike in these conditions would be a bit boneheaded. Besides we still need to finish the full service we started last week.
Over at Pharaobike, Ton and Marianne did some last modifications on her motorbike. And Sander did a full service on his one. According to Sander there are four reasons why an R100GS is better than a Transalp:
1. Engine - Did you ever try to check, let alone adjust the valve clearance of a V-twin engine crammed tightly in a motorcycle frame? This is so much easier on the good old boxer engine. Besides the radiators of the Honda are always in the way, something you won't experience on an airhead. Also removing all four spark plugs on the Alp is a bit cumbersome and must be the reason why usually only the two accessable ones are replaced.
2. Drive Shaft - Not only is a chain greasy and likely to mess up your motorbike and hands, adjusting it is also a painstaking process. And when you got it wrong, it has the potential to break. Chears for the good old drive shaft.
3. Tubeless tires - With a proper tire plugging tool, fixing a tubeless tire is so much easier. So not looking forward to have to fix a flat on the Alp in the blistering Saharan sun.
4. Lack of plastic fairing - Plastic fairing only has the tendency to break and it doesn't even look nice. Won't regret binning it after the first tumble with the Alp.

Just let's hope the Alp will compensate for these shortcomings with it's reliability (gearbox), drivability and fuel economics. Otherwise Sander will really regret selling the Beemer in the first place.

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