Maps, phone, GPS! what could possibly go wrong?

We set off feeling very organised, even the navigation, after all a GPS and a phone with Google Maps with a plan to get a map of Europe on the other side.  Not that our first few days were going to be hard map wise, or at least that is what I thought.

Then we arrived in Antwerp around midday on our first day and it started to rain.   All ready exhausted, I made the, perhaps not so wise decision, to exit the ring road towards Brussels, just to keep going and thinking I could turn on my phone to navigate (only to find that data wasn’t connected for Europe), or check the GPS (but the battery was flat from using it to check our route along the way and to find a campsite earlier as Sofia was struggling to stay awake) and a map of Europe that would be waiting for me at the next services (my expectation being that all highway services in Europe have a road map of Europe) only to find that they only had a Belgium map available.

That would have to do – and so the navigation by traditional map began.   It wasn’t so bad, even if irritating having to stop and check which ment Sofia having to get off the bike every time (keeping her awake) the detail being too big to have just one page showing on the tank bag, until I took a wrong turn and couldn’t stop for about 30mins to check the map!

Thankfully once correct we were not too far from where we were aiming for and around 8pm we finally rolled into a campsite.

The next day didn’t feel like a big navigation issue (we had a solid map now!), the plan was to potter around the area until about midday, getting lots of map practise as well, and then start planning our route to Cologne where we were staying with a good friend we had not seen in many years.    Luckily we stopped where a friendly local made the plan for me right up to her front door, wrote it all down, and helped me to memorise it (there was still no data on the phone – maybe just Belgium?).  It was at this point I discover that Garmin, in their desperation for money, have designed the USB cable to NOT charge the device directly from a power socket! it will however charge through the laptop (phew!) We arrived in good time in Cologne with the GPS winning the day for those final street directions, and still no data on my phone now we were in Germany.

The following day I phoned up my UK provider and it turns out that despite the 10 minute conversation about travelling in Europe for 2 months and increasing my data allowance, the customer service didn’t think that turning on data roaming was necessary!  Now turned, all was well, we had google maps, bluetooth into the helmet, a GPS fully charged.   I plugged in my destination via various stops that had been recommended and we set off in high spirits!

The thing I love about technology navigation is that all you have to do is plug in the destination, set preferences to avoid highways, and boom!  you find yourself on some amazing roads, no stopping and checking, no getting lost, nothing.  ‘Turn left in 200metres, TURN LEFT!’   is all that is needed, and if you take a wrong turn, no problem, it recalculates… no stopping and re mapping the route.

To be honest, I have no idea how people cope on motorbikes with maps.  Yes, I think one should always be handy (though I still hadn’t learnt that lesson yet), but to have all that effort removed is such a joy.   Lots of people have said they see more with a map, but what exactly?   I’m just as likely to take a wrong turn using technology (yes really!)  but at least I don’t have to stop and re plan.  And stopping for me is a mission with Sofia in the back – it has to be a place where it is safe to stop and for her to dismount the bike if she needs to.

So there we were having a wonderful ride through the German country side when the battery on phone started running low, I plugged in the charge adapter only to find it had finally given up the ghost and didn’t work at all, about the same time the phone froze so even my desperate stop at a gas station to plug it in to fast charge enough to get us out of the back roads was pointless.  And they had no maps.  I used the GPS as much as possible but again battery ran dry.

Finally I found a map, limited to the area we were in, and decided to take the fast road to our destination (we needed to start chewing up some mileage now!) picking up a new charge socket for the phone and a European map at a services.  Finally!  all bases were covered just in time to find another awesome road before arriving at the camp site.

The following day was the best ride thus far,  with blue toothed instructions to a destination, no highways, I was finally relaxing and enjoying the journey which took us up the east/west divide of Germany.  When navigation works well, it is fantastic!

I think in conclusion to the debate on what to have, all forms are good to have at the ready.  But for people who prefer to use a map on a motorbike, perhaps their destination is the journey itself?  For me, I like to have a destination and then enjoy the unexpected journey getting there, which the tech navigation takes care of.   We don’t always stay exactly where planned, those decisions happen on the road, ultimately though, direction is important to me, and not having to worry about any of the ‘getting there’ is, for me a load off my mind so I can enjoy the journey so much more.

 

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Bikes! Bikes! Bikes! so many lovely motorbikes!

Having made the decision to sell the Ural I walked away thinking about 650 BMW, v-Strom or a TransAlp – the seller being the seat height.  BMW chalked up the best on the seat hight, whilst the v-Strom best all round, and TransAlp as bullet proof reliable.

I didn’t go any further as would like to sell the Ural first and know my budget, however, I want to do some work on it first and waiting for Mick (our mechanic) to be free so no advertising as yet.  The clock is ticking if we are going to turn it all around before dead line for getting the papers for Russia sorted out and as time passes it is requiring greater levels of optimism!
A stroke of luck over the weekend, however, as a friend says they are hoping to pick up a Bandit 600 (road bike) for peanuts and said I could borrow it for our Europe trip.  There is only one snag though, the owner is a nightmare to contact.  This could be for a number of reasons, one of which it is possible he hasn’t used the bike in such a long time that he can’t find the keys!   I wait hopefully that something will pull through, though the hope fades as the days go by.

In the mean time I’m chatting to Mick about it and he gives me a push to sit on a few bikes to get a better idea of seat heights.  Not something I wanted to do because, naturally, once you start sitting on bikes you are taking your first steps in wanting something that maybe you can’t have…. I hate that!

But he was right though, so today I went down to the local dealer.  Sat on a SV650, which is probably my max height and comparable to a Bandit, a Bonneville which had a horrible custom seat and a Shadow.

Hmmm the Shadow 750, super comfy cruiser with a shaft drive!   Sofia would love it!

So now I’m talking myself into the prospect of buying a bike rather than borrowing one (eeek!  I’ve not sold the Ural yet and the money is already spent!)  I start looking into prices.  Shadows hold their price around the £4000 mark, it really doesn’t matter the mileage or the year.   I ask Mick to keep an eye out and he comes back with a Kawasaki VN800 (chain) for £3000, now we are getting closer to what I can expect price wise.

Cruisers are great comfortable bikes, but if I’m buying, I’m not just buying for Europe, I’m buying for around the world – and I have to think about the cruiser capability.  How would it be on gravel?  or worse – sand?  as a lower bike, there is less visibility to see pot holes and other horrid road hazards that can cause damage or a fall.  Certainly there would be no standing up if in an off-road scenario.

So now I go back to adventure bikes, and double-check the seat heights.  Yes, the BMW of the 650 size is the only bike that comes comfortably into my seat range – there is one for sale right now in Worcestershire for £2400.

I’m driving myself insane.  I wish I had not gone to the bike shop today!

Dead line for getting documents sent off for Russia is 3 weeks!

Whilst it would be great to go to Russia on the Ural, it has to be said that now I’m looking at a different riding experience, I am now wanting it more than the Ural in Russia experience – I have to prepare to be disappointed.

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Update:  An now I have just seen Sofia’s perfect colour – Pink! for £2000  Someone please put a firewall on my PC so I can’t see any more bikes!

 

Kenya – The Low Point

We spent a 4 weeks in Kenya, and almost all of it was in Nairobi!  One would think that this would have been a great time to relax and unwind, but sadly the opposite was true.

When your mode of transport becomes inoperable, it is stressful, and crossing borders in this condition only compounds this, so it was with relief that we arrived at Jungle Junction, on the raving recommendations of travellers, to rest up and have the bike fixed.  Indeed, the bike was worked on, and the primary fault fixed within a number of days, however, it became apparent that more needed to be done, and this is when we hit a wall.

Jungle Junction has a constant flow of overlanders with their various vehicles needing attention.  Sadly however, any bike that requires more that superficial attentions tends to go to the bottom of the priority pile.  And so we waited. I did some work on it and resolved a fault, desperate for progress. And the stress started to build.  The head mechanic, and owner of the establishment, eventually pulled out the stops and worked on a Sunday to resolve the problem.  But it didn’t help my levels of stress to hear the bike being referred to as scrap metal!  Negative attitudes to a job invariably lead to negative results.

The fault was found and resolved.  And despite the sound not being 100%, the machine worked and I wanted to get back on the road.  I don’t remember why we delayed the test ride a couple of days, but finally on the Wednesday we were riding to Nakuru, a good distance to ensure that any further problems would have a chance to show.  The results of the test told me all was not perfect, but the expense both in time an money thus far was too high, and it would be better to start moving South again.

The Saturday morning, I started to get ready to leave, checked the oil and tappets, the latter because after the still recent (in terms of kilometres) rebuild and suspected valve not seating properly.  This is when I discover they had been redone for the compression test and done incorrectly.   This was too much for me! utterly desperate to get going, and risk that damage had been done to a valve!

I freaked in a thousand directions, burst in to tears a few times, and generally looked decidedly unstable for about half an hour as I contacted a new mechanic to check the valves, get them ground in properly which we didn’t have the kit to do in Addis.  Things that had actually been requested and not done, and whilst it still clearly needed doing had decided to stop wasting money waiting – but now was an absolute necessity to do.

It turns out later, in conversation with another waiting motorcyclists, and perhaps as a result of what was going on with me, that the head mechanic was now saying that he was not prepared to take responsibility for taking apart cylinders and doing valves.  Well I wish he had said something like that to me when I arrived!  We would have been on the road 2 weeks sooner and saved a lot of money!

The new mechanic, Rick, did a fantastic job with the valves – and thankfully the unseated valve showed no signs of damage and was once again reseated properly. Although the prognosis was a cylinder head replacement would be needed at the end of the trip as a seat was worn.

A window opened in the clouds and showed us the summit of Kilimanjaro – beautiful!  

Finally we found ourselves back on the road and heading South, with an engine that has never sounded so smooth!  There were a couple of concerns as we headed for the border to Tanzania, but ultimately my fear of spending any more time in Nairobi kepting biting our heels and we kept going, with Rick accepting my panicky phone calls and putting my mind to rest.

We spent one more night in Kenya, and then crossed the border, an exact month to the day that we crossed the border into Kenya.  I have never been so happy to leave a country, and yet so sad that we never really had an opportunity to explore it a little.

We spent our last night at a lodge owned an run the local Masai.  It was a beautiful spot!

A Mazungu in a Mutatu

We have now been in Kenya for almost a month and practically the entire time has been in Nairobi waiting for the the bike to be good to get back on the road. I hope now that in the next few days the wait will be over and we will no longer be mazungus (white skinned) in a mutatu (mini bus public transport)

The inside experience of a mutatu! blurred as it raced over bumpy roads, and packed to the rafters with people – thankfully it was only a short ride to the local shopping centre!

So what has happened in this last month? From an autism perspective, we have met with a couple of charities in Nairobi. The founder of Autism Society of Kenya and principle advocate in Kenyan government, Felicity, met us for lunch and we found out about the remarkable progress that she has made in the last 10 years in terms of getting recognition for Autism in the Education Ministry, and on the day we met, how she received her first email from the Health Ministry acknowledging the need for a committee to be established to identify the needs presented by autism. Felicity has also been involved with outreach programmes but is constantly struggling to find sufficient funding to continue this work.

Knowing the struggle to get any recognition for autism in Africa, it was nothing short of a miracle to hear her story. She puts much of her success down to her previous involvement within government (from a nutrition education standpoint) which has helped her to understand the process, and effectively identify the contacts, follow the right processes, and use her her existing reputation as an expert to ensure that she is heard. Behind all of this however, is her drive an commitment to establishing an effective support system for autism that springs from her grandson’s diagnosis. Indeed, it was only through taking him physically to the registration office to register the charity, that she was able to convince the registrar that autism was real so that the charity would be registered.

I also had the opportunity to meet (albeit briefly) another star on the autism scene in Nairobi, James. Having worked with children with autism in New York, he returned to Kenya committed to helping families affected by autism. Setting up the Autism Support Centre, James works to help parents by bringing them together, providing information, and helping to apply pressure to get more support for their children. I was kindly invited to attend a parents group on a Saturday morning to speak a little about what Sofia and I were doing. I wasn’t the only speaker, as other parents where also invited to speak with the subject of discussion being Autism and Sexuality.

A full house of parents in attendence

It was a wonderful experience and really interesting to hear about the cultural challenges that parents were facing and wonderful to see a couple of the speakers being fathers, as well as a number of fathers in the the audience. On this particular subject line major concerns included sexual abuse of the child due to their increased vulnerability, and accusations of harassment (perhaps hugging strangers, or staring inappropriately) in a country where very few people outside the community have any knowledge or understanding and the law does not take any account of disability when considering a case should it be brought to court. The primary message however was hope, hope for the mothers who’s husbands refused to be involved, hope for parents concerned about the future and how they will cope, hope that despite autism, that into adult life there was every opportunity for their children to experience normality – as one parent put it: I am still hopeful that my son will find love and get married, even if it means his wife will live with us I will be a very happy man.

 

All in all, this time in Nairobi has been about interesting people. We have been staying at a major overland rest stop and mechanic shop, and whilst Sofia has been doing her utmost to make up for lost TV time both past and future, I have been regaled with wonderful travel stories – from the guy who was asked for the police report for his stolen car because he may have stolen it from himself, to the couple who seemed to have more than their fare share of break downs and improvised solutions like using margarine as grease, draining a pond of water because they were stuck in it, and a ranger vehicle running out petrol on them as it was coming to rescue them from the bush! But the time has definitely come to leave, as I become more frustrated with the stagnation and concerned about the finances, and judgements are starting to be made about my lack of control over Sofia’s TV obsession by the longer term punters of the Jungle Junction establishment. Judgemental strangers is part of what it is to be a parent of autism, as few people take the time to find out more about why things might be the way they are and even less interested to accept autism as a valid reason to any behaviour that they personally disapprove of. Yes I definitely feel it is time to go! 😀

Taking the carburettors apart and fixing the issue of petrol flooding into the cylinders

Please donate to help us raise awareness from autism – with the cost of fixes to the bike we are now very low on funds, so please donate even a couple of dollars and it will see us getting a few extra kilometres down the road – http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charity-web/charity/finalCharityHomepage.action?charityId=1005498

Stuck on the Side of the Road – Again!

Well what can I say, it seems almost repetitive to say we were stuck on the side of the road, but there we were, making a run for the border with a day to spare, and we lost all power.  First I thought it we had run out of fuel, but topping it up, it was clear that it wasn’t.  Then I thought is was compression, and discovered one of the cylinders was full of fuel.

Whilst I suspected all wasn’t well with the bike, I really believed we would make it to the border and didn’t top up the phone card and couldn’t even contact the mechanic to see what else I could do. So every vehicle that passed, I flagged down and asked for a tow to the border, but none were going that far, so the best option was to return to Yebello.  It eventually turned out to be the French tourists in their 4×4 with guide and driver who passed us on the road earlier, who we stopped to have a chat with, who had passed us again and were now on their way back to Yabello for the night, who towed our sorry bike to a place where a truck would be much easier to find should we need one to get to the border.

We were being well looked after by 4 local boys who helped flag down cars etc to get us a tow – and NGO that stopped was concerned about out location, but to be honest we were always met helpfulness.  Whilst I wasn’t keen to linger, I didn’t feel in any danger either.

Armed with phone credit, I got in touch with Mick our mechanic, who instructed me to clean carbs thoroughly, and check the timing device.  Carbs cleaned just as it got dark, and no improvement in the bike. The next morning, I checked the interrupter and that seemed fine too.  So without further consultation, I arranged a truck.  Getting across the border was a higher priority now.

Truck found, price agreed, I thought we would be on road to Kenya, but 3 hours later, we found ourselves outside the house of the local transport official where her mother was persuaded to allow the driver to complete the necessary documents and sign it in her absence.  The legality obviously questionable, but when you in a hurry, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Searching the back streets of Yabello trying to find the transport officer who wasn’t answering her phone!

Finally we were on the road to Moyales with Ethiopian folk music quietly playing in the back ground, whilst I tried to ignore the vulnerability of the situation we were in terms of crossing the border handicapped by a bike that didn’t work.

Yay! we are in Kenya.  The photo doesn’t show it but by this point of travelling 5 days of which two days off road and breaking down and trucking, Sofia’s last t-shirt looked like it had been washed in a dried out river as did all her others!   I wasn’t actually able to get washing done until Nairobi!  

As soon as we arrived, with 2 hours to spare, the haggling commenced on how much for a bunch of guys to get the bike off the truck and local fixer/guide/helper/money changer extraordinaire made himself known and pointed me in all the right directions to documents stamped, fingerprints taken and photos logged.  Surprisingly, Ethiopia customs and immigration processed us quickly, and by 4.30pm I was encouraging the bike pushers to push harder to get the bike up the hill to the Kenyan customs and immigration.

Parked out side the police station right by the boarder gate where I worked on the bike for a day.  The policemen where really nice and kinda took me under their wing a bit, making sure I got a decent mechanic, wasn’t over charged, and shooed away people if the crown got too big.

Finally we were in Kenya, and a feeling of safe in terms of visas!  The next day, I worked on the bike, still on the side of the road.  I sent the tank off to be cleaned, double/triple cleaned the carbs, and changed the oil yet again.  So back to the timer, and found that it had moved about half a cm.  Right on the border of Kenya and Ethiopia as not the place to find solutions, and despite the best efforts of the local mechanic, he clearly didn’t have tools or the right experience, and so another truck was arranged and it was time to go the Jungle Junction in Nairobi where a good mechanic and a great location beckoned us.

Crossing the Equator on our way down to Nairobi – in the back ground is the truck carrying Sofia ( who was tired and sleepy and not impressed with the occasion!) and the bike.