A monster motorcycle ready to crawl over the Alps.

"Monsterkuh" is what I was told it was called, German for Monster Cow. A BMW R1100 "DESIERTO" model from the TOURATECH Company is what it was. A giant dual-purpose 1100 cc BMW motorcycle with enough grunt to pull stumps. TOURATECH then hung everything they make and sell from it to include aluminum panniers, tail rack bag, fairing, mudguards, and a huge 41 liter (nearly 10 gallon) gas tank. Then they added a GPS, rally computer and road book holder. For added measure they stuck on hand protectors, raised handlebars, ceramic clutch, sport seat, steel braided brake lines, frame and engine protectors, Ohlin shocks, headlight covers and a set of off-road tires. I was set to grunt myself through the worst sand and mud in the world.

From back of bike

The DESIERTO BMW was a strange monster for the roads across Europe to Turkey, most of which are high-speed autobahns. I was on some of the best roads in the world atop a motorcycle modified to eat some of the worst, like the Sahara. Surprisingly, the Monster Cow was udderly happy munching autobahns. There was a sticker next to the speedometer which warned not to exceed 160 kilometers per hour, which the motorcycle could well do, but the tires not.

I picked the wrong time of the year for this leg of my third trip around the world. Snow and sleet met me everywhere, a huge shock from the jungles of Brazil where I had been sweating with an AMAZONAS only a week before.

Streaking across Germany I hit a roadblock thrown in front of me by a challenge offered up from a friend in Bavaria. The offer was for a Wolpertinger hunting expedition. I had hunted the Big Foot in North America on a 1947 Indian Chief motorcycle, Amazons on an AMAZONAS motorcycle in South America. I thought "Why not hunt Wolpertingers with a Monsterkuh in Europe?" Into the cold and wet Alps I rode the huge BMW. If Wolpertingers could be had on a motorcycle, I had the one to have them.

The Wolpertinger has some quirks. Because it has feathers, and sometimes feet like a duck, it can live both in the ground and in the trees. It also comes out only at night, like the Kiwis I had hunted in New Zealand. Some other strange factors thrown in were they only live in the State of Bavaria, (specifically the Bavarian Alps), the best time to hunt them is on the night of a full moon (which it was) and big breasts were their weakness. It seems the Wolpertinger falls asleep when it sees a set of exposed, big breasts. Once it falls asleep, the hunter only has to throw a bag over it and the celebration begins.

I liked the idea of hunting with this kind of bait. As Bavaria is a home for both big breasts and Wolpertingers, all I had to do was match them up and I would have a Wolpertinger in the bag. I knew where I could find some bait, so all I had to do was camp in an area known for Wolpertingers, wait for the full moon to rise, and then, when I heard one, show it the bait and stuff it in my rucksack. The little beast would be bagged.

Bagged is how I had to get myself before I could stop the suffering from camping in the cold, wet, November snow of the Bavarian Alps. Getting bagged is not hard in this part of the world, and usually starts with some Bavarian brew. This anti-freeze also helped keep my bait fresh, which was starting to get ugly and shrivel from the cold.

Wolpertingers are smart, no one had told me that. I suspect that is why they are so hard to catch. Somewhere in the middle of the night a glass of champagne appeared next to my sleeping bag and a slight tug of my hair woke me. I thought the champagne was from my bait, so I downed it for additional weather protection. Some minutes later there was another tug and down went a second glass. By the time I felt the third tug I realized I was super-bagged and not the beast I was hunting, so I grabbed for the tugger and got one hand on a bunch of feathers. My second hand grabbed a horn and a good "Montana Saturday night drunken brawl in the mud" was on.

I am a Crow Indian, and we are pretty good at catching eagles with our bare hands, but a bagged Crow is no match for a slippery Bavarian beast. No one had told me Wolpertingers bite, and this one had a bite like a set of Vice Grips and bit often. Flopping around in the wet snow and leaves, I was screaming from getting bitten and grunting from the hammering in my head thanks to the beer and champagne. Not helping me at all was my bait, whose swelling head was pulled deep inside a sleeping bag.

The Wolpertinger beast bested me. The next day I had welts on my hands, arms and face that looked like Tiger Woods had used them for practicing his chip shots with a three iron. My sleeping bag was soaked, the Monsterkuh had been knocked over, and my bait was in a very bad mood. It seems the Wolpertinger had also used the champagne trick on my bait! The only good thing that came from the night was a photograph taken with a flash after I had surrendered to the little demon.

For those who doubt there is truth blowing in the winds, the above photo is proof that the Wolpertinger exists.

As cold and wet as the north of Europe was, I decided to ride south for some sun. With the war over in Serbia and Croatia, I thought I could cut across to Turkey through the top of Greece. About ten years ago I had ridden this area on another BMW motorcycle and was used as a moving target by Croatian artillery, but this time things were quiet, maybe from the halt of the war, or maybe from the cold and wet.

My first border check in all of Europe was leaving Austria and entering Slovenia. The Austrians wanted to check the papers on the motorcycle, possibly to see if it was stolen. The Slovenes wanted to inspect the motorcycle. In Slovenia the BMW company sells less than 200 motorcycles per year and the tricked-out R1100 GS was something not seen in Slovenia, except in magazines. The border guys were bike nuts, so we spent about 20 minutes talking about my motorcycle and Harley-Davidsons. In Slovenia, like other places in the world, I am often asked if I "have a Harley back home in America" and people get a questioning look on their face when I answer, "Yes, I had one, once."

Entering Slovenia

Slovenia is not part of the European Union, so their border is still up. Throughout the rest of Europe, except for Switzerland, I encountered no borders. Switzerland decided not to join the EU, maybe wisely, as the Euro (the European Union's new currency) is slipping against the dollar. My guess is the Swiss bankers had a lot to say about whether or not their country would join the EU.

Slovenia is a nice country. I used to pass through it quickly on my way to the Yugoslavian Motorcycle Grand Prix races, but this time I spent some quiet days. A small country (2 million people), Slovenia has a little of the best of Europe; some nice Alps, good roads, a bit of the Mediterranean Sea, fine wines, tasty food and friendly people. I was also happy to find Slovenia's only motorcycle museum.

Finding the museum was an accident. On a small road, in the rain, I noticed a sign that read "Muzej Motociklov." At the time my Slovene words numbered about 20 (beer, toilet, Hello, thank you, yes, no.) and these two words were not in that count. But the rain and hope for a dry place might have forced my vocabulary to expand to 22 words. Or maybe it was those vortexes I had visited in Brazil and Arizona while riding an Indian Motorcycle and the AMAZONAS (first built around an Indian frame) on the earlier legs of this tour of the world. Whatever it was I took a side road into the tiny village of Vransko and found a candy-store selling chocolate motorcycles, an Indian Motorcycle engine in a motorcycle tavern spewing beer and a museum with a nice collection of nearly 100 motorcycles.

Slovenia has a rich history for motorcycles. The Tomos motorcycle, a GP winner in the 50cc class, was manufactured in Slovenia. And Ptuj, Slovenia's oldest city, was the home of Ganez Puch, the engineer who created the Puch motorcycle, manufactured in Austria and sold by the Sears Company in the USA as the Allstate.

The Motorcycle Museum of Vransko has been open for three years. The owner is an Indian Motorcycle owner and surprisingly he and I had both been to the same European Indian Motorcycle Meeting in Switzerland several years ago. He also had in his museum several Indian motorcycles and knew of the book I had written about Indian Motorcycles. It is either a small world as they say, or there is something to this "cosmos" stuff they market and spout in Sedona, Arizona.

The local antique motorcycle owners formed a union with antique car owners (remember, Slovenia is small) and organized a club. In 2002 (third week in July) they will host the European Indian Motorcycle Meeting. They are already making interesting plans. Pete Grom, the owner of the museum, hopes to have restored by then his 1936 PMZ, a Russian motorcycle which used a copied (the Russians copied a lot of things) 750 cc Indian engine and transmission stuffed inside a copied 1930 BMW frame. (Again, for the motor-heads reading this-see my previous reports-this continues an "Indian" thread here with Indian motorcycles, but nothing that I planned before I left on this journey.) I hope to see that PMZ motorcycle restored and running in 2002.

Indian brass plate on 37 Indian

Indians are everywhere. If you do not believe me, ask General Custer. In Slovenia I found a 1937 four-cylinder model, along with several other Indians. I felt like there was a little bit of Springfield, Massachusetts, (home of the Indian Motocycle Company) in far-away Slovenia.

The BMW R1100 GS was an ideal way to claw my way over the snow-covered autobahns of the European continent. It was built in Europe; thus sticking with my plan of riding around the world, using a motorcycle manufactured on the continent I am crossing. It was able to chew up long stretches of high-speed pavement while at the same time get me off-road and into the woods of places like Bavaria and the Black Forest. I had used a BMW R1100 GS several times before, and felt they were too heavy for my kind of riding, but the one from the TOURATECH Company (www.touratech.de) was different. They must have known I was coming because they modified a R1100 GS to fit my needs. I never did figure out all the wired gizmos on the handlebars but assume that when I make my motorcycle ride to the moon, the TOURATECH electronic black boxes will help get me there.

The next leg of my global ride will find me chasing Yetis in the Himalayas with a Enfield Bullet 500 cc motorcycle manufactured in India [an Indian in India on an Indian Enfield?]. The design of the Enfield comes from the 1960's, as does some of the questionable engineering. It is a small, slow motorcycle, with a top-speed of 70 miles per hour. A crazed motorcycle friend has suggested I carry it to the top of Mt. Everest, then ride it down the North Face, thereby setting a Guinness Record as the first person to ride a motorcycle, without a paid guide, in China. To this I said "Foolishness, sheer foolishness. Can't be done. Hulk Hogan could not do it, Slim Williams could not do it. Even Steven Spielberg could not figure out a way to get it done." And then I thought, "I wonder where I can find this guy named Tenzing?")