We rode from the sites of fictional battles to the scenes of real battles in Bosnia and Hersegovina. The city of Sarajevo has been at the center of conflicts in the region throughout the 20th century. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenburg, in Sarajevo was the event that triggered the First World War. It happened just next to the Latin Bridge that crosses the River Milijacka in the heart of the city.








In high school I remember vaguely knowing about the conflict happening in Bosnia, but not having much idea what it was all about. With the breakup of the Republic of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared their independence, plunging them into 3.5 years of war against Serbian and Croatian forces. Sarajevo was under siege from the Serbian forces from 1992-1996. During this time, the only way in or out of the city for people, food, or weapons was a tunnel built beneath the runway of the airport, which was the weakest point in the Serb forces. Think we went and crawled around in the tunnel? You know we did.





As we drove out to the airport, we stopped at an intersection where the taxi driver pointed the spot where a massive white sheet had been tensioned between two 8 story buildings with ropes to try hide people from snipers in the surrounding hills. Nearly everyone here has stories about that time. It sounded pretty rough. No water access, no power, and little food. Those with the skills made weapons by hand. It’s unimaginable thinking of a city persisting like this for 4 years.





We stopped at the Sarajevo Brewery to hoist one in tribute to all the brave souls who weathered the siege and fought to defend their home however they could.





Our next stop was the little town of Mostar, which also played a part in the war when Croat forces invaded and occupied the west bank of the River Neretva that flows through the town. They occupied the huge hill right next to the town and shelled the crap out of the place.





The beautiful footbridge that is a primary tourist attraction today, and during the war was the path to the front lines of the fighting. This is a fantastic BBC documentary about Mostar during the war and some totally heart wrenching stories. Here's what the bridge looked like during the war, from the BBC:





Our taxi driver back in Sarajevo wasn’t optimistic about not seeing another war. “Every forty years or so, we have a war. It’s just the nature of the people here,” he said. After getting to know the place and the people here, I hope he’s wrong.


We crossed back into Croatia leaving the big problems of the past behind and managed to find some small problems of our own. We were along the coast approaching the Palenica National Park when a screw found its way into the rear tire and quickly deflated the tube leaving us squirming along then breaking the bead off the rim.





No problem, I’ll just patch her up. But when I examined the tire, I found that it wouldn’t be quite so easy. Though our rubber was wearing thin I’d counted on making it to Munich, but my Kenda 761 had other ideas. The tire tread had separated from the steel belted carcass all around the tire and the side knobs were cracking off. Looking at the tire it seemed idiotic to go riding off onto the high-speed motorways of Europe on this thing hoping for the best.





So here we were in this tiny town with a shredded tire and I had no idea where to get another one. Oh, and there was a storm on the way. Luckily though, fortune sometimes favors the poorly prepared just as well as the bold. The tire had popped off the bead just 300 meters from the cheapest pension in town, so that I could just heave the fully loaded bike over to the parking lot. They had wifi so I got online and found reports of a dude in Zagreb, in the far north of Croatia who had helped some other bikers that had come this way. I was pretty shocked when he sent me an email back immediately and said that he would check first thing in the morning for tires in Zagreb. By 10 AM he had arranged a 17’’ Metzler Tourance to be delivered to a hotel just 1 km away from where we were holed up. Unbelievable. Now that is some global biker solidarity. Doobie, you’re a legend mate. If your headed through the region, check out his bed and breakfast place in Zagreb, Croatia - it's called Labagola. He's also serves as a contact point for motorcycle repairs and logistics throughout the Balkans from Turkey to the Alps, so if you're in a tight spot, drop Doobie a line. (He's FRgich on the HUBB)






And that was it for our quick blast through the Balkan states. There was natural beauty, famous battlegrounds, war, strife, hope, and another round of helpful strangers. Hard to imagine much more that you you can ask of a motorcycle trip.

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Still looks like a great ride! Kind of bittersweet to know it is coming to and end ; but I know I will re-read many, many of your posts. But, still cannot wait to see what is next. Since one of the destinations I would like to get to on my bucket list is Turkey, would you consider turning around and going back through?

glad you're still digging it Yuma. Bittersweet for me too, for sure. Turkey was surely one of the highlights of the journey. If there is a place to head back to, Turkey is at the top of the list. ..

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

With only a few countries in Europe still ahead, completion of the trip felt so close, but with the Alps still ahead and a road weary bike beneath us, the finish line began to recede from grasp.






I love riding through places with a weird or striking natural landscape and on this stretch of the journey it was the Karst topography of Slovenia that served up the goods. Karst terrains are formed when limestone goes into solution in water moving beneath the surface, creating subterranean caverns and the like.








The stalactites and stalagmites that we roamed between belonged to the Postojna caves. With a row of lights to guide us we walked through an absolutely gaping cavern 115 meters below the surface. The entire cave system is more than 20 km long and in the cold and damp air I found it hard not to think about the millions of tons of earth perched above our heads. I can see how the dwarves get into this scene.


We left the caves, and zipped along on the motorway north. I pressed up over 80 mph a few times passing trucks along the way. And then Dyna Rae stumbled. When I pulled over to assess her condition, she wouldn’t idle. It was as though I’d pushed her too far, taken her steadfastness for granted and she finally spoke up about it. She’d been punished all the way across Africa (twice!), climbing goat trails, rattling down corrugated roads, and sucking diesel dust. She’d done all this with a minimum of fuss and I didn’t even get her some new shoes until the soles peeled right off the ones she was wearing back on the coast of Croatia. And now I wanted her to hurtle down to motorway keeping up with all the Audi A6’s and BMW M series. She wasn’t havin’ it.


As the rain started to trickle down, we pulled off the motorway into a beautiful little town called Bled to sort out the problem. I could think of worse places in the world to be stuck camping in the rain.





Battling the wind and rain on the motorway and then battling Dyna Rae’s issues had worn me down. When we found the campsite, all I could do was hug a tree.








The inlet filter to the carb wasn’t clogged, so the inability to idle pointed clearly to the need to dig into the carb to clear the pilot jet of whatever crap had blown in there when I stirred things up blasting along the motorway. As it turned out, there was plenty of gunk in the bottom of the float bowl. And check out this little mystery nugget I found chilling in the fuel line.





Unfortunately I’d lost my little screwdriver ages ago and never managed to replace it. Jamie came to the rescue, with the perfect sized set of tweezers to remove a pilot jet.





The needle has seen better days. I found a severe notch on one side along with erosion of the plastic spacer on the other side. The way the bike runs is very sensitive to very small changes in these tiny little parts, and it’s a good bet that some of Dyna’s rough running of late can be attributed to what you see in the image below. The needle sits in the middle of a slide that moves up and down by the pressure gradient created in the carb when you open the throttle. With the needle and spacer in this state, the needle is probably sitting cocked sideways and messing up fuel delivery. While I have a spare needle, I don’t have a spare one of those little spacers. Oops.





Taking your bike apart at home is one thing, but on the road is another, especially if you’re a crappy mechanic like I am. When you mess up and break something or strip a bolt, replacement or extraction may not be so easy. I know that I know how to put everything back together, but even so, looking down at my pile of carb in a random sink in Slovenia still inspires just a little bit of anxiety.





With her bits cleaned up and reassembled, Dyna fired right up and idled like a champ. It was time to climb into the Alps and I was happy to have a running bike again. Austria seriously looked like the Sound of Music film the entire way across.








We rode through more than 20 miles of tunnels crossing the Alps and lucked out, only hitting a few showers along the way. We made for Munich, where I’d heard for years about a standing river wave with a crew of local surfers. I’d met German surfers in places like Dakar that had learned to surf only on this river wave.





There’s even a local surf shop, where I got a board and suit to use. Only problem was that I no longer had a board rack on the bike. But I had a plan. Sort of.





We were kind of a scene. I can’t really think of a better way to get pulled over by the police than riding all over downtown Munich like this. We weren’t in Africa any longer where 30 chicken cages loaded onto a 125cc is standard practice, and the Germans are rather fond of their rules. Against all odds, we made it to the Eisbach River wave in central Munich unmolested.





The locals were ripping it.





It looked so damn easy. Just jump on, stand there, and boogie around the thing. After all, I’m a surfer from California. I’ve spent my life surfing waves in the ocean. How hard could this be? Pretty sure I was going to rule it.





I may have been slightly overconfident. As I stepped off the ledge onto the board ready to slip down the wave face and felt every drop of the River Eisbach trying to push me up and over the crest and down the river. Before I knew it I was sucked under, rolled around on the rocky bottom and then floating downstream and swimming for the bank. Alright, I thought, had to get that one over with, now I think I’ve got it. My second wipeout was even more comedic than the first.


You had to be really precise with your position on the wave to stay down in it and not have it suck the nose of the board under. Looking down at the mesmerizing of white swirls and eddies, it was difficult to judge position on the wave face. With every humbling trip down the Eisbach, I imagined an ironic narrative from the crowd of spectators gathered on the bridge above, “Those German surfers rip. The guy from California sure sucks.” After enough bounces on the riverbed, the local guys gave me some tips that helped immensely. Jamie managed to capture a few glorious seconds that actually made it look like I could actually ride the thing.









It was loads of fun when I wasn’t floating downstream cursing. We retired to our campsite and I licked the wounds to ego and flesh.





awwwwwuuhhh!





In Dachau, outside of Munich I finally managed to get our fork seals replaced at the local moto shop and the pre-load increased on the rear shock. We’ve had about no oil in the fork since Albania, which makes the bike ride like total garbage. Our girl’s legs now finally feel back in shape. In Dachau, we also got a chance to take in some history with a visit to the Dachau internment camp from the holocaust era.





The camp was complete with gas champers and crematoriums, a model upon which others were constructed throughout Europe in the Nazi regime's zeal to cleanse society of whomever they deemed unfit to belong. In 1930’s Germany, national socialism consolidated and radicalized a number of political positions – nationalism, imperialism, social Darwinism, and resentment of liberalism. The Nazi movement strove towards a racially pure body, wherein all elements that weakened it or didn’t fit in were eliminated. The Jews were painted as scapegoats for Germany’s economic woes following the First World War and were the focus of racial hatred preached by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As World War II wore on, treatment in the Dachau camp worsened: people starved, were experimented on, and executed on the whim of the brutal SS officers. The words printed on one of the buildings where people were forced to labor day after day reads ‘work brings freedom’ in a mockery of hope for the prisoners.





You certainly can’t accuse the Germans of forgetting their history. They’ve got it all on display and the stark images and words of Dachau leave a lasting impression. The day we were there, the place was filled with school groups come to learn about this terrible episode in history.





We rode north out of Munich and stopping at Nuremberg to camp for the night and paid a visit to the castle. The campsite was packed and no one bothered to ask us to pay, so we didn’t. The party didn’t stop for most of the night at the campsite and we didn’t really understand what the occasion was on a Thursday night until the next morning when a girl drove up to us on the bike, rolled her window down and asked, “You guys know which way to the AC/DC show?”. In that moment, The World War II era Germany couldn’t have seemed further away.








We’re just about to the end of our road in Europe now and enjoying every mile left.

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

loving the journey, it makes night shifts enjoyable

The journey's end lacked any sort of dramatic flourish that we might have imagined along the way. We simply rolled onto a quiet beach and had a look at the ocean. All the better, to help us remember that the moments in the middle, when things can get uncertain, uncomfortable, dangerous, or exciting, are important to appreciate while you’re in them.


We rode north through Germany, once again feeling like a road full-on hazard traveling at mere mortal motorbike speed on the autobahns. We headed for the coast of Belgium, but first stopped in the charming city of Bruges. One of the best preserved cities of the Medieval times in Europe, we had a wander through cobbled streets gawking at cathedrals and the like alongside packs of Chinese and Japanese tourist groups.





We reunited once again with Steven and Sita for our time in Antwerp and they even scored us an empty apartment that belonged to their friend Wim. We camped out in the living room and were stoked to have a dry place to explode all of our stuff. Thanks Wim!





I even got the chance to meet up with Tony again, who I’d last seen in Sierra Leone, when he turned his van around and headed back towards Europe after nearly a month together dodging police in Guinea and Sierra Leone. I finally got to meet his Tenere.





On the coast I learned that if you’re keen enough for a surf, you can even find a wave to ride in Belgium.





I was pretty keen for a surf.





Though the waves were lacking. The Belgians have got the surf vibe nailed down, complete with a replica of the very statue that sits at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, one of my home surf breaks. How’s that for coming full circle, eh?





A year and 8 months ago, the journey began crossing the English Channel to Calais, which sits just south of where we stood on the beach. Since then, it’s been 41,000 miles through 54 countries, riding waves in 24 of them. We got to see wonders of the earth and learned loads about the peoples and pasts of the lands we rode through. Lots of people shared the journey or helped make it happen – so I’ll finish with a few words of thanks.





This dude showed up on the other side of the planet to ride a motorcycle halfway across Africa. It wasn’t pretty, but he made it happen.





It was my trip, and then it was our trip. Now it’s hard to imagine being on the road without my girlfriend Jamie. I get to tell this story in my voice, but you don’t see anything that she hasn’t had a hand in creating. She’s literally been behind me at every turn. When I’m loosing the plot, she keeps it together, and in the low moments she finds a way to laugh right through them. I can’t say that I’ve ever met a girl like her. Thank you Jamie for being my partner in this mad adventure.





They shared their homes, their food, and their waves with us and were friends along the way. Some had very little to give, but shared it anyway. Others appeared out of the darkness to provide help in a jam when the light was fading fast. There are countless friendly faces, not pictured here, mostly local folks who welcomed us with open hearts. If you’ve been following along, you’ve met them too. For me, they’ve been as much a part of the journey as much as the riding, landscapes, and surfing.





Finally, thanks to you folks who came along with us for the ride. Some of you became part of the story when we met out here in the world or you contributed to the project in Sierra Leone. Your words of encouragement have helped spur us forward more than you might guess. As always, enjoy the ride and stay tuned for the next move…

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

New plan. We're taking the long way home. Dig it:

Long Way for a Wave | bugsonmyboard

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Hi Gary,

It was a real pleasure to provide assistance to your adventure.

I see the trip is going on, a nice new route is on the way, we'll watch out for some new installments

Dooby

Still riding that Metzler Tourance that you got out to me in that little village in Croatia.

For any ADV folks travling through or near the Balkans - make sure to hit up Doobie for biker friendly accommodation and parts for stranded bikers. He's a life saver!

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

hey folks, the new thread with the continuing adventure is here:

Long Way for a Wave

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches