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Nice distances guys,
surely what your riding must carry some weight too ??? - Joe90 - 450 miles on a c90 gets my vote.....oh the pain the best ive managed is Dorset to Garmisch Partenkirchen - 852m / 1371km on a Dr650 in 24 Hrs with rain ALL the way and tempratures just above freezing - that took a few days to get over..... and Collioure, France - Back home to Dorset on a TTR 250 - 926m / 1491km in under 24 hrs had a short 'power nap' in a rest stop on the ground by the bike for an hour and was woken up by a small French child poking me with a stick at 7am.... |
After a three week holiday (1974 ish) touring around Italy on an 860GT Ducati (cant remember the number of times Italians told us to buy a decent bike like a Honda 750!!), we were on an Autobahn somewhere South of Munich, I remember it was a public holiday weekend as the traffic was really heavy. I throttled up a bit to be met by an over revving engine. A bit of arm waving got us onto the hard shoulder.
"Oh look no chain and look no battery and look no chain guard, and look only half a rear mudguard" I wandered down to the emergency phone, "Mein moto ist kaput at telefon nummer 123" "Und?" "Und ****ing help me" "Ach zo" but it could have been arsehole though. The tow truck turns up, gives us a bill the size of the UK national debt and then radios for a tilt truck, we then get taken off to the local town that has a bike shop, the owner came in at about 7pm on a Sunday and got us a new chain. Ein minor problem - no credit card facility, no bank open and no Deutsch Marks, just a UK cheque book and Eurocheque gurantee card. Write cheques and away we go. No real money left, just enough for two or three tanks and few cups of coffee. We rode at about 75kph from Munich to Calais (about 1100kms in those days) non stop, took turns at sleeping on the pillion, coasted onto the ferry and ran out of fuel. At least we got to eat after cobbling together a few pounds from change. We got talking to a couple of sidecar racers who had a good laugh at us, but did give us a jerry can of fuel to get home on. Ah those were the halcyon days!!!! |
[QUOTE=MountainMan;183997]I was only a couple of minutes behind schedule. Told her that I was sorry for being late, traffic was terrible.[/COLOR]
i really impressed from the story above. i know how bad riding is in Bulgaria and in Turkiye. congrad mate.. my long and horrible ride was from Dover (UK) to Venice (Italy). had a broken rear suspention near Strasburg in France. 2 hours wait for repearing it. and 3 hours in Verona, Italy. I have ridden from L'boro to Dover and was Dover around 9pm. I was a guest of a chap in Dover from hospitalityclub.com. went to bed like 12ish am. there was also some other guests (2 from Germany) just after went to bed, i have realised that i have left my carne, passport, etc all my documents in the paniers and the paniers were not locked. I couldn't go down cause i did not want to disturb them and couldn't sleep becase worrying about the documents. just slept an hour and woke up at 4.30pm to rainy and windy British morning. rode to Dover, cought the ferry. I have tried to sleep but childeren did not let me. arrived to rainy and windy France. got lots of red bull and espresso on the way. Stoped twice for meal in France and a big stop for rear shock near Strasburg. rain has stopped in Switzerland around 12am. I had a nap in Switzerland in a service station in disabled wc (cause they are bigger). tried to dry up my gloves, socks, boots using the hand dryer. spend there almost 2 hours. entered Milan around 9am and realised that i have missed the ferry to Greece which was at 10am. then i was slow on the trotter. then i show a bmw sign on the motorway near verona. entered Verona for bike repairshop. found one honda garage with the help of locals. they said, they don't have bmw rear shock and takes a week to order and get it. spent there almost 3 hours. and finally arrived Venice, a camping place near Marco-Polo airport at around 3pm next day. so, about 1400 km in 32 hours with a broken suspention half of the way. not bad 3 months after having the driving licance on a overloaded single huh?? |
I`ll enter the silly category.
Champion effort Mountain Man.
I rode about 1150km in 12hrs from Namibia to South Africa via Botswana (incl 2 African border crossings), but the difficult part was that I couldn`t use my right hand at all from a large crash a week earlier, and so I wound 8 guage fencing wire around the throttle and handguard to keep the throttle stuck open. And even if I could have been scared enough to try to pull the front brakes they didn`t work yet anyway since when we welded the cracked axle mount back to the forkleg during reparation we mis-aligned it and so the brake pads were not aligned. I had only the rear brake and gears to slam down whenever a wild boar, disorientated African, etc would cross the road. The day was New Years Eve so couldn`t miss the party, which went until 8am... A ´difficult to stay on the road`one was 13hrs from middle Austria to a World Enduro Championship race in Alpine Italy on a Ducati, but it was following 15hrs in the bar which first started with 8hrs drinking with a girl friend before she retired, and then a further 7hr “free bar” lock-in with her friend, the bar owner`s daughter. Only 3 hours sleep between leaving the bar and starting the ride is really not recommended, although I did sober up by sunset and the real twisty stuff. Off road i`ve only done 5500km of dirt in 10 days, but that was Oz. I have a Dutch friend, Jan Heemskerk, who use to ride 850km from near Amsterdam to the south of France every Monday for work and back Friday (lunchtime start and finish for those days) for 9mths because he preferred it over flying. He also rode from Vladivostok to Amsterdam in 24 or so days on a Tiger 900. And through a South African MX riding buddy I met a Capetown guy, Freddi Stafford, who road from Capetown to Sudan/Egypt border, where he was refused entry, and so he rode back to Capetown all in a total of 21 or 22 days! Including 2 days stuck in about 150km of southern Sudan swampland. I saw the photos, and there he could only sleep on top of his stuck bike it was so wet! I bet he still does 400km mountain runs on his R1 at warp speed Sunday mornings before his wife and kids wake up. P.S. Toby, I`m going to be in that area of Peru soon, and it will bug me to try now that there is a time to beat! |
apols to M Python
Right !
I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, , eat a lump of cold poison,extract cod oil from the dustbins outside the chip shop for two stroke oil for me BSA Bantam , work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, ride to Scuntorpe Steelworks on't Bantam and beg for iron fillings ter make a new bike ,and I couldn't afford a saddle - no I had ter make do with a roll of rusty barbwire on't frame , I allus used to ride in't rain 'cos sunshine were reserved for rich folk ,then when we got home, I would have to lick bike clean wi'tongue then our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah." But if you try and tell the young motorcyclists of today , they won't believe you ! |
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and Simon's average speed was 96 Km/h (app 60 mph) for 12 h. is Namibian, Botswanas and S.A roads are that good? |
Kudos to you Mollydog
Thanx Mollydog, but I was 40 then. I ride the sweeper of the groupthese days as I tend to be the elder. That`s OK, my challange now is to keep the rest of the group ALIVE. On this last trip my son got dimensia at 14,000 ft, and took a wrong turn and was taking crazy blind corners at full speed. Because he was on the same bike as me and hundreds of feet ahead of me, I couldnt catch him. Yelling by blasted head off behind him and waving with my free arm (NOT a good idea at that altitude¡). Took me 10 km driving like a madman to catch him.
Your Baja trips sound grueling. I`ve been down there as far as Cononia Guerrero, so I can imagine your Baja to SF ride. Was wondering where the name 'Mollydog' came from..... (Is she? still with you ?) |
Dodger - and tha wa lucky!
I can't compete with the motorbikes, so I wont. But I can say I've twice had to re-locate a truck from Kathmandu to London as fast as possible and one time from Cairo to London. With myself and another driver doing a tag team thing with one sleeping in the back whilst the other drives and only stopping for fuel. It took 12 or 13 days, maybe 14, can't really remember as I lost track of the time. Bear in mind this was in an ex-army Bedford with a 80km/hr top speed. |
I am happy to admit that I am not very tough but credit to my partner.....
In Pakistan we hit the infamous road to DG Khan - after sleep deprivation (thats another story) we were riding through some deep sand when he rode into a pit of soft sand. as he tried to accelerate out the bike lept foward, fish tailed before both he and the bike were airbound. To my horror he landed with a cruch on some rocks with the bike on him. After finally coming round after about 5 mins and me suprisingly calm thinking "this is it" he got up, bent the front forks back into shape with the help of a truck driver and 2m crow bar. The outcome: One cracked helmet, 4 broken ribs, concussion, broken ankle and mangled thumb. He finally went to the hospital 5 weeks later after insisting everything was ok as I dosed him up on painkillers to find on the xray that despite 2 breaks to his ankle, his motorcross boots had acted as a splint and it was healing well. Stupid B**tard!!!!! |
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