Hi there,
to harleydan,
yes, there is still some mad traveller wich use an HD to ride the world.
i went to khardung la on himalaya last year just 3 months after peter and kary forwood; i was the second one in the world...
now i'm plannig to ride across south america, starting from buenos aires about on the end of next january (2009). maybe we could have a meet
down there...
in the meantime have a look on this: www.lungastrada.it , my website
it is in italian, but a lot of pictures are titled in english, more or less...

see ya on the road?????????????????????????

Back to the OP, isn't it a bit of a waste of time making your bike look old and battered, if you're in the developping world it's still likely to look different, and you'll look different, so if you do stumble across someone who'll nick it they'll nick it anyway.

Mind you if it's very different from what's available locally, will it actually have a lot of worth anyway? I mean who'd want a BMW GS1100 when the nearest dealer is 2000 miles away and spares cost a year's wages?

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Who would want a six year old, 100,000 mile C90 clone that's been ridden by a large collection of careless teens intent only on making a few quid. Yoof here abouts stole one! You can't even use the defence it was the pizza they wanted, the kid doing the deliveries had taken the bag out and walked up to one of my neighbours doors. It is possible that the brainless morons didn't work it out of course . It was found the next day out of petrol with the pizza box missing.

Then there are the cretins who stole a mates MZ for the purpose of setting it on fire. Those are IMHO best dealt with using a tow rope fastened to a lamp post ,as while the bike was a near perfect example, the in-sewer-ants say no MZ is worth more than a few hundred quid and that's what they'll pay.

Now, I believe this an oddly British pnenomena and in most of the world (certainly Africa) people perhaps still think hard before stealing. I would therefore worry more about things like GPS, jerry cans, camera's, stoves etc. than the bike itself. I habitually use a chain on the bike's back wheel that in Morocco convinced the locals that England was a very dangerous place indeed. They stated as well as I could understand that there was no risk of anyone breaking my huge chain to take the bike in Morocco :confused1:

I'd get a big chain for the bike and worry more about smaller items.

Andy

There is a product called sheet tack paper that you should be able to buy at hardware stores in Europe. They sell it at Home Depot and Lowes over here. It is a transparent protective plastic product that is used to line the bottom of drawers and prevent utensils from scratching the bottom of the drawer.

I painstakingly covered all the panels on my bike with this product to protect the paint. When I got to Nicaragua I decided that I wanted to tone down the look of my bike more so I covered the plastic material with duct tape. After a couple weeks the duct tape gets old and your bike starts to look like a Chinese bike. This was great for avoiding the Peruvian police who are notorious for pulling foreigners over to extract bribe money. It was not until I removed the plastic in Argentina that I started to have problems with the police pulling me over on my shiny bike.

BTW: Do what you feel is best for your safety on the trip. There will always be guys who will make fun of you for taping up your bike, but half of them don't have the balls to do a trip like this anyway.

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http://www.journeyrider.net Latin America blog (07-8)

Is using military surplus stuff a wise idea? I'd have thought that someone trying not to be noticed, travelling with military-style luggage, would attract a whole lot of unwelcome attention in certain parts of the world! I know that cammo trousers etc are against the law in some countries, maybe looking like Rambo on Tour would be a bad move?

They will know you are a foreigner from a million miles away no matter how hard you try to fit in, but it is still better to try and look like a poor foreigner as opposed to a wealthy one.

That is rediculous how Lonely Planet advises that you can be mistaken for a soldier if you wear camo clothing in Latin America. It is not something I would test out, but they are not going to mistake you for a rebel unless you are roaming through the jungle.

You will not be mistaken for a soldier with military surplus tank bags. There are so many Hollywood stereotypes that you will uncover when you go down there.

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http://www.journeyrider.net Latin America blog (07-8)

OK, I'll take your word for it, but rather you than me! Hollywood stereotypes aside, given the popularity of The Great Satan and its former colonial master-now-lapdog (that's the UK to you), I'll stick to trying to look like a skint Belgian tourist (visits to DRC excepted, of course!)

I had enough of a fright when a taxi driver in Belfast asked a group of us "So, yous'll be squaddies then?" (or words to that effect)
****ing hell no, we most certainly were not, thank you very much matey, but given the fact we all had crew cuts and were carrying/wearing odd surplus stuff (we were tech crew on a rock tour), I could see why he jumped to that conclusion. It might have been just an innocent remark, but my arse was going like a trumpeter's lips!!