Best crash !!!
Out for a blast early one morning in the Sultanate of Oman - early morning beautiful weather, no dependant relatives so I decide on jeans, t-shirt, XTZ750 and a gravel road.
I overcooked it at abour 100km/hr into a corner and slid for ages. Ouch. I waited, bleeding at the side of the road for about an hour when a brand new LandCruiser arrives. It is a local man with several wives and many children - we have slight language difficulties but when he leaves I guess that he will come back. He does, minus the wives, children and all the back seats. Into his new LandCruiser he single handedly lifts my Super Ten which leaks oil everywhere and I leak blood everywhere in the front seat. He is cool with that and very happy to be helping. We drive for a couple of hours when I nearly pass out, before stopping at his cousins for Friday lunch. There despite the crippling heat, flies, loss of blood and enormous pain, the family insist I am treated as a celebrated guest. Lunch takes several hours. Eventually another cousin arrives in a pickup to take me and Super Ten the remaining 300km back to Muscat and my house. Cousin unloads bike, checks with expat neighbours that I am okay and refuses any cash for petrol, time, cleaning the inside of his cousins LandCruiser.
The thing that makes me so sad is that the current politcal climate makes many Europeans suspicious of Arab Muslims - yet any one who has travelled in the region will have similiar stories to tell of enormous friendship, legendary hospitality and kindness that no other European stranger will ever have come close to have showing them.
And there is another story of an Arab who led us out of the Wahiba sands when we where hideously lost before he then walked...walked the 40km back to his house. And thats the truth and another story

Hi Maria
Thats OK ! everyone makes a booboo now and then; mostly they are hidden. Looks like you met "Lonely Rider though"!

Very true, Dick. I met a local on the Masirah Island ferry this week who left his brother's pick-up to join me in my car and show me the way through the Wahiba sands.
Stephan