Hi All,
Hope I'm forum relevant with this hint/tip!

I live in Ireland and have done many trips to Europe and into Russia. This year for example I rode to Corsica, Sardinia and the Alps and took my 18yr old son as pillion.

The problem is this...
In order to get to those places I first needed to ride 3 hard days to Nice and spend lots of money on ferries, fuel, road tolls, food and accomodation. Then do the same in reverse to get home! I figure we put in one solid week roundtrip just getting to those regions and back and with all the above associated expence, not to mention the time off work. I wondering how to beat this problem and its cost.

I came near to beating it last year. I rode from Ireland to UK, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweeden, Norway (Nordkapp), Murmansk and Finland (Helsinki). For me the return home from Helsinki was going to be an expensive drag that I didnt really want to do covering roads that I had already been on. So, I had a friend fly into Helsinki and I flew home for €30! He was really pleased with the idea or riding my bike home and seeing all the Baltic states etc whilst not having to ride round trip to get there. We both saved a lot of money.

My biking buddies and I looked at the notion of putting a motorcycle into mainland Europe. Most of our riding is done there. For example if the bike was dropped in Paris someone flys to Paris and rides it to wherever they want, say Milan and then fly home. Next person flys to Milan and might ride it for example to Madrid, then fly home etc. Maybe we could create a booking list detailing dates and where you will make the drop as this way it allows future participants to plan dates and destinations.

It raises lots of questions...
Would it be open to anybody in the form of a business or maybe a small group of ten people who have each thrown in €500 to purchase a bike costing €5,000.
One bike type wont suit all
How do you manage luggage
Where will the bike be stored
How will the bike be maintained
What happens in the case of breakdown
What happens when people fail to adhere to the agreed requirements
etc,
etc,

But if it did work then for example I could fly to Milan for €50 ride for a week to Madrid and fly home for €50. With one trip I have more than saved my initial investment of €500.

Any thoughts? Maybe its mad! Any suggestions to refine the idea to make it workable?

Declan

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About the only way I could imagine something like this would work in practice would be for someone to set up some sort of company that owns the bike, then people pay a membership fee that would entitle them to use the bike for a fixed amount of time per year, more if it was not being used. That way the company would be responsible for servicing etc.

The two big problems (I would guess) would be storage when not in use, especially if it's been ridden to some far (ish) away city, and also insurance for the people riding it. The insurance issue you could work round, but the storage would be a more substantial problem.

Great idea. I like your thinking.
There's nothing mad about the idea, it would just take a fair bit of logistical effort to get it set up.

I think it could work but only between mates who have a fair amount of trust in each other. I cant see it working as a buisness - they have motorcycle hire already, no?

You could try getting in contact with the HUBB communities in a few countries to see if you could find somewhere to store the bike. Maybe someone has a barn or big garage. I imagine a small fee would help things along

Luggage - Buy a bike with panniers already on it and leave the panniers on permanently. Each person knows how much space is available and takes a pannier liner bag with him on the plane.

Maintainence: First person does a week (or whatever period) and drops the bike off at a garage for service. Next person comes along a week later, pays for the service and rides bike away.

You could have a bank account set up with a shared kitty for all to contribute. That way if there is a breakdown and one has to pay for recovery and repair, the cost would be covered by the kitty. Probably unfair for the one unlucky sod to pay for repairs when something happens to go wrong.

Good luck to you

Thanks Garmei, some great ideas there that enhance the overall idea, like the storage by a HU community and I really like your idea of the pannier lining bags (which may even qualify as carry on luggage on an aircraft thus reducing the air fare). And your service/breakdown suggestions are interesting.

I service my own bike and perhaps it could be schedueled in the "bookings" for a return home journey for major servicing during. This could be during a winter period. Oil/tyres changes can be done anywhere. People could report into an ongoing fault/snag log so we know what to expect when the bike returns home for major servicing. The costs of this could be taken out of a kitty as you suggest.

Regarding on road breakdowns I feel that parts could come out of the same kitty as they would have to on servicing but the user at the time takes the hit on recovery services as some people are happy to use recovery services whilst others are more inventive on relying on local help to get them out of a hole.

I think as a business it could be a bit messy, maybe best to confine it to mates first and see how that goes, if it doesn't work there it'll never work in a full business!

Keep the ideas coming...

Declan

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