Hello everyone,
First of all, just wanted to say that I ran into the HUBB yesterday by chance while looking for bike parts, and was VERY pleasantly surprised with what I found. Good to know I'm not the only "crazy" out there whose every waking moment (or nearly so) is filled with thoughts about what he/she/it will find over the next hill...

Well, and after such a short and inadequate praise of the HUBB, I guess a (not-so-)short introduction on my part is in order, so here it goes:

Spent the last 14 years dreaming of having a bike, and finally got it about 2 months ago (I'm not counting the 2 years of enduroing and trailblazing with my lil' 50cc back in the early-mid 90's). During those years I've gone half-way across the world a few times on a shoestring budget, hitching, walking, buying crappy old cars and driving them till they broke apart (and with no money to repair anything)... the last one might still be lying around somewhere on the Gunbarrel Highway in WA (Oz) after a 3cm-wide hole was blown (inside-out) in the bottom of the engine.

If you see a beat-up cream-n-black '82 Holden Jackaroo there somewhere, that is (well, was) my not-so-trustworthy steed for 30K km.

I've "sneaked" across borders (riding on the back of a drug-smuggler-slash-cannabis-grower's pickup truck with an M60-like-gun mounted on it across the Syrian-Lebanese border - back INto Lebanon - during Israeli bombardments in 2006 comes to mind), ended up 200km from the nearest human being with nothing more than a change of clothes (dirty), my passport and a 2L bottle of water (well, and about 13€ worth of small change)... and in the process had guns of varying sizes from 5 different nationalities (well, gunners, no idea about the guns) pointed at me accompanied lots of screaming and mad gesturing over the years (with no further consequences luckily)... but, probably nothing new to many (or at least a good few) of you here.

And what's probably nothing new either is that I loved every minute of it (although, admittedly, most "oh, crap!"-moments were more enjoyable as an anecdote accompanied by a cold ).

Anyhow, as I mentioned earlier, I ran into the HUBB looking for things for my "new" bike ('96 Dominator in case you were wondering), all part of the early stages of my next big "plan" (which is, as usual, sketchy as best) - namely a Madrid (or wherever I might be at the time) to Beijing (or, well, somewhere in China) trip. I'm aiming for 2010-or-so, and in the meantime lots of "short" trips to North Africa and around South/East Europe.

So, you'll probably get fed up of me in teh coming years with endless questions of the what, where, when, why, how-kind (I figured a long-distance bike trip would probably require a bit more thinking through than getting on the nearest plane/bus/boat/donkey with my passport, a worldwide travel insurance and some cash as I've gotten in the habit of doing).

Well, that's pretty much it, and if any of you is ever near/in Spain (at least within the next year or so), feel free to say hi, ask for a place to crash (Bob knows I've bummed out and been welcomed in the houses of perfect strangers too often to refuse such simple courtesy to anyone), etc.

See you around, safe travels, good luck and sorry for the huge slab of blabbering...

J.

__________________
"Hope for the best - plan for the worst. Then watch it all go pear-shaped and wing it." - Me

Have a nice trip.