I am now very serious about doing a ten year round the world trip. I have being toying with the idea of which bike to use and it's driving me crazy. BMW should have had the right bike by now, but I still think not only is the thing too big and heavy, it is getting too damned complicated. On the other side, a single seems the way to go, but I do prefer the smoothness of a twin. My last trip round Australia back in th 80's on a TT600 was a real bum numb-er, although it was barable.

My idea, and this is for a couple of reasons, is to buy the new Triumph scrambler, and use this as a basis for a round the world bike. Firstly, and this is purely for reason's of sentiment and it's what got Ted Simon around the world, and though I am not trying to do any re-enactment of Jupiters Travels, I'm British, and I'd like to do it on a British bike. Surely the basic Bonnie must be a better bike than Ted's bike was 30 odd years later.

The second thing is the bike just looks so damned good. But I realise there will need to be alot of thought that will need to go into this machine. Apart from the basics of stregthening the bike up and finding it's week points, I have over a year in hand as I want to set off on this trip on my 45th birthday, so over the next 15 months I want to build the ultimate Triumph overland bike, big tank, boxes the lot.

What I'd like to know is (1) does anybody think I'm being a fool using this "Rock n Roll" looking machine as a platform? (2) I reside in Thailand and will have to make trips back to the UK over the next year to get this machine ready. Does anybody know anybody in the UK who could help me build this bike? I want to strengthen the thing up a bit, have a new pannier tank hand made etc, better suspension the lot. As I don't know much about this bike at all and I'm going in a bit blind, I'd appreciate any help or onformation you can give me. Keeping the bike nice and simple but able to carry all my gear plus a Fender Telecaster (electric guitar) is all part of it...

Many thanks, keep on rockin' and get well Rick Parfitt ( Status Quo guitarist and co vocal man who this week has been diagnosed of throat cancer)

Muzz