Back to Reality

After 48 hours of earned relaxation, its time to shift gears into working mode. Tomorrow is my first day at the office and I feel that my thoughts are still floating around more riding. It will be difficult in the coming days to adapt to the containment of the 4 walls of my meeting room and office after spending 21 days roaming freely. As always all good thing must come to an end and so will this Blog with this closing post. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all my readers, who followed us over the course of this trip and in specific my wife and lovely children for supporting me on this trip, I hope you enjoyed this adventure.

Live your Dream and Ride on!

Hellraiser Signing off--------

BMW GS 1150 - The Verdict

This journey was accomplished on a 2001 Beemer, purchased with 38000km from Tristar with a 3 month warrantee. The Beemer is equipped with the famous Boxer Engine designed in 1923 by Max Friz. The Boxer engine tend to produce more noise than inline and V-engines because of valve clatter. The Beemer is smooth throughout the rev range, however vibration can be felt in the handlebars above 120 km/h, the Beemer can cruise happily at 150km/h all day without any signs of fatigue. Consumption was frugal up to 120km/h, wind the throttle open and that gas tank empties too quickly. Best range achieved on a tankful was 330km (grandpa) worst 240km. The range is about right, however make sure you always top it, on long hauls to avoid surprises. Comfort, its not a Goldwing, the modification done to the bike made it an acceptable tourer, although it lacked the juice on straight motorways, it stood its grounds on mountainous roads and will out run any superbike. Longest day in the Saddle 924 km, 14 hours, I was still fine and did not suffer any pains. Handling simply amazing, predictable, loads of feedback, I carved corners at 160km/h. ABS I was always skeptical, now I am sold, I avoided some serious mishaps with the ABS, from now onwards a standard on all my bikes. On the plus side was the heated grips, worked wonders on my frozen fingers in the arid desert cold. No major issues encountered burned floodlight, loose front turn signal nut and a loose Speedo cable, none of which are considered crippling. Overall the GS is a solid performer, its due for a free service courtesy of Tristar.

Bilad Al Sham

Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are considered to fall under the infamous name of Bilad Al-Sham.

The unfortunate common denominator across these countries is the apparent poverty particularly visible in the small villages, I can not describe the state of the inhabitant of these areas, but low standard of living is a common sight, which bring me back to reality, that although we are enjoying ourselves we should consider ourselves very fortunate to be able to embark on such a journey. I was interviewed by a magazine in Jordan and a question was asked on what are the objective of this trip, to be honest, we never had any.
However I am positively impressed that the most common question asked by people all along the trip, why are we doing this? Is it that people sympathized with the hardship of riding a bike across so many countries, or is it because we should have adopted a cause. I have started writing this post prior to meeting Alex Wettstein, maybe next time we should think of adopting a cause, get sponsorship and achieve some sort of humanitarian relief.