The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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The United States of America is not one country but many. I set off on my little Honda XL250 to explore some of them…

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United States of America

We were in brilliant sunlight at 30,000 feet as the Laker DC10 started its descent into John F. Kennedy Airport. Fifteen minutes later, on the ground, it was night – darkness broken only by the beacon of the dozens of aircraft milling around waiting to park or take off. I found myself hoping fervently that this was not going to be an omen for my long-awaited tour of the US. Half an hour later my fears were firming up.

The immigration lines in the arrivals lounge were long, slow and staffed by people obviously bored with their job of keeping America safe for democracy. I got short shrift – two months to be precise – when I tried to get an entry permit to take me up to the date on my onward ticket – all of three weeks later than the two months.

Retrieving the bike from customs in America and discovering someone had dropped a crate on it

But – America, land of contrasts! – things were quite different at Customs. Not only did the officer disdain to search my luggage, but as soon as he noticed that I was a motorcyclist – easily deduced from the crash helmet under my arm – he engaged me in a lengthy and interesting discussion of bike usage in the US. He then closed his station and went off to find out the easiest and cheapest way in which I might recover my bike, which had come by airfreight, out of bond.

There are two types of Americans, I have come to realise. Those who can’t do too much for you, and those who can’t do anything for you.

Ten minutes later, equipped with detailed – though unfortunately wrong – information, as well as the address and phone number of my first American friend, I boarded the bus into Gotham City. For $5 the airport bus was good value.

You get to goggle out at the fascinating and scary concrete ribbons of the freeways, contemplate the towering housing projects and quickly summarise all the warnings about New York – while you’re still safe. As soon as you step out of the bus at the Lower East Side Bus Terminal you’re on your own. At 1.00am, for me, this seemed about on a par with crossing Parramatta Road (Sydney’s main traffic artery) at 5.00pm on a Friday afternoon. Death lurked everywhere.

I didn’t have any American change, so one of the taxi drivers – a sizeable black person – lent me a dime to ring the Youth Hostel. They didn’t answer, so I decided to go ‘round and wake them up. The loan of ten cents had put me so much in the moral debt of my driver that I didn’t feel able to protest his charge of $8.50 for ten city blocks…

He did me a favour by pointing out that I was in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Manhattan, and to watch out. If anyone tried to ‘put trouble on me’, he suggested I keep walking. I amended that to ‘running’ and thanked him.

The hostel was closed for the night, of course, but I got a room in the hotel next door, as well as a much appreciated snack in the hotel’s all night coffee shop. The bellboy pointed out that the TV would operate only if the bathroom light was switched on; I gave him a dollar and fell into bed. I am a creature of sunshine.

The next morning, with temperatures climbing towards the century mark they reached every day while I was in New York, I felt immeasurably better and more in control. I checked in at the hostel, stowed my baggage and went out for a walk. As I left the hostel, my eye was caught by the unmistakable shape of the Empire State Building, visible through a gap between some other buildings across the road. I stopped and admired it for a moment, then turned and began to walk on.

‘Hey, buddy.’ A well-dressed black bloke standing in a doorway marked ‘NY Community College’ called me over. ‘Buddy, I been workin’ here for 20 years. Ever’ now and then, folk stop where you did an’ look up in the air. What you lookin’ at?’ I motioned for him to come back a few steps with me, to where he could see the Empire State, and pointed.

‘The Empire State?’ he said. ‘Oh, yeah, sure. The Empire State. Yeah. Never thought o’ that…’ I’m still not sure if he was taking the piss. Well, actually I am.

It was beginning to get muggy, even early in the morning, and I turned up towards Central Park. It’s a blast walking through New York. I doubt that there’s a more interesting place on Earth. And it’s all the people; the diversity, the style, the craziness. In Central Park, this being summer, it was all hanging out.

I have never seen so many scantily covered ample breasts and buttocks in my life—and most of them on wheels, too. Roller skates everywhere, people with radios clamped to their heads bopping, rolling, even dancing… and rippling – the males with muscles, the females mainly with, er… other tissue.

The remainder of those couple of days is a bit of a blur. There was Greenwich Village, with the frisbee experts working out in Washington Square; the great food in the delis; the spectacular comics pages the Sunday papers serve up; the sight of miles and miles of smog from the top of the Empire State; Waylon Jennings at the Lone Star for $1 cover charge; and the terrible beer.

Stopped outside a United States Post Office

I approached the beer scientifically. One evening, I bought one can each of six different beers and retreated to the room I shared with a swarthy Frenchman and two melancholy Danes. As I listened to tales of touring the US and Canada by BMW – this from the Frenchman, who’d shipped his bike over and spent eight weeks buzzing around – I sampled the brews.

They were all awful, without exception. Pale, flavourless and nearly non-alcoholic, they all tasted the same. Bad sign.

One of the Danes explained his melancholia, too. He had, it seemed, been mugged. His papers, money and travellers’ cheques had been taken – in Miami, of all places. I’d always thought of Miami as a sort of geriatric anteroom to a morgue, but it seemed street crime was a problem. For the Dane, anyway. His consulate, fortunately, had come to the rescue. They had replaced his passport on the spot and had lent him some money.

With the mugging story still fresh in my mind, I descended into the subways to make my way out to suburban Jamaica to pick up the freight papers for the bike. Graffiti on the NY trains is of a very high standard, and the trains themselves are occasionally even air-conditioned.

Papers in hand, I presented myself at the freight depot. It seemed that some mud had been noticed under the guards on the bike, so the Department of Agriculture man had to be called. Foreign mud is a no-no. I sat around, gasping in the heat, for an hour or so until he came. After one look, he decided that he wasn’t worried. Ah, mud shmud.

I was then free to deal with the lady from Customs, who suspected everyone and everything— she gave me a hard time because my bike registration papers had expired, but finally relented. She did not mention insurance, fortunately.

So I had the bike back – rather bent, since someone had dropped a crate on it, but still my bike. I had to straighten the shock absorbers with a crowbar, but the rest of it wasn’t too bad and went back together quite well. It wouldn’t start, though; throwing away the contents of the float bowl and pushing finally did the trick. My grateful thanks to the guys at Seaboard World, who donated a gallon of petrol and then pushed. I couldn’t have done it without ya.

My first encounter with the freeway system, on the way back into Manhattan, wasn’t reassuring. The signs were so cryptic. What do I know from 72nd Street? Signposting is all very local, unless you’ve memorised the route numbers. No denying that the freeways get you around at a great rate of knots, though.

I was back at the hostel before I knew it. I fitted my lovely new Oxford Fairings windscreen out in the street, and attracted all sorts of loonies. One of them insisted on telling me the long, dreary and predictable story of the disintegration of his Gold Star BSA.

There are British bikes slowly corroding and dying all over the world. I know this because I have been told many times.

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Tch tch, that’s enough slinging off at British bikes. Let’s head out for New England, instead, and enjoy summer in the forest.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Motorcycle Touring

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Don’t trust the Hungarians, according to the Romanians. And vice versa. Just as well they’re all good people.

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The Eastern Bloc, and back to England

The customs man at the Bulgarian border asked us for third-party insurance, which we no longer had. When I told him this, he rolled his eyes heavenwards and waved us through – he couldn’t be bothered getting the forms out.

Bulgarian roads were pretty nasty, mostly cobble stoned and wavier than the Bay of Biscay in a gale. Someone once said that the potholes were the size of small planets. Big moons, maybe. Fields were being ploughed by small tractors with treads instead of wheels, possibly lightly converted tanks.

We felt our way gingerly through the forested hills to Veliko Tarnovo. The campsite there turned out to be the most expensive of the trip, but at least it had plenty of hot water for the showers, although I cannot for the life of me imagine why the taps were electrified…

Perhaps some of the cost of the site was an entertainment charge. We were certainly entertained, by singing and revelry, until about 2.30am. It was a party of East Germans who were no doubt glad to be away from the Stasi. We in our turn were glad to get out of Bulgaria after our extensive stay of 24 hours – that was all the time our visa gave us.

Accommodation could at times be expensive, but a hot shower was always appreciated

Good thing, too. Among other things, the roads had finally done what even the Yugoslav ones had not managed— they had broken the bike’s luggage rack.

Romanian Customs must have had us pegged as International Drug Runners. They searched everything on and off the bike, even though their drug-sniffing dog didn’t show the slightest interest in us.

The highlight of the ceremony came when one of the male customs officers found a suspicious small cardboard box filled with what looked like miniature white sticks of explosive, with fuse attached. Neither of us spoke Romanian, and Annie finally got through with a bit of French.

“Pour Madame,” she said. The customs officer looked at the box of tampons, went bright red and couldn’t give them back quickly enough.

We then had to change $10 per day of our visit into the local currency and should also, apparently, have bought petrol coupons. Nobody told us anything about them, so we rode blithely off. As it turned out, only one petrol station asked for them, and they filled our tank anyway when we shrugged our shoulders.

The roads were noticeably better than the ones in Bulgaria, and we made it to Bucharest for lunch. We ate at the Carul cu Bere, a restaurant in an 18th-century inn. The food here was superb, beer came in great stoneware steins and was delicious, and it was all quite cheap.

I know the people were being oppressed by the government, but everyone we saw seemed cheerful enough – even the ones eating the awful greasy ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s, Romania is yours for the taking.

It was frustrating trying to find somewhere to camp. Most of the sites listed in the official booklet (another damned official booklet) were either closed or had disappeared. One was even closed for stocktaking!

“One tree, check. Grass, sort of, 80 square metres, check. Pile of gravel, one of. Where’s the pile of gravel, Karoly?”

When we finally found a site the bike immediately attracted a crowd of truck drivers. While they were admiring the twin disc brakes up front, one drew me aside. He told me that he was Hungarian, and to be sure to lock everything up. The Romanians, it seemed, were all thieves.

Official channels were not reliable in those days when it came to which camp sites were open

Marvelous, I thought. Later a Romanian told me that Hungarians would sell their grandmothers for a packet of cigarettes. Why do neighbours always delight in blackening each other’s names?

This slanderous tendency isn’t restricted to morals. When I made a disparaging remark about the Bulgarian roads, all the Romanians were tickled. One of them pointed to the dirt track we were on and suggested that that was what the Bulgarian roads were like. I said no, worse, and he pointed to the ploughed field next to the campsite. When I nodded, they roared with laughter and then bought us beer.

We had a race with a diesel locomotive up into the Transylvanian Alps and lost when we came to a red light. It was unfair – there was no red light for the train. These mountains are beautiful and full of old chateaux and grand hotels from the days before Communism. Most of them had been turned into workers’ holiday hostels – one improvement, anyway. We saw no signs of direct bloodsucking.

Somewhere in the north of Romania we lost the rubber plug out of the cam chain tensioner. I manufactured a new one from rolled-up adhesive tape and wired it into place – it seemed to do the job very nicely. We were once again trying to find a replacement gas bottle, and in Oradea near the Hungarian border finally found a gas depot.

It was closed, but there were some people outside and one of them took our empty bottle, passed it through the fence to somebody inside and got a new one back for us, free of charge. Nice people everywhere, or maybe they just enjoy sticking a thumb into Authority’s eye.

The locals proved friendly everywhere we went, although the rivalry between nations was obvious

The border with Hungary was easy, except that once again we had trouble changing unwanted money back. It’s against the law to take Romanian money out of the country but they wouldn’t give us anything else, so we had to spend our remaining cash on the el cheapo souvenir wooden plates with pokerwork decorations which were the only things for sale. Could this have been deliberate?

The roads to Budapest were smooth and straight and almost unbelievably flat. With conservative and polite drivers as well, Hungary is one of the most pleasant countries in Europe to ride in, although things weren’t quite so easy in Budapest.

Annie checked with the Tourist Bureau and they told her that the campsite was closed, which seemed a bit unlikely to us. We rode out there just to make sure and lo! not only was it open, but it was open the whole year round, and it was a pleasant enough site despite the loud disco music from the restaurant at night. Isn’t it great to see Western culture spread behind the Iron Curtain?

Budapest has excellent public transport and is an altogether prosperous city. The people still didn’t look happy though, and the truckloads of Russian soldiers we saw were pointedly ignored. We took the road along the Danube on our way to the Austrian border and were rewarded by quiet country lanes and lush greenery.

The border was quick as they were only searching cars, not bikes. There’s a tip there, unless they change over on even days… As we rode into Vienna that afternoon, the back wheel of the Yamaha started making the most peculiar scraping noise. I tracked it down to a shoelace caught in the rear brake caliper.

An overnight stay in Vienna, in a clean and well-equipped campsite, and we were on our way again – no more time for sightseeing. The border with Germany is a one-stop affair – the guards showed our passports to a computer, which raised no objections, and we were simultaneously out and in. Coming into Passau, we started chatting to a bloke on an ancient BMW outfit, and he showed us a good pub for lunch.

We camped in Nuremberg that night, near the stadium made famous by the big Nazi rallies. It’s a parking lot now, which seems appropriate. The campsite was excellent, as all German campsites seem to be. Then it was up the Autobahn, on to Brunswick and a few days with relatives.

Then a long day across to Ostend and the late ferry to Dover. Due to delays on the ferry – it kept yo-yoing around in Dover harbour – and problems with the ramp, we didn’t get ashore until well after midnight.

The Customs man asked us where we’d been and wasn’t at all impressed by the 18 countries I rattled off. He just asked whether we’d picked up any ‘noxious substances’ and when we said no, we didn’t think so, let us go.

Miracles do still happen. There was a bed-and-breakfast place still open on the Folkestone road, and the first thing our landlady did was offer us a cup of tea. We were back in England, all right.

The run to London was just a formality. We were back, 194 days, 20,000 miles and £2000 after we’d set out. A great trip, albeit with its ups and downs. And then there was the next one…

After 20,000 miles Annie and The Bear arrive back in London but the journey is not over

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Yes, this isn’t the end. America is yet to come, back on the old Honda XL250 and in a place where everyone remembers Kings Cross.

Source: MCNews.com.au

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Last we settled down Pamukkale, to the chirping of the frogs, now we make a beeline to Bulgaria, and answer the age old question of, ‘Can you repair a BMW with a pair of truck tyre levers?’ Yes you can.

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The frogs in the pool did their best to keep us awake and there was an attempt to short-change us in the morning, but other than that, Pamukkale was a pleasant place. On the way out of town the clutch on the BMW started slipping quite badly, but Michel adjusted it up as far as possible and managed to make the bike rideable.

The road we had selected to take us back to the coast was marked as ‘stabilised’ beyond the little town of Kale on our map. In Kale, we stopped for a glass of tea and Annie and Cathy were the only women in the tea house. No-one appeared to be concerned. We donned rain gear, and the locals tried to dissuade us from going on. ‘Rocks this big and mud that deep!’ they said.

Stabilised conditions were’t what we expected… the locals were right

They were right, too. ‘Stabilised’ turned out to mean deep, gluey mud and we lasted a little more than a mile before deciding it wasn’t for us. That road was 56 miles long!

Our alternative was better, and a filling lunch of kofte (meatballs) and beans was enlivened by a conversation with a couple of bank tellers, who were delighted to exercise their English. They told us that petrol prices had doubled in the previous month. We still thought it cheap.

On the road down through the ranges, Michel suddenly pulled over to the left and stopped. I followed, put the side stand down – and the bike fell over on the slope. The stand had broken through the tar, and the bike tipped, spilling Annie and me off – right under the back wheel of the BMW. Now Michel had pulled over because he thought he smelled something burning.

His first thought, therefore, when I dived under the back of his bike, was that I was putting out a fire. So he dived off as well, also ready to extinguish the blaze. Confusion reigned for a minute until we had it all sorted out, the XS back on its wheels and Michel reassured that the R100 wasn’t about to go up in smoke.

Annie then saved the day by producing the brandy flask. Those Vetter fairings really are good – better than any crashbar – and there’s room for a brandy flask in the pocket. There wasn’t a scratch on the XS.

We found a campsite out at Kemer, past Antalya – it was free because the season hadn’t started (‘No, no’, said the site manager, that meant only that he couldn’t charge us, not that we couldn’t stay; in fact he turned on the hot water for the showers) – and we did a bit more lying around in the sun, as well as going for a run down the coast to Kas.

This stretch was as pretty as ever with its steep, pine-covered hills and empty beaches. The road that was being built when Charlie and I had come through here a year and a half before was already disintegrating.

The Yamaha handled the potholes and gravel noticeably better than the BMW, despite the stuffed shocks. The BMW also had a flat tyre on the morning of our departure. Nothing to do with Turkey, this was an after-effect of the encounter with the rock in Yugoslavia. The tyre had sustained a slight split on the inside, and this had been plucking away at the tube, finally tearing it. I’ll say this for BMW, they supply an excellent pump.

After another ethnic lunch at Antalya, we rolled east along the rather featureless coast. In Anamur, the bikes were parked on an embankment above the market square while we did some shopping, but suddenly a gust of wind caught the BMW and flipped it onto its side. The bike landed right on the edge of the embankment, slipped over and crashed down a foot and a half onto its back on concrete. Then it tipped onto its side. Almost a complete somersault.

At first it looked as though the only damage was a broken mirror and a cracked fairing, but when we tried to ride away the back tyre was rubbing against the guard. The fall had bent the rear frame loop.

Enjoying some refreshments off the bike

Fortunately, another campsite presented itself just down on the beach. When the owner realised that we were having problems with the bike, he told us his friend had the tools to fix that, and would be around in the morning. He then invited us to dinner and drinks.

A thoroughly drunken night followed: we tried to teach our host some Australian songs (no, no, once a jolly swagman…); he recited a great deal of poetry, we did some dancing; there were drunken protestations of eternal friendship; and in an incredibly badly judged display of helpfulness I gave two guys a lift home high into the hills on the big Yammie – both of them on the back at the same time on single track paths alongside irrigation canals.

After I delivered them I had no idea where I was. Well, actually I knew where I was. I just didn’t know where anywhere else was. I navigated by the lights of the town down by the water.

Annie misjudged the strength of the spirits and went to sleep in my lap when I finally got back, and what eventually saved us was the nearby shop running out of raki. We had to switch to the considerably less alcoholic beer. I’ve seldom had such a good time.

We ‘repaired’ the R100S in the morning with the special tools our drinking buddy’s friend had – a couple of enormous crowbars – took a look at the marvelous Crusader castle while our hangovers abated and then tackled the cliff road east. This is a great run through stunning country, made less pleasant only by the lumbering timber trucks.

We managed to find several locations with a hot shower on offer

We had trouble keeping up with the flying Mols as the BMW’s handling came into its own on the tar. Camp was at the BP Mocamp that Charlie and I had disliked so heartily on the previous occasion. Everyone wanted a shower. The place was still as expensive and the staff as rude as before, but at least the water was hot.

Then on to Mersin, where a tractor tried to run Michel off the road, and up through the Cilician Gates to the Anatolian Plateau. The dual carriageway claimed by our map turned out to be sheer optimism—all they’d done was make the old road less passable with their road works.

The Rock House Hotel at Goreme was closed, perhaps because it was still early in the season, so we went to ‘Paris’ Camping instead, which not only had hot showers but free gas cookers and tables and chairs. A few days passed pleasantly enough with sightseeing and clambering in and out of stone houses, and we changed the rear tyre on the XS without any of the problems experienced by the bike shop in France. Well, getting the bead on the tyre to pop properly wasn’t easy with only a hand pump, but the security bolts gave no trouble at all.

We climbed to the top of the stone fortress at Uchisar, and one of the town urchins chased us all the way up to sell us a guide book. Unfortunately, he’d gone by the bikes – full German registration on the Yamaha and German tax-free registration on the BMW – and had brought the German guidebook instead of the English one; a wasted climb.

On the way to Ankara via Kirsehir everything was green again. The fields and meadows were feeling the spring even here on the high plateau. Crossing an embankment, the Mols hit a pothole and bombed the unsuspecting peasants below with one of their panniers – the Krauser came off the bike, bounced along the road and then dived down into the fields, but there was no damage beyond a few scratches.

Now you know why BMW riders with old Krauser panniers always have straps around them. The main road to Ankara hadn’t improved since I’d last travelled it and we had to contend with long stretches of gravel and dirt. The Ankara campground had taken down its sign, but I remembered where it was and we managed to wake the guard.

Although my old friend Rochester had gone, we were still not allowed to camp on the grass, just like old times. When we went off to do a little shopping, we discovered that a kilo of onions cost the same as six bottles of beer. There’s a moral there somewhere.

It was back out into the grey air and heavy traffic of Ankara in the morning. Martial law was in operation, every corner had its soldiers, and at strategic intersections there were rows of tanks. The tank crews were really taken with the bikes and waved enthusiastically as we passed. We waved back, of course. Of course!

Suddenly the BMW started to lose oil rapidly, and it didn’t take long to find out why. The sump was gradually lowering itself on its bolts and spitting out oil. Michel tightened it, making ominous comments about Turkey and BMWs. Then we were off to do battle with the traffic on the Istanbul road.

The less said about this run the better – we were forced off the road once each and didn’t really enjoy it. The first tanks at the outskirts of Istanbul were actually a welcome sight, and when we stopped the crew of one of them insisted on giving us cigarettes. Soon afterwards, we rolled over the toll bridge back into Europe.

We located the most convenient camping ground, set up the tents and ducked off to town for dinner; I took the others to the little kebab bar Charlie and I had found, where the food was as good as ever.

We resealed the sump on the R100 S with liquid gasket and I put the stays from the top box back into their proper place on the rack. I thought we were through the worst of the roads; little did I know.

After the obligatory rounds of sightseeing, which are more worthwhile in Istanbul than in most places, we raided the Grand Bazaar. It sells everything from everywhere – all at negotiable prices. Never believe what the merchants tell you, just dig in and enjoy it.

They have some beautiful things – I bought Annie a miniature painting on ivory (yes, I know, ivory – but it was clearly quite old and the elephant would have died a long time ago) and myself a pipe, an eagle’s claw carved out of meerschaum.

Turkey offered stunning scenery

The radio featured marvelous selections from sixties and seventies rock as well as classical music, and we played a chess championship. I won! But only because all the others were even more beginners than I. An idyllic existence, despite martial law and shootings.

Then the Mols were off again to southern Greece and the sun, carrying with them our Scrabble set as a farewell gift. We turned our wheels towards Bulgaria and then home.

The trip had lasted over six months by this stage and we were quite happy to have it end. A tour has a sort of natural lifespan, although most people have to get back to work before it runs for that long. The lifespan of our tour was coming to an end, and it was time to let it die gracefully.

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Turkey was pretty interesting. That was nothing compared to the Eastern Bloc, though!

Source: MCNews.com.au

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Last we arrived in Athens, now a bit more of Greece, and then off into the wild wonders of Turkey. Few countries in the world have more interesting people.

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We set up camp, bought some wine and sat around feeling miserable. The next day we had trouble at the bank and begrudged the Bulgarians their extortionate fee for a 30-hour visa. A pall descended that wasn’t broken until the Mols arrived, grinning from ear to ear.

Michel and Cathy had left London in the cold and drizzling rain, and had had much the same weather until southern Germany, when the snow had started. On the autobahn to Austria, they had been riding through snowdrifts and had camped in them in Salzburg.

The luggage rack on the XS had cracked from being overloaded, meaning more creative solutions were needed

Finally out of the heavy weather on the Yugoslav coast, they had had a slight argument with a large pointed rock which had bent their front rim and flattened the tyre. Michel had bashed the wheel back into shape with his axe, replaced the tube and they’d ridden on. And they were cheerful when they arrived in Athens!

We rolled out the plastic jug of retsina and sat down for a little party. It was good to see them again. The hangovers in the morning were something to behold, except for Annie. She’s the only person I know who knows her limit – most of the time anyway. We packed up rather gingerly and then flew up the motorway. None of the speed traps were interested in us.

The strain of keeping up with the R100 S showed on the Yamaha’s worn-out shock absorbers, and I wallowed around the corners the BMW was taking in style.

The weather was deteriorating again, but we got away from it by spending a couple of days on Thasos. This island is less than an hour from the mainland by ferry and specialises in honey and having its roads sink into the sea. It’s a pretty, pine-covered place and has a good campsite as well as miles of coastline suitable for free camping.

We had a barbecue on the beach, using a suntan lotion shop display rack as a griddle, and sank a few beers. Then it was time for a run around the island, checking out the sunken roads – there were several places where you could have gone skindiving without leaving the saddle – and back to the mainland.

The bike drew plenty of attention during our travels

On the way up to Alexandropoulis, over those pretty mountain roads, a police car came the other way around a corner while I was way over the centre line – they didn’t bat an eye as I corrected and drew sparks from my centre stand.

The rack on the XS had developed a couple of cracks in North Africa when we had overloaded it so badly, and these were getting worse. Reluctantly, I decided we wouldn’t be able to carry spare petrol in Turkey.

We had another game of hunt-the-gas bottle for our little cooker. You can buy the cartridges everywhere, and you can generally buy large caravan-size bottles, but the little ones are hard to find. A kindly German-speaking cab driver finally took us around the town looking for one, for free, and found it.

A knowledge of German is invaluable in Greece and Turkey, as so many people have worked in Germany. Our cab driver, for instance, had saved enough money while working there to buy his cab, which he had then driven home to Turkey.

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Turkey

The road to the border was indifferent and the service on the Greek side quick if not exactly courteous. The Turks were working at their usual pace – dead slow – and held us up for a while, but at least there weren’t any Customs searches.

The road down towards Gallipoli was initially quite good and for a while I thought we were in the wrong country, but it soon deteriorated, and the Mols took flying lessons on a tricky humpbacked bridge. We had lunch there and a German couple, he on an XS1100, she on a CX500, stopped and told us that a few years earlier they had managed to get a 2CV Renault airborne on that bridge.

We had intended to have a look at the site of the infamous Gallipoli landings of the First Great Unpleasantness, but couldn’t find any cliffs that looked likely. Later we found out that the landings hadn’t been at Gallipoli at all, but on the other side of the peninsula. No wonder it was a disaster.

The ferry to Canakkale in Asia Minor had just left when we arrived at the wharf – it was only running intermittently due to a diesel shortage – so we were facing a three-and-a-half hour wait. A man at the wharf told us about a local ferry that ran from a place a little farther down the coast; I wish he hadn’t tried to help.

Missing the proper ferry had us taking a local alternative…

This local ferry was a mildly converted fishing boat, with extremely flimsy water pipe rails and nothing to tie the bikes to. We shared it with a defunct tractor and a van, and it was so crowded that the bikes were right on the edge. We hung onto them for grim death all the way across the Dardanelles. It would have taken only one largish wave…

Past rows of closed campsites – the season hadn’t started in Turkey – we rode to Troy for a look at the ruins. The place is quite a mess. Apparently there are numerous Troys, one above the other, and it’s all a bit of a chore sorting it out.

It is very impressive, though, to see several thousand years of civilization in a few yards of hillside. You’ll be glad to know that the wooden horse is still there. You can even climb up inside and play Greeks and Trojans.

On the way back to the main road, a kid lobbed a rock at us. My feelings about this kind of thing hadn’t changed since the last time it had happened, in Afghanistan. I turned around and went back with the motor on the red line in first. The kid ran as though all the demons in hell were after him, and I guess the big Yamaha sounded a bit like that.

Turkey offered stunning scenery

I caught him and gave him a dressing down in front of his mates. A bit self-righteous, maybe, but if it stops him and his friends from throwing stones at other bikes it will have been worth it. So there.

Lots of pretty hill country then, and for the night a tiny campsite marked ‘Kampink-Piknik’. It was quite idyllic, but they’d run out of beer. I guess no place is ever perfect.

The BBC World Service news on my little short-wave radio was cheerful and informed us that three people had died in political shootings in Turkey during the day and that a military coup was starting. I’m glad to say that nobody has ever shot at me – well, not for a good long time, anyway – and nobody shot at any of us in Turkey.

I told the manager of the campsite about the military coup, and he said he hadn’t heard about it and anyway who cared. Next morning we had to search for a while before finding a petrol station that would sell us juice, not because there was a shortage of petrol but because the electricity was off. Not all stations have hand pumps.

At one place we looked like being out of luck when three Italian campervans pulled in behind us. A bevy of bikini-clad young women exploded from the vans, and all of a sudden petrol was available after all, even if it had to be pumped by hand.

The road to Izmir reminded me of Greece. As soon as you got into the town limits, the tar stopped and the gravel started. After Izmir we were on the main road again and diced with the buses and trucks down past Ephesus to the coast at Kusadasi.

Finding petrol and gas bottles proved difficult in Turkey

The town is a port of call for many of the cruise liners that ply the Mediterranean and prices in town go up between 100 and 2000 per cent whenever ships are in port. We learnt to do our shopping after they had left.

There were some attractive bike leathers for sale here and I was tempted, but they weren’t all that much cheaper than in Britain, and you get after-sales service in Britain. We lay in the sun for a bit, and I bolted the stays from the top box onto the bike frame instead of the rack. Not quite so elegant, but it put less strain on the cracks.

Going inland, we followed the country lanes for a while, riding through the little villages dozing in the sun, before we returned to the main road and the traffic. At Pamukkale, an area of hot springs and calcium deposits that turn whole hillsides white with dozens of stepped warm pools, we camped in a tiny site with a large pool. The pool was bigger than the camping area.

Our host was a keen man after a buck, as a lot of Turks are (and you can’t blame them), and we had a classic run-in with him. Michel priced the beer, an essential step if you don’t want to find yourself with an enormous bill. He was quoted 40 lire for a bottle. We both hit the roof, as 30 is considered expensive, and our genial host backpedaled rapidly. ‘Oh, you want the beer for drinking! That’s only 30.’

Taking a rest when the road conditions deteriorated

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The beer for drinking wasn’t bad, and almost drowned out the frogs during the night. But our bikes kept lying down.

Source: MCNews.com.au

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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A recalcitrant bankie in Titograd and Easter in Greece – the world is a strange and wonderful place.

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An absolutely horrifying detour through the mountains claimed us as soon as we left Dubrovnik. The ‘road’ was a more or less recently graded dirt track, and over the 40 or so kilometres it lasted we counted three trucks that had simply fallen off the roadway; two of them were lying on their sides, and one had rolled over onto its roof.

The bike dealt with the surface quite well, due no doubt largely to the fat rear tyre, but there was chaos at the other end as cars and trucks squeezed past each other on the narrow cliff path. We were more than glad to be on the bike.

Just before Titograd we fell foul of a radar trap. For once, I actually had not been speeding, but you can’t argue with Yugoslav traffic cops, even though their equipment was more than a little questionable.

“Our radar says you were speeding.”

‘That isn’t a radar. It’s a hairdryer.’ It was, too.

“It does not matter what it is,” he snarled and wiggled his submachine gun suggestively. I paid the fine and rode on, seething. Still, if they caught me every time I do exceed the speed limit…

The Titograd campground had been vandalised badly since Charlie and I had stayed there 18 months before. The pretty lady wasn’t in reception, either – in fact, there wasn’t anybody in reception at all. I finally found someone at the hotel that adjoins the site and they told me to camp anywhere I liked, the site was open and free.

We bribed the campground guard in drinks to keep an eye on our gear

Annie thought they just couldn’t be bothered filling in all the forms. The watchman came past, cadged a couple of drinks, and promised to look after our tent extra carefully. I went to the bank to cash a travellers’ cheque and had to scribble my name on it four times before the teller was satisfied that my signature matched the sample.

Then on into darkest Yugoslavia, up hill and down dale on steadily worsening roads. We took the main road, not the track that Charlie and I had taken, but at times it wasn’t much better. Winter had destroyed more than one bridge and undermined the road so often it was like a trials stage. In one tunnel there were great ice pillars, formed by water dripping from the ceiling, but we made it through to Skopje and then over quite passable back roads to Ohrid.

We heard a sad story that night in the cevapcici bar where we were having dinner. A young Yugoslav soldier came over to us and introduced himself in fluent Australian. He had been taken to Australia by his parents when he was two years old and had lived in Canberra for 16 years. Then he’d come back to see his relations and the army had grabbed him for two years’ national service.

They were pleased to get him since he had just passed his apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic, and they didn’t have many of those. He had eight months to go, and was counting the days. “When I got here I didn’t even speak the language,” he told us sadly.

Our landlady gave us a heroic breakfast, including a gallon of coffee. Annie had washed a pair of her knickers and hung them on the back of the bike to dry, something we often did with wet clothes, and the landlady nearly cracked up. She thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, and called out all the neighbours to share her glee.

The people at Bitola were helpful and pointed out the road to Greece, which was just as well as there wasn’t a single road sign in the whole town.

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Greece

There were money-changing problems at the border (never change more money than you need) and the obstinate Greek Customs man wrote the bike into my passport, which was near to being full, instead of Annie’s, which had more space. But you couldn’t really stay annoyed long. Spring was with us at last – it had been following us all the way from Sicily, and now it was finally catching up.

After a run through fresh greenery we made camp at Meteora, below the famous rock cliffs like stone trolls with monasteries for hats and long trails of poo from the toilets overhanging the cliffs. We watched the tourist buses rolling up, and it struck me as odd that the monks should be able to reconcile the religious life with showing tourists around all day. Do they pray for a good tourist crop in between counting the admission money, I wonder?

Spectacular landscape was admired in Greece

There was a large chrome and glass establishment in Kalabaka which advertised itself, in large day-glo letters and in English, as a ‘typical Greek taverna’. What would Anthony Quinn have said?

Annie was befriended by a little black dog we nicknamed The Sheik for his habit of creeping into our tent when we were asleep. He followed her devotedly everywhere she went. The proprietor of the site didn’t know who owned him. ‘He just likes tourists,’ he told us.

The Plain of Thessaly, although it sounds good, was dull. The excitement set in on the mountain road after Lamia, where a new road was being built and the old one had been sort of lost underneath, making it pretty rugged. At one point we stopped and were passed by a wartime German Zündapp outfit, pressed into service to deliver vegetables and elderly Greek ladies.

After passing the great olive grove of Itea, we climbed the cliff to Delphi and camped right on the edge of the drop. The scramble around the ruins was well worth it, but it’s best timed for when the tourists are at lunch. Delphi is one of the prime sightseeing spots in the country and becomes badly crowded even in the off season.

We chatted to an elderly, tubby cop who was quite obviously in the grip of a lengthy love affair with his Harley-Davidson. He showed us where he’d painted this antediluvian monster himself, careful dabs of the brush over rust patches. A German arrived in the campsite one night on a shiny new BMW R45, still in shock from travelling on the Lamia road.

We told him to try the Skopje-Titograd highway if he wanted a real experience. He was cheerfully horrified when he saw us loading the bike with all our worldly goods, and asked politely if he might take pictures. No doubt he’s still scaring fellow motorcyclists with them, back in Germany.

The road to Thebes was fine, except that the surface deteriorated badly whenever we went through a town. Often town streets were dirt, not even gravel. Perhaps the powers that be feel that it’s a waste of time tarring them – they’d only wear out again anyway…

On the motorway the radar caught us once more. This time I wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense, and anyway I’m not scared of Greeks the way I am of Yugoslavs with submachine guns. I pointed out, at the top of my voice, that I had not been speeding as they appeared to claim, but only doing 100 on what was after all a freeway and didn’t they have anything better to do?

We were both still angry after the hairdryer episode and Annie joined in with my tirade. They eventually shooed us away, dazed by our combined assault. Around the next corner we found a sign indicating that the speed limit was 80…

Athens was, as always, dusty and noisy, with cancerous traffic. We picked up some mail, including a pair of visors kindly sent by Bob Heath and a note from the Mols saying that they’d be joining us a week later. That night, we were overcharged for our dinner of calamari down in Piraeus, and the waiter plied us with free retsina when we complained – we felt that we were getting this travelling business sorted out pretty damn well.

The week until Michel and Cathy arrived was spent exploring the Peloponnese. A couple of days lying in the sun at Epidaurus with an excursion to the well-preserved amphitheatre were followed by a visit to Sparta. Then we headed over the ranges to Kalamata and ran into more snow. It really is true; you become much more sensitive to nature’s little quirks on a bike…

On Easter Sunday, the proprietor of the ‘Melbourne’ cafe in Hora bought us some cakes and coffee. People kept giving us Easter presents all day — boiled eggs dyed red, biscuits and even a cucumber were thrust into our hands by people standing beside the road. Everyone was out in their front yards, roasting lambs on spits; the countryside smelt like a vast Greek restaurant. Olympia, which we’d intended to make the high spot of our day, had been closed by a strike. Back to reality!

On the tollway back to Athens, the toll collectors in their little hut waved us through for free, but it wasn’t a good Easter for everyone. As we crested a hill, a puppy wandered out onto the roadway. I made a crash stop and Annie scooped it up, but its owners weren’t to be seen. It had obviously been abandoned.

We stood by the side of the road for a while holding it up as we’d seen people in Morocco do who wanted to sell pups, but nobody stopped. A puppy isn’t a terribly sensible companion on a bike trip, especially when you have to cross borders. We really didn’t know what to do.

Finally, we took it along until we reached the outskirts of Athens, found a prosperous-looking suburb and dumped it on someone’s front lawn. We assumed that its chances would be better there than on the motorway. But as we drew away, it was already tottering back out onto the road. A sad end to Easter, both for the pup (I presume) and us.

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Feeling down? Don’t worry, just wait until the Mols get here. Read about their arrival next time.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Italy to Yugoslavia

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Now that Yugoslavia has turned into twenty-eight different countries, Customs and Immigration is easy. It wasn’t when it was still just one country.

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There were lots of fellow Australasians at the camp, and we spent most evenings standing around the fire drinking beer and telling lies. Because we’d taken the bike off to be serviced, we had to use public transport for getting around. This consisted mostly of buses like enormous green tin sheds on wheels, which are free.

Well, they do have a ticket machine, but the only people who seemed to use it were the nuns. Nobody ever appeared to check for tickets. We visited the Colosseum and the Capitoline Hill, which was inhabited by a great tribe of tough looking cats. They are protected by law, it seems, and fed by the inevitable little old ladies. The catacombs were closed, allegedly for renovation. Renovating the sewers, how nice.

The Bear leaves Italy behind heading for Yugoslavia in Part 25. but not before visiting Venice

For us, the highlight was the Vatican Museum. Not so much for the Sistine Chapel, which looks and feels like an ecclesiastical railway station with a nice ceiling, but for the superb ethnological section.

With the bike back on the road, though not greatly improved by Italian servicing, we took in the more remote spots like the Villa d’Este, with its hundreds of fountains, and Hadrian’s villa. One night, the Goodyear blimp put on a brilliant lightshow over the city. While we sat on a park bench craning our necks, moving coloured pictures flitted across the sky – we were entranced.

Before departing for Umbria we bought some new clothes, which was a real luxury after living in the same very limited range of clothing for so long. Our first stop was Assisi, with its houses of honey-coloured stone stacked one on top of the other on the hillside and a quiet campsite overlooking it all. The tomb of St Francis, deep in the rock, was very impressive. We had some pleasant sunshine, but it was still cold in the shade – as I discovered when I washed my one and only jacket.

It was wet and windy again on the road to Florence and we were forced to fortify ourselves frequently with coffee and cakes. Having arrived, we decided to cop out for once and stay in a pension. We were sick of the rain and wanted to feel warm, clean and human for a change.

Warning signs for drivers

Punishment came, of course – someone broke into the bike’s top box and stole the only thing in it, our airbed pump. I had locked the steering, put the alarm and the massive Abus lock on as well as covering the bike with the Vetter cover, but all to no avail. I guess we didn’t do too badly, all things considered. The pump was the only thing stolen on the entire trip.

Our pension was comfortable, with en-suite bathroom featuring a working hot shower and central heating. A little time was spent outside – we looked at the Ponte Vecchio, wandered the streets drooling at the shop windows and toured the Uffizi gallery. I become very easily overloaded when confronted with too much art in one stroke, and emerged shell shocked. Annie coped much better.

Conditions were still icy in the mountains

Then it was back out into the rain and off to the mountains and the snow, but the road over to the east coast had been freshly cleared; it was empty of traffic and fun on the bike. We rode up the mountain to San Marino with the big motor enjoying the work. Hills were never a problem for the Yamaha and I very rarely even had to change down.

San Marino was a real, genuine tourist trap of the first order; a gem of a rip-off. The only good value was booze, so we stocked up. It was cold, too, and we huddled in our sleeping bag waiting for the morning, which brought a dullish run to Venice, where we installed ourselves in the Treviso campsite across the lagoon.

Venice rewards the adventurous

Venice repays the effort made to get away from the main tourist haunts; there’s a wealth of interest in the back streets and alleys, and coffee is cheaper, too. Perhaps the place is a little too devoted to chasing the lire, but it’s nonetheless interesting for all that. All the dogs wear muzzles, by the way, although some of them have their pacifiers just slung casually around their necks without interfering with the use of the teeth at all. Very Italian.

I felt inspired that night – perhaps Venice had kindled a fire in my soul – and excelled myself at dinner, even if I do say so myself. With only two pots and one flame I produced hamburgers, mashed potatoes with onions and mushrooms in white sauce. Didn’t taste too bad either…

Venice also offered plenty of inspiration

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Yugoslavia

Italy had seemed tame to us after the rigors of North Africa, so we were rather looking forward to Yugoslavia. We didn’t have long to wait before things got rigorous again. At the border, the official took one look at our pretty blue Australian passports, went into a huddle with his pals and then disappeared indoors.

Here he got on the telephone, looking worried and leaving us sitting in the drizzle without an explanation. All I could think of was that there had been some reports of terrorist training camps for an anti-government right-wing organization called Ustashi in Australia. Perhaps the border police thought we were Ustashi shock troops, on a Yamaha. Eventually they decided to take a chance that we wouldn’t blow up any bridges and let us in.

On to Zagreb with a will, through pretty, agricultural country with the first flush of spring on it and the last clouds of winter above it, but one of Zagreb’s alleged campsites had disappeared. The other was closed, and so were most of the cheap hotels.

We checked into a reasonably comfortable place near the railway station and went out to do the town, but the grim weather made that a rather uncomfortable pursuit, so we retired early and wrote letters.

We had intended to devote a day to the famous Plitvice lakes south of Zagreb. The rain became heavier and colder as we rode out of town, and the bike began to run rough and lose power. I pulled into a petrol station in Slunj – what a name for a town to get stuck with, although it is very pretty – and took parts of the fairing off.

The problem wasn’t difficult to trace. One of the plug leads had come undone and been casually pushed back, which I can only presume had happened during the service in Rome. It was soon fixed and gave no more trouble, which is more than I can say for the Yugoslav weather.

The scenery was exceptional, but the weather fickle

When we got to the lakes the rain turned to sleet, so we decided to get the hell out of there and down to the coast. Then, naturally, I got lost. The bloke behind the counter of a hardware/booze shop gave us directions. It seemed like an odd range of stock for a shop, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

“I’ll take a hammer and a box of tacks. Oh, and give me a flask of brandy. Two.”

Back on the main road I overtook a truck without realising that there was a dip in the road ahead; the dip, of course, held a car coming the other way. The big Yamaha dived off the side of the road into the accommodating snowy ditch quite gracefully, I thought. Annie’s opinion was otherwise. The bloke in the car just shook his head.

We recovered with a terrific meal of roast pork and chips in a cafeteria above the bus station in Otocac and washed it down with a brandy (possibly sourced from the local hardware shop) before tackling the godforsaken plateau above Senj. It snowed again on the pass, but then we were through the weather and rolling down the twisting, lightly oiled and diesel soaked mountain road to the sea and sunshine.

We found a sweet little campsite on the water and it was actually warm enough to eat dinner outside the tent, although not quite warm enough for a dip. The rain came back the next day as we rolled into Dubrovnik and we couldn’t resist the offer of a pension with a garage.

A German couple touring on an elderly BMW R60 joined us and we spent most of the evening telling stories over a few drinks. A lot of Germans seem to speak English, which is handy. A few days in Dubrovnik were a real pleasure.

We did all the usual things – walks through the medieval city, around the walls and out to the fortress, as well as familiarising ourselves with Yugoslav cooking. There was a small bar tucked away in an alley down by the harbour that specialised in burek, the cheese or meat pastry. They also had cevapcici and rasnici (grilled meats) which I knew from Australia and we spent almost every evening there having a few beers with dinner.

A few beers with dinner were welcome

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This is all sounding pretty good, isn’t it? But the gods of the road had noticed that we were having it easy…

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 24

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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One definite advantage of travelling in Italy is that you can buy wine in bulk. We bought a five litre plastic container for ours.

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Northern Sicily is a rugged place, with awe-inspiring cliffs sheltering long ranges of hills like overstuffed pillows, with a fine needlework of vineyards embroidered on them.

Despite the drizzle, we had an enjoyable few days exploring. Every now and then the padrone back at camp would get worried about us and offer us alternative accommodation – first it was a little wooden house, then a caravan. All free of charge. He couldn’t understand that we were quite happy in our tent.

As the skies looked clearer to the south, we finally packed, had a last cup of coffee in our little bar on the harbour and headed across the island to Selinunte. We rode through seemingly endless fields of yellow flowers and discovered a peculiar system of motorways.

These roads weren’t on our map, and seemed almost like miniatures – a proper motorway scaled down to Fiat 500 size. Altogether in poor repair, the system didn’t seem to lead anywhere. I had some vague memory of the fascists undertaking construction programs in economically depressed parts of Sicily; this could well have been one of them. Later we were told that the Mafia had had the contract.

A chap we met along the way showed us a rather eerie place to have our picnic lunch – the main square of Gibellina, a town destroyed by an earthquake in 1968 and never rebuilt. We were stopped by the police a little later, but our total inability to speak Italian foiled them and they let us go. I’ve found that ignorance is generally bliss when talking to cops.

The Greek temple at Selinunte was in better condition than most of the ones in Greece itself, but the campsite that had been recommended to us there didn’t seem to exist. We carried on to camp at Sciacca, after endless rows of holiday houses in various stages of incompletion and invariable poor taste. The sun came out, and in the morning we were served excellent Espresso coffee right at our tent. A great institution, the waiter-service campsite.

Cobbled streets proved a challenge in some locations on the fully laden XS

As Caltanisetta’s bypass road wasn’t quite finished, we had to go through the town itself. This is the one environment in which a heavily loaded XS1100 really doesn’t shine. The narrow, cobbled streets with their sharp corners gave me quite a bit to do.

An additional problem is that you can’t get yourself out of trouble with the throttle – there’s nowhere for the bike to go if you accelerate. We were caught in a Communist Party march as well, which slowed us down even more. Caltanisetta had good ice-cream, though.

Down past Enna, we took the spectacular autostrada, which just ignores the lie of the land. When it isn’t swinging itself over the valleys on a ‘viadotto’ it’s drilling through the hills in a tunnel. It must have cost an absolute fortune to build.

On the coast once again, this time the eastern one, we found a supposedly closed campground called ‘Bahia del Silenzio’ at Brucoli, which opened just for us. With typical kindness, the people offered us a small bungalow, but we stuck with the old tent. We’d finally woken up to the most economical way to supply ourselves with wine, and bought a five litre plastic container which we regularly refilled with the local vintage just like the Italians do.

After a quick look at Neapolis with its amphitheatre, near Syracuse, we turned north once more, to Catania. The inland road looked good on the map and turned out to be quite exciting, with steep hills and ridgetop runs, but on the way back down it became a little too exciting when we hit a sizeable patch of diesel and went sideways for a little while. No damage, but a bit of heavy breathing and cursing resulted.

A very thorough tour of Catania then, helped by the motorway signs, which pointed around in a large circle taking in most of the town. We both got really annoyed with this and rode around swearing at the tops of our voices until at last the autostrada entry ramp came into view. Fortunately, the Italian motorway cafes serve excellent coffee. We recovered our composure over cappuccino.

Road conditions could be questionable, and road markings at times were confusing, luckily the coffee was good

Camp was at Acireale, just north of Catania, in a clifftop campsite that had a lift running down to the beach. Talk about luxury. Another sort-out left us with quite a bit of gear to mail home, and we parcelled it all up neatly and took it up to the post office. It wasn’t to be that simple, though.

First of all, I hadn’t left enough loose string for them to put their metal seal on. They retied the parcel for me. Then, I hadn’t put a return address on it. I tried to tell them that I certainly didn’t want the parcel returned to the campsite, but it seemed that a return address was required by law.

So I put the same address on the parcel twice, which made them very unhappy, but they took it. Losing a little weight made the bike look much neater.

We rode up around Mount Etna, through hazelnut plantations and past pretty little towns balanced on hilltops, and on north through a national park and a vast hunting reserve. Lovely country up here, with some excellent road over the passes that took us to Milazzo and a German-run campsite called, inexplicably, ‘Sayonara’.

The weather was pleasant but the locals still seemed to find it wintry. At a petrol stop on the way to Messina, the attendant came out of his office shaking his head, pointing to the bike and crying ‘Freddo! Freddo!’, which I took to mean ‘cold’ in Italian. Either that or he’d mistaken the bike for a friend of his called Fred; unlikely under the circumstances.

The ferry to San Giovanni on the toe of Italy was quick and cheap. They once again had excellent coffee on the ferry, and nice pastries, but the signposting out of San Giovanni reminded us unpleasantly of Catania.

When we finally made it out of town, we rode up the coast through Scylla (Charybdis must have given up monstering, it wasn’t to be seen) and on north. People seemed rather offhand and not particularly friendly, even suspicious. When we tried to change some money at an airport, the teller regretted that the bank had run out of money. Fruit and vegetables didn’t seem as fresh as those in Sicily, and the roads were worse.

Italy has some amazing temples and ruins to explore

We really didn’t think much of southern Italy. There was a lovely campsite in an olive grove at Lamezia Terme, admittedly. We took to the autostrada to get us north – it’s free as far as Salerno as some kind of odd economic boost for the south – and we followed it up through the southern mountains, past occasional snow patches, with our warm clothes, heated handlebar grips and GloGloves on. The hills were lovely, with only a few factories polluting the air.

Naples welcomed us with its expensive but invaluable ‘tangentiale’ ring road, which introduced us to a new and, as far as I know, unique hazard. I was used to buzzing up between stationary lanes of traffic, such as the ones queuing to pay toll on the ring road.

Even with the rather wide Yamaha that had always worked. Not in Naples. None of the tiny Fiats I was trying to pass had air conditioning, so when they stopped in the queue they would throw open their doors. Oops! We weren’t going to get through that!

We nevertheless followed the ring road to its western end in Pozzuoli and a campground that had been highly praised. The site featured a swimming pool fed by a hot spring, and we spent as much time in the water as possible. Pozzuoli is famous for two things: it is the most earthquake-prone place in Italy, and it is the birthplace of Sophia Loren.

We did feel some ‘trembles’ but Sophia didn’t seem to be home. I met her many years later at an Italian motorcycle industry dinner. She must have been in her mid-80s, and she looked stunning. Where was I?

Ah yes. Naples itself was a disappointment. It seemed to be little more than a permanent traffic jam; we were glad to get out. Pompeii was the real attraction and we spent some satisfying hours there. With a little imagination, the town comes alive just as it was before the ashes of Vesuvius swallowed it.

Annie and I also looked through the creepy underground ruins at Cumae, with their huge trapezoidal tunnels. On a lighter note, we bought a little chess set and I discovered to my delight that I could actually beat Annie. Only because she hadn’t played before…

Neil and Millie were there, too, both looking well. They had had a little trouble with the GS in the desert when one of the carburetors had jammed and drained the petrol tank in less than 40 miles, without their noticing. The locals had helped them.

Neil and Millie were also in Italy but had issues with their GS in the desert, where the XS was still going strong

We rode up to Rome in bright sunshine by way of Cassino and the Via Appia, picked up our mail and found the ‘Roma’ campsite without any trouble. Along the way, we discovered that the intricate Rome one way system doesn’t apply to bikes. You can ride anywhere you like, in any direction. At one point we scattered the crowds around the Trevi fountain.

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Misbehaving in Rome is all very well, but there was still a chilly winter Italy out there to traverse.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 23

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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In the last instalment The Bear has just reached the Tunisian border, and was now stuck at the border with no visa, no money and no food. What the hell. Let’s party!

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Tunisia

When we reached Hazoua, the Tunisian border post, a slight problem emerged. The tourist bureau leaflet had assured us that visas were issued at the border, but the sergeant on guard thought otherwise. ‘Not possible.’

I told him about the leaflet and he smiled gently and said, “Ah, the tourist bureau, it is their job to get people to come to my country but it is my job to keep them out.”

Problem. We couldn’t go back, as our single-visit Algerian visas had been cancelled half an hour earlier at the Algerian border, and we couldn’t go forward because this officious idiot wouldn’t let us. We couldn’t really stay there, either. Without money changing facilities or a shop for even the most basic necessities, Hazoua didn’t really make it as a campsite.

But one of the skills you develop if you travel a lot is knowing when to shout and when to whisper and I decided this was a shouting situation. So I waved my press card and introductory letter at the sergeant.

After recently sampling fresh fish off the boats, The Bear and Annie found themselves at the Tunisian border without visas, food or money

The letter, from Middle East Travel Magazine where I had been art director, was in Arabic and impressed the guard sufficiently for him to get on the radio. He came back and said, perhaps, but it would take three days. We sat down to wait. I was fairly confident they wouldn’t let us starve, and I was right.

One of the guards saw me rubbing Nivea (another sponsor, thank you!) into my hands and delightedly shouted, “You are woman! You are woman!” I invited him to look at the monster that our XS11 Yamaha had become with all of its fairings and our luggage. ‘Could you ride that? No? Then beware whom you insult.’ He gave us half his dinner, and some of the others kicked in as well.

Then followed a hectic night for all. The guards were nervous and afraid of the Lybians, who had attacked the nearby town of Gafsa a few days earlier, and they spent the night prowling around with loaded guns and flashlights.

We slept first on the veranda and then, at the guards’ invitation in the Customs post, more afraid of those guns than of the Lybians. A false alarm involving a Belgian camper van which had scared the sentries lightened the atmosphere a little as the terrified Belgians were dragged in at gunpoint and interrogated.

“Do you think we are fools? What were you doing out there? I do not care if you are a policeman!” North African French is relatively easy to understand because it has a small vocabulary and no grammar whatsoever, so we could follow all this. It was nevertheless confusing; why pick on these people? One of the guards came out and winked at us. “Belgians!” he grinned.

Things looked better in the morning. The Chef du Poste (who is the boss, not the cook) arrived and cut through some of the red tape, and with visas in our passports there finally seemed to be a way forward. But we needed duty stamps for the visas, and they were obtainable only in the next town.

“We shall do this,” said the Chef du Poste. “You,” pointing at me, “will take the motorcycle to get the stamps. She,” pointing at Annie, “will remain here.”

‘Ah, no.’

“Then we shall do this. You and she and this guard will go on the motorcycle to get the stamps.”

‘Ah… no. Why don’t we just ride to the town and get the stamps? Of course we will return.’

“Ah, no. We shall do this. The guard with your passports will take the bus. You two will follow on the motorcycle. You will pay for the stamps and the guard will give you back the passports.”

‘Ah, yes. Thank you.’

“No, no, it is nothing… welcome to Tunisia.” All of this in ‘the broken North African French, of course, mine considerably more broken than his.

There was one more hurdle, however, in the form of a police checkpoint just outside town. The bus was checked and went on. Then it was our turn. As I tried to explain in my combination of schoolboy and gutter French that the passports the cop wanted to see were on the bus (voila, les passports, er, marchons dans le autobus!).

He became more and more annoyed and began to toy with his sidearm. Fortunately, the guard on the bus remembered us around about then and made the bus turn back. He was abused for inefficiency by the cop, who then let us pass with a big, toothy grin.

Tunisia didn’t really turn out to be worth all the trouble. We rode up to the coast at Nabeul through uninspiring country, camped and went in to Tunis to pick up mail and book the ferry to Sicily. Annie scouted out a replacement gas bottle for our stove, which was a relief. Nice to be able to do your own cooking.

Setting off to Tunis, the next step was a ferry back to Sicily

We moved to a hotel in Tunis for our last night, because the ferry left at 6.30 am and the nearest campsite was two hours from the port. The Hotel Medina was nice; our hosts insisted that we park in the lobby, which I’d intended to do anyway. Then we went out and bought some English newspapers as well as pate, salami and bread, and had a feast of eating and reading in our room.

We explored the medina as well and found it pretty if a little tame, discovered the excellent produce markets and then slept until one am. Then the alarm on Annie’s little calculator, the desk clerk and the muezzin from the nearby mosque woke us simultaneously.

Getting the bike into the hotel lobby had been easy with a dozen helping hands, but now that it was just Annie, the desk clerk and me it wasn’t quite so easy to get it out. After a 36-point turn – scuffing their paintwork with my front tyre on every one – I managed it and we rode off down to the ferry followed by the desk clerk’s blessings.

While we were waiting aboard the big Yamaha in the light, sprinkling rain for them to open the gates, an XS500 arrived… then an XL125… then two bicycles. I kept expecting someone on a skate board. After an elaborate check of papers, which failed to turn up the fact that we had overstayed our visas, and a confused Customs check, we finally rolled aboard. Back to Europe!

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Italy

The ferry to Trapani wasn’t exactly the QE2, but it got us there; everything was rather shabby and the bar and restaurant were expensive and generally closed. In the third class saloon, where we made our home for the 12 hours of the crossing, there was strict segregation – the Arabs sat on one side, we Europeans on the other.

The curious thing was that you didn’t actually see this division happen – it just developed. When we first sat down, there was an Arab family sitting near us, then, as more Europeans arrived and sat on our side, they moved.

We spent most of the crossing playing cards with the French guys riding the bikes we’d met at the gate. True to form, these two let me struggle along in my idiot French until they wanted to explain something about the game we were playing – and then they both suddenly spoke passable English. The French are hilarious; they always do that sort of thing.

The Immigration check in Sicily must have been carefully designed for the absolute minimum in efficiency, but the Customs check that followed was considerably keener – it involved our first encounter with drug-sniffing dogs. One of them, a cheerful hyperactive German Shepherd, was much more interested in chewing our tentpoles than in looking for drugs. I politely asked the handler to restrain his beast.

Then it was out into the chilly, wet evening and up the autostrada to Palermo. Sicily in the failing light was almost unbearably picturesque, although I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more had I been warm and dry.

Arriving in Italy, saw some dreary weather to kick things off

We reached the ‘Pepsi Cola’ campsite just as it was closing and the padrone took us into the office and poured us a brandy before we got down to the signing-in formalities. Sicilians are very perceptive people.

It dawned wet and cold, so we inserted ourselves into our Alaskan suits and MCB boots – waterproof boots are a real blessing when you get several days of rain – and went exploring. The site watchman warned us to beware of pickpockets in Palermo, but apart from the post office giving us change in stamps rather than cash we weren’t robbed.

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You can never be sure what you’ll get when the Mafia builds your highways – as you’ll find out next instalment.

Source: MCNews.com.au