Thursday 27 April 2017

One last hurrah!

Not a great deal to say this time round, though last time I said that, I was accused of then going on to write too much! No pleasing some people 😉

I've made up my mind about the Sprint and she's going to get one last tour of duty. Since last posting, I have had a test ride on the Yamaha FJR1300, so I've now ridden the potential replacements. However, I've decided to stick with what I know for this tour and look at replacing her later in the year or next year even.

Grizzly has somehow managed to obtain a new passport, so that's that sorted and I've updated the Eurotunnel bookings with his new API and the Sprint's rego.

Only 65 days to go now, so I need to get the TomTom fixed up and tested out. Last time, I had issues with my cardo intercom and low volume, so I need to make sure it all hangs together before we set off. Don't want to be having a repeat of the last trip, when the cardo died on me. Riding through Monte Carlo with no voice instruction, was almost impossible!

That's all for now.



Monday 10 April 2017

Mountain climbing the easy way

Seem to be adding  posts in a half life manner at the moment. By that I mean, recent posts seem to have occurred with half the time left to departure, than the previous post. 82  days left now.

Not a great deal to say. I've re-booked a little excursion for when we arrive in Bergen, which should be fun if the weather is OK. Not so probably, if we hit one of Bergen's many, many wet days! Not much we can do about that though, it will be, what it will be.

There will be some minor admin things to sort out before we take to the roads, such as how much of each currency we will need to take with us, i.e. 3 different Kroner, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. We only spend one night in Sweden, and two in Denmark, so the majority will be Norwegian. I already have Euros and Grizzly (a.k.a Knutr) will be bringing me some more, to pay off his travelodge and eurotunnel debts.

I need to check that Knutr has got his passport renewed too, else I might be looking for another nutter to join me 😉

Last time I mentioned I was looking at a new bike. The other day I tested a Yamaha FJR1300. A nice bike and definitely in the frame along with the K1600 BMW. Problem I have at the moment though, is that there is uncertainty surrounding my future employment, so I'm a little reluctant to shell out on new hardware, until I know what the future holds. It is almost certain then, that I shall be taking the Sprint on one last hurrah! You never know though.

One piece of hardware I have purchased though, is a new, all singing, all dancing, TomTom Rider 410. That is, a tone deaf all singing, one legged all dancing TomTom! You'll guess it hasn't exactly blown me away! I'm not going into loads of detail, suffice to say, there seems to have been some major software changes from the old Rider 2 device, to the new 410, which means it doesn't perform as the old one did and in particular, when using the TYRE planning tool, for which incidentally, TomTom provide a free Pro licence, with the 410! Testing in the car has proved, shall we say, less than fully satisfactory. It might just be an education thing but as I say, the software just doesn't do some of the neat stuff that the previous device did. Progress?

As a result, I think I shall have to tweak the route plans before downloading them to the 410 and hope we don't get totally lost in the wilds of Norway!

I have more testing planned, in the car and on the bike, so hopefully I'll have got it all sussed before 2nd July.

Think that's all for now. Once again I'd say, if you haven't already, then sign up for email blog updates. That way you'll not miss anything. It will get more exciting once we hit the road, I promise.