K
Kamanya
Guest
Hi,
The most important thing is to set a date – and then tell everyone.
After that everything falls into place. If you start working the other way around, as in go when you’re ready, well, you’ll never get it off the ground.
Craig and I used to live together as students and have been fast friends since. We used to be river guides at one stage too. When we lived together I used to have XT500’s and later a Honda CB900. I was always on his case about getting a bike as he used to be a courier in London for a while but drove a cage when we lived together. Then we moved apart and I lost the bikes, gained a car and he did the opposite. Now the shoe was on the other foot, he was the one ragging me. We had always spoken of doing a big African Bike Trip and in Jan of this year (2005) he sent an innocuous if a little sarcastic email;
So.
When are we going to set a date for our Great Namibian Off-road Motorcycle Expedition (GNOME ?) and who is invited? Okay, I guess there are certain entrance requirements - like a bike, for example - but since I know you are going to get one in the first half of this year that counts you in for sure.
What about planning something for 2006?
I was immediately very distracted and unproductive at work and mapped out a route to the GreatKuneneRiver in Namibia – this being a section of the world that we had seen as guides but never on our own time.
And I set a date; 16th December 2005
I still didn’t have a bike; the only bike thing that I owned was an old helmet.
It took a lot to get organised. As a student for the 6 years that I rode, I hadn’t ever bothered with useless things like a licence and insurances. The bikes were built up and never registered. Getting a bit wiser and less stupid had changed my risk tolerance for that kind of stuff and if I was to get this trip off the ground I would have to get legal. So a frustrating time was had trying to hurdle the bureaucracy of becoming a legal biker. I suppose one of the pressures to become legal was also from my bank as they would be loathe to finance a bike without the necessary licences and nobody would insure me without one either.
Almost a year passed and after many hours of internet searching, piles of bike magazine reading and lots of kicking tyres in bike shops irritating the sales people and with 3 weeks to go to THE DATE, I popped for a brand new silver KTM 950.
My very understanding wife when I told her thought that I had bought a CD at first, “Weren’t you off to buy a bike? Katie M? I haven’t heard of them are they a local band?”
She at least agreed with me that the shiny Silver Dream Machine was a pretty good looking bike once parked in the garage.
Late in the game I learnt that the trip was actually going to be the least expensive part of the adventure; it was the gear that was going to do the damage to the credit card. I read somewhere that; “if you can’t afford the gear, you can’t afford the bike” Isn’t that the truth?
Things moved very fast from there, loads of planning, paperwork, packing, prepping and before we knew it D-day had arrived.
This is the account.
The most important thing is to set a date – and then tell everyone.
After that everything falls into place. If you start working the other way around, as in go when you’re ready, well, you’ll never get it off the ground.
Craig and I used to live together as students and have been fast friends since. We used to be river guides at one stage too. When we lived together I used to have XT500’s and later a Honda CB900. I was always on his case about getting a bike as he used to be a courier in London for a while but drove a cage when we lived together. Then we moved apart and I lost the bikes, gained a car and he did the opposite. Now the shoe was on the other foot, he was the one ragging me. We had always spoken of doing a big African Bike Trip and in Jan of this year (2005) he sent an innocuous if a little sarcastic email;
So.
When are we going to set a date for our Great Namibian Off-road Motorcycle Expedition (GNOME ?) and who is invited? Okay, I guess there are certain entrance requirements - like a bike, for example - but since I know you are going to get one in the first half of this year that counts you in for sure.
What about planning something for 2006?
I was immediately very distracted and unproductive at work and mapped out a route to the GreatKuneneRiver in Namibia – this being a section of the world that we had seen as guides but never on our own time.
And I set a date; 16th December 2005
I still didn’t have a bike; the only bike thing that I owned was an old helmet.
It took a lot to get organised. As a student for the 6 years that I rode, I hadn’t ever bothered with useless things like a licence and insurances. The bikes were built up and never registered. Getting a bit wiser and less stupid had changed my risk tolerance for that kind of stuff and if I was to get this trip off the ground I would have to get legal. So a frustrating time was had trying to hurdle the bureaucracy of becoming a legal biker. I suppose one of the pressures to become legal was also from my bank as they would be loathe to finance a bike without the necessary licences and nobody would insure me without one either.
Almost a year passed and after many hours of internet searching, piles of bike magazine reading and lots of kicking tyres in bike shops irritating the sales people and with 3 weeks to go to THE DATE, I popped for a brand new silver KTM 950.
My very understanding wife when I told her thought that I had bought a CD at first, “Weren’t you off to buy a bike? Katie M? I haven’t heard of them are they a local band?”
She at least agreed with me that the shiny Silver Dream Machine was a pretty good looking bike once parked in the garage.
Late in the game I learnt that the trip was actually going to be the least expensive part of the adventure; it was the gear that was going to do the damage to the credit card. I read somewhere that; “if you can’t afford the gear, you can’t afford the bike” Isn’t that the truth?
Things moved very fast from there, loads of planning, paperwork, packing, prepping and before we knew it D-day had arrived.
This is the account.