Åsa – Page 98 – Forza Åsa

On my way to getting ready

Not much has happened on the blog lately but I have been busy ticking of my To-Do list. I have been contemplating the problem with my leather and how it affects my knees and I came to a conclusion. While leather is the safest option I also have to consider the importance of being dressed comfortably while riding. If something bothers me after one hour it will be horrible after one week. My Grand Tour is planned to take 5 weeks. Therefore, I was forced to go shopping. I hate shopping. Even though motorcycle stores generally are a bit nicer than other stores, it was still with great effort I went to search for new riding trousers in cordura.

Fortunately, there are quite a few shops located close together on Calle Bravo Murillo so I spent a Saturday there pondering the different options. I rather fancy having grey trousers due to the heat but they were nowhere to be found in my size and I went home empty handed. The day wasn’t completely wasted since I got a good idea of the range of clothing in stock. I followed up on the idea with another trip the upcoming Monday which resulted in me abandoning the idea of grey ninstead setteling for black. On Tuesday, I finally found a suitable pair. Unfortunately, they are not waterproof but will be nice and cool since they have sections made of mesh. Next task is to try them with my rain trousers to see how they work together… I’ll wait for some rain for that. Unfortunately, even these trousers are a bit short… they could do with a slight extension… and I could do with a reminder of what long legs are good for, seems just to be a hassle.

Other than this I have an upcoming appointment in the Ducati garage for a service and new front tyre. Almost all of my accommodation has been booked, the only one left is a night in Malmö which seems to be a challenge due to parking issues. The Britain tour came together nicely and is going to take me into Wales adding a new country to my list. I’m very excited about this! All in all, the tour around Britain covers 1800 km, not taking into account the distance I’ll ride during the WIMA rally.

While I was summing up the kilometres from the different legs of the journey I ended up with approximately 7000km. Exciting and a bit scary. This gave me a couple of sleepless nights pondering why most people don’t do things like this and why I do it. Due to the length of my journey I will have to change my rear tyre somewhere along the way. Now I’m trying to find out what distance I can expect the tyre to last, a question that none is willing to answer as it seems. Hopefully, I can be told some sort of percentage of remaining rubber on the tyre while I’m in the garage on Monday and calculate from that. Another new problem is the rear brake light which remains on after releasing the break. Seems to be some kind of glitch. I hope the garage can sort that out for me, the brake light is almost as important as the brakes.

I have also worked to complete the list of accredited Ducati garages along my route and tomorrow I plan to scan my important papers and e-mail them to myself for backup. Then, hopefully, I can give the bike a clean and try the new products I ordered from England. The PackSafe net seems good too. Left to do is to buy a compression bag for the bike cover, write to another couple of magazines, get a haircut and leave the Ducati at the garage for service and investigate the heated grips… and then it’s packing and repacking. I could do with some treatment for my left shoulder which keeps bothering me though, will try to squeeze that in too. Soon, very soon, I’m off!

Pondering packing

I was fortunate to get my hands on the British magazine RiDE which has a special on great roads in UK. Even more fortunate is that I have not yet planned the four days following the WIMA rally when I will spend four days travelling south to reach Portsmouth. Now I have some great ideas cutting into Wales and thereby adding another country to my journey, one I yet haven’t seen, neither on bike nor by other means. I look forward to some further planning and plotting to complete my plan for the Grand Tour.

In addition to the great road coverage the magazine is a super good read. I will definitely try to get hold of it again. The magazine contains quite a few readers’ contributions and actually asks for readers’ opinions and travel accounts. I’m definitely going to send them an e-mail describing my project seeing where that might lead.

Amazingly enough I even made good use of the advertisements since I found a site called motohaus.com. Since the Ducati Monster isn’t intended for touring it is almost impossible finding compatible bags and such things. During most of my years I’ve been using a waterproof sack and luggage straps. My first Monster had soft panniers fitted on to frames on the bike.

Prepared for touring Europe the summer 2000

The panniers hardly fit anything and the frames looked ugly on their own, and when riding a Ducati, of course, you want to look good. Changing bikes I gave that up but kept on dreaming about a hard rear case. So far I have not found a way to fit that, even thought I met a fellow Monster rider last summer who had it and claimed the manufacturer was Givi. Happily contacting Givi they indeed had nothing for me so that dream faded. It’s not so much the need of bringing along more stuff, because during the years I have got used to packing ultralight. What I lack is the possibility to leave my Ducati with luggage unattended not needing to worry. I’m not implying that I bring along valuables, the thing is that I bring everything I need, and without them I will be in trouble.

Now back to my praise of the RiDE magazine. This add for Motohaus made me follow up on the luggage/packing idea once again. And I did find a pack safe system, called PacSafe, A metal net bag is fitted onto the dry bag and locked to the bike. This was a doubt-free buy, and even though the use of it is still to be tested I feel confident. I also added another few things to the cart, an Airpro tubeless repair kit for repairing a puncture and CO2 cartridges to fill up the tyre after the fix. I’ve seen these things before but falsely been told that I needed to remove the tyre from the rim to do this. Therefore, I thought it wouldn’t be an option for me since I lack both tools and confidence to do that. But, after searching the net I found an excellent link with information on how to do it on ADV rider. No need to remove the tyre from the rim, it all seems quite straight forward.

Now I’m confident that if worst comes to worst I can do this. So far I have had two flat tyres during my 12 years of riding. Most people I know have experienced none, but on the other hand, they don’t ride as much as I do. Lets hope I don’t need to test the tyre kit too soon though.

Absent minded

This Sunday started off so nicely. I went and got the Ducati a proper clean; a soap & sponge wash, followed by wax. After that followed lunch and siesta watching formula 1 comfortably from the sofa. The peak of the day still awaiting me. I planned to ride out, going north by Miraflores de Sierra to Rascafria and then head back via Cotos.

instructions for use and information about forbidden actions

forbidden action - wax on — forbidden action – wax on

Since Alcobendas was warm, bordering hot today, I wore my leather and not much else. Walking to the bike I thought it was a pity it was so warm that I didn’t get a chance to try out my new gloves.

Riding up to the mountains though the temperature dropped considerably and the road was wet from heavy rain. Almost immediately my knees started to hurt from the pressure of the leather. This fed a train of thought, considering pros and cons, weather to stick with the uncomfortable but safer leather or buy ride safe water proof trousers to go with my riding jackets. And if so what jacket would I use, the summer one or winter… both Sweden and England can be chilly during summer. And what to do with the back protection, use the small one in the jacket, or the independent one which is safer but less comfortable. So many different aspects to consider. Then I stopped for photos. I saw lightning over a lake and thought it looked exotic. Then the fuel lamp lit up, that means 3 more litres to go.

I think it is a bit hazzly to fill up the bike in Spain. Often I have to pay in advance, and estimate how much I can fit. Or enter the shop and ask them to open the pump for me, and then enter again afterwords to pay. Therefore, I don’t like filling up the bike unless I really have to. All this is of course bad excuses for what happened out there today. Since Iäve been home not riding fro two weeks I didn’t really know when I filled it up last. Nor did I check the trip meter. Frankly I was absent minded. The result was that I was out in rural area with no clue where to find petrol and I had 3 litres to go.

The scenery up there is really stunning but now I had a hard time enjoying it, battling not only the discomfort of my knees and the cold up on 1800 meter but now also the lack of petrol and the nudging fear of the possibility of not finding a service station in time. My only comfort was that I knew my good friend Merete wasn’t travelling this weekend and she would probably even find a way to appreciate a call for help. I usually count that 3 litres give a bit more than 30 km. Passing Cotos I was also passing 30 km. Now my hope was to the down hill, thinking that I could basically just roll down not using the engine and save fuel. So I did. Turning towards Madrid at Valdeski I still didn’t know the distance to a village with a petrol station. I continued to try and use the gas very carefully and going slow, the cold also helped keeping down the speed. The air holes in the leather sure lets in a lot of cold air even though I never notice that when it’s warm.

I couldn’t believe my happiness when at 49km reached Merete’s village. I parked and picked up my phone. Happiness turns to disbelief when she doesn’t answer on either of her two phones. Good thing I didn’t know that up in the mountains. No point in hanging around so I slowly rode the bike out of the village and continued towards Madrid. Now I could feel that the engine wasn’t getting a smooth flow of fuel because of the rickety ride and I knew there is not many more meters to hope for. Then I saw them, like in a dream. Never before have the flags of Shell locked to beautiful. With a big smile I asked the service intendant to fill up the Ducati. It ends on 12 litres, that is indeed full tank.

Looking back, today’s ride wasn’t the relaxing little trip that I was expecting but indeed quite an adventure. I make a mental to fill up first, before heading out alone to rural areas. And I wonder with resignation how many times this must happen before I actually learn. Looking back it wasn’t to bad, actually, I didn’t even have to push the bike 🙂 which has happened on at least two ocations in the past.

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