Paris to Sydney, 2005-2006

Finally, we are just about ready to hit the road, we will be leaving in just under 3 weeks. I will be riding up to Vancouver, BC from San Francisco on April 4, with the bike scheduled to ship by air from Vancouver on KLM Cargo on April 10. Erika will be headed to Los Angeles to see her family and will meet up with me in Paris.

The folks at Animal Travel (www.amimaltravel.com) will be shipping my beast from Vancouver to Paris, they quoted me a rate of $1350 Canadian. Hopefully the shipping experience will be a smooth one. I will be sure to let you all know what happens.

The ride from San Francisco to Vancouver went smoothly, amazingly enough no rain until the last leg from Seattle to Vancouver. Not what I expected in an area sometimes referred to as the "Pacific Northwet".

We couldn't have had a nicer start to our time in France than being able to stay with Dave's friends Tony and Caroline in their cute little Parisian flat, conveniently located just steps away from the kebab house and the croissant bakery.

Thursday morning we went to Charles De Gaulle Airport just north of Paris to pick up the Transalp. Getting there was easy, the metro took us very close to the airport and we boarded a bus which dropped us directly in front of the freight company holding our bike.

Leaving Le Val D`Ajol, we ascended smooth twisty roads through the French countryside into the rolling hills of the Swiss Jura region. This area is not known on the typical tourist route but is filled with beautiful scenery; old farmhouses; and cheese, watch, and chocolate factories. The closer we got to Cormoret, the very small town where Erika spent many summers with her mom's family in her younger days, the chillier it became. Those were supposed to be green fields where horses grazed in the sunshine! But they were covered with snow!

For our last hurrah in Switzerland, Erika`s parents took us up to the Appenzell, a region in the northeast part of the country (they offered us the use of their rental car if we'd agree to let my mom drive the Transalp with my dad on the back, but backed down after we promised them a nice dinner at the hotel). Luck was with us and it was the first day of sunshine we'd seen in the country. As we rode through Interlaken, we could actually see the surrounding high mountain peaks covered in snow which Dave to that point did not believe actually existed in Switzerland.

When you read your campground guidebook and get all excited because the football field-sized country of Liechtenstein has about 20 campgrounds, you are ultimately disappointed to realize that the country with 20 campgrounds was actually LUXEMBOURG and that your campground guidebook does not even LIST the football field-sized country of Liechtenstein. However, if you are travelling with Dave, you still live happily ever after because he can simply ASK A QUESTION to some local Liechtensteinian who of course will know that a campground exists just down the hill in lovely Treisen.

Hi, I am a map of Austria. This is what I look like:

/\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\
/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \..............

Our first impression of Slovenia is kind of dreary. The high mountain pass we've chosen in order to see something a little more unusual (as well as to avoid the high cost of the toll road) deposits us in a narrow valley with dark old farms and barns and houses which seem a shabbier imitation of the chalets of Austria. The sky is dark and the hills covered with less abundant shrubs. A few older people are out tilling small patches of ground. Few flowers are evident.

We'd heard of the beauty of the Croatian coast as well as the trauma of the war. Not sure what to expect, we cross the border. Opatija is our first stop. Set, as are so many coastal towns, on a curved bay with houses nestled along streets winding down the hillside, it is extraordinary for its ornate mansions and hotels left over from the glory days of Austria/Hungary in WWII. It was apparently the playground for the wealthy in that era, a strange concept when you consider who the wealthy of the era were. At this point it is a festive and inviting environment.

There is something about border towns. Perhaps if you ran into them in the middle of the country they would seem less disquieting, more common. Perhaps it is only one's heightened anticipation of change, one's alertness to potential of the unfamiliar, that creates a perception that there is different light and shadows.

Border crossings have been simple. Typically, documents are shown to personnel at the semi-official looking station of the country you are leaving, whereupon you sit around for a few minutes while they retreat into some small dark cubicle to perform mysterious rituals and incantations before returning your documents; then you continue down the road for a few minutes before stopping at the semi-official station of the country you are entering, whereupon the process is repeated. We have encountered no problems or delays in particular.

It is HOT. Boring countryside. Flat. Hot. Homes are newer-looking -- as if built by someone who had some money to build a nice new home, not as if re-built by someone whose home had been trashed in some war. The road is long and straight and flat. It is, by the way, hot. This is an agricultural area, enhanced by some dried-up industrial looking stuff. It's like being back on parts of glorious Interstate 5 in California.

The sky is getting a strange translucent cover, like a sheet of gray pearlescent silk lit up from behind. It makes the heat thicker, and moist. The friendly border guard tells us names we can't remember of places to see in his beautiful country. Admittedly, we're kinda ready to be taking leave of the lingering starkness of ex-Yugoslavia's troubled history. Though we've met some wonderful people, many a discussion has been had about the overall detached feeling we've experienced as travellers.

At the beginning of June, the motorcycle registration expired. Dave's dad will get the new one in the mail, which he'll forward to a contact in Istanbul. But there are two borders to be crossed before we get to Istanbul. With an expired registration. Whaddaya gonna do? A little computer magic, most likely, with the scanned version of the old registration. Dave happens to be an accomplished computer magician and has produced a fine-looking-if-one-sided-version-of-a-registration that just happens to expire in June 2006. The following transpires at the Bulgarian border:

Erika must have her coffee. Luckily there's a restaurant just before the border crossing into Turkey. And fortuitously a pair of bikers show up to keep Dave entertained while E gets her caffeine fix. Though their English is limited, this father-son team from Hungary speak the universal language of motorcycle. We're impressed by their printed-up itinerary of a 2 year world tour, and that they are choosing to have this adventure together as family.

Ack! Someone lost track of the last three weeks we spent in Turkey. We'll get to it some day. Meanwhile, on to Georgia...

Road Poems for Georgia

1. Tblisi

when going to the capital
you don't need a map-at-all
simply take the asphalt road
the only paved one, so we're told

2. Telavi

"secondary road" the map says
quite a scenic 40 miles
"no no no no NO" our E says
bouncing over rocky piles
"potholed dirt's my thing", now D says
with one of his manic smiles
half an hour hence we've conquered
all of two and one half miles

3. Batumi Haiku

No surprise that rain in Georgia before the Azerbaijan border would mean rain in Azerbaijan across the Azerbaijan border. Inhabitants of dozens of cars stalled in a long line are draped in various stages of soggy boredom over their cars' open doors. Tentatively we cruise to the head of the line to jump through the usual bureaucratic hoops. Though each of us has obtained a 30 day visa, the motorcycle apparently only qualifies for a 3-day transit permit. Why is this? Really now, only in our dreams could we possibly expect anything like a logical explanation.

We've had a long-standing impression that the ferry crossing from Baku to Turkmenbashi would necessitate shadowy dealings and bribes to everyone from cargo boys to captains in order to get the motorcycle illicitly tucked away on board. Scenario part 2 encompassed images of futile nauseous attempts at sleep below deck, stashed behind tankers inhaling a hazardous plethora of environmentally toxic fumes. While getting problems squared away at the port in Baku was an experience best not repeated, this ride across the Caspian Sea is turning out far far better than anticipated.