And so, we came back to California to find a missing Elephant. As always, our journey was short on planning and cobbled together. The start is never a thing of beauty; more a matter of tucking in as many loose ends as we can find and getting started.We escaped from Australia's gravitational pull on 8 July and spent a hectic couple of weeks in London to re-acquaint ourselves with our grandchildren Erin and Conall and, of course, their parents, Mike and Sarah. Our arrival coincided with Erin's fifth birthday with the necessary party for 25 five year olds the main attraction. Conscientious parenting is hard work! Grandparenting is exhausting.

Our time was made more hectic by a short five day detour to Lille in northern France. Like many things in life, our French sidebar came about largely through no enterprise of our own. In 2008, a group of worthy researchers and archaeologists uncovered an unmarked grave containing the bodies of 248 Australian and British soldiers who died during the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916. The soldiers were re-buried in a purpose built cemetery in 2009 but the identities of many of the remains were not known. Over the next four years samples were tested for DNA and matches sought from the families of soldiers who were listed as missing. Through one of those amazing examples of the golden age we inhabit, the DNA of one soldier was matched to the current generation of my family.

Sergeant Major William Henry Christian Rose was my maternal grandfather's first cousin and he died at the age of almost 20 on 19 July 1916. Along with 19 others, he was remembered in a ceremony on 19 July 2014 at which their new headstones were dedicated. Each headstone bears the soldier's name and an inscription chosen by his family. Jo and I attended the dedication ceremony together with a cousin, Warwick Rose, and his wife Selena. For us, the visit was a quick train trip from London. Warwick and Selena made a much greater commitment travelling from their Queensland home especially to attend. The proceedings were restrained and tasteful and a worthy remembrance of those young men who came from the far side of the known world to fight and die in this part of France.

A new museum dedicated to the Battle of Fromelles was opened next to the cemetery the day before the dedication ceremony and it is a worthy attraction for the local community. The exhibits were well presented and provide an excellent explanation of the battle without the triumphalism and mawkishness that sometimes accompanies such places. The battle was, like many others at this stage of the war, run with breathtaking incompetence and visitors could be rightly angered that the senior command was never held to account for such abject failures in planning.

Our pleasant family interlude was, unfortunately, just a preamble to the serious North American business of the summer. Another day wasted in the back of an airliner and a five hour drive north from Los Angeles got us to the home of our friends Blair, Kristin, Ewan and Lily. We found a forlorn Elephant moping around Blair's workshop. I would like to say that fettling Elephant went like clockwork but it was not so. It took us five full days of faffing about before we unceremoniously threw our gear onto the bike and farewelled our hosts. It would also add a touch of drama to report that we had to solve some difficult technical challenges to get underway but this too would be untrue. The most complex technical difficulty was solved by Blair who noticed that I had pulled the casing of a throttle cable out of its ferrule during servicing and that this was causing the engine to run unbalanced; a five second fix. No, it was all easy enough, but we were just out of practice after a few months off the bike.

So as soon as we had the basics sorted on Sunday 3 August, we crammed everything on the bike and bolted. There were still dozens of small problems to sort, but these would get attention in the days and weeks ahead. Experience has given us this bias for action. Rather than try and sort every problem, we tend to get moving and pick up the pieces later. And that is what we are doing now, pushing north, across the California Central Valley and up the Sierra Nevada heading for Canada and sorting out the little things as we go.