Today I should have been riding to Portsmouth with Martin to board the Bilbao ferry but so much has changed in the last month. Martin’s had to ‘back out’ due to a reoccurence of a back problem, so I’ve decided to make the return date more flexible. Rather than using the ferry I have sent the bike out to southern Spain with www.biketruck.com and will be flying to Málaga on 5 Jan to be reunited with it.
A second truck left several days earlier carrying the UK Dakar Rally competitors’ bike to Lisbon.
It was a weird feeling readying the bike for the pickup on 31 December. I’ve really concentrated on packing small this time, but am still taking a JetBoil stove and five weeks supply of www.LighterLife.com food packs so I can continue my weight loss programme. I’ve also packed a sleeping bag and exposure sack in case I get the chance to overnight in one of the Rally bivouacs.
Anything else I remember to take from now on will have to come out on the plane with me. I’ve left my helmet and jacket with the bike, and plan to fly wearing my biking trousers and boots. My carry-on flight luggage will be the tank bag containing my diddy 12-in notebook PC and other modern-day ‘essentials’ such as Zumo SatNav, digital camera and my iPod. And did I mention the cake of DVD movies? I am still a packing failure!
What’s for sure is that there won’t be any shortage of company on the trip–January is a popular time for NW Africa. Two of the other bikes on BikeTruck belong to Adrian Tamone–whom I know from Hewlett-Packard some 20+ years ago–and his son. They are going to ride with me for three days until we reach Er Rachidia on the evening of 7 Jan.
Steve Attwood is already on the road and reached Tarifa yesterday evening. I’ll be meeting him at Er Rachidia and we are planning to watch the special stage of the Rally on the morning of 8 Jan, then ride west to Zagora which is the next night’s bivouac. We might be able to watch the start of the special stage from Zagora, and afterwards will probably head further west.
Steve has to return to the UK about the time that I start the ride south on 13 Jan, but I have an option to meet up with a Swedish guy called Patrick Kunosson who’s also riding through Western Sahara and Mauritania to Senegal. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s Denis Robinson and a group from www.ukgser.com who are riding Honda C90s to Bansang Hospital in The Gambia.
Irene, my wife, will be flying out to Senegal on 19 Jan so she can see the finish of the Rally, then we’ll have a couple of weeks of winter sun together before she flies back and I start the long return journey back to the UK.
My notebook PC is monitoring the temperatures for Eastbourne (currently 3°C), Fès (15°C) and Dakar (28°C) via Windows Vista weather feed gadgets. The longterm forecast for the UK talks about winds from Siberia and temperatures similar to 1987 when it was -12°C. So it looks like I chose a good time to be away then!
Tim
There and Back Again 