Finally on the 21st of august, after endless preparations, we (Marc and Susi) start our trip from Graz towards Africa. Tam is going to leave Wales on his Honda end of September and the three of us are going to meet mid October close to the Syrian border. Our plan is to ride from Europe to Namibia on the east coast of Africa!
Our team is set up by Susi very Austrian (30); lecturer for geometry in Innsbruck, Marc not a typical German (24); student for architecture in Innsbruck, Tam a welsh boy (29); outdoor instructor.
Why our preparations took that long, is explained quite fast: Our really small knowledge about motorbike trips is the following:
Marc and Susi: 2 weeks Austria-Hungary-Romania 2008 on a mission to find offroad pists (Marc just got his motorbike drivers licence 2 weeks earlier)
Tam and Susi: 9 days off dirtriding in Cambodia 2008 (Tam didn’t have a divers licence for bikes at all at this point)
Susi: 1999 (2 months after I did my motorbike test, in the meantime I had 2 accidents and for 6 weeks a cast) Austria-Italy-Greece. After that 8 years no bikes at all...
Almost everything is set up by now. Our bikes, Marc’s KTM LC4 (”Diablo”) and Susi’s LC4 400 military (“Luzifer”) are almost ready to start. Luzifer has still to be lowered, the doubling up of susi’s boot’s sole still didn’t really do its job to minimize the risk off an accident, caused by the lack off being able to touch the ground.
After a billion of eBay- auctions and way too many nights spent searching for the right gear and not to forget perfect packing lists from experienced enduro riders, we can almost proudly look at our weight- and size wise optimized stuff. Of course we could have saved some grams here and there by buying super expensive high end gear, but that definitely overstretches our budget. On the other hand, what makes us quiet relieved is the fact that we saved 10kg each only by using soft bags.
The documents (Carnet de Passage, international drivers licence, 2nd pass) are packed, so now we are ready to rock!
