Double Indemnity

This week Gina is flying off to Poland with friends to spend some zlotys in the Krakow Christmas Market. All a bit ominous because she is also taking an empty suitcase with her which means that she has every intention of filling it to he brim - sounds expensive to me :(

So the double indemnity referred to in the title will be me getting duplicate documents sorted with backups in PDF on a memory stick and then emailed to my hotmail account in case I need to get my hands on them when I'm away. It might seem like overkill but the last thing I want is to be stranded in a far off place just because I lost my registration documents or had my licence stolen.

I also need to renew my international driving licence and trade my current passport for a newer jumbo version with more free pages soon to be filled with visas I hope. There is nothing wrong with my current passport other than I don't have enough free pages left for my trip.

So here's my list for the week:

Renew my International Driving Licence
Apply for a "Jumbo" passport
Obtain a duplicate driving licence
Obtain a duplicate V5 Vehicle Registration Document (I will laminate this one)
Laminate my MOT
Laminate my insurance certificate


This week I also need to get some more information to Dave at Stantours for my Asian visas and I also need to send an email to Dave Grist at HC Travel so that I can firm up a quote for our shipping from the UK to Baltimore.

Quite a busy week then !

A Day of Dave's

I went to the NEC Bike Show on Monday with a couple of good friends, Chris & Larry, and I spent some time at the HC Travel stand talking to David Grist about shipping our bikes from the UK to Baltimore in the States. The plan is to drop the bikes off at the docks in Southampton and then scurry off to Heathrow and catch a flight to New York, hire a car and then spend a few days bimbling south to Baltimore to meet the bikes and clear customs. David Grist was very helpful and he has a wad of information from me and hopefully we will get the makings of a much cleare plan when he comes back to me with price estimates etc. He did tell me that the sailing schedules for April wont be out until February so no firm bookings can be made until then.

 

The next Dave was Dave at Stantours who answered my email query about getting visas for Russia and the 'Stans'. His reply was full of information and it is going to take some time for me to sort it all out in my head but I do know that I am going to have to trade in my squatty little passport for a jumbo version that will give me more visa pages.

 

Time is ticking away........

Charity Pages now online

I have just spent a happy two hours pulling my hair out trying to get some business cards printed for my trip. Every time I changed one thing I seemed to wipe out something else AAaaarghhh.

Anyway I think that I have got it right, so fingers crossed.

I also had to set up my charity pages so I would be eternally grateful if you would ake some time out to log onto my JustGiving pages and donate some of your hard earned cash to my causes - remember I am fully funding my trip so all donations go to the charity. Here they are:

The Myton Hospices - three hospices covering a large area of Warwickshire

http://www.justgiving.com/Martin-Lloyd1

Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance - a fantastic cause

http://www.justgiving.com/Martin-Lloyd2 

If you want to know more about these charities then Google them

Thanks

In the Beginning God created the World..... and I want to see some of it

Round the World in 80 Ways sounds like some wonderful journey  on or in assorted machines, but it is not. It was just a catchy title which appealed to me at the time I thought of it. The truth is more mundane I'm afraid. Yes, it is around the World but only one way (westwards) and in only one way - on my motorbike.

Me and my good pal Mark are setting off at the beginning of April 2011 and we want you to follow our progress on our journey into the unknown. We are simple souls, totally unprepared physically or mentally and riding huge BMW 1200GS machines which all overlanders (for this is what we are now) will say are far too heavy and unreliable for such a trip. We will just have to see.

We have travelled together for over 15 years now and some of our previous sojourns can be seen our website www.ridersoftheworld.co.uk . Please take a moment and visit the site.

Posts in between now and April will hopefully give the reader an insight into our preparations for our epic trip and by all means feel free to leave a comment - especially when we are away on the actual journey as this will give us a bit of a boost and keep us going.

Mark has chosen to raise money for Prostate Cancer whilst my chosen charity is the Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance. I will post details of how to donate in a later post for anyone interested in supporting our causes - by the way, we are funding the trip ourselves so 100% of donations go to the charities.