Time is Ticking Away

The pace is picking up fast and we are quickly running out of days to get everything done and, no, I haven't lost any weight.

 

Last Friday (11^th Feb) I got a late afternoon email from StanTours to say that my letter of invitation to Russia has been received and is in the offices of Real Russia in Islington. I rang Real Russia and confirmed that the paperwork was with them and the reply was a comforting "Yes".  As luck would have it Mark was coming over to stay on Friday night so when he arrived we had a chat and decided that as this part of the trip was the largest it was important enough for us to go to London in person to collect these precious letters of invitation and put forward our visa applications.

 

We got up early on Saturday morning and made our way to Coventry station where we got the 7.30am Virgin fast train to Euston which got onto the London platform at 8.30am. We got the Tube to Islington and by ten past nine we were pushing open the door of the Real Russia office where Don, the owner, sifted through the paperwork, took our money and told us everything would be just fine. We won't know if that statement is true until next Tuesday when our passports will be returned either with or without the precious visa.

 

Grant, our mechanic friend, has rung to say that our personalised Ohlins have arrived from Sweden (now wishing even more that I hadn't lied about my weight) and he will pick them up early next week and fit to the bike which for some bizarre reason has just reminded me that I must call the BMW dealer (I use Woollastons in Northampton) and get (a) a duplicate spare ignition key (b) beg for a spare fuel pump controller – a known problem with our bikes and (c) a spare ring antennae – yet another know fault with the BMW GS which would render the bike totally stagnant if it failed as there is no way to start the bike. I do have a BMW bike dealership much closer to home (Clarkes at Rednal) but I have found their service to be way below the norm and, quite frankly, they don't deserve repeat custom.

Good news arrived this afternoon in the form of an email from David Grist at HC Travel who has now confirmed our booking for shipping the bikes from Southampton to Baltimore aboard the good vessel Texas with the added bonus that the prices have not increased from the original estimate given a few months ago (£575 per bike (one way) if you're interested).

Our next task ?  Well, when (or if) we get our Russian visas we need to look at other visas for Mongolia, Kazakhsatn, Uzbeckistan, Turkmenistan…….. never ends does it !

Liar, Liar........ !!

……….Yes !  Liar, Liar pants on fire.

Well , I must now confess to dishing out a big lie this week. You may recall in previous posts that we are upgrading our suspension by fitting some expensive Ohlins shocks.  To set the gear up properly the manufacturers build each bit of kit specifically for the weight of the bike which includes in our case both the luggage and the rider. I lied about my weight and took two stone off my actual reading and now I have committed myself to losing this amount of flab before we pick up the bikes in Baltimore on 16^th April. – I'm bloody starving, but don't tell anyone my little secret.

I've also started a "Things to Do" list but I keep remembering things to write on it when I'm nowhere near the list and by the time I find it again I've forgotten what it was I had to do. Is this the shape of things to come. The most important thing to do now is to get our Russina visas sorted out. David at STANtours has said that the Letters of Introduction (LOI) will be with us next week and we have decided to use Real Russia in London to assist us with the application (cost around £274 for a 6 month multi entry visa plus 126 US dollars for the LOI).

Good news on the shipping from USA to Vladivostok. We have found three others from Tennessee who want to share with a container with us. This will have the effect of splitting the total cost five ways instead of two and we will all save a small fortune. Bob Erion of Radiant in Seattle has been really helpful and patient with us and, somehow, he seems to answer  his emails almost immediately, day or night,  despite the fact that he is around 10 hours behind the UK.

This week will see me sorting out all the things that I need to take and putting it all together in one place before I start to cull things that I can do without. Memory sticks need filling with copy documents and information, Garmin maps and waypoints need downloading onto SD cards, and me and Mark need to spend some time together just going over things to make sure we don't duplicate things like tools etc.

Just wish I hadn't lied about my weight…. I'm still starving