Edging Forward Bit By Bit

It has been a really busy couple of weeks. The grogginess of the Christmas and New Year celebrations soon wore off and we burst into action. This is what's been going on……

Last weekend Mark came over and stayed and we had a boys with toys couple of days fixing Mark's aluminum panniers and racking system to his bike. I fixed my additional fuel carriers to the back of my panniers and it all looks good.

We have ordered some Ohlins front and rear shocks and springs, these will significantly upgrade our existing factory standard suspension but at a fair old cost at around £1800 for each bike. This is about £300 more than we first thought because we apparently need the heavier duty shock. The idea here is to keep our old suspension boxed up at home and (God forbid) if the Ohlins system packs up then we can FedEx the old parts to us and refit them – this will probably save a bit on import duties because the secondhand parts will be worth considerably less than new).

On Monday we spent a day in Peterborough at the Passport office where we successfully applied for second passports. This will help if we end up travelling through Syria, Jordan & Israel as the Israeli visa stamp in our passport will be the kiss of death if we want to enter some middle eastern countries later on. It also means that we are not so constricted by time when applying for visas. The passport office staff were really helpful but Peterborough itself was depressing.

The success with the passports spurred me into action and I contacted David Grist at HC Travel and we have now completed our shipping contract forms which have us dropping off our (cleaned) bikes at Southampton on 1^st April. We are then making our way up to Heathrow where we will fly to New York on 3^rd April. I also used David to sort out my 6 month Travel Insurance for the trip – specialist cover for the type of journey ahead – that cost me £473 plus we also shelled out to Motorcycle Express another $660 US Dollars for 2 month comprehensive cover in the States – we will buy third party insurance (if available) for the other countries at borders as we progress.

We also confirmed and paid $120 US dollars each to STANtours to arrange a Letter of Introduction for Russia which we will need when we make our multi entry visa application to the Russian Embassy in London.

And, finally !  I went and queued in the Post Office, paid my £5.50 and got another one year International Driving Permit because my existing one runs out at the end of July.