……….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 16th 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
No comments:
Post a Comment