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Richard &Jude’s post
We have come to the conclusion that shipping the bikes out of Darwin is too risky as the potential delays could mean us missing the start of the China leg. The alternatives are to either fly or ship the bikes out of Brisbane or Perth to either Kuala Lumpur or Bali. Brisbane is too close to Sydney and we would miss much of Australia and Perth is about twice the distance from Sydney as Darwin is. At this stage we have decided to go to Perth and see more of Aus. It’s about 9000kms to Perth from Sydney via Uluru, about 1/3 of the whole trip! Our preference would be to get the bikes to Bali and ride across the equator and ship the bikes from Sumatra to Kuala Lumpur but the ship that used to go pre Covid times is no longer running. There was a rumour posted on a web site a couple of weeks ago saying that a new service has started but we have yet to confirm it. Lawrence has been looking into shipping his bike out of the UK to Sydney and everything that is involved to do so. An International Carnet is required and the bike has to be literally spotless to get through the strict Australian quarantine requirements. No North Wales mud and sheep droppings allowed Lobo. Jude and I completed our test run on the bike. We rode 2700 kms in 5 days camping all but one night. The bike fully laden with 2up was initially a bit of beast to handle through the one hour of heavy and slow Sydney traffic to get out onto the freeway but once going you could hardly tell the difference. Stopping distance was much longer as you would expect so had to be taken into account. We were on the road for 8 hours the first day with 6 hrs actually in the saddle arriving at our campsite as darkness set in. Over the next four days I became much more used to handling the bike at low speeds and capable of doing low speed u turns fully laden. We are both so pleased with our new Klim gear. It’s very comfortable. It was cold (for Sydney) when we left and over 32c in the traffic jams of Brisbane so all the ventilation zips in the jackets were much appreciated. From the second day onwards we got saddle sore after the first hour each morning and had to stop every hour thereafter to revive ourselves. We purchased an Airhawk seat pad before we left but unfortunately it made little difference even when inflating it to different levels. We must look for something else to try and resolve this issue for both of us. Gel perhaps? Colin has received confirmation from the two causes he was proposing that we can promote and contribute to them. Seva and Wheels for all which I think are two great choices. Check them out. Jude and I have managed to find time to work on our house here in Sydney with the aim of getting into a state where we can rent it out without expecting too many repairs. We have been madly painting outside of the house, replacing the 30m long wooden fence between our neighbours and trying to sort out all the years of accumulated stuff that we have as we will put it in to storage. We are planning to rent our the house out for a couple of years as we intend to live back on our boat and sail to New Zealand after our bike trip. Good news! We have heard that the border in and out of China has opened. Azerbaijan was supposed to have opened but it’s been delayed until 1st July. There is still fighting on the Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan border so that’s still closed. Turkmenistan opening up is now looking promising as well
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