Elvis on the Move - Motorcycle Adventure Travel

The following is an email I just received from a local freight forwarder. If this is indicative of what I can expect then My life just got so much better. According to my calculations Shipping should be in the $775 range and I have a choice of Frankfurt or Munich. Could this be right? Read the following I have made some notes in red: Hello Elvis, Please see the current rate below for March 2008. Air Freight YVR-FRA/MUC: 2.34/kg My bike is 230kg $ 538.20 (includes - FSC, SEC, NAV) Dangerous Cargo Fee: 100/HAWB (house airway bill) $ 100.00 Export Terminal Fee: 0.16/kg $ 36.80 Export Declaration (B13A): 45 (if needed) Don’t know what this is? $ 45.00 Document fee: 55/HAWB $ 55.00 Pick up cartage: TBA (One of those hidden charges. I won’t include it) Insurance: TBA My bike is only worth money to me . ...

So... I guess all things being equal I will have to do the majority of the repairs myself. I have begun researching my bike a lot. The first thing I need to do before I even remove one nut from my bike is to... OK the first and second thing I need to do is to FIND MY BIKE! The second thing I need to do is to build a workspace to fix my bike. (this is my carport on Saturday morning. Do you see a bike? this is a closer look at my 1941 International. Yes it is all original. And yes, it does run. I use it to go to the dump and pickup gravel and dirt and the like. I think I see a bike in there. Maybe two? Wow! How did I let it get to this? Lets drag this sucker out a see what we're dealing with. OK. We have a winner. This is the beast that's going to take me across Eastern Europe reliably. No really! I mean it. Trust me I have my doubts to. Now let's see what space I can make to work in. The various stages of my Saturday spent cleaning out my carport/soon to be garage. I worked ...

I posted a couple of blogs already just to try this out. I think I was a little premature as I was just toying around. If I want this to be a serious blog i think I need to put a little chronology and structure to it. So let's start this over and call this the beginning... It all started last year, August of 2007 to be exact. After a year of being with my lovely wife Izabel I finally took her up on an offer to travel to Croatia. She's been going every second year since I have known her and I have resisted. She did have an ace in the hole to get me to go... she threatened to kidnapped my daughter (Olivia) for the whole summer and I wouldn't see them until they returned. So there it was. I had no choice but to get on a plane and get over there. You're probably asking yourself, "Why wouldn't you want to go?". It's not that I don't like to travel. It's just that Croatia was never on my A-list of places to go. Couple that with the fact that I'm ...