Elvis on the Move - Motorcycle Adventure Travel

So today is the day. After a long beautiful week of sunshine and sickness I’ve decided to go get insurance for my bike today. Now it rains. Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?Ah, what the hell? A little water never killed anyone. Here’s what the weekend in Vancouver is supposed to look like: 10°C | 6°C Friday 9°C | 5°C Saturday 10°C | 5°C Sunday It’s not looking so good. On a plus note, I just checked my driver’s license and I have 20 days until my learners permit runs out. Yeah… you heard right. “Learner’s permit”. It seems that if you are out of the country for 5 years and you hadn’t been renewing your license they make you do your driving tests over. Needless to say it was enjoyable having to take my driving test over again at the age of 31. Not only was it was hard keeping both hands on the wheel, it was damn near impossible not to reach under my car seat for the icy cold beer I could feel rolling around. So now I have to schedule a day to be sober and go drive my bike around a b...

So the last few days of crippling sickness have not been a complete waste of time. I managed to get a little XBox time to myself and... oh yeah? A NEW DRIVEWAY!! I, of course, had nothing to do with the making of the driveway. Unless you take into consideration the time it took me to earn the money to pay for it. These guys came in and within a couple of hours a brand new driveway was made. Take a look: Now the only problem is I can't take my motorbike anywhere near this fresh asphalt with the oil leak. I don't even know how quickly my wife would take my life if I was the first person to put an oil stain on the fresh tarmac. Maybe I could make a ramp?

So now I find myself at home on a beautiful Tuesday morning, quarantined to a radius of about 25 feet from a toilet. It seems that after my daughter's misdiagnosed measles, her properly diagnosed tonsillitis, strep throat, fifth disease, and ear infections it was her flu that took the big man down. This has been a malady ridden spring to say the least. The moral of this story is, "Get your flu shot!". Izabel got hers and she's as healthy as a horse. Here's a completely unnecessary picture: why yes that is vomit on my shoulder! Needless to say I'm having a tough go of it. During this posting I've had to get up quickly and go to the bathroom three times. So on that note I'm going to have to sign out. And to think I was going to buy insurance for the bike today. I don't think so.

I was just talking to my friend Dave and I was asking him about the blog and whether he liked it or not. He said, "yeah it's good". As the phone call progressed, I could tell he hadn't read anything beyond the headlines and he had looked at a couple of pictures. Shame on you Dave! Now go and read the blog in its entirety and get back to me. Now to today's entry..... It looks like I have my oil leak figured out. When I do an oil change I need to drain the oil from the transmission as well. The engine oil in this bike also doubles as the lubricant for my clutch. I've read a few posting over at another forum and they mention it a few times. So one more thing out of the way. I'm going to get insurance on Tuesday and take it for a few 'fair weather' tests. I found a motorbike mechanic not too far from me and I'm going to see if he can balance my carburetors for me. I think it's asking a little too much for me to try and balance four carburetors ...

Every well laid plan has a goal. My goal is a tiny little village in Croatia named Jadrtovac (try saying that one ten times quickly). Should be an easy enough goal. Get on plane, catch a taxi, and 'poof' you're there. Way too easy to make a story worth reading about. Could you imagine that blog? It would be about me packing, maybe a little blurb about buy airline tickets, and perhaps a misadventure about bad English and a taxi driver with poor hygiene.That's it... done. So let's clarify the goal: My goal is a tiny little village in Croatia named Jadrtovac. Now let's make it interesting and add some hurdles to achieving this goal: I have to transform a rusted out piece of crap motorbike into something reliable enough to make a long journey. I then have to ship the bike to Europe somehow. I then must travel through at least 5 countries to get there. OK that's a good set of guidelines to make this an interesting adventure. Especially when you add the fact that ...

So now that the lawn is taken care of (for the time being) I can get back to the important stuff... my bike. So now that she's running I should start working on cleaning up the bike and seeing what I have to work with. I also looked around for the paperwork for the bike and came up short. I can't find the registration anywhere. I guess ICBC (the government run insurance company for British Columbia for all my out of town readers) will be making more money off me to get my registration papers replaced - the communist dogs. Checked my license plate. As you can tell from the photo I haven't had insurance on this bike since November of 2004. Wow!! That's a long time to be sitting around doing nothing, I'm ashamed. I'm still leaking a lot of oil every time I take the bike for a ride up and down the hill. It seems to be dripping down from my air breather. There's a tube tat runs from my clutch up to the breather. I must be getting oil overflow from there. How much...

So today I come home from work after stopping to pick up a few things to continue on my motorcycle project only to find a 12 yard pile of soil sitting on my front lawn (I use the term 'lawn' loosely as my front yard has the ability to grow rocks and that's about it!). It would seem that because my wife has had to spend the last week and a half indoors because of my daughter's misdiagnosed 'MEASLES' the she has gone completely crazy. Now it looks like I'm not going to be doing anything with my bike this Easter long weekend. Update: This is only the first of two soil shipments. Another 16 yards will be arriving tomorrow. Time to nip this in the but and call out the big guns. I got a hold of a rental place and they are going to drop off a Bobcat tomorrow. The one thing I forgot to mention... I have never driven a Bobcat before. How hard could it be? Famous last words. As it turns out. It's not that hard at all. I knew all those years of playing video games ...

Eureka!! After the oil change was done I inserted the fresh battery. The leads had been bastardized something fierce so I took the battery connection leads off of the 750 beside it. I found some clean bolts to connect it and Voila! (or is that et voila?) Now to get it running. I had a heck of a time putting the gas tank back on. There was a time 5 years ago when removing and reinstalling my tank was a daily occurrence. Now? Lord help me if I even know where to connect to the carburetors. Finally got it figured out now lets get 'er going. Checklist: oil drained? ---> Check oil replaced? ---> Check battery connected? ---> Check petcock open? ---> Check ignition on? ---> Check bike in neutral? ---> Check Touch the ignition button... the bike cranks? Hooray Keep cranking.... Give it more gas... choke it...more choke...less choke cranka cranka cranka Nothing I continue this until there is no juice left to crank. Shoot. Now what? Connect charger and go watch Survivor on...

When I ponder the word 'recovery' I think about 12 step programs and sponsors and "one day at a time" I think the rehab model applies to what I have to do to get my bike into the condition it needs to be in Where do you begin such a long journey back? At the beginning? No way man! Lets start the A-Team way. Hannibal didn't do anything without a plan. How else can you sit there afterwards smugly saying, "I love it when a plan comes together". Of course I probably have more in common with Murdock than Hannibal. Lord help us! So here's my plan (I pity the fool who gets in the way): Drain the gas tank inspect tank and recondition if necessary. clean petcock and fuel filter. remount new gas Charge battery Change Oil Change oil filter New spark plugs or clean up the old ones and regap for now. Start your engine Make new plan depending on what happens Ready---BREAK!! Removing the Gas Tank. The lock on the cap is completely ruined. This will have to be repl...

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 ...