Mayan Prophecy Countdown
It is raining again, so because I cannot ride, it is time to strip the bike down. So, during the day I managed to get the bike to a stage where I could start running cables and installing the new gear. During this time I also bought some oil and did a change, a very expensive oil at that, considering I paid $25 for 3lts oil at my last change in Macedonia, today I paid $22/litre, a bit of a shock and no ‘world traveller’ discount. But, at least once the oil change was done I could drain the fuel tank and remove that, I had to run the engine to warm it up before the change and run it again and check for oil leaks after the change. But, by mid afternoon the cabling was going well.
One thing of note was the fact my chain oiler had gone missing in the post, but after a few phone calls we found that the delivery dude decided to send it back to the sender, because it was addressed to ME at this address, but he knew the only names at that address were BIRRER, stupid idiot never knocked on the door to ask, nor leave a note saying a parcel had arrived. It eventually did arrive that afternoon where I was once again stunned by the tax rules and had to fork out another $50 import duty, but I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and paid up!! Anyway, eventually the bike looked like this and stayed that way while I ran cables and tried to install three different things on it, namely the new heated grips, the new chain oiler and a power supply for my SPOT.
I had walked the rear wheel up to the Suzuki shop to get a patch put in it and a bit later Sepp kindly took me down to Silverstone Park after lunch where I picked up my new clobber.
I am impressed by this shop and the owner really knows his products and seems to know where each zipper, fastener etc is on everything he showed me so if you find yourself in this location and need some stuff I can highly recommend the service and the price. I received a massive discount on the gear plus tank bag after mentioning “World Traveller”, around 35%, which was really appreciated and made up for the other negative expenses, thanks and here are some details for those that need them.
Hauptstrasse 11-13
CH-6015 Luzern
N47 03.541 E008 17.163
During the day I had contacted the Kyrgystan Embassy to see if my passport had arrived, it took many phone calls before I finally managed to get through. Bummer, the people who handle that section are not in today, what is it with these embassies. 😦 Nothing I could do except wait until tomorrow and call again, and the bike was more important at this moment. It was a long day and continued into the evening with the SPOT modifications, but eventually I had the power supply installed under the seat and the cables attached to the device. I was not happy with the connectors I had and would change them, maybe tomorrow.
Later in the evening while having a beer or two, Simon was of the opinion that the passport and visa would be ready Friday at the latest but maybe Thursday and as the weather was going to fine up a bit later in the week, he planned a few routes for me. One for a ride to Geneva(to pick up the passport) then north to Frankfurt, another route for a ride to Geneva, then to Stelvio Pass and on to Frankfurt and a separate day trip around the Alps near Lucerne. As he knows the area and the mapping program very well, I left this task to him as he could incorporate speed and scenery and riding into the routes better than I could 🙂
Cheers from Lucerne
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 