TravellingStrom

Mayan Prophecy Countdown

I had a very late start to the day today, I actually slept in!!!! Yes, I was up at 8am and had missed LianYa leaving, sorry about that, nice to have met you, keep up the good work 🙂 I did not have far to ride today, only as far as Hannover in Germany, but with a few stops on the way. To start that process I tried to contact Gerbing, but all I got was an answer machine in Dutch, Vincent called to listen to it and said basically he is on holidays, as from today and would not be back until 30th July, well root me boot, but I guess it is my own fault, I dithered and did not bother to phone over the weekend, so now I pay the price.

What was worse was the email I got from David, I actually got it late last night, but was a tad stoned, but in effect he said, they are heading to Corsica this Monday morning until late July!!! I had sent an email in response asking for the charger to be left at the house or the neighbours or something, I would have to swing by and see if he got my reply before hitting the road!

Although I dithered, Vincent had dithering down pat, so the plan to take the motorbike to work failed, no keys, they are with his iPad he left behind the other day. So, spare keys, no worries, but no spare keys to the panniers, lol, what a circus this is turning out to be, and if you can believe it we both managed to navigate South America safely and get home, with out space cakes mind you 😉

Anyway, I got on the road and left very late and took the decision NOT to swing past Gerbing HQ as it would mean another 200km to the trip and with no personal contact very little useful outcome. I headed north and east, across a big dyke that went for about 30kms and at the other side I had to wait while a series of sailing ships went through the swing bridge between the North Sea and the inland sea.

The weather stayed dry for most of the day except for the overcastness, but that soon changed about 5pm when the rain set on for a while.

As I got into the Bergen Belsen area, I came across the end of a tank exercise, so not only were there warning signs about beware of tanks, I got to pass quite a few in a convoy 🙂

Once there I went straight to the workshop as described by Dave and eventually found the joint, it was an old farmyard, but as by now it was gone 7.30pm, it was more a reconnoitre than expecting anything to be done 🙂 I did speak to the owner Frank, and he advised he could do the tyres after 10am tomorrow, oh well, another late start to the day I guess! I then went and found a guest house which had a restaurant as well and had a magnificent Paella, if I could not make it to Spain, this this was the next best thing! 🙂 The beer was OK as well, of course 🙂

I think the worst thing for the night as a spoiler was as soon as I connected to the net I was hijacked. It seems I have a virus, or a Trojan to be more specific, it tells me it is from the German Police and I have unpaid for downloads on my machine and to enter my credit card details to unlock the computer, fuckin wankers, as if I would pay online like that. So, a quick phone call to Ib to confirm that yes it was a virus, I then spent the evening doing a system restore to that mornings restore point(I hope you all do this regularly?). I then removed the free antivirus I had been using, Avira(stay clear of this one) and installed Windows Security Essentials which killed a lot of crap that should have not been there. This is what you get when you log into to different networks everyday.

Anyway, the job got done, it looks like I survived another day, tomorrow I was heading east, but the first thing to do was get my new tyres installed

Cheers from Bergen-Belsen, Germany
TravellingStrom