2 Weeks Offroading in Portugal

2 weeks offroading in Portugal
North to south.
Solo.
On a big heavy bike.
Fresh offroad tyres.
A fuel pump on its last legs.
A clutch slave on its last legs.
A GPS that wouldnt import the offroad route.
A language I didnt speak.


What could possibly go wrong?

oooooooo
awesome start.
I'm salivating...

Let's here it Nick!

The bike was in pretty good condition, Id checked a lot of stuff over before so I wasnt too worried about it.
Still, being cautious, I gave it another thorough check over. A pure formality. I had wanted to do it a week earlier, but things had come up. It was now 11pm friday night and the tools came out. Checked brake fluid, oil, fasteners, etc. Rear brake pads were toast :huh (those Galfter blacks didnt last long!...)

Checked the fuel pump. All looked good. But on hearing recent anecdotal evidence of dead fuel pumps that "looked good", I completely removed it to have a close look in good light.
The fuel pump points are a common failure point on the LC8 950's - with the electrical arcing eventually eroding them away.
On casual inspection, they looked pristine, but on closer inspection, they were almost completely gone :eek1

I had a Facet pump to replace it with, but didnt have all the fittings I wanted or the thread sealant. Bollocks....
I checked with my local dealers on Saturday, none had a fuel pump in stock that I could carry as a spare

I then went on the check the clutch slave, the plastic spacer was bent way out of shape - suggesting the slave wasnt square with the pushrod - this is where they eventually crack & fail. .
Fortunately I already had a spare slave that Pyn had lent me. Evoluzione was on its way, but wasnt due to arrive with my mule for a couple of weeks.

So, 1 very suspect fuel pump, a slave cylinder that looked to be on shaky legs, I still hadnt worked out the luggage arrangement on the bike, or even what to pack, I had a prefilter to clean & oil (I had to first get the bloody oil from somewhere), fresh tyres to put on ... and a bazillion other things to do.

This was going to be a busy weekend

Ahem... where was I ...

Well, my pre-departure check over was worth the effort - but now I had a bunch of problems to look at.

Fellow advrider RiderJimbob heard of my problem and kindly lent me a spare 950 fuel pump. Thanks a lot Jim! Only hitch was that Jim is near Oxford - about 1.5-2 hrs ride away...

Spare clutch slave in hand (thanks to Pyn) had that worry squared away.

Pre-filter oil. You would think that would be easy to get Bell-ray air filter oil in a city like London ... but no. Thankfully a fellow 950 owner managed to pick some up for me from his local shop. But that was 1.5 hrs ride the other side of london.

My pre-departure to-do list was growing rather than shrinking...

First port of call was to get the new D908RR rear and MT21 tyres on my dirt rims. Not a complicated task - but in the interest of saving time, I thought Id get some professionals with proper tools and machines to do the job...
Now, I can swap my wheels on the adv, on my own, with no bike stand, sitting on my arse on the side of the street ... in about 30 mins. And I dont think Im that quick.
How long you think it should take a professional to do the same job, with a bike stand!? 1 hr! . 1.5 hrs for the complete tyre-change - and 1hr of that was faffing around getting the bike on and off the bike stand and the wheels on and off the bike.... then they had the cheek to want to charge me extra because it took a long time! :eek1

Well, with a day of riding around like a madman picking up parts and executing other odd jobs, I set about cleaning and replacing the pre-filter at 1am ... (its funny the people you meet on the street at that hour on a Saturday - who, in their drunken state, are quite amused at finding some guy with motorcycle in bits on the sidewalk ... and feel pressed to strike up conversation )

1 day left ... a million little jobs to go ...

Wow! That seemed like more than two weeks...

How was it? We were worried.

The previous day (day -1) was filled with a million boring little tasks. Working out what to take, reviewing that and taking 40% of the stuff out of the "to-take-to-Portugal" pile and repeating...

Day 0 ... I met the day with all of 4 hrs sleep. Its 9am, only a few things to do, then be off by 12, arrive in Portsmouth by 2 (leisurely) and departure at 4 .. easy peasy.

My only target for the day was to leave on time. The last thing I wanted was a stressful, 90mph ride to the ferry where any small hiccup could result in a delay that would have me miss my boat. Next ferry sailed 1 week later. Nope, I didnt want that stress

My stuff was mostly packed ... that 'ol 90% problem (the last 10% taking 90% of the time...)

Just download my GPS route to the Zumo .... and ... WTF?
"Cannot import route. Too many points"

Several choice swear words. Try again. No luck. Goddamit Garmin! How many points too many? 5? 100? What do you mean too many? We are in the age of petabytes and hand-held devices holding 10s or 100s of gigabytes. What the F**K you mean too many points?!!!

Starting to panic just a bit ... its now 10am ... I consider my options. The GPS route is the only planning I had done .... I didnt even have a map .
But, aha! I had a 2nd GPS that I had acquired with a used bike. A Garmin 276C, no less. Lets try that.

It sorta worked. It imported most of the routes - but complained about 4 of them being too long () and warned me that they had truncated them.
Trouble was, I had no way to mount this 276 ... and it didnt have the right maps on it ( only UK and northern france...).
So, I have 1 GPS with maps and no route. Another GPS with route and no maps ... and no mount...

11am ... I dont have time for this shit - I still havent finished packing. I would work it out later...

Finally finished packing, strapped everything to the bike, got all my gear on and was 1pm :huh.

I rode like a man whose bike holiday depended on it - 90mph the whole way there ... squeaked through passport control (Id forgotten my passport was due to expire soon ... usually they dont let you travel if you have less than 6 months validity left on your passport). Negotiated the queues of cars waiting to get on the ferry and .....




Made it

I got a bit side tracked

Writing these RR is harder work than it looks... I have a new-found appreciation for the effort guys like yourself put into them ...

The ferry ride was looking messy ...

It was barely 6pm and the bar was full of drunk English people.
Weh-heeey were on a cruuuise innit! Gisabeer!

However, it was not all bad.
On deck, I run into this geezer



Wearing a Klim jersey and Tech 10's he stood out from the rest of the caravan-towing tourists.

Then the "small world" phenomenon came into play.
It turns out he knows Wonky (http://www.adventure-spec.com/) - they did a massive trip across Asia in 2006 with some exciting stories to tell (involving being shot at, being arrested ... almost having their bikes set on fire by the police.... ) More here

We were heading in rougly the same direction ... South
So we went to the bar to hatch a plan

...and then.....?

Keep it comming Mook!

Top stuff!

...only 3 more months until the next chapter...