25,000 miles with Luke and Nick

The plan is to ride from South Africa to Norway in 5 months and document it along the way. There is only one problem. Our bikes are not showing up. They were supposed to be here 3 weeks ago. In the mean time we have done the following...

This is Nick


This is me aka Luke


We like doing hand stands in weird places. This is the pool in our hostel where we have been staying for the last 3 weeks.


I guess we need a picture of the bikes. Right now they are somewhere between Chicago and Cape Town. 2008 KTM 690 2009 BMW F800GS


I type in Orange
Nick aka nrader types in Green

We have a website set up where we post official entries, but I personally like this place better, so I'll be posting here quite often. Maybe I'll even be able to finish this ride report, unlike my last one.

www.lukeandnick.com

I type green

The bikes are at the Cape Town Airport now. They should clear customs monday morning (tomorrow)

We went shark diving off the coast of South Africa. This is a little video I made.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/19066721?color=ff9933" width="670" height="377" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Shark Diving off the coast of South Africa.</p>

Good to see you back posting another trip. Neat video in the cage.

Looks like that third dude in the hot tube aint wearing trunks.:eek1

Not that there ia anything wrong with that....

Just makes headstands dangerous I guess....

.

Crating up the bikes was a semi-stressful event, but in the end we were really happy with the finished product. It was a 2-day event and Mr. Nick managed to skip out of day 2 due to a "work party." You see Nick is an enginer and quit his job to do this trip.



Crate Finished



The next day we drove around clare getting paperwork notorized and making copies for Worldwide Shipping Co. We drove down to Chicago to drop off the bikes. The guys working there were really friendly, but didn't have muh info for us. Apparently they are just the 3rd party that takes the crate to the airport. We just signed a release paper and left. So now we are driving back to Clare without the bikes. We havn't paid for shipping and just hope that our quote was accurate. Well, the quote wasn't accurate. They tacked on another $400 haha.



I tend to put things off till the last minute and packing for the trip was no exception. Finally at 6:30 a.m. after an all-nighter I was ready to leave.



The morning we left Nick's dad who is an anesthetist taught me how to stich up an orange and went through the med kit that he put together for us. We are pretty much a mini-pharmacy. Typical airport stuff happened next, I got my cell phone turned off for the next 5 months. I didn't call my friend Jesse Neil and I got called out for it via facebook. (sorry Jesse)

we landed in Frankfurt and had to claim our checked luggage because the layover would be 10 hours. We checked it back in, then took a train to the city. The ticket booth was confusing so we just hopped on the train sans tickets. It worked out ok and we made it just fine.



It was really cold there with snow and ice on the ground. It's alwasy cool to see the weird cars and bikes that they don't have in America.



This would be the last picture taken where I am not sweating profusely.


back on the place we slept and woke up to some eggs and spinach.


It started getting light and the clouds parted.... AFRICA!!!!!!!!!!! This is Namibia


After the 11 hour flight we land in Cape Town South Africa stinky, greasy and happy. Now time to find a place to stay for the night.

I will be looking forward to this story!!!

What happened to the Husky?

going to be an interesting ride report!

great videos on your site, how did you make the intro/outro? really cool!

can't what to read it looks good so far.

In.
Good luck, you crazy cats!

looks good! I want to see that 690 in action!

I ended up selling it to my friend for 3 grand. The bike will not die!!!

My friend who is a multimedia genius, does the intros and animation. He uses Adobe After Effects. I cut the videos using Premiere Pro.

Ride safe(ly).

This town feels shady.

The next few days are a blur from boderline heat stroke. Coming out of the airport we take the bus into town. I didn't have my camera out and missed some shots of the shandy town. Immage the typical squating homes made out of pallets, scrap tin and garbage. Apparently they tried to clean that all up for the World Cup but didn't quite get the project finished. Reminds me of Detroit moving all the homeless people out of the way for the Super Bowl. By the time I got the camera out, the shanty town was passed.







A nice city worker talked us into getting a cab for the "backerpacker" hunt. Backpackers is their version of a hostel. I'm glad we took the cab because it was so hot and hauling our 80 pounds of gear on our backs would have got old real fast. We found a place called "Cat and Moose" (I don't understand the name either) It was110R per night per person ($17 USA.) Next on the list was food then a well deserved nap. We are staying on Long Street which is a popular area for backpackers and tourists. I usually try to avoid these places because it is very annoying being treated as such. You get whistled at all the time and offered weed/sex etc... a regular basis.



After eating at the "24-7" and taking a nap, we found "Yours Truly." a trendy coffee/juice/art shop with free WiFi.

So the bikes are supposed to be here on the 9th, but when Nick checked his email the delevery date has changed to the 13th. So now we have about a week to kill in Cape Town.



the rest of the day we spent hanging out at the backpackers in the pool and resting.



The next morning we walked to the fishermans wharf. This was a newly developed ritzy part of town, a nautral location for the bmw dealership. We talked to an awesome guy named Shane who said we could unpack our bikes and store our gear right there at their shop. He gave us a contact and let us use their phone to call a man to get our bikes from the airport for us. He's charging us about $100 USD for the service. Sounds halfway decent to me.



On the walk back we found this strange looking tree...


(we checked for snakes first)



breakfast from two angles.



so far the animals are not very intimidating.



The pool tables here are tiny. 6 feet long and the balls are much smaller. The pocket corners are rounded. Here is nick going for a jump shot.


Back to the 24-7 to get something to eat.


I wonder if she recently washed her feet. The day before I saw her running barefoot outside. (The food tasted fine)


So now it comes down to the feature photo. I hate to give a negative view to this town as we have only been here a few days, but I will be happy to leave this place. Mostly because I don't like touristy areas, but also because it feels shady. I trust my gut because that's really all I can do. I trusted it when I met this man today.

Con or Not?...

I was outside of "Yours Truly" lurking some free WiFi facebooking and Tweeting when this Man comes up to me asking for the time. That turned into are you an American? He says good and starts laying down the story. This is the abridged version. He is a Canadian on vacation with his 3 syblings 9,12 and 19. He is the oldest 31 and they all got their passports stolen on a bus. So he needs money 360R ($55 USD) to get bus tickets to go to a village outside of Cape Town to the Canadian Consulate. I am always down to help people and at first the story sounded ok, so I went into a shop to sit down and talk. The more he talked the more the story Mirrored the story of the "Religious Man" from my last motorcycle trip in Mexico. Things were not adding up in my head...

Why did you leave your passport less siblings alone some where?
Why does he know where my backpacker is since he's only been here a few days?
Why is his fair skin not complely sun burned?
Why won't he talk slower and calm down when I ask him to?
Why is he showing aggression to me and mad that I am taking a while to convince?
I pull out my camera and want to take a photo of him. This is another way for me to read him. I hit the record button and ask him to slowly go through his story again. I know if I was telling the truth, I would be ok with that. He gets really mad and tries to block the camera. Saying I am a horrible American. Why won't I help him out. He takes the notes that we had been writing on a napkin and storms out. I will never know the truth to the story. It is impossible to say, but I THINK this guy was a fake.

hmmmm, he sounds pretty shady to me. looking forward to seeing some riding pics

So am I. We are been sitting in this town for 3 weeks and we are borderline sick of it. It's real frustrating with our bike delays and problems. I'm just trying to stay positive and remember that I am on probably the biggest adventure of my life.

I finally have caught up with you.
You've covered a lot of ground since you was at my house
and bought my 610 Husky. Where is that old dog anyway.
Hope you are liking your 690.

Just a few people in the world get to experience what you have Luke---I can tell you realize that and are soaking up each moment.

I have a saying posted right above my computer and ponder it each day.

"Enjoy Life Today
Yesterday is Gone
Tomorrow May Never Come"

I try to live my life that way--but you damn sure do.

Here's an old pic of me on the Husky you bought from
me before you submerged it
in that mudhole somewhere in Mexico I think ????

Your friend,
Mark