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After what amounted to literally hours of planning, my friend Patrick Burek and I rose in London at 4:00 AM on June 26th, 2006, to begin our 2500 mile round trip journey to the Alps. (You might remember Patrick from the New Zealand tour of 2001.) We had to catch an 8 AM ferry, as there are only 23 ferries a day and we couldn't afford to miss this particular one. The day dawned dull and gray. What a surprise! As we moved the bikes out from the fortress in which I keep them at night, and loaded, (as high up as I could), the 125kgs of
security measures into the back
of the BMW R1150GS that Patrick would ride, I felt the same feeling
that I experience, without fail, at the beginning of every great
motorcycle adventure I
undertake: rain. Of course, the United Kingdom was in the middle
of the biggest drought of the decade, and it waited until the very
mintute we were to leave to rain.Armed with a Google map showing me, (with amusing diversions the wrong way down a couple of one-way streets.... hilarious!), how to get to the ferry port Dover, we set off, Patrick on the BMW, me on my new Moto Guzzi Griso. The unpleasant drizzle turned to a unpleasant shower as we navigated the 4:30 AM London traffic. The Griso bristled with Italian style and demonstrated this early on by deciding that it was far too chic to be ridden in these kind of conditions, and set the speedo pouting by displaying either 0 mph, or 596 mph, with a big "!" mark and the admonation, "Servicio stupido!". It only returned to reluctant form when the tempurtures hit a more mediterranean 33C the next day. The BMW refused to bristle at all.
The rain continued, a steady drizzle, but before we knew it, we were in Dover, and the bikes were safely on the ferry, albeit filthy. We retired to the spacious lounge, where we had a rather unhealthy meal. I don't think anyone could agree that frying toast is a good idea.
Arrival in France
After the short trip across the pond, we landed in Dunkirk, France. The rain began to let up, and by the time we hit the Canadian War Memorial at Dieppe, memorial it had
stopped.
We paused there for a visit,
before
heading on, onto the motorway, so we could get to the good riding as
quickly as possible. The first pangs of boredom soon gave way to
an agony of dispair.... motorway riding is never interesting, even in
France. The Guzzi is no touring machine, but it was fairly
comfortable, and didn't get hard to hang on to until we hit about 85
mph... which is about the average speed on a French motorway, (the
official speed limit is 130 kph, (80mph)). We had
hoped to make it to Bern, Switzerland the first
day, but soon realized that would never happen, and decamped in Nancy,
France. At this point my plan came to fruition, as the BMW,
loaded with about 100kgs of chain about two feet above the seat and,
inexplicably, a giant wheel of cheese Patrick had picked up at the
motorway service stop, caused the BMW to topple in the parking
lot. It took a team of five to right it, and to this day, Patrick
looks at a parked BMW as one might a not-very-well-trained lion or a
particularly peckish great white shark.Cultural Issues
hungrySM.gif The next day dawned bright and sunny, and after another virtuoso performance by Patrick at the breakfast table, on the way back to the hotel to begin our ride, I decided to stop and buy some fruit, at a charming "Fruitieier,", (I made that word up). Cue the first cultural faux pas. Did you know that in France, fruit fondling is looked upon only slightly less disapprovingly than the Nazi invasion that began WWII? I didn't. Thus,
naively,
I decided to select the
fruit I wanted, and put it into a readily available bag. It was
only when two ripe peaches were about to be joined by two equally
lucious nectarines did I hear an admonishing, "Tut, tut! Touchez
pas! Touchez pas!" which was accompanied by a gaellic scowl
unscowled since scowling was first invented in France nearly 100,000
years ago. Now my French isn't very good, but I knew from my
schoolday studies that "touchez" meant "the fruit" and "pas" meant
"fondle/manhandle", and that the "don't" was silent. Putting it
all together (manhandle + fruit + don't), I knew I'd done wrong. As I
sheepishly began to replace the afronted fruit,
another shopkeeper swept up, oblivious to the unfolding drama, and
foisted the box of peaches away from me, not noticing the two
missing. It was only when she got to the till that she realized
the full horror of the situation, and I was greeted with another scowl
and another round of "touchez pas". Quelle horror!Anyway, fruit skillfully aquired, we headed off, south towards the French alps, where we encountered our first winding and steep roads. It was at this point that Patrick's rear brake began to fade to nothingness. "Not my problem!" I cheerily thought as I pretended deep concern, and made a note to let him lead on the next downhill.
Our next night was spent in Morteau, France. France was playing someone in the World Cup, and they won. Of course, the city exploded in joy and horn-tootling unrivaled. We let out a few of our best French accented "Woooooooooooo!" sounds to help the cause. (We also experienced these kinds of celebrations in Lorcarno when Italy won and again somewhere in France when the French won again. It's all a big blur now. See the movies of some of the celebrations here.) From this point on, whenever "Morteau" was mentioned, I would hilariously wave my foot around, my big toe sticking out. Patrick never tired of this.
Great Riding
The next few days offered great riding. Armed with the competant but slightly hard-to-use Motorcycle Journeys Through the Alps and Corsica, and a map marked up with all the
best roads, we passed through the
French Alps, which was some of the best riding on the trip, and spent
the night in the gorgeous Chamonix, Mont Blanc. From there we
spent nights in
Martigny France, Locarno Switzerland, through the amazing Splugen
Pass, and then to the very charming
Ponte di Legno in Italy. It was in Italy, on the Saturday and
Sunday the first and second of July that we first encountered the
near-suicidal riding techniques of the Italians. Or should I say
they would have been suicidal in our cack-handed gloves; the Italians
thought nothing of passing a line of cars against oncoming traffic down
the center line at 70 MPH. Even when overtaken by teenage girls
in flipflops on Vespas, we did not waver in our committment to safety
and cowardice.
The
two days of
riding on the weekend were the least pleasant of the
trip... it was hot, the roads were crowded with maniacs, (read, better,
faster riders), and some
idiot misread the map (I won't mention any
names, but I concede it wasn't Patrick), causing us to spend many an
hour retracing our steps in the stifling heat. Not only that,
Patrick was
on to me, and was packing the chains and the wheel of cheese at the
bottom of his luggage now. We were glad to pull into Cavalese, Italy, at the very inviting biker's Hotel La Stüa. Catering mainly to Germans on BMWs, (each German must be issued a BMW R1200GS at birth, such was there ubiquity), it was a very friendly and helpful place. Here we met Dave, from Detroit in someplace called the "America", who joined us the next day on our trip around The Sella, a kind of ring or roads in the Italian Dolomites. Dave rented his Kawasaki ER600 in Germany for €400 for the week from Kawa-Hage, which seems like a pretty good idea, especially after we got dinged for 300 Swiss francs on a new tire for the BMW earlier, (which is about €192, which is what a new front AND rear cost in London, that bastion of bargains).
We enjoyed the Hotel La Stua so much, we returned there for a second night. Too bad we didn't know we were going to be doing this, as we could have ditched our luggage and
the
wheel o' cheese. This would have made
both bikes a lot more nimble. One thing we did learn on this trip
was to pack light and be well prepared. I brought way too many
cold weather layers, and should have had faith in my original plan,
which was to bring one merino wool/synthetic riding t-shirt and two
pairs of quick drying socks, so that when I arrived at our destination
in the evening, I would just wash the t-shirt and socks in the shower,
and the next day, they would be dry. I brought way too many back
up t-shirts, and why Patrick thought he might need BOTH his futon and
his comforter is beyond me. 
Well, by this time we were thinking we had better start thinking about heading home.... we didn't want to do one final day of 1000km, so we decided we would slowly start heading back the next day, Thursday the 4th of July. We got an early start, and treated the BMW to a nice, €11 litre of oil. I suggested to Patrick that for that price we could have used the finest Italian dipping olive oil, which brought hearty guffaws and chuckles from one and all. (*Note that this is not true: Patrick was paying for the oil, and levity was not going to be appreciated. That much money buys you a nice 3 BR house in Hamilton, Canada.)
A Mystery
We spent a very nice morning traveling through some more amazing scenery, before having to hit the motorways for a few hours. The last hour or so was spent riding very pleasant roads to the very nothing town of Krumenau in Switzerland, where a very chilling thing happened. After unloading our bikes, Patrick was out chasing squirrels or something, and I was in the room brushing my teeth. While I was doing this, I heard a very unmistakable sound: a pine-cone hitting the floor and bouncing twice. It was every motorcyclist's worst nightmare....
someone had found us and was lobbing pine cones
into our open window! I sprung into action, leaping to the
window, shouted, "Hmph, wmfpevah ish dvowming mwat, cwut id
oud!" (Remember I was brushing my teeth, not attempting to speak
Swiss-German.) The cone cacophony stopped as quickly as it had
begun. I searched the room, but no
pine cone was discovered. Could I have been wrong?! Was I
hearing pine-cone thuggery where none was occuring? Was I being
too quick to judge this small, tight-knit community with my big-city
ways? I hung my head in shame, and decided not to
speak of it. I also decided to wear my helmet out for dinner in
case of a renewed attack... Patrick either pretended not to notice, or,
more likely, didn't notice at all as he spotted a pizza restaurant
across the road, which he declared to be the "new hot spot" in
Krumenau. Later that night our worst fears were realized:
after moving one of the beds we found the near-deadly missle, a pine
cone, the diamater of which easily exceeeded three centimeters.
We knew then that we would have to keep all of our wits about us if we
were to escape un-coned.
The next morning, after a suspiciously quiet evening, ("too quiet," Patrick remarked), we woke to a bright, yet strangely menacing morning. The grim events of the previous night weighed heavily on our minds, and each seemingly casual stroll pass the window was accompanied by a primal, gut-level fear. We knew that we would revert to instinct if another cone volley was launched.
Later that morning, after a tense but, dare I say, tasty breakfast, I returned to our room after loading the bikes, only to find Patrick under the bed, quivering. I was
unable
to coax him out, and he was unable to
tell me what happened. It was then I noticed the horror he must
have endured. On the floor were four of the murderous missles,
the Decidius Pinus Conus.
With the aid of a long stick with a piece of ham on the
end, I was finally able
to coax Patrick out from under the
bed.
It was then that he told me (between gulps of both ham and stick), of
the horrific attack, the four deadly
cones sailing silently through the air, missing him by less than four
meters, only to land on the carpet with
a menacing "plonk, plonk". I was sure he would never recover,
but the ham seemed to help. A lot actually. I'm not
sure the stick did him any good, but he wasn't complaining. We never did solve the pine cone mystery. There were reports of someone out on the lawn that morning when he should have been loading the bikes, but these tales are told by the guillable and Patrick, mainly.
The Last Leg Home
We left the pine cone horror behind us, and the last leg of our journey began. We took mostly motorway, as we headed towards and through and right back out of the very boring
Lichtenstein, and up into Luxembourg, (where we
were assaulted by a massive rain storm and had to seek shelter under a
motorway underpass), and finally the last day,
Thursday the 6th of July, through Belgium and back into France, where
we tried to catch a ferry from Dunkirk again. This time, though,
they wanted over €100 each for the one way trip, the very same one-way
trip we paid less than €50 for just a few days ago. We refused
with a firm "Non!" and headed to Calais, where we got a ferry back to
Dover
for the very reasonable €52. Ha!!The last tiny bit of our trip was marred by someone, (I shant say who but his initials were S.E.A.N), screwing up and sending us through the center of London at rush hour. Naturally we got seperated and somehow Patrick got by me, despite my having practically blocked off the entire road. I also don't know how he got all the way from central London to Holloway Road in North London and back to my place, without a map or even much common sense, but he did! When I finally got home, there he was, sitting on my sofa, most of the wheel of cheese just a distant memory.
It was, without a doubt, a great trip. Click here for more pictures.