It’s a recurrent dilemma for motorbike travellers what motorbike to take with you on your trip. Not easy to find an answer. In all the stories I’ve read, people used different motorbikes for different reasons. Only one thing is sure: the ideal motorbike doesn’t exist.

To be honest: I’d love to take my loyal buffalo, my BMW 1150 GS, with me, but he’s too heavy now I’m going to travel on my own. A difficult hurdle to take. I know my 1150 so well by now. So I have to make a choice, not one of my biggest talents. During my search I made a list of most popular motorbikes and scored off the ones I really didn’t like. I ended up with a top 5 including several brands of bikes. Luckily a friend of mine gave me a very good advice: take a brand that you are familiar with and will have a good support team at home. To be honest: I’m not the most technical person with bikes. Not that I have two left hands, but I’m just not brought up with tinkering with motorcycles. My list shrank to three!

What I’ve learned of my trip with Marika riding from India back home is that it’s very helpful to share your thoughts with others. So I did by asking advice on Facebook and the one and only Dutch BMW GS forum. That always worked miracles. And so it did as well this time. Shortly after posting my question, a friend of mine reacted by inviting me to try out his BMW G650 X Challenge. One of the bikes in my top three list. And if I liked the bike, it was for sale. The X Challenge is a motorcycle with one cylinder and to be very honest, it didn’t appeal to me. But I took the chance. I had to go there anyway to go to a tent show. So not entirely prejudiced I stepped on the X and to my big surprise we became friends after not even one mile! A week later I said yes to John’s offer and another week after that the X stood next to his big brother in my shed.

 

Now the reconstruction phase started. Although the X already had the right suspension and front wheel, I had to change and add several things. First of all I needed a luggage rack and a solution to take some more fuel with me. My already used sources gave me the best option: Go to Erik here in NL (Hotrod Welding). Erik developed a rack and tank especially for the X. Not the most economical solution but by far the best and tested heavily!

 

 

The next step was to check the whole bike and renew and add some parts mainly for protection of the fragile parts of the motorcycle. I of course needed help. There is one man who knows everything about my bike and that is Bas who works for Hyperpro. I met him before and during our last trip Hyperpro was very helpful so the link was made easily. Three days we spend checking every bit of the bike. For me it was an essential journey getting to know the X. That’s a part that still bothers me. I’m going to leave on a bike I don’t know very well. Bas and his colleague David had a lot of patients guiding me through all the technical stuff. It really helped a lot. Although I still won’t be able to fix a lot of problems myself, I at least know where to look for. Bas and Davis I owe you a lot!

 

 

Bas Is welding my GPS Mount

 

 

In the mean time my saddle has been adjusted to my butt. Women are somewhere different 😉

 

Another difference between the 1150 and the X is the way I’m going to transport my luggage. My 1150 has nice aluminium panniers but for the X I better use soft bags. I didn’t have to think long which bags I wanted: the Magadans from Adventure Spec! I only had one worry: is it enough… Bas was a big help in this matter as well. Not only does he know a lot about motorbikes, he also travelled through some of the countries I’m going to. He confirmed my thoughts about using tankbags as well. My investigation for these kind of bags leaded to nothing I liked so I decided to make them myself. I love being creative but was just worried it would be a big hassle because of the fabric I wanted to use. But luckily my sowing machine handled it very well.

 

 

In the mean time I had to leave my house and moved twice to end up living in old school where I was lucky to get two classrooms. Perfect for the upcoming months. After no more then 6 weeks I suddenly got a call: If I’d like to work in Austria over the winter. A few months ago I applied for this job and never heard of it again. They wanted me to come straight away, impossible of course so I was able to bargain for 2 weeks. Two weeks to get the most important things done and to move again…

Glad to get this much done before the 3rd move

Just had time to make a few pictures (not the most brilliant ones)

 

With help form friends and family I managed to get most of the preparations done. The rest (the last bit on the bike and the bags are not yet finished) has to wait until I get back. The paperwork can be done everywhere. So I got on the bus the first of January. The first goodbyes… Four months away from all the people I love and my bikes…