Hi, and welcome to my 'diary' of mine, Allens and John's trip to australia on Bikes.
For those of you that know me out there some of you are perhaps thinking this is a little out of the blue, but hopefully as you read on you will find out more about me than I have let you know in the past, and perhaps this will help you understand why I am involving myself in this whole thing.

So why travel half way around the world on two wheels, with pretty much everything i own on the back of my bike, leaving my friends, family and loved ones behind??? Good question!!! And one i doubt i couldn't answer fully, but I shall try to answer it as best i can.

For years i have been wanting to travel and see other cultures. To experience first hand what friends and family have been telling me is out there. To smell the spices of foreign cooking, to feel the heat of a foreign summer and to experience first hand how people from other backgrounds live there life.

So when Allen said to me he was going to ride to Australia, my initial thought was oh yeah, have heard these crack pot ideas before. The idea appealed to me also but being in the position i was it was out of the question. I am a partner in the family company, i had just met a wonderful girl who for the first time in years I could see a relationship going somewhere. And to be honest the last time i had gone anywhere outside the coutry was with my parents. I am now 30, so that was quite a while ago.

Anyway, after thinking about it some more and seeing Allen getting more and more serious, I spoke to my girlfriend (Kay) about it, and she could see that I wanted it to happen. So she gave me her 'blessing' or so to speak on the provision that i would send her a postcard as often as i could, and that i would come back to here when we had reached our destination. Shes a good girl and i know im lucky to have found her. When i get back from Oz we plan to move in together, watch this space..........

So what am i going on?? Well, we looked into this long and hard from the beginning, and basically our decision was dictated by funds, same as everyone else' i suppose. But what could we get that would do the job for the money we had, which to be honest, wasn't much. We decided XT's would be a good bet, made for the job in hand, simple, reliable, and pretty inexpensive. So we set about looking for some bikes.Al found his pretty quick. It was an 89 XT600, on 35k miles. I took him down to pick it up and it looked the part, no doubt, but since then he has had a few difficulties with it. Perhaps he shall mention this in his blog, but if i said the engine has been turned inside out for the past 3 months, has done more miles than the rest of the bike and been put back together a couple of times i wouldn't be stre
tching the truth. Anyway, before all this happened i was looking for an XT also, in the end i found a 97 XTZ 660 tenere in sheffield going for a good price, so off i went to have a look. image

This is the bike when i got it home. Its not quite finished yet but shall post another pic when it is completely ready, should be this weekend, or next..... will have to wait and see.

I had some of the things i would require along the way as i had started hiking a couple of years ago, so i had a tent, sleeping bag, and other camping things, though some of these clearly weren't upto the job and would have to be replaced. Anyway, over the past few months we have been trawling ebay and other online sites looking for things we need and have slowly got together a long list of things we think we are going to need. All of which is going to fit (i hope) onto the back of the bike............

The route.

We are to travel through Europe, into the Ukraine, Russia, Kazhakstan, back into Russia, Mongolia, China (fingers crossed), Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and finally to arrive in Perth Australia sometime in early September. Where all being well, Kay is going to meet me for a two weeks before returning home together.

Anyway that should keep you going until my next entry which should be in the next 2 weeks. All being well the bike should be finished then and i can post a new pic, along with an update as to how things are progressig.

see you then.

Col