Champion effort Mountain Man.

I rode about 1150km in 12hrs from Namibia to South Africa via Botswana (incl 2 African border crossings), but the difficult part was that I couldn`t use my right hand at all from a large crash a week earlier, and so I wound 8 guage fencing wire around the throttle and handguard to keep the throttle stuck open. And even if I could have been scared enough to try to pull the front brakes they didn`t work yet anyway since when we welded the cracked axle mount back to the forkleg during reparation we mis-aligned it and so the brake pads were not aligned. I had only the rear brake and gears to slam down whenever a wild boar, disorientated African, etc would cross the road. The day was New Years Eve so couldn`t miss the party, which went until 8am...

A ´difficult to stay on the road`one was 13hrs from middle Austria to a World Enduro Championship race in Alpine Italy on a Ducati, but it was following 15hrs in the bar which first started with 8hrs drinking with a girl friend before she retired, and then a further 7hr “free bar” lock-in with her friend, the bar owner`s daughter. Only 3 hours sleep between leaving the bar and starting the ride is really not recommended, although I did sober up by sunset and the real twisty stuff.

Off road i`ve only done 5500km of dirt in 10 days, but that was Oz.

I have a Dutch friend, Jan Heemskerk, who use to ride 850km from near Amsterdam to the south of France every Monday for work and back Friday (lunchtime start and finish for those days) for 9mths because he preferred it over flying. He also rode from Vladivostok to Amsterdam in 24 or so days on a Tiger 900.

And through a South African MX riding buddy I met a Capetown guy, Freddi Stafford, who road from Capetown to Sudan/Egypt border, where he was refused entry, and so he rode back to Capetown all in a total of 21 or 22 days! Including 2 days stuck in about 150km of southern Sudan swampland. I saw the photos, and there he could only sleep on top of his stuck bike it was so wet! I bet he still does 400km mountain runs on his R1 at warp speed Sunday mornings before his wife and kids wake up.

P.S. Toby, I`m going to be in that area of Peru soon, and it will bug me to try now that there is a time to beat!