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Here we go again!

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Well we now find ourselves in Japan and ready to ride our motorbike to London. But first of all why are we doing this. The answer lies in this quote from Gullivers Travels which gives us clarity in our thinking and reasoning and this says it all - 

We 




Having got the purpose of the trip out of the way it is time to get down to the nitty gritty of the travel. First question - how do I make Diana as comfortable as possible on the back of a bike for 5 months and 30,000 km. . I search the internet and find this possibility.  Unfortunately we do not have a spare green sofa - 




So having got this travel option off the table it is a question of getting the packing organised. I test out the Plan B accomodation options in the lounge at home 





Actually on a more serious note the test was well worth while as I found I had the wrong tent poles to go with the tent   Imagine finding that out in the back blocks of Outer Mongolia as I put the tent up in the rain! 

Then it is a quick trip down to Bluff to see which direction London is. I put London into the GPS to see what would happen. Smoke comes out of every orifice of the GPS and the prissy voice from the GPS tells me to stop being silly with unreasonable demands 





Now it is packing time. I go to the internet again to study packing options 









So doing our own thing based on our own experiences we set out absolutely everything we are taking right down to the underwear   Note Diana’s pearls !








Then it all goes down to this -



s  -


Now we are ready. We ride the bike to Auckland over four glorious days 



 A lovely stop at Nelson Lakes 





Then the Red Head has to have all her delicate bits scrubbed to make sure there is not a problem with agricultural inspection in Japan. Having done that the bikeis dropped off at Cyclespot on the North Shore in Auckland for a full bells and whistles service , new tyres , crating , picking up by Mainfreight for airfreight to Japan 






And now as I write this we are in a hotel at Narita airport waiting to find out how to get the bike customs cleared and picked up. Waiting,waiting,waiting ......  Hopefully the next blog post will have us riding thru the countryside of Japan. And here endeth  the first blog post 



















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