Last Days

Friday morning we left Hotel Montana outside Ellwang and braced ourselves for a looong day on the highway.

We needed to get all the way through Germany, and most of Denmark, the long way through the respective countries. The route went: Wurzberg, Kassel, Hannover, Hamburg, Flenzburg, and then into Denmark via Hoptrup, Aarhus and finally ending up in Randers where we were gonna stay for the night at Jim's parents farm. We travelled from 9 in the morning to 11 in the evening covering some 1100 kilometres. 

Jim's bike was running smoothly so whatever he did the night before seemed to work. As a precaution he had disconnected all the home-made wiring he had done himself, meaning the charger outlet for his GPS and - unfortunately for his  freezing hands - the grip-heat system.

Since his GPS wouldn't stay charged without an outlet, I put it on my bike instead. Not that we had much use for it. I turned it on and it said something like: "Stay on this boring highway for the next two-thousand-eleventy miles and hours until you hit the North-Sea" So I turned it off again. Jim's fuel tank is a bit smaller than mine and he usually wants to refill at around the 200km mark, which usually is a good time for a break anyway. My 450km range is of little use here, so I only refill every other stop to keep the weight down.

The ride was uneventful as it has been for the most part through Europe these days. We have put all our focus on getting through as many miles as we can manage and the weather has not been good, so unfortunately I haven't got much of any photos to post here.

Arriving at the farm of Jim's parents we chatted for a while and had supper before going to bed, they only had one guestroom for us so they put the Norwegian outside with the cattle... I kid, I got to sleep in their brand new camper-van. :)

We didn't get much sleep last night since we had to get up and go at around 5 this morning to reach Hirtshals for the 7:00 check-in time, destination Stavanger. We skipped breakfest and after Jim and his father helped me push-start Klara we were off for the short hour and a half drive on the highway to Hirtshals. I had forgot to turn off my grip-heat the night before and my fancy "only ON when ignition ON" relay switch system had failed somehow, discharging the battery. No problems though, the battery re-charged nicely on the drive up. I monitored the generator output voltage enroute and turned off lights and of course grip heat to give the best charge, so in a way I suffered emphatically with Jim in the freezing morning fog. (until I said "screw this!" and maxed grip heat half-way there. "Sweet sweet grip-heat defrost my blue knuckles.")

I had accidentally booked a sleeping cabin for this daytime-only ferry, but I was very glad to have one afterall for a little nap-time enroute. Jim was able to upgrade his ticket as well, so we both got to rest a bit.

The ferry is, surprisingly for an early Saturday departure, completely full. Alot of tourists with their camper-vans onboard, so I imagine it will be a race to get off the ship ahead of them so we dont' get stuck going 40 on the Norwegian "Highways".

The M/S Bergenfjord docks in Stavanger at 20:00, less than two hours from now. I've already been booted out of my cabin by the cleaning lady, and all the chairs onboard are taken, so as I write this I am sitting on my butt at the reception area floor.

We intend to drive all the way home tonight, aiming to be in Bergen at around 02-03:00 depending on the local ferries.
We could have stayed the night in Stavanger of course, but since we are both scheduled to fly already this Monday morning we want to push on and at least have 1 full day at home, for prying off our unwashed-for-over-a-month biker clothes with a crowbar and such.

I will write a summery of sorts later this coming week.

I finally cracked and put a sticker on my bike. Arab portion says: "Hey Arab brother, check out the idiot tourist who bought this overpriced sticker!"

<-...enter bratwurst joke here...->

Asphalt bobsledding, w/o bobsled...

The M/N Excelsior docked at port Genova this morning at 10:00 o'clock, not 03:30 as we initially thought. But we were still content, being able to sleep longer and even have some breakfest was nice.

After clearing out our cabins, we were eventually allowed down onto the car deck to get our bikes ready. The paper checks by Italian officials went quickly and smoothly and we were fast on our way North towards Milano.

After picking up a pair of sunglasses (finally!) we continued past beautiful lake Como and crossed into Switzerland after a quick lunch at the border.
Rain was forecast but we did not encounter any until shortly after driving the first few miles into Switzerland, from then on we've had it all the way. It has been a pretty frosty drive today, from Italy through Switzerland, Austria and into Germany. Temperatures starting at 18 and dropping down to 5 where we are now, and that's without the 120km/h rain and wind-chill.

We had aimed ambitiously to ride all the way up to Hamburg today, but we had to call it a day at a highway stop near Ellwang, Germany.
One reason being it is dark, wet and cold, but mostly due to Jim having serious problems with his bike Ida.

It started at a gas-station in Lustenau, or rather "it didn't start", when Jim tried to turn on his ignition after re-fuelling. Everything was completely dead. After some quick troubleshooting checking circuit breakers and measuring the battery with my multimeter we didn't find any obvious faults. I suggested we try and push-start it to at least see if we could get the engine turning. But when he'd mounted his seat and covers again the ignition worked fine all of a sudden. I told him it was probably just a short somewhere due to all the rain.

We drove off again with Jim up front, bike not really running very smoothly, but still working. After just a few kilometers we got to a roundabout close to the highway on-ramp, all of a sudden while in the left-turn of it I could feel the backwheel sliding out from underneath me. As a reflex I put my left foot down to try and stay upright, it got caught under the pannier again, like the day before, and did little to help the situation. In 2-3 brief seconds both Klara and me were on the asphalt sliding seperately along, doing a half piroutte before stopping. Me on my back, legs facing the now stopped car who was behind me, and Klara resting on the left pannier. It may sound very dramatic but it was not, I was driving very slowly (30-40km/h tops) and hardly banking into the turn at all.

I got up and didn't feel much discomfort at all except maybe a bruised heel. The nice german man driving behind me had stopped and came running out asking me if I was OK. I was, so I thanked him, picked up the bike, cursed what I thought was a slippery oil-slicked roundabout and drove 100m to where Jim now had stopped.

I didn't really see any oil-spill in the roundabout, so I started re-tracing my steps. I had noticed my rear wheel had locked up very easily while using the rear-brake lightly just minutes before the roundabout, but I didn't think much of it then. Then I remembered I had driven all around that gas-station looking for a hose to check my tire pressure while Jim was mounting his covers. I probably drove over oil-spills there.

The bike looked fine, with only some shredmarks on my pannier to show for the incident. Those frames are strong I tell you, someone must have done a decent job welding them. :p
I did a "burnout" to try and burn at least some of the oil off, and sure enough the tire was still very slippery. I took it very easy for the next 50km and did gentle s-turns to clear the sides of the tire as well, now its all good again. Note to self: "Take it easy out of gas-stations"

I thought I would keep my mocking-rights over Jim, as he had a small wipeout coming off the bike in Marocco after hitting deep sand on the road at high-speed, but now no longer.

After another hour or so on the highway Jim was not happy with going much further as his bike was intermittently threatening to stall. We've been doing some more troubleshooting here at the highway "Hotel Montana Ellwang", and Jim just came back from a short test-ride right now with good and bad news.

The good: Whichever wire was jiggled or tightened seemed to work.
The bad: Not even German policemen likes to see people ride around without a helmet, even if it is ONLY a 200m ride down the side-road for a quick test-drive. "You wear ze helmet in Denmark, no?" What are the odds? ;)

Left alu.pannier, good for crash protection...

Cruising M/N Excelsior

Monday morning saw us getting up at the crack o' dawn, checking out of the hotel Miramar (our home for a week), packing our bikes and heading North.

We figured we would have plenty of time for the drive to Tanger via Rabat. Though on Sunday evening as we were double checking the route and our tickets for the ship, we first saw that Google maps gave an estimate of over 11 hours for the trip, also there were some small writing on the tickets about latest check-in being 4 hours before departure, departure was at 23:59. 

We didn't believe Google, but still departed earlier than we had planned, just in case.

The first hour or so back on the bike riding was really enjoyable after so much time off it. I was all smiles and giving Jim the thumbs up and such as we sped away on the nice asphalt roads out of Essaouira. Only letting off the throttle when passing carts pulled by mules or horses so not to scare them.

 Klara has a loud exhaust pipe, very loud. So loud in fact, that when I drive behind f.ex scooters/mopeds, the men driving them starts to lean down trying to listen what the hell kind of sound their engine just started to make, until they turn around and notice Klara growling like a B-17 bomber plane on take-off power. :)


Anyway, hand-signals are our only means of communication now, and has been since my intercom died somewhere in the Atlas mountains. It's too bad really, because it was one piece of technology you really want to have working all the way on such a trip. I don't know what killed it, probably Jim was tired of me singing him songs so he sabotaged it, the bast.
We were using it alot in the end, quizzing each other about French words. I credit the intercom with helping me learn how to count to 100 in French. We would be driving along some boring road and I would go: "HEY!" (to open the transmission) "Jim, what is 76?"

Still, we've done good without it and agreed on a few basic hand-signals. It also gives us lots of time in (relative) silence and lets the mind drift off in whatever direction it wants for hours on end. So for me that is akin to a Homer Simpson brain monologue: "..road...road...goats...more road...slow smoking car...waving children...must honk my funny-sounding horn(!)...smiles...happy....road...sheep...more road.."

After a quick stop in downtown Rabat at Jim's friend to pick up some equipment we stored there, we continued onto Tanger. We had made good time on the highways and figured we still had plenty of time. At aprox. 20km outside the city though the road split to two directions: "Tanger Port" and "Tanger Port Med.". I was not sure where to go, but Jim pointed to the med(iterrian?) one and I figured he had checked beforehand. "port med" was another 50km and further South of the city. It turned out to be the wrong port. It was a huge construction area where they were building what WILL be the correct one in the future.  I guess their first priority was to put up directions for it and THEN start building it.
 
Anyway, after skidding on some wet mud on the road near the work site twice, nearly laying down the bike, and nearly twisting my ancle off underneath the low custom-mounted pannier when trying to stay upright at speed, we finally stopped to ask for directions. Turns out we were supposed to drive to the city port where we first arrived afterall. The man we asked said it was only 14km or so if we went off the highway onto a shortcut. We should have known better, because the distance was closer to 30 something and in heavy traffic. The clock was ticking, and the 4 hour before check-in deadline was only 20min or so away. We were overtaking as many cars as we could trying to get there in time. I was imagining worst-case scenarios with difficult port officials who were so eager to take our bribes or generally make life difficult for us when we first arrived.

We got there 12min after the deadline and got through allright enough. We were given orange "Genova" signs to put on the bikes, then one of the "officials" ran us through the "hurdles" we needed to get our papers in order. For the right price of course. After everything were signed and stamped we were allowed to line up with our bikes to load them onboard. There were alot of other "adventurers" there with us driving everything from motorbikes to huge off-road semi-trailers.

We drove onboard the Italian registered ship MN Excelsior about 2 hours after we got there. After strapping down our bikes and grabbing our stuff, we went upstairs, checked in and got our cabins.

The ship is nice enough. It seems like an older outdated cruise ship taken out of service and now used for these shorter ferry trips. It has 3 restaurants (1 open), a swimming pool (no water), a fitness room (closed) and even a casino, also closed.

There are mostly Moroccan passengers on-board and most of them bought tickets with no cabin included, since they are cheaper. Fair enough, but this being a 3-night voyage it means there are people camping and sleeping just about everywhere, making it look like a refugee ship of sorts.

We have sailed for a day and a half now, and arrived at the port of Barcelona this morning at 8:30. We will be staying here until 14:00 then depart for Italy and the port of Genova. We decided on going with this ferry option back when we were in Merzouga. We figured we had already done the long highway transit legs through Spain and France on the way down, and would rather get an extra day or two in Marocco instead of swatting 1437 flies and mosquitos with our heads riding at 120km/h on the boring highways for days again. Been there, done that and all..

The Excelsior is scheduled to arrive in Genova at 03:30 Thursday morning. We will be stopping by Milano or Luzern to buy me some long awaited sunglasses(!), then it is power on through as far North as we can get. Hopefully Hamburg by the same day.

It will be a hectic few days through Europe for sure, but until then we will be eating pasta and playing games here in the lounge at deck 7 "The Pacific".

Waiting in line to drive onboard the M/N Excelsior in the background

Jim passing time with a cappuccino and some games on his phone

Relaaaax

Well, we are still in Essaouira, if only for so much longer.

We have enjoyed our stay here so much that we first postponed our departure by 2 days, by skipping a planned routing via Marrakech, then further postponing another 2 days by skipping a stay in Rabat.

Essaouira is also known as the windy city, and so the kitesurfing has been really good.
There has only been one or two days with difficult or weak winds, and those days we've either rented surfboards or kayaks.

The one day with just surfboards, the waves were quite small, so I ended up paddling around helping windsurfers and kitesurfers who had crashed and lost their board and such.

I also got to try my talents as "life-guard" when one french windsurfer did a huge jump but ended up crashlanding wrong side down and busting his knee. I didn't see the fall, but I heard a scream of pain, and shouted to him asking if he was allright, he was shaking his head both hands clutching his submerged knee. I quickly paddled my longboard over to him and grabbed on to one of his arms pulling him halfway up on the board.

Up until then, the waves had been tiny, but all of a sudden here comes 2 or 3 quite big ones completely disrupting my rescue attempt. I lost my grip on both him and the board and we went tumbling inside the wave. When I came up again for air, I accidentally nudged the surfboard in his direction, it went full speed towards his head and hit him right in the face as he also had just recovered from the big wave and was looking in another direction..

Some life-guard I was..
Anyway we got to shore and he was helped further from there. I met him and his girlfriend a few days later and he was on crutches, he was still thankful even though I torpedoed him with my board.

Besides doing all kinds of watersports we have browsed the markets in the local medina, eaten good food and tried both Hammam and massage.

The Hammam we tried were in the cellar of our hotel, I've never tried it before, Jim has, and we both agreed this guy was crap. We went to a 5 star hotel and spa instead and the treatment and quality there were sublime.

When we first came to Essaouira we had intended it to be the place where we really were gonna enjoy ourselves and also stay at the best hotel we could find, which didn't mean much since most had been very reasonably priced earlier along our route, and also not very fancy.

Well, as we drove into the city we saw a big sign saying Atlas Hotel 5 stars, and we both pointed to each other nodding and grinning.

Fast forward to the incredible looking lobby and reception desk where the nice looking non-bhurka wearing lady has just told us the price of a room. Jim looks doubtfull and says: "hmmm well... I... Magnus what do you say...?" and I, without thinking much about it, go:"Allrighty, sign me up for some of this!" Jim looks at me like I am leaking brains out of my nose, and I go: "oh did she say xxxx Dirhams, I thought she said... riight, so only one night then to test it I guess.." Jim is still not believing what is coming out of my mouth, so I go: "...riiight... so maybe we should look around for what other hotels are around.."
Well Jim was right of course, the price was way high, and we still found a nice enough place to stay, and we could spend all the money we saved on kitesurfing rental and good food/drink instead.

Not much else to report at this time, except maybe the removal of our beards. That's right!

Jim was itching and getting annoyed by his face-doo so he cracked first a few days ago. Staying unshaved for the longest amount time was sort of one of our semi-challenges. I also used it for the purpose of scaring away the most weak-hearted hustlers and small animals. Such uses will shortly no longer be needed, and I would still have an untanned skin "beard" if I didn't let some sun get through eventually.

I will probably not let my beard grow as long as this again unless I enlist as a sailor, so being the kid that I am, I decided to shave in a way that would give me the most amount of beard types in one shave. I started off with "huge side-burns", then "the donut", next obviously "the fu-man-chu", "the wife beater", "the cop stache", "the dirt-lip" then all off. It was funny! I'd post pictures, but I don't want to scar any retinas.

On Monday, 7 hours from now, we are starting on our journey home. It sounds like a very short and quick affair when saying "just going home" but the reality of it is one week of travel, 3 nights on a ship to Italy, and 2800km to ride on our bikes. We've prepped our bikes tonight, and we are ready for the first leg up to Tanger, about 700km.

Time to get back on the road for these slackers!

Club Mistral, where we rented all the fun water-equipment, only a short walk from the hotel

Some of this..

More of that..

And plenty of this!