Finnish Curve Cowboys

We are currently at Roy Jorawsky's home in Strathmore, near Calgary Alberta. Our flight from Frankfurt was fine, pretty much on time and everything worked OK. Roy was there to meet us at the airport and took us to his very beautiful home. We were also welcomed by a nice 25 deg C Alberta weather with clear skies. I'm writing this on Roy's computer as we did nor get mine hooked up on the internet as the network at Roy's seems to be computer specific.
We have been admiring Roy's fantasticly painted "firebike" and have been doing some serious "LT-talk" while at the same getting Roy's Garmin 2610 in operation for us to use on our trip.

At this stage I want to apologize for the not-so-many pictures on this blog but believe me I (and even Roy with me) have tried hard! We managed to load the one picture on the first day post but for some strange reason no more pics come visible. They seem to disappear in the bit heaven...

Tomorrow is Wednesday and we shall see how things work out with two exciting things: Do we get the bikes out in decent time and shape and will I get my driver's licence from DHL cargo terminal...

We decided to be on the safe side and started at 06:30 from Hotel Hoheluft towards Lindlar in the neighborhood of the city Cologne Germany. We were both for the first time riding on German autobahns (or actually I was there last May but I had my dear wife sitting as a speed limiter behind me..). And there was not much traffic at all for the first two or thee hours. So we were doing a steady 160 km/h for the first 1 – 1,5 hours which still felt comfortable speed with the load we were carrying. Okay, we had to try a full throttle with the windshields down and I got it up to 202 km/h but that was maximum. Of course with average speed to 158 km/ h you can kiss goodbye to any fuel mileage. My bike with all the extra lights and mirrors got about 1,2 liters / 100 km worse mileage than Jouko’s bike which is mostly stock. I had to fill the tank every 220 km when Jouko would have gotten about 300 km. So now it is proven that if speed is doubled the air resistance grows by quadrature. We made it in good time to Lindlar and got a chance to meet Tom and Hartmut plus a whole bunch of other German LT-riders who were having their regular "stammtisch" at Hartmuts hotel.. I had met many of these guys at the German LT-Treffen last May.

Tom and Hartmut had left their bikes to the Frankfurt Cargo already on Friday so we got very valuable advise from them for the drop off procedures. As we hade made it in such good time to Lindlar we decided to push the remaining 200 km to Frankfurt so that we could drop off the bikes to the Gargo already on Sunday well before 18:00. We even washed the bikes at Hartmut’s and when approaching Frankfurt airport we had to watch and adjust the gas level so that we would not have more than a quarter tank at arrival. Of course I had to fill 5 liters some 50 km before and Jouko did not need any…
The Cargo Center did not have their full staff on Sunday but there was a very helpful supervisor who advised us with the bike preparation. Of course many (or most) of his advise were somehow safety regulations related and everybody was a bit jumpy because of the latest terrorist news from London. We were advised to remove all possible extra liquids, aerosols, tire filling cartridges or whatever would look suspicious in the possible X-raying of the bike. We loaded our riding gear in the trunk and left saddlebag. I left some other luggage in the right saddlebag. I was allowed to leave the Chicane tank bag on. The radio antenna, flagpole and the bike-to bike phone antenna had to be removed / folded down. We disconnected the battery, locked the cases and left a spare key for the supervisor. Nothing was allowed to be left tied on top of the bike simply because the freight company does not want to take responsibility of any losses of loose stuff on the bike.
So we had already handed over the bikes on Sunday which was very good as the procedure was quite time consuming and we would have been tight with time on Monday morning as our own flight on Air Canada to Calgary took off at 14:00. The bikes will follow on Air Transat flight on Wednesday. Or this is at least the plan….I’m writing this on the Air Canada flight.

Of course a Big Trip like this needs at least one unplanned episode. I had (or still have) mine already: When discussing with Tom Russell in Lindlar about his and Hartmut’s travel plan we got to talk about the Canada / USA border formalities and what all documents will be needed. Tom mentioned drive’rs licence…DRIVER’S LICENCE! Oh s**t, my licence is at home in my regular wallet! I decided not to take that wallet as it is too bulky and it has a bunch of different kind of plastic cards that have no value abroad. Besides it is already falling apart. So I took a totally new one in which I just loaded three credit cards and some cash and that was all. I even had a fancy packing list but the driver’s licence was not on the list….
My own fault of course. Well, I had already driven through 3 countries without a valid driver’s licence but I would hate to try to enter the U.S. without one… So I called my dear wife and she packed the licence into an envelope and DHL picked it up today (Monday) and they promised it to be in Calgary by Wednesday. Now in the ideal situation we can pick up my licence at the same time when we are getting the bikes. That remains to be seen…

We arrived to Stockholm, Sweden at 07:00 Saturday morning and we decided to tune Jouko’s Icom bike-to-bike phone before starting the 570 km trip to Helsingborg Sweden.

The morning was fine weatherwise and we were trying to obey the Swedish speed limit of 110 km/h. We succeeded in this most of the time and the times that we did not succeed, there were luckily no LEOs in sight (or in the bushes with their radars..)
We stopped for gas and some snack. I moved my bike from the pump to the front of the restaurant and was wondering why Jouko is driving his bike back to the pumps. After while he came and handed me my gloves which I had left on the top of my RKA luggage rack bag tied on the rear seat and not on the rack. Nice that he again took care of my falling gear…
In the afternoon we got some rain and we had to put the rain gear on top of the BMW Venting Machine gear that we have. The rain gear also provides wind protection when the weather gets colder.
We arrived to Helsingborg harbor and bought tickets for the ferry to Helsingør Denmark. The weather on the Danish side was dryer and we started our 200 km trip to the next ferry in Rødby Denmark which would take us to the German side over the (Baltic) sea to the town of Puttgarden.
We had booked a "biker friendly" hotel in the little town of Oldenburg im Holstein just some 30 km south from the Puttgarden harbor. It was already 20:00 Saturday evening and we had covered 840 km. This was a good exercise, especially for my back. When riding on the highway I did all kind of exercise on the saddle. I used my electric height adjuster to raise it all the way up and this relieved my knee angle. I used my highway handle and just kept my hands in my lap which must have looked funny /scary / cool to the cars I passed on the motorway. Every time we stopped I tried to find a place to hang from my arms and thus give some stretching to my lower back.
The owner of the hotel was a biker himself and as we telling him our plans for the next day (Sunday) he was a bit concerned as the combination August – Sunday – German Autobahn can mean big problems. He was just returning from Belgium previous Sunday and it was a nightmare with "Staus". (A German term meaning a fully packed autobahn moving at walking speed if even that fast.)
So...our first waypoint was to get to a small town called Lindlar where we had a meeting with Tom Russell and Hartmut Bleeker, the two other Europeans headed for the CCR. Their flight was due already Sunday evening so they would have to leave around 15:00 to Frankfurt Airport. The reason for our visit was to pick up the new BMW Air Flow 2 riding boots for Jouko. Those were not available in Finland and we had no time to get them ordered and delivered to our dealer any more.
We went to bed around 23:00 and fell asleep with no problems. And I remebered to do my back excercise.

My original plan was to start from home at 14:00 towards Turku Finland (180 km) from where our ferry to Stockholm was due at 21:15. I did all kinds of last minute preparations including visiting a physiotherapist who gave some last minute treatment to my back. I also went and bought myself a kidney belt which has really been of big help. I finally got started one hour later at 15:00 and the bike odometer showed 40222 km as starting reading.

Jouko lives in the suburbs of Turku so we only had half hour to the harbor from his house. I stopped at his place and we did some last minute cleaning and especially waxing the front side of the bikes. This was in order to make the future bug cleaning easier as we were especially instructed not to leave any dead bugs on the bikes during the flight transport.

When we started from Jouko’s home it somehow happened that I drove first although we were in his hometown and he knows the best way to the harbor. All of a sudden I realize that he is no longer in my rear view mirrors. He must have forgotten something so I pulled over and waited for him a while until he came and we continued, Jouko in the front this time. This small incident started a series of similar happenings to which I will return later. Anyway, at the harbor he handed me my leather neck collar which had been flying from the back of my bike when we started from his home. My way of packing things…

We got our bikes on the Stockholm ferry and the fastening methods to the ferry were just as ridiculous as we were warned about. They had just simple nylon ropes and a rail on the wall of the ship cargo hall. I asked the loading officer if this was the only equipment they had and he told me that this is enough. They have never had a bike to fall down… OK, the ship is about 200 meters long and it will not rock much on a normal weather but still I have heard about occasions where a bike has come down. Maybe not on this particular ship, but on a similar one.
Well, we just parked the bikes on the side stand and used the nylon ropes to secure them the best we could. Luckily the sea was calm and everything went okay.