Jingle jangle jungle...

Ah the festive season is upon us once again and what better way of lessening the pain of receiving yet another unfeasibly jolly jumper and pair of reindeer themed socks, than reading an article penned by yours truly about crashing a motorcycle through a very remote and tropical region of Australia?

Adventure Bike Rider issue 14 should be as stuffed as a Christmas turkey with literary delights just waiting to warm your cockles and bring a sparkle to your Xmas sale jaded eyes. More exciting than a visit from Santa himself, more fun than a royal baby and guaranteed to have no batteries included.

Lurking within the pages like the inevitable orange at the foot of many a Christmas stocking, should be the story of my attempts to reach the most remote northern tip of Australia - Cape York. As is fairly standard, nothing comes easily for Gosling One and myself so it's filled with tales of excitement, adventure, 'daring do' and quite nearly some actual 'do'.

More entertaining than a sack of coal and less irritating than a Cliff Richard Christmas song, what's not to like?

Should be released onto the unsuspecting public very soon. Adventure stories from the tropics...take that winter!

Just wandering about...

When you arrive at a place that sums up what you try and spend most of your time doing it's only natural to take a photo really, and then just keep on rolling by.

I spent a weekend wandering around the highways, byways and mostly no-ways of the south-western bits of Western Australia the other week and experienced something quite novel, at least for me.

A flat tyre! Gosling One's first ever flat tyre. In the entire 44,347km travelled of the original Arse About Face expedition I managed to avoid, mainly thanks to dumb luck I would imagine, any flat tyres at all so I was probably due one. In fact I'm probably due more than one to be honest, but don't spread that around lest the idea catches on.

The valve on the inner tube decided it'd had enough of being stuck inside the rear wheel and made a bid for freedom, persuading all the air to escape along with it the silver-tongued, erm, valve.

My natural tendency to plan for when I meet the many screw-ups that tend to lurk in Australia waiting for me, meant that I had along a spare tube. So with a fallen tree serving as the centre-stand Gosling One doesn't possess, I managed to switch out the ruined tube in a surprisingly efficient manner and with a minimum of swearing or fatal injuries.

As always the flies were enthusiastically persistent in their attempts to lend a hand, wing or whatever, in my wheel changing exercise. Thousands of the airborne menaces made my first ever tyre change a more irritating experience than it probably could have been, but they certainly helped lend a sense of urgency to proceedings.

End point of the riding was Nalyerin Lake in Western Australia:

Click this for a bigger version [fair warning, it's pretty big]

I was thinking about camping in the middle of it, but (and here's a tip for fellow travellers out there), just because it looks pretty dry on a satellite photo doesn't mean it actually is. Still, plenty of room elsewhere in Australia to throw up a tent.

If you build it, it will break...

So Gosling One is sporting her rather fetching new spotlights for this upcoming season in motorcycle fashion, as mentioned in a previous post. I've also added a waterproof GPS thing [waterproof as she tends to be under water quite a lot, not because it ever rains in Australia] to enable me to reliably say "I know exactly where I should be, but I'm not there".

The most important must-have accessory for the socialite motorcycle about town this season however, is the often of neglected shovel.

Not only does it add an 'adventurous' flavour to an otherwise drab wardrobe, but it will also enable me to dig us out of whatever hole I managed to ride into. It's happened before, I'm sure it will happen again. Also of course, because I'm British dammit, it serves as a very handy tea-cup holder. Hooray for multi-purpose! Also tea.

I spent the weekend just recently seeing if I could rattle off any of the things I'd added to Gosling One by exploring a bit of the South West of Australia. Nice place, pretty big, lots of kangaroos and everything stayed attached surprisingly. That's a testament to a metric-crap load of duct-tape for you.

Some photos from the short trip down south:

2 wheels good, 4 wheels erm...no wheels then

Everything looks artistic in black and white. Wonder if that applies to zebras....

Someone in the highways department has a sense of humour

Not a bad spot for a bit of camping...

...so I did.

Attempts to coerce a book agent into looking at the manuscript for Arse About Face have continue with renewed vigour, so with any luck there might be some news on that front soon!

The eyes have it...

Gosling One has been augmented during her stay in the motorcycle hospital. Much like the Million Dollar Man she has been improved, although the budget was more along the lines of a few dollars and whatever I could find lying around. But that's not quite as catchy for a TV series.

First up and most importantly she now sports some rather snazzy eye wear:

A rather shiny [when they're switched on at least] pair of LED spot lights. The original headlight is about as useful as an asthmatic firefly in a coal mine, so the addition of something that could perform laser eye surgery on a kangaroo at 300 metres was a bit of a no-brainer really. If anyone wants to know what they were or how the hell I fitted them without electrocuting myself, feel free to drop me an email.

50 Shades of Murky Orange...

For those that have been keeping anxious vigil at Gosling One's bedside, the prognosis is good! Behold:

She's feeling a lot better after her extended stay in the motorcycle hospital, under the care of Dr Hammers, a.k.a me.

The parts arrived [eventually], I managed to fit them without setting fire to anything or causing localised plague outbreaks and she now runs like she always did. In other words, straight off the highway and into mischief.

I also took the opportunity of her not being able to escape my clutches, to make a few modifications based on my experiences of rattling around Australia and the various pickles we found ourselves in. Details will follow in another update. I can tell you're all excited about that by the hushed silence.

Gosling One health report...

Following my ill-fated attempts to "clean" Gosling One's carburettor, a process which rapidly descended into damage limitation territory and a frantic attempt not to break anything else, she remains laid up in bed awaiting parts.

Nil by carburettor

Doesn't she look sad? She looks sad to me, show some sympathy.

The reason she's STILL awaiting parts is because it takes a while to get things shipped from America to Australia, even though both countries appear close together in alphabetical terms. I'm a big fan of supporting local businesses, but here's why I'm dead set against it in this case.

Those two bits above, or at least something like them are important in a carburettor so I'm told. They do something regarding the flux-capacitor-black magic interface or something like that, either way she won't go without them.

Local Yamaha dealer in Western Australia, the total quote came to...wait for it and you best take a seat... AU$ 163.90 and a lead time of four weeks. After stifling my urge to tell them to ram said nozzle where it might logically be expected to go, I resorted to the ever handy internet. Including the shipping from the USA and a delivery time of about two weeks, AU$34.

Western Australian business are forever bemoaning the fact that nobody shops locally, there's a reason right there. Support local business, unless they're trying to steal your soul!

i = mischief maker...

So I happened to be in Perth the other weekend where there just happens to be a forward command post for the Apple world domination force, more usually referred to as an Apple Store. You may be sensing I'm not a fan of Apple which isn't strictly true at all, I love their pies.

Beware the pickers in blue!

Anyway, because the launch issue of Forever 2 Wheels is now available on iTunes and I just happened to be around quite a lot of iPads and other Apple branded shiny things, it only seemed right to set as many of them to the F2W app on iTunes as possible. Easier said than done mind you, those eagle eyed orchard workers in blue were dogging my every step, anxious to "help". Clearly just poorly masked code for "stop me plugging my writing in their store".

How long my domination of the Perth branch [ahahah] of the Apple tree lasted I don't know, but there were at least five minutes over the weekend when my face graced the majority of the devices in store.

You're welcome Perth!

iPad, iMag, iRide, iCrash...

The launch issue of Forever 2 Wheels digital magazine for the iPad is now available on iTunes. Two reasons why you should be looking at it right now rather than reading this post:

One: It's free. Free!

Two: This is the more important of the two obviously, it features my article on riding [crashing] around Tasmania and a whole host of other images from the expedition.

I don't have an iPad, but then I've already read the article so it's no great shakes for me. If you're like me though and have yet to succumb to the all alternative destroying corporate mega-fruit that is Apple, then there's a handy preview of the mag here: http://f2w.appclarity.co.uk/usa-by-ural/usabyural.html

The preview article isn't by me obviously as I'm neither Louis Pryce or Austin Vince, at least not last time I checked, but it's a bloody good read!

Forever 2 Wheels..

Forever 2 Wheels, memorise the name and clear some space on your iPad people. F2W is a digital interactive magazine, coming soon to an iPad near you. Not only that, but they're the latest to fall under the influence of my arguably evil plan for world publishing domination.

Showing remarkable taste and foresight, they've decided to use my 'Devil of a Tale' article about rattling up down and every which way including loose around Tasmania, as the headline act for the fledgling publication.

There's a swanky preview video of the interactive mag here:




Shame about the pictures of me ruining the whole thing, but Gosling One was looking suitably motorbike-like. Unlike how she looks at the moment, which is like a giant pile of parts.

The experiment in hammer based percussion, also known as putting her back together, continues with renewed ferocity as I've got my replacements parts. Stay tuned for more news!

If it's not broken, stay the hell away from it...

It's been a while since the last update, which would be shocking if that wasn't the norm really. The main reason being, there's not a lot to report. Despite being back in Australia and raring to race toward the horizon in a lustful quest for adventure and hi jinks, I've not really been anywhere yet. Unless you count the local Yamaha dealer, which is as exactly as exciting as it sounds.

Gosling One is currently basking in her natural state of 'broken'. I only have myself to blame really, mainly because nobody else stayed around long enough to carry the can. It all started out as some relatively innocent tinkering with the carburettor in and attempt to solve a fuel supply hiccup and, well, one thing led to another. Things got stuck, stuff didn't un-screw like they should, hammers became involved at some point, sense of humours were damaged, some bigger hammers were found and swear words utilised to full effect.

The end result of this 'harmless tinkering'? A busted carburettor, which is now being employed as a paperweight and a long stint of being stationary.

The technical term is 'buggered'

A plus point to all this tinkering with the inner workings of Gosling One, is that I now have something resembling a clue about how the carburettor works [or doesn't], and exactly how much impact trauma one can withstand before becoming so many shards of shattered metal. [Not a great deal]

I've also developed a universal, fix anything on any bike tool kit. See below, and feel free to tweak your own adventure motorcycle tool kit appropriately.

This lot will fix anything. Cable ties are an excellent addition to this tool kit

So I'm now waiting for some replacement bits to appease Gosling One and the mechanical gods.

All this time twiddling my thumbs has unforunately given me ample chance to forget how to put all this back together:

Think I'll just hit it with something and hope for the best

Whilst Gosling One can't escape and frolic across the outback, I'll be making a few additions to her arsenal. I'll add a few images and news about those if all goes well and I don't break anything else.