In mid November I flew to Phoenix, Arizona where my friend Bob lives. Bob is a 70 year old retired airline pilot who I met on the boat from Panama to Colombia. We also rode together through Colombia. My other friend, Wayne, had arrived a couple weeks earlier. Wayne is 59 year old retired postal worker from Williams Lake, Canada and I met him in Mexico. He too was on the boat from Panama to Colombia.
All three of us gathered at the house to get our paperwork together and ride our motorcycles to the loading dock in California to ship them to Melbourne, Australia. Both Bob and Wayne had many problems getting their Carnet de Passage (paperwork for temporary importation into foreign countries) and so I spent a few days wondering around town and getting extra parts for my motorcycle and I also stopped at REI and bought a new sleeping bag and one person tent for camping in Australia. Before the flight to Arizona I purchased my Carnet for $1700 - about the cost I expected but still I was weary about paying that much for some paperwork.
The day before we left for California Bob taught me how to maintenance my motorcycle; such things as changing the oil and other liquids, and the oil/air filters. With my other motorcycle I just had the BMW dealerships maintain the motorcycle at every large city I stopped at along Central and South America. I never once changed my own oil. But Australia will be a different story; large cities are few and far between and sometimes I won't see a city for days or weeks. I will need to know how to maintain my own motorcycle.
Others might view my lack of motorcycle knowledge as being a naive motorcyclist, but those people don't know the difference between a mechanic and motorcyclist. Those types of people spend weeks fixing up their leaky Harley's and ride through the mountains for a day or two and think they've been on an adventure. I simply don't enjoy the ‘Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. I find it terribly boring and time consuming. I'd rather ride the damned thing.
Bob's brother arrived in the morning. He'd be trailing us in a car with all of our gear inside. Bob and Wayne were going to ride with him on the way back to Arizona. I had plans of flying up to San Francisco from Long Beach simply because I hadn't been there yet and it was a short flight.
That first day we mostly stuck to the interstate. It was a very long, very straight and very boring ride. Absolutely nothing of interest happened. We stopped at a Motel 8 and went out to eat.
In the morning we followed Bob to some back roads that went through small mountain passes. Some of the best roads I've been on. At first Bob was leading us and I was behind Wayne. Bob and I like to go as fast as possible through the tight turns so I passed up Wayne and it took a few minutes to catch up with Bob. He saw me in his mirror behind him and he gave me thumbs up and I waved back.
I felt a bit embarrassed that I had trouble keeping up with a 70 year old man, but the dude can really ride. We lane split between cars and took turns at 70mph. He rides just like I do. We stopped a half hour later to wait for Wayne and Bob's brother in the car. Bob got off of his bike and came over to me. We were both smiling because the ride was fantastic compared to yesterday. He complimented me on catching up to him, saying that not many people can. This made me feel better. The others showed up a few minutes later.
The rest of the ride went like that until we reached the outskirts of LA and Long Beach where traffic began to pick up. The shipping company came up on us faster than we expected and the end of that journey was a bit sudden. We handed over our keys to the shippers and signed some papers. Wayne had some trouble because he was supposed to get some documents at the Canadian/American border. He didn't have them and this could potentially cause trouble with US customs and getting the bike shipped. I hope all goes well with that.
We were told that once the bikes cleared customs then it would sit in a crate for a while waiting for it to fill all the way up. Then it would take another six weeks for the bikes to reach Australia. They estimated that the earliest the bikes would arrive would be just after the New Year. I think it will take longer.
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