Dijon drunk and tired

Dijon today, another short ride in miles, but it feels longer in the saddle of a Honda C90.

We took a day off yesterday in the forest de Orient, chilled out, drank wine and didn't ride our bikes.

We've scored another cheap hotel and have begun drinking the miles away agian. Is there nothing that booze can't fix..

we've spent nearly 6 hours a day riding. We take smaller roads so as not to get swamped by speeding traffic over taking us and blowing us off our bikes.
I am writing this drunk and broken, but I can still remember the joy I felt as we cut our way through the french country side, our route often flanked by poplar trees and farm land that is unmistakingly French.
You feel so much more connected to the land when travelling by motorbike, probably because you feel every bump and twist of the road...

I must sleep now and rest for tomorrow's mamoth journey to Geneva.

Jamie

dijonnn

I'm sat in a strange bar in the center of dijon.. listening to weird smooth jazz, a it drunked up, and having real problems adapting to this topsy turvey keyboard.. and its a bit to hot in here.. but i guess thats a good thing.
What to say of today...... if i could find the question mark key, that would have been a quesion...
I'm in good spirits after leaving the forest a little late this morning, but liam arrived all annyed.. with jamie close behind.. fortunately beer has fixed that, and we're all on the straight and narrow again.
It was an amazing drive down here today, with perfect driving conditions. every type of terrain, and not too many massive lorries.
arriving around three, and only looking for a hotel for short while.
the hotel is ok, an cheap too. Alix, the receptionist is nice too, and a sassy redhead.

well, i hope that was an exciting insight into another day in the "crazy" life of a road dog..

bon

Dijon, country roads and moods

We're all writing stuff in some bar cow we're all a bit drunk essentially. Jamie's just got some cold lager's in though so its all cool. Today I started off all pissed off and it was a bit embarasing, no idea why. I was fine when I woke up at the campsite at 'foret d'orient' which is a great big nature reserve in the middle of France pretty much. It is a really beautiful place by two ajoining massive lakes. There are beaches and watersports but we were a bit out of season, which worked for us because we are always knackered. This meant loads of space at the site and nobody around when exploring the surrounding area, a bonus really. Still, a little bugger called 'Robert' (an english baby) kept us awake most of the night with incessant screaming.

Anyway back to today. For the first time I felt what Jamie has been feeling. That horrible chafing raw arse essentially. I've sat still for a long time before but its the vibrations, they make it really painful and its a bitch. I cheered up later because we were cruising down the most amazing country roads, massive hay bales, little french towns and hills. It was truly one of the highlights of the trip so far. Tried to film some stuff on the way too. So,ehow ,y ,ood caught up with me however, and I was all wound up on our arrival at Dijon (home of mustard i suppose). This was mainly due to 8 hours riding and trying to find a hostel, all that stuff. I feel fine now, some cans later and more bread, cheese and tomato's for dinner. Its pretty hardcore this trip, but the highs are very very high, and the lows pretty low (something we've all confessed) but we expected that I suppose.

Tomorrow then we plan on a really early start, to try and avoid this kind of thing. Dijon is pretty beautiful too but full of rich people looking at us like tramps. 6am start then boys lets do it!!!

Oh and the bikes are totally mint, you can't hurt them, they'd go longer if we wanted them to.

Liam

Paris...and loads of country roads

Its been four days since we last wrote to you and by jove a lot has happened in that time, lets explain where we have been.

We succesfully made our trip down to Dover in time for "The Pride of Kent" which sailed us over the channel with consumate ease. To be fair, it took a lot longer than we expected to ride to Dover, mostly due to our inexperience. Our heavy packs made it pretty difficult to negociate petrol stations, but we were already making friends...including a chap who used to build C90s.

On arrival in Calais we got the map out to remind us of the route to our couch surfers house in Wissant. There was more wind than kansas city and our dorothy's struggled courageously along the coastal road as we were almost driven back into the sea. It took no time at all to reach our destination however, despite numerous 25mph moments up hills with aformentioned wind trying to thwart our every move.

Our couchsurfers Tiphane and Mattheu gave us a warm welcome and showed us to a garage to house our steeds. We were greeted with a beer, a sofa and the promise of a barbeque, more than we possibly could have hoped for. Several glasses of wine later we were challanged with 'chest o' booze' which naturally we rose to. A couple of burning contreau's later (Jamie still bears the mark upon his throttle hand) we were shagged and sent straight to bed. During the night Bon not only spooned Jamie but also talked in his sleep all night "what are we selling, why are we selling it" stuff like that. He has done this every night since.

We woke up late and with booze coarsing through our veins so didn't get our packs sorted until about midday. We only managed to get to Amiens, instead of our proposed destination of Paris. Nevertheless that did involve about eight ours of riding through desolate farmland in oppressive weather conditions (waterproofs on!). Highlights included Liam running out of petrol where every village we passed had no petrol stations or they had been closed for thirty year. We camped on the edge of Amiens and were grateful for our stubbies from a nearby garage.

Off we go to Paris the next day nice and early. While it didn't take long to reach the outskirts once inside the living beating heart of the beast we risked life and limb on several occasions. We were carried through ring roads of death and junctions of doom against our will. We tackled the formidable Champs Elysses and the Arch de Triomphe out of choice savouring the challenge and enjoying riding the bikes for once in their element. It appears if you have a scooter in Paris you can do whatever you want; mount pavements, navigate one way streets (the wrong way) and ignore pedestrians. Our desired footage of all this mayhem is actually Jamie holding a camera zoomed in and sideways, which pretty much represented the feeling of the entire afternoon as he clung on for dear life instead of risking it for fame.

Thats it for now...of to Forest d'Orient today!

First we have to escape this labaryntine city

It's 6:30 am.....

Lets saddle up boys, we've got some serious bum aching riding to do!

Hell Yes!

Oxford Mail and other stuff

Oxford mail feature emerged today, you can check it out at: 

http://www.oxfordmail.net/news/headlines/display.var.2428724.0.wheel_make_it_to_greece_despite_theft.php

Bought some baby wipes today.....good for a quick clean

Here's Jamie with his new purchase...

Liam's video response to Gumbo's Concerns.....

Stolen C90

O.k. bit of a blow today.

My Honda C90 was stolen from outside work. 

My fault I guess, I only locked it to the railings with a bike lock, and that bike lock did have a chunk out of it from a previous attempted stealing.

My fault then, oh and the person who stole it, yeah actually mostly not my fault, mostly the fault of the person who stole it.

Anyway it's not about blame and fault it's about revenge.

So I went out trying to find the C90 this evening, not satisfied with just telling the Police about it, I wanted to do something.

I must have thought I was Edward Woodward from the Equaliser or something, because before I knew it I was asking questions of young scamps in the wrong part of town and chasing some punk in my car who I'm pretty sure was riding my bike, only minus the number plate and lights. 

Needless to say I lost the punk, probably for the best, I'm not actually sure what I could have done if I had caught him, apart from maybe getting beaten to death.

So here I am one week to go until we leave on our adventure and I have lost my stead.

easy now we'll make this right

Jamie 

Ouch my toes

I'm all blundering about the house tonight. I had decided not to go out, and sort things out, but I'm totally shattered. I've just smashed 2 or 3 toes into a coffee table and it feels all the more horrible when you're tired. The band is recording Monday and Tuesday so half my mind is on that, and half on the journey. 

I'm trying to make sure I don't forget to do anything but that sort of means that my brain is focused for the entire day at the moment, and its messing me up. I just want to leave now so that we can get on with it and I can feel a bit more free from the constraints of bloody PLANNING!!! All I ever seem to do is F***ING PLAN my BALLS off!

Country run through the tempest

We had a little run anyway Bonamy (Hi!) and I. It was great to get the bikes out and see how they were in the rain, the answer is...petrifying. Side winds and wet country roads make for a pretty scary experience on a hovercraft/labrador but it was great!

We stopped at a country pub and bought a hot chocolate, which came with a FREE bit of shortbread, fucking yes!!!

Here are a couple photos....

Rain anyone?

Holy balls its raining so much today

Bon and I were planning on a proper razz around the countryside loaded up today but its raining loads and loads and loads, and very windy. I thought I was gonna die riding back from Kings. Another awakening as I realise we could wake up in a tent on the second or third day and have to venture out into similar surroundings, great.

Off to buy some waterproofs!

We'll be in the Oxford mail soon, and were on Jack FM today which I had no idea about till one of the blokes in Kings told me. 

Woke up early again..

Woke up early again today.....

Been having very strange dreams lately. If  I'm not being chased by wild boars across the hills of an imaginary village between Freeland and Barnard Gate, I'm talking to a man who every time he coughs  a little bumble bee buzzes  out of his mouth.

I should have listened to the villagers when they said "if the boars don't get you, then the herd of camels will". Sure enough the Camels are lurking in the distance, just out of my vision but they're there alright.

I guess it's lucky that I can fly. It's also handy that I can put forcefields around myself and move objects with my mind. It doesn't help with getting back home though.

The Bee man keeps apologising as he coughs a swarm around us and mumbles something about there being no Taxis from here.

My Mum dropped round my old leather jacket yesterday. It's one of those heavy metal biker jackets that you wear if you're into Iron Maiden. We bought two of them, me and my brother at Finmere market when we we're kids. They never really looked that cool, even then.

I think I shall test one out around town on the C90. It might make me look a bit more dangerous.

see you later

Jamie

 

Boring...

Here we are planning some shiz...

Luggage

Also thought I'd post a video of me trying out some luggage techniques with Bon. I've no idea why but when I watch this video I piss myself laughing, I think it might be my helmet, it looks ridiculous.

First Blog...first crash!

Hi all,

This is the first of many blogs from team C90 that will appear over the the coming couple of months. We are still in the planning stages, but its getting a little desperate I suppose since its really not that long before we leave.

The donations are going pretty well for Sobell House which is all cool, keep em coming in!

I went to take my red 1998 C90 to the garage today to get it serviced, figure its probably for the best since these chicken chasers have got to to a grand total of (probably) over 4000 miles. I rode it to Kings Motorcycles in Kidlington which is full of good old boys talkin about how "I used to rag them things around fields all day, they never break them C90's" lets hope so eh. I gave them the link to the donation thingy, may do a print out to stick in the shop though. I had to pick up Jamie's 1988 doom blue bike as well which has just been serviced, but the wing mirrors are still completely useless, they are shit and he should buy some new ones really. So anyway I get to that roundabout before Summertown and "plup plup plup" he goes...the petrol has completely run out, great. I push it to Summertown to have a shuftee in the guitar shop while I wait for the J-Dog to arrive with a jerry can. He does in good time and we fill it up. Off we go then back to his to drop it off and coming out of Marston there's a hell load of oil or petrol on the road and the front wheel ice skates along and before i know it the bike's squashing my leg and I'm in the middle of the road, wicked. I get up unhurt but his back right indicator cover has smashed (sorry J-Dog but it weren't my fault!) which isn't too bad, could be a lot worse. 

Anyway it was a bit of a realisation that going down The Champs-Elysees and skidding on a bit of petrol isn't going to be as simple as swearing and just getting up, I'd probably get my head squashed by some Opal (euro Vauxhall, check the knowledge) or something. Care is going to be imperative on this trip, we don't want to be those little crosses on the side of the road in Greece. 

In other news John Duns Scotus, the brown 1974 C90, sold for £540 on ebay and the dude it coming to collect it tomorrow, which I'm sad about but he just wouldn't make the trip without a bit more care, hence the purchase of (yet unnamed) red 1998 C90. I might call it Sarah Connor, it looks like something she might ride while escaping from Arnie or some of his robo-friends. 

Over and out!!! 

Liam