Thursday, 21 June 2007

the wednesday meeting...

yesterday was another meeting. pk rocked up at my place a couple of minutes early. he was sick and also in a seriously foul mood. luke waltzed in seconds later with all his gear on, looking like he'd just stepped off the catalogue shoot! awesome stuff. pk's mood swung temporarily!
lukas brought us an awesome watertight kit bag to strap to the back of the bike. the gear from germany looks a good buy, especially the boots. i think they need some wearing in though as changing gears seemed a bit difficult... apparently the shower is the place to soften them up...
we stood in the kitchen wolfing down some hot dogs, luke ate the most. we are seriously starved of selection on biker gear in south africa, or at least cape town... the catalogues from europe depict shops full of jackets helmets and every single gadget for a bike.

onto the meeting! we checked out our immunisation card and found that the mad quack from the travel clinic seemed to have forgotten signing us off on the meningitis jab. also something about waiting 6 months before getting the second hepatitis b shot... need to look into that!
the next thing was the visa's. this will be a bit of a headache, we have already touched on the subject, we checked the bradt guide against the info given in the lonely planet and then again against what i got from phoning the embassies in SA. well, typical for africa, we got conflicting results. there are certain places where i just think we need to get the visa before hand. in many countries they say you can get the visa before entering the other, but that also takes time, which we'd rather be spending doing something else... the decision we came to was that we'd re-look the path of using a visa company, which i have once again emailed.
aahh... then there was the small matter of paying for the pannier's.... this huge amount of 6020.00 rand is what separates from having nice shiny aluminium panniers that are lockable, detachable, and can be knocked out in case of a fall or buying/manufacturing something that will just hopefully do the job, like maybe some canvas bags? it's time to decide...
i've redesigned the sticker slightly. when we get the panniers it should fit nicely on either side.

it's a bit of a sluggish time right now. there's still 5 months until we leave, which almost seems like too much, but then there is stuff to do and there's work, which is now going to start getting busy... motivation is a bit low, but it's part of getting this whole thing together. some stuff is fun and easy to do, others just seem like such a schlep. what makes it worthwhile is thinking of the adventure that is coming up... adios!

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