Elephant - the bits the others forgot or missed

The Guzzi blowing up was an act of revenge by the woodland alliance.

My evidence? The trip started with the following conversation in the
ferry port between Sweller and Burnt

Did you see a badger on the way down?'

'No'

'Must have just stunned it then'.

Wednesday night - 6 of us were waiting for Bonwick to turn up. At this
point we wondered if the whole thing had been an elaborate ruse and a
'got you' text was going to appear.

Instead he rolled up, led the way and promptly got pulled by customs.
His protests 'but you've let the paddies through' were ignored.
However to make him feel better the customs, at his suggestion, pulled
the last bike in line as well. Someone was suddenly very glad they
hadn't packed the potato mortar.

We got on the ferry and got pissed and talked bollocks, which was
something of a theme throughout the trip. No feed line was left alone
and some of the things we managed to create feed lines from were
inventive.

Thursday, mile munching at speed commenced. I have learnt not to wave
chocolate biscuits at fate. When asked a couple of days before the
trip

'How often do you use the back brake?'

'Oh rarely, only when it all goes tits up'

Well it did. A tiny bike screaming along keeping up with the big boys
vibrates a lot and things fall off. Important things. Doing the last
50 or so miles in heavy traffic with only a back brake and no idea
where I was going was definitely the worst bit for me. After that the
blizzard was simply very pretty freezing icing on the alcoholic cake.

Getting pissed at the hotel soon made everything rosy again and at
least I got there, instead of being 100 miles behind trying to fix a
Guzzi.

Friday morning - The advance party headed out to secure a base and MJC
and myself waited for Sweller and tried not to laugh too much at the
fact the Smart car had less luggage space than the Guzzi.

Many thanks to Michael who drew the short straw to stay behind and
help me source a brake lever due to his facility with languages and to
the kwak dealer who took a lever from an ER 5 in the show room so we
could catch up.

Well, we could have caught up but suddenly all the valleys looked the
same. We weren't too stressed and enjoyed riding through the National
Park, then at a stop to ask for directions Pan ice skating became a
new sport and MJC cracked his head. I had a '**** it, it's getting
dark, if that is icy the road to the site will be' moment and we found
a hotel owner to take pity on us and though the hotel was closed for a
holiday she stuck the heating on in two rooms and fed us German food
while oom pa music played in the back ground. After we'd necked the
shot of spirits, we realised we were warm, dry and had beds and
heating instead of being in a tent in -5 temperatures. Messages were
relayed that we were warm and safe, it was agreed we'd done the right
thing, so we settled down and kept up the getting pissed and talking
bollocks theme.

The hotel we stayed in had 20 Spanish bikers last year so we have came
to the conclusion that some where there is a Senor TOG and from this
we extrapolated there was a Mexican Bonwick - aye ca rumba.

Saturday - arrived at site, put up with the piss taking, got drunk,
played with fire, watched pretty fire works. Did our best for
International relations. Somewhere in Germany a bike group will now be
calling two of their members Laurel and Hardy. There was also a weird
Pip/TOG genetic experiment - ginger but with lots of bikes.

The Germans seemed very impressed that a woman had ridden to the rally
and I did a reasonable job of not being too sarcastic at the 'Respect'
compliments. Apparently the fact I have breasts makes me even more
hard core than the rest of the Magnificent 7/Seven dwarfs/7 deadly
sins.

I think Sunday morning's retreat has been covered. Thanks to Sweller
who, as I was about to get on the bike and head into the carnage,
offered to ride it up. Given that he found it tricky I'm very glad I
didn't attempt it. As the blizzard got worse was very tempted to kick
the bike over and call Aunty Carol but was told to get on with it,
just think of it as wet roads and I did.

It was good to get to the hotel and, yes, get pissed again.

This left us set up for the mile munching back to the ferry, more beer
on the over night crossing and a leisurely ride back today.

It was a blast. Thanks folks.

 

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.rec.motorcycles/msg/f7bfc840159aab3e

OK.. it was four weeks... not bad for a guess though.

 

<high five>

 

TBF I doubt you were the only one in the company with those.

 

<flicks vees>

I'm not staying.

 

DLTDHYOTAOTWO.