Getting the KTM 950 ready for safari

So the two giant Safari tanks arrived the other day
tanks
and so I went ahead and emptied the bike…
goodby gas
got rid of the old tanks (there are 2 on a KTM 950 adventure)
old orange tanks
and installed the new 40+ litre Safari Tanks.
New uglyness
Yes -the bike looks pretty ugly now, or as I like to think of it: Purposeful.
Sadly the saga of the tanks was a saga. This morning I woke to the lovely smell of gasoline. The culprit?
leaky fuel cock
Yes – that’s a leaky fuel cock, and after some experimentation I ascertained that it was leaking becasue the o-ring had failed (it looks ok, but leaks anyway. Luckily I have brand new fuel cocks on my saddle bags, where they are used to pour water.

So off came the tanks
off with the tank
and the new fuel tap went on. Here’s my cousin Richard visiting the scene of the crime.
Richard, Bike and Cars
That’s his car behind:
Jenson Healey
It’s a Jensen Healey = lovely. My other vehicle is the stately silver car parked in the garage:
Rolls
It’s a 1981 Silver Spur – which is also lovely, when it goes.
Anyway, about then a box arrived. I expected it was a box of KTM bits and pieces for the bike, but sadly it was an Amazon drop off:
amazon airlift
Actually I wanted to get reading straight away, but not to worry – a few minutes later the next box arrived, and it was full of KTM bits:
KTM box
It came from the USA in about half the time that it took Apple/TNT to deliver their stuff from Sydney

So with the bike already uncovered (I was hard wiring the GPS)…
naked bike

..it was time to add in some of the new stuff. (There is another box of stuff still to come as well).
first up was the world’s lamest (and only) aftermarket side stand footprint extender. Normally I just get a bit of metal welded on the end, but since I was already buying a bunch of stuff, I yielded.
Touracrap
Then I replaced the snorkel extension to the air intake with this healthy looking red number:
Red Headed pre air filter
It’s a cleanable pre-filter for the really dusty conditions I’ll be experiencing.
Finally I installed a new radiator grill, put everything back together (I’m getting pretty good at that now, which is the point) and with double the fuel capacity, a tough radiator, decent air filter, large side stand for a heavy bike on sand and hard-wired Zumo GPS, the bike is, well, getting there. Still to come is the replacement bash plate (which I really hope fits with the tank) and some tools. I also want to fit an auxiliary power supply in the front tray, along with a lock. And I am avoiding the need to practice road-side puncture repair.

There – wasn’t that just fascinating? How was work today?

Great mousetrap, lousy website

These guys (Turtlepac) make petrol and inflation bags. The products seem to be very high quality, and come recommended by a bunch of people. I’m thinking of getting one to add capacity to my bike.

turtlepac

It’s a shame that the website is so unusable. Every product page is akin to a paper catalogue – nothing is clickable and PDF’s abound.

turtlepac

Looking for motorcycle bags? – It’s buried under the Sport Aircraft Portable Auxiliary Tanks and Collapsible Jerry Cans section. And the aircraftFerry section – neither of which are actually linked to, but from links I received in an email from them.

Some of those pages even will not vertically scroll in Safari. Or Firefox. I’ve never see that before. To view those pages I actually had to “email the page” from safari, and look at the page in Mac Mail.

Prices? no – we don’t show those on our website – we make you ask us for a quote.

turtlepac

Want to Buy now? – Well – just fill out the quote  form, incomplete with no drop down box for product type.

turtlepac

Want to pay? simply email your credit card number, and they will look after you. Yup.

Now surely these chaps are selling most of their stock through other channels, but when I see a business like this, all I can think of is opportunity:

  1. Opportunity to make some extra sales.
  2. Opportunity to save on customer handling costs.
  3. Opportunity to have thousands of people link to your products.
  4. Opportunity to take the company over, put in a decent website and then sell the company

Apple is cool, but their partners are not

Apple does everything they can to make dealing with them a great experience. But they are let down by the little things, and by some pretty big things.

The little things I’ve talked about before. The big things are more serious.

Their partners suck. Vodaphone, Vodafone (that’s how you spell it in Australia and Optus all suck. Of course that’s one of the reasons that they all want the iPhone – as its coolness will hopefully rub off on their brand. And how cool is Apple? uber-cool:
apple.com

Apple’s site is so clear, so clean. It is a pleasure to use and absolutely dangerous as hell to shop.
apple shop
The one saving grace I have is that Apple completely fails to understand that people don’t necessarily want their stuff sent to the same country where they have their credit card. Painful.

But their partners sites are woeful:

Telstravodafone

Actually I cheated on the Vodafone site – the screenshot is old – here is a current Vodafone current site, along with Optus’s:

Vodafone AuOptus

Both iPhone ads click through to a “sign-up for information to be sent to you” page, aka as sign up to be spammed by a telecom giant pages – no thank you.

Just after the iPhone went live on the Apple store, both sites were showing their typical cluttered and incomprehensible appearance and soul destroyingly complex product range. Perhaps the iPhone is helping them to an epiphany in website and product design?

or perhaps not. I feel they are closer to AT&T than they think.

Even after a year of iPhone, AT&T still sucks, and there is no reason why the local resellers won’t continue to as well. Try this. Go to the AT&T website and navigate (don’t search) to find an iPhone. It’s worth it just to feel what bad looks like.

AT&T

Oh – and good luck – I gave up after about 7 levels and used search.

Finally, and the real reason for this rant post, is TNT, Apple’s delivery partner here in Australia. TNT suck, suck suckity suck. Here’s their performance trying to deliver a package to me – I ordered the super dooper expensive overnight service because I really wanted the stuff quickly and reliably.

That was 11 days ago, on the 16th, and I still have not got the stuff. Apple got the package to TNT within hours, but here’s the TNT legacy of shame.

TNT\'s legacy of hopelessness

The first delivery came while I was in the house – they should have used the buzzer. I’m not kidding – they were the stealth deliverers, and the first thing I knew about it was a card on the floor. I called the number, they would not return and nor could they tell me where the van was so I could chase it down. It was probably around the corner somewhere else in Fremantle, but they had no way of contacting the van.

The second came not the next day but the day after. Nobody was home – they were the day before when they had promised to deliver.

The third – another 3 days later. Again – the stealth drop as I’m pretty sure my cousin was in the house.

Last night was asked “when should we deliver” and I said “tomorrow, after 10am (to be safe)”. That sounded good (I was talking to the service centre in Sydney)

So today the local delivery folk decided not to put the box in the truck, as they “couldn’t manage to deliver after 10am”. They can’t manage to deliver at all as far as I am concerned.

Today they asked me to pick it up at the depot – which is 25 minutes away and open during working hours only. Pathetic.

So I’ve asked for another delivery tomorrow. The portends are not good. How do I explain ever_so_gently to these @#$@#$ people that they should 1: use the rather obvious intercom system on the left of the door and 2: if that does not work use the cell phone in their pocket to call me rather than take the parcel back to base and try again 2 days later.

I’d hate to have used the el-cheapo service.

On the other hand I’ve managed to receive a 40 liter tank for my KTM in an enormous box, and a GPS unit from an eBay seller. Both arrived courtesy of the friendly post office, without any drama. Both were ordered after the Apple stuff. If nobody was home then the “depot”, which is the nearest post office, is about 400 meters away and open when I am around.

So Apple – perhaps try the Aussie postal service? TNT is not Fedex or UPS.

Luckily Apple sent me a customer survey today, so I was able to inarticulately rant about this episode. I’m quite proud of its’ sheer inarticulateness and rantiness, and so here it is, spaces removed for your reading pleasure:

WorstAppleexperienceever,andI’vepurchasedfromonlineandretailstoresinUK,U
SA,NZandAustralia.ThepaymentoptionsassumeIamanAustralianandit’sunclearwhtherthepaymenth
asworkedwhenIamdone.TheTNTdeliveryservicebringsmetotearswiththeirincompetence.Iprovidedap
honenumber-neveracallwhenthedeliveryarrived.Iwasinsidethehousethefirsttime.Can’ttheyknock?Th
esecondandthirdtimestheyarriveintheonehourofthedaywherenobodywashome.Itmighthelpiftheattem
pteddeliverytimewasn’talwaysthesamehour.Peopledowork.Yesterdaytheyaskedmeforatimefordelive
rytoday.Isaid”past10″.Todaythelocaldepotandsaidtheyhadnotevenloadeditintoatruck.Theycalledwella
fter10Someonewasatthehomeallday-whynotcallearlier?Nowtheywantmetogotothedepot.Itis25minut
esawayoneway.Theysucksucksuck.Changetheprovider.Please.

That feels better.

I do want to make it clear that I put the blame on TNT’s systems and processes, not the people. Both people I have spoken to were very polite and helpful but confronted with a computer system that was unhelpful to them and a series of processes seemingly set in the 1980s. TNT – if you are reading this then accept this as a failure of your management and IT systems, not a failure of your staff.

Go Fug yourself

I’ve been following go Fug Yourself for a while – a comic look at the paparazzi world and fashion disaster.

Today’s effort is priceless.
gofugyourself

Interestingly from what was a simple blog, go Fug Yourself now seems to be part of Celebuzz – a bunch of celebrity site. This is big business folks – the lowest common denominator hard at work.
Celebuzz s part of Buzznet – yet another social media network. It seems they are expanding into better things.

Are you easy to manage? 10 ways to be

Today I sat on the train on the way home, in a crowded carriage.

A woman got on board, talking on her cell phone, and rather than hanging up she talked through the entire 30 minute journey. That wasn’t so much the issue in the crowded carriage. The issue was that she spent the entire time complaining.

Complaining about her job, about other people on her job, about the stress that it created for her and so forth. It was evident that the person on the other end of the line worked with her, and was most likely her boss. Oh – and 95% of the talking was happening at the train end of the call. The carriage reeked of mutually shared but not discussed discomfort.

It was all very hard to tune out due to the sheer volume and intense stress levels of the poor woman – who was close to self-induced tears the entire time. Franky – she was a nightmare, and that was just for those of us in the train.

The person on the other end of the phone wasn’t having a great time of it. Our fellow traveler was proving extremely difficult to manage, requiring at least 40 minutes of listening time in what was an excessively dysfunctional call. Moreover she oozed incompetence and defensiveness, along with uncoachability – the three  killer factors when it comes to being a good employee.

So – that begs the question. Are you easy to manage? Do you think about being easy to manage?

Let’s assume that you are smart and resourceful – clearly becasue you are reading this blog you must be both.  Smart and resourceful people can get a heck of a lot done, and very quickly. But they can be wildly painful to manage.

They ask too many questions, nag for change several times too often, pushing for the better way rather than the way we have always done it. They are likely to get very excited about something and then totally deflated when others close it down. They are great at making changes but lousy at day to day monotony. They require constant feeding of work, and if you give them responsibility they eat it up and demand more. You feel that they want your job, but really they want your CEO’s job.

However, if they are easy to manage, then they are the superstars.

So – what should you do? How do you become easy to manage?

Here is one top ten list of how to makes changes while being easy to manage:

  1. Think about it. In each interaction with your boss and everybody else you work with, think about whether you are being easy to manage. Do it constantly. Review how you went in your mind. And devise approaches, before you confront people, that will  engage them rather than alienate them.
  2. Prioritise the changes you want – rather than fight 20 battles understand the 3 important ones and go for the, While you are at it, slow down the pace of interactions, saving them for a set time each day or week – most people can only take so much.
  3. Try questions. Avoid ‘teling’ people what to do by  putting everything into question form. It can sound contrived at times, but it really works as it means you are asking for an opinion rather than telling. The resulting discussion often leads to a better answer.
  4. Give credit to everyone except yourself. Seriously – don’t ever take credit for anything. Try it and you’ll not only get a lot more done, but you’ll find that the folk you are giving credit to actually deserve it. Eventually you’ll find that those same people start giving credit to you – and then the credit-festing game begins. The idea is to give more than you receive, and the result is an amazing work environment where everybody truly appreciates what everybody else is doing
  5. Out work everyone. When faced with a hostile environment put your head down and produce. If everyone else is complaining, but you are producing that much more, and easy to manage, then your career is looking rosier.  Be careful to make sure that  you are noticed, but don’t over do it – the occasional email sent at 2am helps.
  6. Never complain. Ever. Come up with ideas and solutions, but whinging is a career killer.
  7. Move. If the work environment encourages whinging and whining, then get out, and get out fast. You are who you hang out with and complaining constantly is not a healthy state of affairs.
  8. Read. Read a critical mass of how to succeed in business books. Understand how to Win Friends, how to manage in a minute, how to move cheese, close a deal, get to yes and have seven habits. After a while they all start to sound the same, so stop.  (they pretty much are the same). I would not recommend adopting any single one of them as a cult or religion, but take elements of each and construct your own way of operating.
  9. Get some air cover. Air cover is someone senior who thinks you are a star and will champion your career informally. Senior folk like to help folks that are earlier in their career, and like to understand what is happening at the lower levels. One of the best techniques is to be there when they are – after hours is alway good for a quiet chat about the state of the world. Try not to tell tales, but keep them informed by using light references to things that you think they should know about. If they pick up on the reference then great, else just move along. And never use any reflective power that you may think you have from this.
  10. Have fun. If you are enjoying what you are doing, then chances are everyone around you is enjoying working with you. If you are slogging away on something not enjoyable, then figure out a way to make it fun or figure out a way to move to something else. Even the worst work can be made fun if you introduce a new ‘element’.

What do you think?

Rent, don’t buy

Via Paul Krugman’s blog in the NYTimes: a salient graph if you are thinking of buying a house. Remember the US market is ahead of most of the rest of the world – the big falls re yet to come elsewhere.

…the Case-Shiller 20-city index compared with the BLS measure of owner’s equivalent rent, both deflated by the CPI. The housing bubble had essentially no effect on rental rates.

krugman blog

Child Drugging and Evil Psychiatrists

I was walking the streets of Fremantle the other day, and I saw this ad go past me several times:

Fremantle

It was attached to the back of this truck:Fremantle

By the amount of airtime the ad was being given, I figured that whoever was putting on the show really wanted people to see it. Human rights – must be Amnesty International or someone similar right?

Sure enough – a little while later I saw a few protesters being interviewed by police. Guys – if you want to draw attention to yourselves then wearing masks is a great way of doing so. It reminded me of the 2000 World bank protests where tens of thousands of people inarticulately yelled for change. (For a more articulate version read the latest by Stiglitz)

Fremantle

They were protesting something or other outside the town hall. So after buying a tiny cooker for my trip, I decided to go in. Above the door was the sign that explained all:
Fremantle

In case I didn’t get the message, here’s the first thing I saw as I walked in:

Industry of DEEEEATTTH
Those evil psychiatrists. Now I happen to believe that ADD and the related drugs is prescribed far too often in many places, so I went despite the obvious kook warning signs. I did have a growing suspicion as to what sort of organization was behind this.

The exhibition consisted entirely of pasteboard displays and video screens.
Evil psychiatrists Lots of them.big. one of many screens

It all went seriously downhill after Godwins Law was invoked. I skipped reading and was out of there really quickly.
evil hitler psycho
So I had to know – who was behind all of this? The last screen I passed showed was the one above with the Japanese gentleman. Was he the founder? And what of the spooky logo? The organsation is called CCHR
spooky kooky
What was in it for the people doing this free display? Where was the value being created? Certainly they were not getting anything from merchandise sales – on offer were Industry of Death Books, T-Shirts and anti Psychiatry and Hitler-memorabilia:
books for kooksthe men behind hitler Do they have children's sizes?

So where was the money flow? What was the purpose of all of this? Who was gaining? Who were these people?

The protesters outside, now free from the police, gave the game away completely:
protesting brainwashing
Yup. The scientologists do not enjoy a great reputation in Fremantle it seems. CCHR, it says in Wikipedia, is an “advocacy group established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz”.

Case closed.

Half year Portfolio update

so – am I following Baupost‘s advice in my own investments?

I try to. It pays to be reminded again and again though, as like most people investing is a very part time game for me.

But I’m happy about some of my decisions, like my short position on EQR, which I regard as vastly over priced if you look at the earnings and value of assets versus the current valuation. The catalyst for the price to drop  is the housing crisis which means people are looking hard at and  reassessing values of these REITS.

I’ve gone up and down in the amount that I am short EQR, but I have made good percentage returns each time I dip in and out.

Interestingly Baupost itself does not short stocks, as the potential loss is larger than the investment, so they buy put options instead. If they make the wrong decision then the most they can lose (they buy and do not sell unhedged options) is the value of the option purchase. The upside though is magnified.

For similar reasons (and because eTrade only recently granted me the ability) I moved almost all of my short and even one of my long positions into options a few months back. The result is much more volatility in my portfolio, but solid returns – up 30% up year to date versus down 8.5% for the S&P500.

portfolio - green is me, blue s&p500

Not as good as last time I reported – when the portfolio was up 35% versus the market down 5.6%. But overall this is pretty good at halfway through the year. There is plenty of work to to to approach last year‘s peak return of 77% and actual return of 63.5% though.

For instance, I really do need to work on reducing volatility as those swings recently are not the sign of a “first don’t lose money” policy. I also need to start again my search for stocks that are wildly mispriced, have a catalyst to change in value and give a margin of safety.

I’ve been getting crushed by work, am super tired after a year of consulting here in Perth and really need time off to reengage in investing (and blogging). The challenge of beating last year’s % return is a good one, but I need to make sure that I don’t gamble to do so.

The Baupost story

Imagine making over 20% a year since 1983. Safely. $10,000 invested then would be worth about $1m now, but the original investors had $27m, and they have made over 6,100% after fees.

Sounds like the sort of place you’d like to put your money right? Especially as Baupost boss Seth Klarman’s mantra is “Don’t lose money”.

Sadly the fund has been closed to new investors for years, as Baupost wanted to keep itself and the number of investors relatively cosy. With growth figures like that, that small fund part is hard to do, but the firm itself does remain a small one.

There is, however, one way you can invest in Baupost, and that is to become an employee. I got close – interviewing with Seth and several others back in 1997/1998, over two or three rounds. Their interview process was really quite excellent – at one stage I was placed in a room, given an annual report and not enough time, and asked for an investment recommendation. I guess I passed that stage because shortly after I was asked to investigate a couple of NZ companies when I was out in NZ a few weeks later.

Sadly I screwed that up – I did manage to get in front of a couple of people, but I didn’t manage to acquire enough information to form a decent opinion, I didn’t spend enough time analysing what I had and then I made a tentative buy call on one of the companies. The companies were BIL and TranzRail and they both had good reason to go down in value, which they did. I fell into the trap of wanting to make a recommendation, rather than just saying “not enough value, move along”

Regardless, the role that they were considering for me was no longer an option after some internal shuffling, and so the offer wasn’t to be. It would have been a very interesting decision between McKinsey and Baupost, and in a way I was pretty glad that I didn’t have to make it.

Why am I mentioning all this? Well via Bert Fresno I see that Alex Bossert has posted excerpts from a Seth Klarman speech at Colombia Business School. Seth pops into the occasional business school class and is entertaining and incredibly informative when he does so. I was lucky enough to see him at Yale (that’s how the interview process got going), and I recommend that if you invest money, especially your own, then you should read that post.

If you have no time for that, but are somehow still reading this (clearly you are related to me), then the essence is simple – don’t lose money, invest in stuff that is wildly mis-priced and look for something that is going to make that mis-pricing revert to the norm

Trade Me lite is here – for your phone

Go to m.trademe.co.nz – even from your mac (or PC if you really must) browser.

m.trade me

It’s simple, stark even and light. A staggering 6.9k home page, versus 292kb for the www home page.

Forget about browsing any way but by search. Actually it is a really unfriendly place to just browse for stuff – but really good if you are monitoring an aucton, or you want to check out your current saved searches.

Here’s the product screen, stark again and tiny.

m.trade me

Note that last line – go to Trade Me to email the seller. I suppose there is no excuse not to just call the seller – unless you are in a pub and it’s 1130pm on a Friday. Loads of phones have email capability, so why not show me the email address? Or even give me the link to the full page with that phone number on it, so I can use my mobile browser or text it to myself?

The photos are scrolled one at a time – no preloading here. They are small but sufficient.

m.trade me

Finally the description page delivers all the text in a stream – which is perfect.

m.trade me

So overall it’s a fairly crippled experience, but a very light on for the vast majority on ridiculously expensive mobile data plans. I sense there is still some work to do around searching via category and placing auctions. With a phone in the camera you’d think that there is opportunity to make placing an auction simplicity itself…

Around Australia madness take 2

On the one hand guys at work here in Perth say that the roads I’ve chosen to traverse are liable to get me killed if I go in unprepared. They are right – so I will be prepared.

They also tell me that doing all of the route in a couple of months is lunatic behaviour. They are right again, so the route, as all routes I lan, is subject to rapid change depending on circumstances. Such circumstances include rainy weather, presence of beer, stormy weather, presence of sand, cold weather, tiredness and so on..

However these guys do a cross-Australia trip in just 14 days.

outbackadventuretreks

That sounds like hell to me – all slog and no let-up if you just want a day off. I’m not into organised travel, and I’m not realy into extended group travel – it becomes more about the group than the travel. But it is an impressive route:

outbackadventuretreks They say the route is 90% dirt and 10% road, which is cool. But at 5600 km that’s 400 km per day on average, and you’d want a few slow days in there. I’m not at all beyond the 400km on rough roads per day – I’ve done a lot more. It’s the prospect of doing that with no break that would get me.

They charge $7200, or $5800 if you bring your own bike. That’s a good extra $1400 spent, $100 a day to trash someone else’s bike is cheap. But the $5800 would get you around Australia on your own for 2 months or more depending on how you travel. They do provide 4WD backup, which is nice, and fuel, which is very nice in these days.

On the other hand there is one leaving Perth on the 5th of July. Let’s see – 4th of July party on the Friday, early morning 5th July departure.. What could go wrong?

and it would be good practice for a Dakar. Even better would be an Australian Safari:

That’s in August, leaving from Kalgoorlie, up the road. 5500 km of racing in 9 days. Outback adventure treks offer a package just $18450 including bike hire, which actually is not entirely unreasonable.

Sadly (luckily) entries are closed for 2008, but there are 2009 slots available.

What to do next: Crazy idea number 3

So the third (and final in the series) crazy idea is clearly going to be a motorcycle adventure – after all that’s what I keep ending up dong.

The question is only where?

One option is the Scandinavia and Baltics trip, which is something that I have not done yet as when I was on my original trip in Europe (1996) it was raining up there. Incessantly.

So this map summarizes pretty well what I was thinking, except I was not planning to do the Iceland bit, and I was not thinking of the Russia bit, but going from Helsinki to Tallinn on the ferry.

worldbybike.com

I stole that image from Gareth and Jo Morgan’s site WorldbyBike. Yes – they are off again on one of their adventures, and that’s their planned route. Have fun guys- I know it will be yet another excellent adventure.

However for me it is not to be – instead, despite the pouring rain outside, I’m going to take advantage of my current location.

pouring rain outside in Fremantle more rain in Fremantle

That’s right, I’m plumbing for an Australian adventure.

I intend to head North from Perth and go across the top then back through the middle. Plenty of desert there, and I’ll run into my brother and family who will be driving the other way up the top somewhere. This is a rough route, which as always with me is subject to frequent and wholesale changes.

Planned Route - Version A

All this will require a bit more preparation than I currently do. While I’m a beleiver in underpreparing if anything to maximise the adventure. There is a bunch of long distance riding in the desert heat, and I need to make sure that I have the fuel range, the water capacity and the ability to either get help of figure things out myself if I break down.

panoramio

A bit more on the underpreparing – you see the adventure only happens when you find yourself in a situation where you need to fall back on your own wits, but more importantly rely on the help of others. Obviously going out with a plan to depend entirely on others is both stupid and rude, so it’s a fine line. My last trip was from Sydney to Broken Hill, and for preparation I rented a bike and took my current gear. That worked out well – the bike was poorly prepared and so for additional adventure I had to limp to Broken Hill and find and get fitted a new chain there. Oh – and there were no tools on the bike for adjusting the continuously stretching chain.

There are two choices for the bike I take – either I take the KTM Adventure that I own, or I buy another bike and use that. The KTM is fantastic off-road, indeed it really wants to go offroad at any opportunity. It’s also an exciting bike to ride, I have the sidecases for it and it is already sitting in the garage:

ktm adv 950

The downside is the fuel range, reliability and tires. The tank takes 22 litres, but the bike is very thirsty, and I usually get around 300km between refuels. I can get a bigger tank though – for about $1700 plus fitting. KTM’s are great machines, but they are not backed by BMW’s reputation, dealer network or reliability. If I get stuck in the middle of nowhere it may be for a bit longer than with a BMW.

Finally tires.

Amazingly I’ve never had to remove a tire to fix a puncture on the road or even on my own. In North and South America I didn’t have a single puncture, while in Europe to Singapore there was invariably a tire wallah within a few metres of where the puncture happened. Actually in that trip punctures happened a lot, and I learned that the best cure is to change tires early, rather than too late.

In South Africa I had some punctures, including one in a game park, but on the BMW1200GS the tires are tubeless, and so you don’t have to remove the tire to fix them, but simply use a plug. I even managed to fix a huge cut in the sidewall, something which is normally terminal. (as it was – a week later).

So the next alternative is a trust BMW – and I’ve had good experience with the F650 range (3 rides on them – 2 GS’s and the older ST). Here’s the Sth America F650GS, now aging disgracefully in Auckland.

http://gallery.mac.com/lwiggs

I’ve also had a great time with the 1200GS range – that’s the 1200GS I owned in South Africa on the masthead, and in New Zealand I have the adventure version. The adventure version would be fantastic for this trip – it’s a huge machine, but it is completely set up for long dirt and desert riding. The downside is that, well it is expensive.

The 1200 Adventure bike in New Zealand is kinda lonely and needs to be ridden, but it is very difficult to get over here when I am not there to organise it. Moreover the expense of shipping it here and back is silly when I have a KTM in the garage.

Alternatively I could buy a 1200GS Adventure here. The new one looks very cool – it has not just ABS but also traction control, and both have an offroad mode. This is point and shoot stuff for dirt roads, just keep on riding and the tech takes care of most things. The bike is built like the proverbial, and you can sit on one all day, but, well, it costs about $30,000 Australian, which is $30,000 USD these days.

So – option three, and the one that is looking extremely likely, is to head off around the North of Australia on the KTM. With a larger tank, and some reliability work.

Overall – things are so easy these days. There are any number of fantastic bikes along with panniers and other kit that you can overland in pretty harsh conditions. The internet holds all the information you need, and thrre really is no excuse (I’ll regret stating that I know) for screwing up the preparation. Once on the road of course it is easy to find good answers to questions via the web as well.

Warning: plans are subject to change…