Departure day

I'm writing this the day before I leave. Six months of planning, construction and problem solving and the bike is loaded and ready to go. In my mind I had visions of how the trip would go - I'd leave on a clear, crisp winter's morning and head for the ferry at a steady, if not spectacular, 50mph, arriving in time for a chance to warm up and grab a lateish breakfast before the European motorway network beckoned. A couple of days later I'd be in southern Germany picking my way easily through deep snow while larger, more unwieldy bikes were sliding off the road and being towed out of ditches with their owners rehearsing what they were going to tell their insurance companies.

The reality is that it's tipping it down outside and forecast to rain for at least the next two days. Not only that but the wind has just sent my bins skittering down the road and it's going to get windier. Additionally, reports from southern Germany say that snow is a rare commodity there at the moment. I have better bikes in the garage for these conditions but the bloop is packed and prepped, so, for better or for worse, it's the bloop's 10bhp versus the west wind and truck drivers watching a DVD while they steer. Here we go...

Wind and rain

The Americans have a word for it - mission creep. Actually that's a phrase but lets ignore that for the time being. What am I talking about? The tendency for things to go far beyond what you originally intended because each further step seemed logical at the time. That's how the screen for the bloop evolved. I've never been much of a fan of screens on motorcycles, thinking that they only got in the way and that better clothing or a bit of "man-ing up" to use a recent expression was all that was needed to cope with the conditions. However advancing years and memories of freezing during the last Elephant trip convinced me to take another look and I decided the bloop would have a screen.

I suppose that back in the 70's when hoards of bikes like these were being used to commute to the local station you could buy all sorts of bits for them including screens but there's not much chance of finding anything suitable around these days. Maybe weeks of looking on ebay might turn up something but it would no doubt be a "genuine and rare period accessory" and priced accordingly. I'd hate to ruin a "genuine period accessory" when they are so rare on a trip like this so I turned to a different part of ebay and for a few pounds bought an A3 sheet of 4mm thick clear acrylic. Actually it might have been polycarbonate or perspex or some other clear plastic. The terms seem be used interchangeably by many of the dealers and not being versed in the art I can't tell one from the other. Either way it looked clear enough when it turned up.

I chose an A3 sheet because I guessed that my chest area would present about an A3's worth of frontal area to the wind, so substituting the plastic for me wouldn't make much difference to the bike but might marginally improve my comfort. Also A3 sheets were cheap and I'd use all of it. Buying a bigger sheet would cost substantially more and I'd have to throw a lot of it away when it was cut to shape.

A week or so later, after a lot of trying to decide on this angle or that, should it be bolt upright or at some sort of jaunty angle, around the headlamp or on top, decisions, decisions, I'd got it vaguely mounted. In the end it went right in front of where my chest would be and sloping a little to the rear for no other reason than it looked about right. More B&Q steel tubing, a couple of modified car exhaust clamps and a couple of evenings sparking away with the welder and it was mounted. That was that, on to the next bit.

That's where the mission creep bit started. The "next bit" was fitting a pair of handlebar muffs in an attempt to keep my hands warm and / or dry. I didn't want to buy these as it would mean spending money so I considered alternatives. The really poor mans version of handlebar muffs is a couple of 5L plastic containers with one side cut out and cable tied onto the handlebars. I've used these before so I know how effective they can be but the bloop is a very small bike physically and 5L containers were much too big to fit in the space available. I tried downsizing to a 3L container but the cutout was too small to get my hands inside and still operate the controls. I did find a plastic milk carton that fitted well but the plastic was too flimsy and I didn't think it would survive the battering on the autobahn. Reluctantly I "borrowed" some muffs I had fitted to the CCM and modified them to fit the bloop. Last time I used these muffs in the rain they leaked like a sieve and the interior filled up with a couple of inches of water. Far from protecting my hands they were stuck underwater for hours on end as I plodded back through France, but they were all I had so I started thinking about ways to protect the muffs - defense in depth I suppose!

The obvious way was to extend the screen sideways with a couple of "wings". These were wings in the architectural sense - the east wing and the west wing. Ebay came up with an A4 sheet of perspacrystyracarbonate or whatever it was, which I cut in half and via a couple of metal struts fixed in front of the muffs. That should keep most of the wind and rain off. So that was my chest and my hands sorted but what about my legs? In December a "quick" 10 mile round trip to the MOT station in the rain showed that they were the only bits getting really wet. I needed to come up with some protection for them. A week or so later I was in Maplin's, the electronics store, and they were selling small plastic snow shovels for £5.00 each. Looking at the shape of the shovel part it struck me that they would be perfect for knee protection if I could work out how to mount them - and I could shovel snow with them once at the site. The perfect double function accessory.

Over Christmas I worked out how to mount them, what would need to be modified and what would need to be made. When I went back to buy them we'd had some snow and... they'd sold out! The next day I took another look at the screen and decided that if I extended the wings downward that would give me some knee protection at least. A few days later and a couple more plastic A4 sheets arrived from ebay and fixed were in place. To stop it flexing I   initially just velcroed it to the back of the indicators but after a trial run I had to make up a couple of extra supporting struts. The screen is now over twice the size I originally intended so the bloop's 10bhp is going to have to work for a living. Feeling guilty, I bought some fully synthetic two stroke oil to help it on its way.

This is the "final" version of the screen -

Preparing the bike - lighting

The pannier were one thing but there was still a long way to go before the bike would be anything like ready. Next item on the list was to do something about the lights. The more I look at the bike the more I appreciate the amount of thought that went into it back in Suzuki's design studio. No money but quite a lot of thought. For example, most original purchasers would have used it for commuting so a decent headlamp probably wouldn't be necessary- there'll be streetlights to show the way so any old headlight will do and a few yen can be saved. As long as other vehicles can see you that'll be good enough. But as you pick your way home slowly in the gloom you don't want cars crashing into the back of you, so they fitted a huge bright rear light. See what I mean about foresight, they really thought it through. I did wonder about swapping the lights over as the rear would probably have done a better job of lighting the road ahead but thought better of it. After all, who expects a motorcycle to be coming down the road backwards at 40mph.

I did look at whether I could rewire the lighting system to run some decent bulbs and concluded that, yes, it would be possible but it would cost more than I was willing to spend at this stage. Maybe later, when the bike had a few trips under its belt, I could justify it but not at this point when I had no idea whether I could even get to the end of the street on it. So I was going to be stuck with all of the original 6 volts slowly making their way through the bulb and scaring the photons into illuminating the front mudguard. To actually see the road I needed some extra lights and the power for them wasn't going to come from the bike.

Many years ago I ran a number of motorcycles with auxiliary lights. Many of them were totally useless (the lights that is) but a set of Cibie Oscar rally lights fitted to my Gold Wing would light up an empty road for over half a mile. Something like that on the bloop would be great but I'm not sure even the engine even put out enough power to light them never mind the generator. That kind of brute force approach was out, I'd need something more subtle. The off road bicycle world supplied the answer. There are lots of very high output battery powered LED lights available on the market for bicycles, many of which are far brighter than car headlamps or even the previously mentioned rally lights. They're small (think teacup size) and powered by lithium ion batteries about the size of a packet of cigarettes. Mostly the good ones come from the US, but unfortunately arrive together with eyewatering price tags and were way way beyond what I could contemplate spending. Good old free enterprise quickly solved that problem though. Chinese copies could be obtained on ebay for a fraction of the cost, so on the basis of nothing ventured, nothing gained I tapped my credit card numbers onto the screen and waited.

And waited, and waited... Eventually after six weeks (and many emails) a package arrived. When I plugged all the bits together and switched it on I must admit I was very impressed. This two inch diameter lamp was bright, really bright - brighter than our car headlamps by quite a bit. This looked like it might work. I made up some sort of mounting bar for the bike, replaced the bicycle orientated rubber band based clamp with something more substantial and worked out where to put the battery. I then decided for reasons of symmetry to buy a second one. That arrived from Hong Kong in five days, restoring a little bit of faith in the international postal system, and after a bit more rejigging of the mount it ended up on the opposite side of the bike. Both of them turned on together was just amazing, lighting up the road far more than any normal headlamps. The big problem had just shifted from one of running off the road in the dark to one of blinding people coming the other way and having them crash into me. I've not really solved that one yet.       

Initial assessment and some DIY

By the end of September I had the bike running well enough to think that using it for the Elephant rally might be possible. It started easily and filled the garage with smoke quickly enough to convince me that the oiling system was working and a few brief trips along the drive enabled me to check it had the required number of gears and functional brakes. I could even see a faint glimmer somewhere in the depths of the headlamp when I turned the lights on. That was good enough. At this stage I had no documentation at all for it- no insurance, tax, MOT etc so taking it on the road for a more extended trial wasn't possible. Maybe in years past I might have tried a Sunday morning trip down some of the quieter roads near here but a combination of age induced maturity and (mostly) the increase in the use of numberplate recognition cameras made the decision for me. At this stage it wasn't even registered in my name so a numberplate camera would link it back to the people who gave it to me, who would then ring me up wondering why they'd just received a letter from the police.  Probably not a good move.

 In practical terms the next step was to look at what changes would be needed for the trip. It already had a rack fitted but the method of fixing meant that it was only intended to take light items. Anything over about 10kg would lead to things breaking and as I was going to need to take a lot more than that it was going to have to go somewhere else. I knew the rack mounts would break and exactly where because I'd done it in the past on a trip to Greece. Overloading that bike eventually led to the whole rear mudguard, including the lights, rack and luggage, snapping off and falling in the road. Once bitten twice shy as they say so this time only light stuff would go on the rack. Rummaging around in the depths of my garage turned up a few items that might help. The first thing was a huge top box that I'd bought to fit the Honda Gold Wing that I'd owned back in the late 70's. Putting that on the rack wouldn't help with the weight issue (in fact the box alone weighed near to 5kg) but it did have a number of older Elephant rally stickers on it that would give me some street cred en route. Hmm... street cred versus needing to call a recovery truck when the whole thing collapsed? It was a close call but in the end the need to keep the front wheel on the ground made the decision. The box was out.

The other thing I found was a set of old 70's panniers. These had also been used on the Gold Wing and looked small on that bike but looked about right for the bloop. They also looked the part, being from about the same era as the bike. There were no fittings but I could make those and a quick examination of the bike showed that Suzuki had kindly provided a threaded hole in a perfect place for a small subframe that I could make to fix the panniers in place. A few evenings (ok, more than a few, but that's how these things go) with some steel tube from B&Q and a mig welder and I had the panniers attached. All my previous experience with making luggage systems (quite a few over the years) came into play, keep the weight forward so it doesn't affect the handling, keep it low for the same reason, tack here, weld there, add a few nuts and bolts and it was done. Except it wasn't. As soon as I fixed the panniers on and gave it a trial run up and down the drive I knew it wasn't. The bags were so far forward the corners dug into my legs, and that banging noise, what was that? "That" was the sound of the pillion footrests knocking into the bottom of the panniers when the suspension compressed. Removing the footrests was the quick fix and a few bits of drilling, cutting and rewelding moved the panniers away from my legs enough to get rid of the worst of the pain. They still do catch but I bought some foam from the local market recently to pad the top. Nothing like engineering the problem away!

Pannier mounted on the bike -

The subframe made up to support the panniers. The bag hangs on the two upright bolts -

Lidl's came up with a magnetic tank bag for £20.00 that increased the luggage space on top of the fuel tank and the local army surplus store supplied a holdall that would fit across the pillion seat. As the time for departure has approached and things have been packed and trial fitted I've now discovered I've got too much luggage capacity and resisting the temptation to use the space available to take "just in case" items has got harder and harder! What I do know is that whatever I take won't be right, I'll leave behind stuff I could really have done with and pack stuff I'll never use.

Thinking about Elephants past

So many good ideas start in the pub. Whether this one originated there or not I can't remember as the mists of time have rolled in and shrouded everything but I wouldn't be surprised. Back at the start of 1973 I'd heard about this semi mythical winter motorcycle rally held in Germany. Stories told that it was started in the 50's by survivors of the Russian campaign in WW2 and that they only used the same bikes that had withstood everything the Russian winter could throw at them. They'd chosen to hold it in the Eiffel mountains as the winter conditions there were particularly bad. Anyone was welcome but no cars - you had to go on two wheels and expect the worst. My girlfriend at the time was already being referred to as a motorcycle widow when I set off with a friend at the end of January ...

Fast forward to 2012 and the Elefantentreffen (Elephant Rally in English) is still going strong. It's now probably the best known winter motorcycle rally in Europe with getting on for 10,000 now making their way to a new site down by the Czech border - chosen because the conditions are even worse than the Eiffel mountains.  I've now been four times but all of them were during the 1970's before this new site came into use, so to go again will be, like the first time, a voyage into the unknown.

I've thought about going again over the last 10yrs or so but for most of the time my winter sights have been looking to the far south where sun rather than snow rules the winter landscape. Given a choice between sunburn and frostbite I've been packing the Factor 50 every time. Additionally I haven't really had a bike suitable for the trip. It's a round trip of about 1500 miles with the vast majority of it on the autobahn. For that part something big and powerful would be the weapon of choice but closer to the rally site everything flips in the opposite direction. A big heavy bike with a high seat is the last thing you want in snow and ice and bikes have got much bigger and heavier as the decades have passed.  There were two bikes with exactly those characteristics in my garage, both of which had been bought and outfitted with winter trips in mind but to the sunnier climes of the Sahara rather than the snow fields of Bavaria. To go on either my XR600 Honda or my CCM604 would be silly; both of them are perfect for rough terrain but if the tyres slide on snow or ice, as they certainly will, the high seat height makes them uncontrollable. I'd be pulling them (and me) out of some foreign ditch for certain. On the last visit in 1979 I used a small 100cc Suzuki trail bike and, while slow on the motorway, it was just about perfect in the snow. If I had something like that now I probably would go again, but I don't.

Or at least I didn't. About a year ago someone offered me a mid 70's 120cc Suzuki commuter bike that they were wanting to get rid of. It had been left in a garage for about twenty years and didn't run but they thought I might be able to do something with it. Either way, it was me or the dump. Nothing happened for a few months and I thought they'd just taken the easy option of scrapping it but these things obviously take a while and it eventually turned up in mid summer. First impressions were not bad. All the bits were there, it wasn't too rusty and I was sure I could work my way through the engine problems. I set about taking it to bits and within a month or so I'd deseized the engine, bought a few missing bits and managed to get it running. Despite the long period of idleness it didn't sound too bad. That's when the thought of using it for the Elephant rally struck. In late summer sunshine it's hard to imagine the biting cold and long dark nights of mid winter which is probably why it sounded like a good idea. If I'd had any sense I'd have remembered that I spent a week in bed with flu after coming back from the last one. And that was real flu, not the "I'll have a few days off work" man flu version. It was probably the mists of time drifting over the memories that encouraged me to consider going again. I still have a number of photographs from that trip but of course you only take them during the good bits so they form the dominant memory.

This is a picture of the bike as it was when I got it -

And one in mid September 2012 when I had it running -

Over the next few months I started making all the bits I thought I'd need to make the bike more suitable for the journey. It already had a rear rack so that was one thing I didn't need to make but I'd need more luggage capacity than that. On the last trip with the TS100 Suzuki I had no way of carrying luggage at all and it was just strapped onto the pillion seat with whatever I could find. There were non stop problems with things working loose and I was determined it wasn't going to happen again. In addition, back then there were three of us doing the trip so as well as mutual support we could split the luggage over the three bikes. This time I had to load everything onto the little Suzuki and as I wasn't going to be taking much that was surplus to requirements making sure I didn't lose anything through sloppy packing was paramount. As you can imagine finding accessories for a 35yr old bike is close to impossible but at least these days I had some capacity to make parts if they were not available. Back then if I couldn't make it with Meccano or the grown up version, Dexion shelving, it didn't get made. Whatever the cost of the welding evening classes I took twenty years ago, it was money well spent!

Reloading the luggage yet again during a fuel stop on the 1979 Elephant trip -