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Europe

jfink

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Joe
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Fink
Chuck and I are headed to Europe. So begins the journey. I rode the Wing from Houston to Orlando these past two days and now it sits awaiting it's scheduled shipping to Heidelberg, Germany on the 19th of March. Our first trip will take us to Nordkapp, Norway. The furthest rideable north in Europe.

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After 133,000 miles here in the US and Canada, it now has the chance to spend the rest of it's life in Europe. I plan to post up my trip information here on TWTex. I need to also get my TWT banner out and start photographing it around the world.

Spoiler Alert … we made it! :-) That's me on the left and Chuck on the right. Behind us is the Arctic Ocean. This location is about 60 miles further north than Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. It was 34 deg F the day this was taken.
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https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ah-g5hoCu5H08zrBeXH0IAUFl4R3
 
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Is Chuck shipping his bike or riding pillon on yours? LOL

_

Sent from my SM-G860P using Tapatalk
 
Is Chuck shipping his bike or riding pillon on yours? LOL

Hahaha ... wait! That's not funny. No, he's not riding pillion. Chuck has purchased a Honda Varadero in Ireland. Until he purchased this, I had never heard of it. Looks like a pretty capable adventure bike, although it hasn't been introduced to the US.
 
Cool! Don't know if you've been there, but Heidelberg is a spectacularly beautiful town, as is the entire southern half of Germany. Get off the Autobahn & enjoy the secondary roads, which are a blast! If you want a real rider's challenge, ride the tortuous road through the Black Forest. Be sure to head SE and check out Garmisch. Not only the most picturesque town on the planet in my book, but fantastic rider's roads there and through the Alps.
 
Hahaha ... wait! That's not funny. No, he's not riding pillion. Chuck has purchased a Honda Varadero in Ireland. Until he purchased this, I had never heard of it. Looks like a pretty capable adventure bike, although it hasn't been introduced to the US.

The Varadero is a great bike, surprisingly capable. It's the big brother to the TransAlp with the VTR1000 motor in it (mostly)
I look forward to reading all about the trip, hope you have more fun than you can write about!
 
Cool! Don't know if you've been there, but Heidelberg is a spectacularly beautiful town, as is the entire southern half of Germany. Get off the Autobahn & enjoy the secondary roads, which are a blast! If you want a real rider's challenge, ride the tortuous road through the Black Forest. Be sure to head SE and check out Garmisch. Not only the most picturesque town on the planet in my book, but fantastic rider's roads there and through the Alps.

Thanks Tim, I will need to spend some time in the south of Germany. When I was very young I lived in Darmstadt and Munich. My dad was in the Military. I don't remember much of the country side, but from what I do remember, it was beautiful.
 
The Varadero is a great bike, surprisingly capable. It's the big brother to the TransAlp with the VTR1000 motor in it (mostly)
I look forward to reading all about the trip, hope you have more fun than you can write about!

We both are going over a few days early to sort out any logistics, mechanical or paperwork issues that may exist. Hopefully, this will be a trouble free bike, as he will not have had a lot of chance to work with it before we leave.
 
Thanks Tim, I will need to spend some time in the south of Germany. When I was very young I lived in Darmstadt and Munich. My dad was in the Military. I don't remember much of the country side, but from what I do remember, it was beautiful.

Cool. I lived in Garmisch & went to high school in Munich, about half century ago. If you really want the skinny, I can put you in touch with a high school classmate who never left, and is now retired in Garmisch. He's a rider & spent the last 10 years on a KTM 990 & VStrom; now riding a Spyder because an arm injury has precluded two-wheeling.
 
Cool. I lived in Garmisch & went to high school in Munich, about half century ago. If you really want the skinny, I can put you in touch with a high school classmate who never left, and is now retired in Garmisch. He's a rider & spent the last 10 years on a KTM 990 & VStrom; now riding a Spyder because an arm injury has precluded two-wheeling.

What a great hook up!
 
Hahaha ... wait! That's not funny. No, he's not riding pillion. Chuck has purchased a Honda Varadero in Ireland. Until he purchased this, I had never heard of it. Looks like a pretty capable adventure bike, although it hasn't been introduced to the US.

Did Chuck go through https://motofeirme.com/home/ for the purchase of his Varadero? If he did is he storing his bike in Ireland or in Germany?
 
Did Chuck go through https://motofeirme.com/home/ for the purchase of his Varadero? If he did is he storing his bike in Ireland or in Germany?

He purchased it directly through Martin (Wheatwacker) from a guy in Arizona, I believe. Although I believe the bike was listed on MotoFeirMe. The bike is registered in Ireland but owned by an American. Ultimately they ended up doing the deal in US rather than European currency. He will be storing the bike in Ireland at Martin's facility, somehow that made sense to him.
 
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Cool. I lived in Garmisch & went to high school in Munich, about half century ago. If you really want the skinny, I can put you in touch with a high school classmate who never left, and is now retired in Garmisch. He's a rider & spent the last 10 years on a KTM 990 & VStrom; now riding a Spyder because an arm injury has precluded two-wheeling.

Thanks Tim. I will have to get his info from you, and visit if I get the chance.

Chuck and I have a friend, on this forum, Lt Col Tom Urich who sort of started this ball rolling, for me anyway. He has quite a bit of information, and in fact, said that he was looking to ship a bike through Stefan. Unfortunately, he can't make it this visit, but we look forward to him coming over soon.

My wife and I met the nicest couple in Costa Rica last year. They pulled up to a road side coffee stand, where we were, and didn't have Costa Rican currency (colons). So, I paid for their order, probably three or four bucks, no big deal. We struck up a lengthy conversation, at the end, they invited us to their home in Germany. My wife has their info, I may look them up.

Also, having three KTM's myself (one in shambles right now), I thought I might see if I can find their place in Austria.

Lots to do! Thanks again for the contact.
 
....

Also, having three KTM's myself (one in shambles right now), I thought I might see if I can find their place in Austria.


KTM won't be expecting that! How many American owners can show up at KTM's doorstep and say, "Let me tell you about this bike..."

Awesome!
 
KTM won't be expecting that! How many American owners can show up at KTM's doorstep and say, "Let me tell you about this bike..."

Awesome!

I probably need to brush up on my German swear words! :-)
 
They certainly deserve a good dressing down.

Maybe you could be more like a honeybee; honey in your mouth but a stinger in your tail.
 
Cool. I lived in Garmisch & went to high school in Munich, about half century ago. If you really want the skinny, I can put you in touch with a high school classmate who never left, and is now retired in Garmisch. He's a rider & spent the last 10 years on a KTM 990 & VStrom; now riding a Spyder because an arm injury has precluded two-wheeling.

I may be asking for your friend's contact info at some point. I'm in the preliminary stages of planning a fly and ride vacation in 2019 for my wife and I to celebrate our 25th. I wanted to hit Stelvia pass, Lake Como, Southern Germany, etc. I'd want something that can be done in a week and avoid very long days in the saddle.
 
On another forum, a user (darts1) posed a question about GPS's. I should probably post this on that thread but I didn't want to Hijack. So I wrote this and I thought I would post it here.

What ever happened to "I wonder where this road goes".

Where I'm going in May, I will have to ask:

Wohin führt diese Straße?
Hvor går denne veien?
Mihin tämä tie vie?
Hvor går denne vej?
Dokąd ta droga prowadzi?
Kur šis ceļš iet?
Куда ведет эта дорога?

And then I will have to understand what they say, when they answer.

I have found that the flexibility of having a GPS has opened up, not limited, alternatives for travel. Most the time I am on the bike, I am going "somewhere". My destination may be an interesting road or two way far away. I have ridden almost every road within a 100 mile radius of my house and I will probably be getting to wherever I am headed, on roads I have already traveled many times.

So I lay out the basic route, then when things get complicated, I reroute. If I have to stop, get my gear off, get my map out, put my gear back on to reroute, I am less likely to do any exploring. Or worse, I am more likely to miss an opportunity to ride a great road, because the turn doesn't pique my interest.

***
By the way, my buddy and I are going up to the Hill Country in a couple weeks (April 9th to 12th) to plan our first trip to Europe. We will sit down with computers and mapping programs to design our "basic" route for our first trip to Europe, then ride some, then eat some. We have done this many times before, and is a significant part of the enjoyment of going on trips. We could probably do this with paper maps, but the "basic" route would be a lot less flexible.
 
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Let the planning begin:

Chuck and I head to The River Inn in the Hill Country next week for our first sit down planning session. Hopefully we will also get some riding in AND take at least a day to sit down with maps and thoughts to work through our first route in Europe. This isn't our first rodeo, we have done this before, many times. One of us usually prepares a strawman route, the other takes a look and then we sit down to talk about what needs to change.

This time it is a little more complicated. We have both chosen different methods of getting a bike to Europe. I shipped my 'extra' Goldwing from Orlando to Heidelberg Germany and he bought a Honda "Varadero" in Ireland. Getting all the paperwork straight, insurance etc is still in the works.

Next, we have separate flights and destinations for us to get to Europe. I am flying to where my bike is via Frankfurt and Chuck is flying to Ireland. He is leaving early with the hopes that his wife can join him for a little vacation before he starts his ride with me. Since we are leaving from Germany and going North, Chuck will have to figure out how he is getting from Ireland to Germany.

Finally, access to maps for our GPS isn't as easy. Because OpenStreetMaps ("OSM") no longer allows downloading all the maps for our planned first route in one batch, it was necessary to download 17 separate country maps, then prepare a route through each country that tied to the previous and next route.

We both have antiquated 'travel' computers, so Chuck has bought a high end laptop for this trip. I am considering taking the one I normally use at home, and if it flakes out, get a new one. All this will take some time to get setup.

Anyway, I have pulled together this very first version of "A" route from Germany to Nordkapp for our first journey in Europe. Here is a picture of the route on the Global Map provided by Garmin. Also is a picture of the estimated mileage and times. More to come ...

ROUTE:
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MILEAGES:
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One other thing we tend to do is to use a spreadsheet to keep up with who bought what. We try to take care of our own tabs when possible, but sometimes it just makes sense for one of us to pay for the entire bill and then keep a balance. Hotel bills, tolls, sometimes gasoline, food, beer, etc. This may seem like overkill to some of you, and for a few day trip, it probably is. But we have done this before when the shared expenses ends up being in the thousands of dollars. Trying to keep that in your head, while not getting out of sorts with the other is just to big of a job when traveling together for weeks or months.

Here's an image of the spreadsheet from our trip to Alaska, that automatically tallies our shared expenses. On that trip, there were 90 lines of shared expenses that totalled $5,620.67. Because my "windows" phone has Excel, I keep up with the expenses. I also am the one to add comments, which at times may not favor Chuck, but it is all in good fun. Besides, it helps us remember when and where that expense occurred.

That trip balanced to $0.34 after all the expenses. Pretty remarkable. That reminds me, I don't think Chuck has paid up the $0.34 he owes me! :rofl:
 
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Hit Normandy if you have time. Looks like a great trip.

Where have you been? Haven't seen you in a while. We are definitely going to visit Normandy, Dunkirk, Bastogna and probably other WWII sites. Not this visit, but later ones.
 
I have spent quite a bit of time figuring how to get a complete map of Europe for our Garmin GPS's from OpenStreetMap ("OSM"). You may ask, why not buy Garmin's map of Europe. I don't know, perhaps it was the experience in South America? The Garmin maps samples we tried to use, were woefully inadequate, missing information and misrepresenting others. Google was almost as bad, and sent us on numerous boondoggles to find hotels, border crossings, restaurants, etc. only to find them missing or miles away.

I like OSM! It's somewhat interactive, in that if you find something inaccurate, it can be submitted and they will actually do something about it. People know this and will actually correct mistakes or missing information. With Garmin and Google, you might as well talk into your hat. Things just seemed to work best with OSM, and ... it's free!

When I discovered that OSM required every country in Europe had to be downloaded separately, I was a little dismayed. I began downloading some 30 odd countries individually and found it was difficult to develop a complete route, one country at a time. So, I began looking for a program to tie together each country into a single map of Europe. I tried probably four programs that I couldn't get to work, most of them CMD prompt driven. Found a program called OSM Combiner, that was programed in Java. I had to download the Java Runtime (64 bit) and found that the format I downloaded from OSM wasn't correct, so had to go back and re-download every country in the right format. Eventually, after long suffering, I was able to make a map of Europe that works! Sweet!

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It's like a lot of things though, once having gone through all of this, it is fairly simple now to get what I need. I would use OSM before any Garmin map except for North America, not including Mexico. How can you trust a mapping program called North America that doesn't include Mexico???. If anyone wants a short tutorial on loading OSM instead of the Garmin maps, drop me a line.
 
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