One Man on a Bike

It’s now only 19 days until I leave Buxted for Morocco. My preparations are coming along nicely but I’ve had a few last minute changes to equipment. It’s very important to me to have a record of this trip and I can’t think of a better way than to write a blog on my way around (hence this blog). My original plan was to take a little netbook with me but they’re just too slow. I played with one in PC World and within 10 minutes (about the time it took to load Firefox) I’d developed a nasty case of Tourettes.

My iPad was out of the question as typing on them is not something I would bestow on any living creature. You’re okay as long as you don’t make any mistakes but the moment you need to go back and correct something you’re doomed to a life of misery. So there I was moaning about iPads saying if they only had keyboards they would be perfect for my trip, it was then that I found out that you can get keyboards for iPads. I bought mine with a nice leather case for protection then got stumped by photographs. As a test I took some photographs on my Nikon D300 and wanted to get one of them rotated, cropped and resized and put on my blog. My conclusion: If you actually want to do something properly get a computer, if all you want to do is walk around looking like a complete wanker then get an iPad.

So, it looks like I’m taking my rather large HP Elitebook 8530p with me to Morocco. The Elitebook is a fantastic laptop that is designed to take a real hammering. Mine’s got 8GB of memory and a 240GB SSD hard drive so is incredibly fast but the trouble is the battery only last about 4 hours. To get around this I’ve bought another 2 batteries and a 12v charger for the bike. Now I’ve got to wire in a charging point into my left pannier that is able to cope with a draw of 90 watts. I’ve got all the cables and connectors I need so will set about getting this done tomorrow.

I’ve been worrying about getting all my paperwork ready for quite some time now but never got round to sorting it out. Earlier today I compiled it all into a waterproof folder. It contains my passport, bike logbook, bike insurance (Europe), bike MOT, Newhaven to Dieppe ferry ticket, D16 TER Morocco entry form (in English, French and Arabic) and 50 police checkpoint documents for the Western Sahara.

The bike has had a lot of work done to it in the last two weeks. I’ve changed the oil and filter, coolant, air filter, chain and sprockets, headlight bulb, brake pads front and back and replaced the spark plugs. Then it went to Everest Motorcycles in Framfield for the valve clearance to be checked, carbs synced, new tyres and inner tubes fitted front and back (with slime), grease the cables and to remove a link from the chain. With the exception of the wiring I have to do to power the laptop the bike is pretty much ready. Once I’ve completed the wiring I’ll drain my laptop battery and do a little test run and see what happens.

Anyway, it’s now twenty past nine so I’m late for bed. Night!