Oranje's 2nd World Tour - Amsterdam to Amsterdam

[Mr Oranje]

A few of you guys may remember when I put up about me traveling on a motorbike world tour a year and a half back. Well, I came back from the world tour 2 months ago arriving back in Amsterdam in May 2011. I have put some thought into this and I think I am going to write up my journal from the trip. I've decided to post my story on the legendary Coffeeshop Directory for those who are interested.

Summary: The trip constituted of me and two other guys. The aim was to go from Amsterdam across Europe and Russia, down into Korea over to America and then all the way down to South America on Yamaha XT600’s E. We had saved up and grabbed resources from where we could to make this trip possible so that we could see the world in its natural beauty. I wrote in my journals every single day talking about the perils and pleasures of 200 + days that I was gone.

While this is a true story and a true account of my experiences I have changed the names of people in the posts here in order to protect their privacy. Here is my account of what happened.

Before we left we all agreed to write up the “Rules of the Road”, which were meant to be kept to allow the group to remain friends and also stay focused on what we were doing. We have been on many trips before together but none like this. Here are what the rules were:
1. Don’t shit where you eat aka be at least 30 meters from camp.
2. Don’t have arguments. Third person needs to defuse situation at all times.
3. Stop a minimum of 2 hours prior to sunset unless all are in agreeance that continuing is a better option.
4. Always carry someone’s item if you have space.
5. Attempt to do 100 sit-ups every day.
6. Try an alcohol from every country.
7. Always fill up petrol whenever possible.
8. Take a video log in each country.

Day 0

Spent the whole day getting our bikes setup and ready. Didn’t eat at all. Got back to Portsmouth really late but managed to grab a McDonald’s beforehand. We are leaving tomorrow morning at 10am and I have still not packed. Today has made me realize that I am well under prepared for a trip of this stature. And I really do not have much knowledge on bike mechanics if things go wrong.

I sat watching the guys installing the engine bike which had recently had a major issue with the screws holding it up. We had been spending the last two days attempting to fix this problem. Brian had been working in a garage on our bikes for the last week, preparing them to be ready for the off but it was a job that needed more time which resulted in frustration as we tried to get ready for this tour.

When I got home late from Brian’s house I knew that the next day I would be driving into Dam on my bike and a smile came across my face as I knew this was really happening. I attempted to pack but failed miserably due to lack of sleep and having to wake up extra early to get things done. I barely slept.

[Willjay]

wake up and pack you are going to the dam

[Mr Oranje]

Day 1

I got up really early with hardly any sleep, feeling absolutely shattered and I looked at my floor covered with clothes, tool parts and camping gear. It was an incredible squeeze putting all of the stuff on my bike. I ended up having to balance the 2 spare wheels on my top box on the back which was moderately unstable but a bungee cord kept it in place.

We headed towards Folkstone with no problems got over to Calais and headed straight through towards Belgium there was really not much to speak of going these motorways other than green fields and hairy looking farmers.

We arrived in Amsterdam around 8:30pm. Got into the camp site and setup our tents but I left the boys to it so I could run to the pub to watch Holland vs. Uruguay in the world cup, which I had been desperate to see. The guys met up with me and watched Holland win 3 to 1 and get into the cup finals. We headed into town and were amazed by the seas of orange, people celebrating their countries win with pride.

We headed to a few of our favorite coffeeshops and headed to Coffeeshop Smokey’s to play some pool. Day 1 was over and we relaxed in the warm Amsterdam evening and contemplated whether it would be Germany or Spain to play Holland in the final.

[cattales1960]

wow this is going to be a great story. I was wondering why we had not heard from you lately orange. I am very curious as to how you got the bikes from different continents that connect only by water?

[geoffk]

wow this is going to be a great story. I was wondering why we had not heard from you lately orange. I am very curious as to how you got the bikes from different continents that connect only by water?

Hoverbikez FTW

[cattales1960]

wow this is going to be a great story. I was wondering why we had not heard from you lately orange. I am very curious as to how you got the bikes from different continents that connect only by water?

Hoverbikez FTW

lol

[Mr Oranje]

Day 2 and 3

These two days were a bit of a blur thanks to being in Amsterdam, so I have combined them together in some kind of an attempt to order what actually happened.

Woke up nice and late, in Gaasperplas campsite in southeast Amsterdam. I love the people here, they are always so friendly and the little supermarket they have does the best fresh cakes ever!! We spent the remaining hours of the morning moving our camp around and get our equipment organised. Went into town and started exploring some of Amsterdam’s finest coffeeshops. We bought some cakes that were called “gangemakers” and they were delicious. First stop was coffeeshop Siberia which had a nice layout and random atmosphere. Everything was very reasonable in this shop and we certainly had an enjoyable experience.

There was a crazy couple in the corner who were talking rather loudly allowing everyone to hear their conversation. They were an American couple that were talking about the Spanish “being like cockroaches”, it made for interesting listening and we all had a good laugh at their controversial opinions.

We spent the rest of the day hoping from coffeeshop to coffeeshop and ended up back in Smokey’s playing pool. Big up Coffeeshop Smokey’s fresh smoothies, they are just the ticket!

[Mr Oranje]

Day 4

We left Amsterdam today and headed towards Austria to get to Adam’s parents’ house in Bad Ischl near Salzburg. We were planning on spending a few days there so we could prepare for the trip and especially to prepare ourselves to get use to not having our usual luxuries. The furthest we had ever been out into Eastern Europe was around Croatia so as soon as we passed that point we had gone further than we had ever gone before.
We drove to St. Vith and camped in a gorgeous campsite amongst the green hills. Brian and Adam had challenged me to run up one of the hills in a set time which they filmed and took photos of. Before we camped down for the night we noticed that my spare tire had at some point connected with my rear wheel and had rubbed some of the rubber away which could have proved to be dangerous. Slightly frustrated by this discovery, we decided to cook a meal and call it a night. We will get to the tire tomorrow when we have some daylight and the motivation to do it.

[Sue Narmy]

Looking forward to reading the rest of this.

Any pics?

[cattales1960]

where is the rest of the trip report mr o?

[Mr Oranje]

Haha the rest is slowly being wrote. I have it all in note form at the moment and am trying to type it all up. So you will have to bare with me on this. It was nearly 250 pages long.

There are pictures and I will post a few soon

[spidergawd]

Well you've whetted my appetite now Mr.O, so looking forward to all future installments.

[Mr Oranje]

Day 5

We awoke in our separate tents at around the same time, due to the heat of the sun beading down upon us. Fixed up some breakfast and then looked at my bike. We all knew that this was not going to be the last time that we would have to perform this act of changing a tire around. I guess we just didn’t expect to be doing it on day 5 of the trip. We went at it as a team with Adam directing us around and Brian throwing in a few pointers here and there. It took us a good 2 hours to get the switch completed, thanks to the sun making the sweat drip into our eyes and unbearable to work in. We found that pumping the inner tube back up was even harder work and thankfully a kind Austrian lent us an electric pump which he had in his car. How I wish we had enough room to be able to pack that as one of our luxury items.
After taking a cool shower each, we headed out of the campsite and south towards Austria. It felt like we had driven for hours and hours once we camped down on the side of the road. There was a stone table and stools next to where we camped, which we sat at and cooked dinner. We all discussed how this part of Germany seemed very back to nature and that it was slightly gloomy for some reason. We blame Amsterdam and the side effects of having too much fun for this reason. We were blatantly missing it!


View from near our campsite.

[Ghost]

Liking this alot , this could well be one of the longest reports,if not the longest(when finished) ever written on here.

looking forward to the next installment, keep it coming

[damagedagain]

this is building up to be a really good trip report top job man