I have to write this in response to my critics who’ve been beating me up lately about not posting entries on my blog here.  MotoHippie is suppossed to be a blog about adventure motorcycle riding… being in strange lands, strange roads, seeing and meeting strange people.  Well… you need a motorcycle to experience adventure motorcycle riding.  Right now, I have in my possession only an adventure lawnmower.  I’ve taken a few 200+ km trips on ol’ Esperanza, but it’s not a joyful experience; I spend the rides stiffened against the wind and ducked down behind my two inch tall odometer.  So for now, I’ve been chronicling my daily experiences on another venue, my myspace blog.  My U.S. license turns 24 months old next month which will trigger a chain of events leading up to my registering and riding my BMW.  After I register and service her, I’m going to be all over the place.  Riding will once again be fun… I’ll have a little more mobility i.e. a bike that doesn’t max out at 90kph.  Life will be good.

Until then, I probably should bring the site up to snuff.  There’s a lot of items that I need to work on.  You see, I’m very interested in getting all these services talking to each other so that the site will be on autopilot when I start travelling in earnest.  I want to be able to upload coordinates, photos, videos, and blog posts independent of each other and have them form relationships which will make visiting my site interesting.  I’m talking maps with routes I’ve taken and places I’ve stayed… embedded pictures and video… major news related to the locations I visit.  You get the picture.  So what’s the problem?  Here it is: I can’t bring myself to write the code when I live in such a bad-ass city.  I can’t get enough of El Puerto, and I’ve only seen a little bit.

I’ve put it off long enough.

I suppose that I’m a little depressed that my pictures didn’t turn out… and that I accidentally left my video camera on and only got random shots from the first 50km or so of my trip. I also didn’t do much talking to the locals down there. The talking I did do was with Tangerine folks riding the ferry to and from Tarifa. I have a little admission to make… and this takes a lot to say this, but I was out of my element in Tangier. I was experiencing something which I had written off as an issue which did not affect me: I had culture shock. I didn’t know what to do.

But how about I start from the start?

I got to Tarifa without knowing that I could actually catch a ferry to Africa. I imagined it was possible, but I hadn’t bother to look it up. I figured that if I got down there and there was no ferry, I’d either motor on to Algeciras or I’d hunker down and enjoy Tarifa. I didn’t really care. Like I said, it’s not about getting to your destination. If it were… I guess we’d all be killing ourselves rather than trying to take a breath and live. I arrived at 3pm. The man at the cash box said the boat left at 5.

“Does it leave at 5 or does it load at 5?”

“At 5pm, that ship will no longer be there.”

At 6pm, I was standing on the bridge wing with a beer in one hand talking to the deck officer about why the ferry never got underway on time. At 6:10 we were on our way to Tangier. I don’t understand unfriendly travelers, and I’m going to have to learn to shrug off rude people. I met an American, a German, and a Swede traveling together from Alicante. I put on my friendly non-skowl, and I did my normal thing when I approach a mixed group of co-ed travelers: I talk to the guys… let me back up for a second. When I go into the bathroom and someone’s peed all over the seat, I clean it up; I don’t want anyone to think it was me. Call it a complex. It’s applicable to a lot of things I do in my life. So I talk to the guys instead of the girls. It’s so they don’t think that I’m the sketchy moto-guy trying to pick them up. Well, I wasn’t interested… I seldom am, but I’d rather not even give them the chance to get that impression. So I wiped the toilet seat and talked to the dude. And in return, they didn’t want anything to do with me. We’re intended to stick together, people! When we’re on the road, us vagabonds only have each other. So let’s keep what we got. I guess it’s so easy to make friends on the road for that very reason: if nothing else, you always share the mentality that you’re not at home anymore. Enough about the rude people.

It took two hours to cross the border once we landed. There is no rhyme or reason to that immigration check-point. They have customs agents. They do something. What that something is, I don’t know. And I don’t like being taken advantage of. Have I ever said that? Have I ever said that I frequently allow myself to be taken advantage of because of my unnaturally good nature? I’d rather concede a $10 error in a bill than make a waiter or waitress feel bad. It’s a character flaw… and those seem to be coming out of the woodwork in droves these days. Well, when someone ‘official’ looking ‘helps me out’ and then demands a tip, it’s hard for me to tell them to go pack sand. It just is.

Public transportation in Tangier.I finally passed immigration and customs and was in downtown Tangier. One word comes to mind: circus. There’s people everywhere… in the road, on the sidewalk; spilling out of cafes, giving me the stink eye. I rode around for over two hours trying to get the uneasiness to go away. My first chore was to find a hostel or a campsite where I could crash for the night and get my bearings. I rode, and I rode, and I rode. It seemed that there were only fancy hotels advertised. The seedy motels and hostels seemed to be hidden from the streets. The few that I did see didn’t seem to have any place semi-secure to park. I figured that I could talk my way into parking in the lobby if I needed, too… but there were stairways and large groups of teenage boys posted in front of every possible hostel candidate. I’m not used to being uneasy in a foreign locale. I suppose that it’s been a while since I’ve ventured into a 3rd world Muslim country by myself on a questionable motorcycle. But I won’t justify. I’m going back down there ASAP. I’m going to be an Africa stud by the time I leave Spain. It’s as simple as that. It’s a skill-set and a comfort level which I don’t yet possess.I’ll save the trip back up the coast for a little later today.



Overlooking Medina.

I got the call on Thursday that my registration paperwork had been completed. I didn’t fool around at all… I made a mad dash to pick it up, get plates made, and get a parking pass for work. I almost had to kill my ride, Tom, as he took his sweet time at the gym after work. After considerable waiting around (as usual) at El Motorista in Jerez, they finally brought my bike around to the front.And then the drama began…The bike wouldn’t start.And then… it barely started. Fermin, the salesman, had told me that they’d service it and gas it up so that it would be ready to go for me when the time came for me to pick it up. I figured the slow ignition was an issue of new bike irregularities, and I wasn’t worried: the ride home to El Puerto was about 30 minutes, giving me a little time to charge the battery if that were the issue. I should have known better. I have recurring nightmares, and they always follow one of two themes: either a general feeling of paranoia or being away from home and having a dead

bike. Seriously. Those are my recurring nightmares. They say the first step to turning your dreams lucid is recognizing a common theme. Anyways, I ride it home (on a major freeway… at 55mph… in the pouring rain) with no issue. The next morning, it starts right away, and I ride in to work. Yay! The start of some sort of rhythm! Following work, I look at the bike, hop on, and try to start it. No joy. I fuss with it for a couple minutes with no luck. I examine it some more and see the fuel switch is on reserve. “Hmmmm… that’s silly. They gassed it up for me. Did they want me to run it to empty without ever knowning how far it can get?” I flip it to “on.” Then, I see that there’s a choke on the carbeaurator. Thanks for the thorough sale, Fermin. I depress the choke, hit the starter and it fires right up. I run it for 45 seconds, release the choke slowly, and ride it about a mile to the grocery store. It dies as I’m pulling into the parking lot. Great. With no battery left, I’m struggling to kick start the thing, but it’s not turning over. I hit the ignition, but there’s barely any juice left in the battery.Anyways… I’m going to cut to the chase here. My bike’s running now… but I had to leave it at the grocery store last night… then I had to run all over creation getting a new battery for it… then I had to gas it up… long story short: great customer service. I got a crap battery and no gas.

I know that I said I wasn’t complaining about my registration/licensing woes anymore, but this is more for my own records than anything else. 

I can’t remember the exact date that I paid the 2000E for the Rieju (I’ve gotten back 300E because they couldn’t register it since), but it was somewhere in the first week of December.  Right now, I’m being told that I won’t be able to get plates until January 8th or 9th, which means I won’t be able to pick it up until the 9th or the 10th.  My birthday is the 11th.  “Happy birthday, John!  Here’s the bike you bought five weeks ago!”  I don’t know what to do anymore.  A full month?  A full month?  To register a brand new vehicle?  I could have closed on a house, secured a mortgage and moved in by now.  The people in our security office (which liaised with the Bureau of Transportation on our behalf) forgot to include two of the copies of my title (you need three, apparently… and a special, hand-written letter from the Secretary General of the UN, it seems…) to register a new vehicle.  In case I’m not clear about my emotional state: I’m going through the roof over here. 

Switching gears, I’m moving all of my personal property into my apartment sometime in the next two weeks.  I don’t even care.  I just want my bike at this point.  Either of them.  If I had my choice between having to wait until March for either my personal property or my BMW, I’d take waiting for the personal property.  There’s a million miles of road out there that aren’t being explored.  Right at this second!  To add insult to injury I got a certified letter today from the logistics company saying that it’s been a month since my bike arrived, and I haven’t picked it up yet.  If I don’t pick it up soon, they’re going to send it back to the states.  Ashton.  It’s not funny anymore.  Please stop this cruel prank.

On a lighter note, I successfully created my first real Flickr Mashup.  Big success.  Now, I just need to figure out how to integrate it into Wordpress’ idiot-proof software suite.  It’s so idiot-proof that it’s practically airtight.  I need a phd to figure out all these php and stylesheet functions.

I was right:  I didn’t get my bike.  I was completely let down.  That was the fifth or sixth time that I’ve been to the shop.  I lost count.

I feel I’ve done enough complaining for the month.  I believe it may be time to move on to something slightly more productive.  I want to make a list of prioritized destinations for both the very short term as well as the long term.  The Rieju is going to be my local exploring tool.  I figure this will be good: I can spend the next four months exploring the province of Cadiz and further out in Andalucia if I have time.  I’ll start nearby and work my way out, so that by the time I can pick up my BMW, I’ll actually need its legs to go a bit further.  So between now and May:

1. El Puerto de Santa Maria: my new home.  I’m going to learn this city in and out.  Whenever I go someplace new, I usually spend a considerable amount of time exploring.  The SMX will be great for this type of travel.
2. Cadiz.  What a great city.  It’s considered to be one of the oldest in the Europe.  Great beaches, interesting nightlife, lots of things to look around at.  Plus, it’s a tourist city (usually not a plus in my book), but tourist cities are usually great to practice the language in.
3. Sevilla.  Been there once.  Loved it.  It’s a bit of a haul on a 125cc, but I’ve taken much, much longer trips on a 250cc, so why not?  Same deal as with El Puerto here.  Except the difference is Sevilla is considerably larger, and I’ll have the wheels to do more exploring.
4. Granada.  Don’t know crap about this place except Alhambra is there, and it’s cold.  I think this will probably be the outer limits of where I want to push the Rieju.  It’s got a 1.96 gallon tank.  That’ll probably get me about 100 miles/tank or so, provided I carry additional fuel (so that I can take it down to empty).  We’ll see what kind of fuel economy the little bike gets me.  It’s a Yamaha engine, so it should be pretty decent.  As soon as I pick it up, I’ll blog a bit on its performance (or lack thereof).
5. Everywhere in between.  Sure, Sevilla and Granada may be what people think of when they think Andalucia, but the real treasures are going to be what I find on the rural coastlines, the farmlands, the pueblos.  Places that are worth checking out, but too remote for the casual traveler.

I think it’s the 13th of May that I’ll officially be able to pick up the BMW.  I’ll get it out of storage, transport it to the BMW dealership in El Puerto, and get it maintained (hopefully there won’t be any major issues with it other than I already know): new rear sprocket and chain, new front tire, 24K service, new rear brake, new relay for the aux lights.  That should take about a week.  Immediately following service, I’ll take it on a weekend camping trip for a shakedown ride.  Where?  Don’t know yet.  Somewhere cool.  Maybe Morocco.  So where do I want to go once I get some real wheels?

1. Croatia.  The Dalmatian Coast is to me now what Prague was to me 4 years ago: a destination that I always tried to get to, but it never worked out.  So as soon as I know that my bike is ready for a trip, I’ll be off to Tangier to hop a ferry to Genoa.  46 hours later, I’ll be in mainland Italy heading North-East.  I don’t know how long I’ll stay nor what I’ll do yet, but I do know this: I’ll be free to do whatever I want and go where I choose.
2. The African route.  I’d really like to take a trip to Tunis.  From there I could ferry to Greece, or somewhere further East in the Med.  Most people hear these North African countries and immediately think danger.  Sure, they’re dangerous.  But so are a lot of other places.  Additionally, you can’t think just think of these countries as African or European.  There’s more to it than that.  The common thread with all of these countries is they sit on the Meditteranean.  So you have Meditteranean Africa and you have Africa Africa.  Same way that Meditteranean France is comnpletely different than inland France.  You look around and see that Ligurians, Calabrians, or Cote d’Azur-ians are a lot closer to Tunisians than they are to Parisians, Romans, or Florentines (minus the language of course). 

And I think I’ll stop there.  My plans change quicker than a something in a something, and when I do get my bike, I’m just as likely to make a b-line for Norway or England as I am to sticking with any kind of plan that I’ve made for myself.