{"id":254,"date":"2012-01-05T02:13:16","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T02:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=254"},"modified":"2020-08-23T02:34:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T02:34:10","slug":"counting-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=254","title":{"rendered":"Counting Down!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:30px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=254\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>Well, 2012 is now underway and Lynne &amp; I are returning to Brisbane for our final leg of our Australian stay before I head off to Nepal in early February. We&#8217;ve got one last house sitting stay arranged which is well located near the airport and city, for organising all the necessary paperwork and exiting the country.<\/p>\n<p>The bike is running well though performance does change a little from day to day, (bit like me!). I&#8217;ve been playing with the jets to get the maximum power range and I&#8217;ve had the magneto rewound after heavy rain flooded it. Now it&#8217;s tightly sealed I shouldn&#8217;t have any more problems in that area. I&#8217;m looking at carrying 50 spare inlet springs as these don&#8217;t last overly long and seem to lose tension pretty quickly. Fortunately these are very small and don&#8217;t take up much room, but of course every little thing does add up. Today I put on new rear tyre after around getting 2500kms from the old one. The two tyres on the bike and three spares tyres &amp; one spare tube should see me through to Europe hopefully. If anyone has access to 26 x 2.5 beaded edge cheaper brand tyres (eg Ensign) do let me know as it will be handy if I could buy them along the way if needed. I&#8217;ve done a test run with soft panniers, kit &amp; spare tyres all strapped on and bike is not overloaded with gear. The heaviest part will be the extra 10 litres of fuel I need to carry as the bike only does 19 kms to the litre! I&#8217;m looking into getting a bike cover &#8211; one that&#8217;s not too heavy but keep the bike away from prying eyes.<\/p>\n<p>One of the recent highlights (and it doesn&#8217;t take much to make me happy), is that I can now push start the FN and it runs within one metre range which means no more pedalling to start or spin the back wheel which was a pain, especially with the pannier loaded &amp; nowhere for the stand to go. There&#8217;s been some amazing technological advances since Lynne &amp; I did our world trip on the GoldWing all those years ago. Now my i-phone carries maps, photos, emails, music, notes, camera, etc. It&#8217;s taken me a while to get the hang of it but even for an old bloke, I&#8217;m doing okay. I&#8217;ve been using Lynne&#8217;s Kindle and toyed with the idea of taking one along but figure I don&#8217;t need to carry anything else &#8211; besides I reckon I&#8217;ll be too buggered at the end of the day to read a book. No-one along this time round to wash my socks, check I&#8217;ve packed everything back on the bike or help deal with those pesky border officials, hawkers &amp; paperwork&#8230;I&#8217;m all on my Todd! Having music though should help me unwind after a hard day on the road.<\/p>\n<p>The next few weeks no doubt will fly by, but I&#8217;m hopeful there won&#8217;t be any hitches. I have the crate for the bike all ready in Brisbane so that&#8217;s one job sorted. As long as Australia doesn&#8217;t get on the wrong side of Iran I shouldn&#8217;t have any problems procuring a visa for that leg of the journey. And for a little light humour&#8230; here&#8217;s hoping my FN doesn&#8217;t end up like the one in this picture!<\/p>\n<p>Cheers,<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, 2012 is now underway and Lynne &amp; I are returning to Brisbane for our final leg of our Australian stay before I head off to Nepal in early February. We&#8217;ve got one last house sitting stay arranged which is well located near the airport and city, for organising all the necessary paperwork and exiting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[27,258],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","tag-getting-ready","tag-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1260,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/1260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}