To salute Carl Stearns Clancy and his decision to venture on alone after having been abandoned by his riding pal in France 113 years earlier, Dr. G carried on alone around the world, having also been abandoned (see previous May, 2017 post) by his riding pal. Pictured above in France was Dr. G’s motorcycle sporting the Clancy pendant that had at this point itself been ‘round the world, carried by five different entrants.
Having considered the options of flying, shipping, buying or borrowing a motorcycle for European Stage Four, Dr. G, an acknowledged frugal economist, opted to rent a 1994 BMW K75 for his European Stage. He said of the three cylinder 750cc motorcycle, “I’ve used twin cylinder models up to this point, the largest being 800cc. The use of big displacement and powerful motorcycles might lead to my focusing on smaller displacement for diversity while crossing Asia.”
Having considered the options of flying, shipping, buying or borrowing a motorcycle for European Stage Four, Dr. G, an acknowledged frugal economist, opted to rent a 1994 BMW K75 for his European Stage. He said of the three cylinder 750cc motorcycle, “I’ve used twin cylinder models up to this point, the largest being 800cc. The use of big displacement and powerful motorcycles might lead to my focusing on smaller displacement for diversity while crossing Asia.”
Dr. G used as his European start base the globally known motorcycle adventure center, Knopf Tours (www.knopftours.com). A previous plan mapped out in July of 2015 was massaged to exclude the self-imposed DNF of # 7, but owner Stefan Knopf and several of the well traveled guests at his motorcycle bed and breakfast designed a Plan B for tagging and bagging countries and miles across Europe. Excluded was Spain, Dr. G citing and honoring what Clancy had written in THE GASOLINE TRAMP (http://bit.ly/2qpizmi and at Amazon): “To all who are planning to motor in Spain, let me give this one word of advice – don’t!”
The Knopf operation in Heidelberg, Germany, where nearly 300 foreign motorcycles were stored, and which had 10 motorcycle theme rooms that were filled for rent and was filled with avid adventurist motorcyclists ranging from the USA to Kuwait, catered to travelers whom had literally been on every continent of the planet.
Unknown to Dr. G was that the expired U.S. Travel Alert that could have contributed to his traveling partner’s (# 7) scuttling back to the USA had been re-issued May 1, suggesting Dr. G (and any U.S. citizen) “should always be alert to the possibility that terrorist sympathizers or self-radicalized extremists may conduct attacks with little or no warning.” The alert specifically cited “widely-reported incidents in France, Russia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.”
After having ridden in a train from the Frankfurt airport, and then a taxi to a hotel/guest house, Dr. G had almost checked off the full list of places the Travel Alert warned U.S. citizens to exercise additional “vigilance,” such as having eaten at several restaurants, wandered into a church, attended a high-profile city fest in a Stuttgart city park, another city party in Schwabin Hall, and numerous described “soft-targets” such as train stations, parks and a school for yoga teaching. As seen above, he spent some time at a club while drying out his Aerostich (www.aerostich.com) riding gear as well as his Nolan (www.nolan-usa.com) motorcycle helmet after two solid days of driving in the rain, blissfully unaware many Americans were huddled in what Dr. G had dubbed “Dorothy and Toto’s Kansas, USA” where they thought they and their assets were safe.
After he had done all of the above, a U.S. resident referred him to the refreshed May 1 alert that said, “Extremists continue to focus on tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls, and local government facilities as viable targets. In addition, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, high-profile events, educational institutions, airports, and other soft targets remain priority locations for possible attacks.”
Dr. G said, “Ahhh, errrr, true ignorance had been bliss, and I’d had a most blissful 3,528 mile adventure around Europe, likely the easiest continent I traveled through with the exception of the USA. I wasn’t in a terrorist attack, but possibly because I missed being in a local government facility, unless one of the public pissoirs or sanisettes on the streets in France qualifies.”
This post first appeared on RTW Adventure Motorcycle Tour Rally, please read the originial post: here
