BikerThomas.com

Sunday 27th of July 2008

I had 3 weeks off work and I intended on using most of that time on two wheels! My girlfriend was working her ass off all summer so I was on my own – just me and my newly washed black Kawasaki VN900 Classic.

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I had planned my trip for weeks. I was going to ride to Hamburg in Germany, Amsterdam in Holland and finish off with Brügge in Belgium. I figured the trip would take about 2 weeks. I didn’t plan the route in detail and I wasn’t sure which way to take home – I figured I’d find out while on the road. I guess I like it that way; I don’t like planning every detail of my trips, that sort of takes the fun out of being free and on the road. If I was to meet someone who said that I absolutely had to go to Düsseldorf  or someplace else I’d be free to do so and being on my own meant that I didn’t have to consider other peoples opinions – perfect!

I started my trip in my home town Kristiansand in Norway. My girlfriend had arranged free ferry tickets to Hirtshals in Denmark. The ferry left at 8pm and arrived in Denmark at 11.15pm. I topped up my tank to the maximum limit and headed for Århus. The speed limit is mostly 110km/h and the roads are good. For those of you who don’t know, Denmark is extremely flat so the roads can be built very straight. It’s not a very fun ride, but the weather was nice and I was very excited to finally be on my way on my first international trip with my motorcycle.

I had a quick stop in Aalborg to log on to some random people’s unsecured wireless network… so that I could find myself a place to pitch my tent… I also had a quick stop in Århus to… well for no reason really, just because I could! Oh and I could plot in my camping site on my new Garmin Zumo 500 Deluxe GPS. The GPS, by the way, was the perfect companion on this trip. I never had to buy a road map or anything like that, I could rely completely on the GPS alone!

I guess most people ride through Denmark in one day as it’s a fairly small country and not awfully exciting. I could have had my first stop in Hamburg but I started to get tired so I stopped closed to the border of Germany. The camping site was called Lærkelunden Camping. I parked my bike, pitched my brand new tent (took a while to figure it out…) and went hunting for food late at night. I ended up finding a pizza restaurant that had opened on that very night! A brand new pizza shop, if I remember correctly I think the owner was from Turkey. He was super friendly and the pizza was awesome!

In Denmark they were promoting lead free 95 octane petrol with 5% bio-ethanol. The sticker explains that there’s no real difference, that it won’t harm your engine and that it’s environmentally friendly. 

 
Lærkelunden Camping in Denmark (left), What my bike looked like when fully packed (right)

Rinkenæs Church (Rinkenæs Korskirke) in Gråsten

Here’s what I brought with me on my trip (at least what I can still remember):

• Ultra compact 2-person tent
• Tiny sleeping bag
• Compact inflatable camping mattress
• A knife (which turned out to be very useful a few days later…)
• Toothbrush, toothpaste, some soap and other necessities
• A compact emergency kit (band aids, pressure bands, anti-burn gel etc.)
• DSLR camera (Canon EOS450D 12,2mp) with a standard 18-55mm lens
• Compact camera – Casio Exilim 5 megapixels
• My good old lightweight laptop (Dell Latitude X1) with an extra battery
• Garmin Zumo 500 Deluxe GPS crammed with maps of most of Europe.
• Pen and paper (a must)
• My mobile phone
• T-shirts, underwear, socks, a jumper and jeans
• And of course standard riding gear (helmet, jacket, boots, gloves)

What I SHOULD have brought but didn’t…:

• Water proof riding pants!
• A pair of extra gloves for colder weather
• A pair of comfortable sneakers
• A bunch of those vicer protectors that you can stick on and peel off after the vicer had been bombarded with Danish bugs from hell.
• Mosquito repellant!
• Sandals
• A better backpack (the one I brought sucked…)
• A lock for the tent
• A mobile phone charger that uses AA-batteries

Make sure you bookmark www.BikerThomas.com so that you can come back and read about the rest of the trip. Day 2 of the trip will be out real soon!

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I checked the accuracy of the trip meter on my VN900 recently. I hooked up my Garmin Zumo 500 GPS to my bike and rode 100KM, at least that’s what the trip meter read. The GPS, on the other hand, said that I had only travelled 96KM. I decided to check this further and sure enough, when the trip meter read 200KM the GPS told me that I had only travelled 192KM.

I’m not an expert on this but I chose to trust my GPS more than my trip meter. Therefore my conclusion is that you can deduct approximately 4% from your trip meter or odometer to get a more accurate view of actual mileage.

Any thoughts on this? Please do add your comment! :)

Links:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/odometer.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odometer

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About a year ago I bought myself a Garmin GPS for my motorcycle. It’s one of those things that you buy and then wonder how you could ever live without one. On my trip in northern Europe last summer I didn’t bring a single map! I didn’t need one! You load the latest updated maps onto an SD-card and pop it straight into the GPS and voila you’re ready to take on an entire continent with detailed road maps and thousands of POIs (Point of Interest, like petrol stations etc).

There are a few choices when it comes to GPS-systems designed for motorcycles, but the two to notice are the Garmin Zumo and TomTom Rider. I did alot of research before I decided to buy the Garmin Zumo 500 Deluxe Europe. Pretty much all reviews online end up in favour of the Garmin Zumo. A years ago it was priced at approx. US$430 in France, add cost of shipping to Norway and taxes etc. and it totalled $540 in todays exchange rates.  It’s more expensive than the TomTom Rider but also heaps better.

The Zumo 500 sports scratch-resistant and water-resistant display so that you don’t have to worry about gravel or rain. The display is a comfortable 3,5″, the perfect size really. The battery lasts for a good few hours but I’d hate to go empty in the middle of Germany or something so I had my super-awesome mechanic hook it up to the extra power cables hidden inside the headlight.

You can hook it up to any bluetooth headset if you want to listen to audio directions, I find that quite annoying so I don’t bother to, but I recommend a helmet with bluetooth integrated into the helmet itself if you want to use this feature, that way you don’t have to have cables everywhere. The Zumo also lets you play MP3 files straight from the SD-card and through your bluetooth set, now that’s kinda cool! I haven’t tried this yet, but I’ll let you know if it’s any good when I have. Apparently you can also make hands-free mobile calls with this thing, but seriously, who talks on the phone while riding a motorcycle? That’s just wrong!

I highly recommend this GPS, it’s the best one out there, it has a ton more features and you can read all about them on Tom McQuiggan’s review and also check out Garmin’s product information about the new Zumo 550.

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