Countdown to India, 10, 9, 8 ...

Busy with loose ends & India preps.

Written by Will.

Hi out there in Blog Land. Hope you are all travelling well ! 

Will & Jenny are as close to ready as we will ever be for our 2 month Indian Motorbike Tour !

Jen draws up a picture, we start to get our travel gear together.

9 Days until departure, our medication/first aid kit is sorted. We spent so much at Discount Warehouse Pharmacy Mandurah they even gave us an additional First Aid Kit for free.

Electronics, GoPro & Camera gear are sorted & ready. All our documents & credit cards are primed for our two wheeled assault on the Sub Continent.

We arrive at Perth HD in Cannington, the Yamaha cops a few strange looks & comments.

Jen & I have been extremely busy practicing our motorbike skills often & as best as we can. Tackling the Perth peak hours traffic, honing our lane filtering & other road skills in the rain & wind. Next weekend we borrow a couple of Royal Enfield Bullet 500cc bikes from Nevermind to go on a bike familiarisation ride around Perth.

With all the additional riding Jenny is now keen to get her BIG Bike licence (R Licence) . So we picked up a new mount for her after coming across a great deal on Gumtree (Australia's version of Craigslist), picked her up a secondhand "Big Bike" nearly a week ago. By the way Jen, happy birthday for next month & next year...etc.

We are looking for something, Low, Small, low kilometres, that will hold it's resale value. The Candy Purple Sportster XL883N Iron, MY2014 fits that brief well. 

Jenny goes for a 20 minute test ride in the heavy Perth traffic, I follow on my bike.

There are a few minor tricks to get the Sportster to start.

We negotiate a very good price with the sales man, Tony, saving about $4000 on what a new 883 Sportster would cost. This one has 1907kms on it as we roll out onto Albany Hwy. After a bit of lane filtering on the gridlocked freeway we head for one of the backroads to get home.

Sadly the practical Bike Test will have to wait until we return home. I can imagine the Assessor following Jenny & her tooting the horn at every vehicle she passes "Indian style" ha,ha,ha.

I know it goes against our philosophy of downsizing but unfortunately Jenny's legs can't even reach the ground on the Yamaha Super Tenere 1200cc, so we needed to find something a little lower for her. Once we get back from India, something will have to go !

On the House front things have been moving along ok. It's never fast enough but progress is being made.

The Reno House is nearly back at lock up & outside rendering nearly complete.

New front veranda at Mandurah Reno House.

Rendering has been started, Reno House.

Does anyone want on old Oven/Stove ? Lots of behind the scenes work has been completed, plumbing, electrical & gas.

The "home" we are living in is nearly sorted, but we are cutting it really fine. Aiming for it too be complete in 7 days.

Meanwhile more work is achieved at our current home. Patio goes up.

Concrete is laid. Some plants removed.

Alan the Concreter is now 70yo, he only does small jobs these days. Does great work.

I've made some progress out the rear, no more weeds crawling up the wall.

So that's it for now, as you can tell, we are just a little excited to be getting on the road again. India here we come....