MOYO COUNTRY
Moto Country
Inspired by the ‘SIX DAYS WALES 1983’ photo book by Toshimitsu Sato
I headed out to find some enduro riders to photograph.
Japan Ride
The Back Road
To Mount Fuji
March 2016, I’ve travelled to Japan with two friends, one who has been a couple of times previously, I however have never been and the opportunity to go with someone who had was to good to miss. Having spent a week and a half travelling through Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Kanazawa and back to Tokyo I’m ready to get back on two wheels and arrange to rent a Ducati Scrambler for 24 hours. Having never ridden one I’m looking forward to checking it out and heading off on my own to explore the roads of Japan.
I pick the bike up at 10am and wanting to grab a couple of things in Tokyo before heading out of town so I've dressed light and plan to put on a new sweater I saw earlier in the trip, however on arriving at the store I discover it doesn’t open until 11.30am and in reality it’s more like 12, but finally I hit the road with a nice warm torso.
Having spent an hour and forty minutes getting familiar with the Scrambler and just to get out of Tokyo I hit rural Japan and pull off the freeway, The bike so far has been pretty good and has brought me out of town in comfort, cruising along with the freeway traffic easily, but now for some curves. I’ve picked a back road through the mountains from google maps that looks to be fun and after a few wrong turns I eventually find it. Here the Scrambler really comes into its own on this single lane road with tight hairpins and flowing curves, hugging the cliff edge I swept into the mountains and forests of Japan.
After the ride through the mountains I emerge back into urban Japan witch is never far away no matter how off the beaten track you think you are. A quick fuel stop where I had no idea what was going on, I had to be rescued by the attendant who explained with no English how I had to have my recite scanned by a separate machine to get my change.
At this point I thought I would be able to see Mount Fuji, but it was shrouded in cloud, so I got on the bike and plunged back into the exceedingly polite Japanese traffic, shortly I had left the small town where I had refuelled and was gaining altitude again still hoping Fuji would reveal its self to me, only to be confronted with a sudden change in air temperature as I climbed along with a couple of cars with snowboards on the roofs going in the other direction, the thought of turning back at this point did cross my mind, but I had come this far all the way from Ireland to Japan, and from Tokyo to Fuji, I had no intention of giving up.
Shortly after this I gave up.
It suddenly began snowing quite heavily and began covering the road as slush causing the bike to hydroplane. This and my lack of wet gear made turning back to only sensible thing to do, I turned and headed down, what followed was some of the most stressful riding I have ever had to do. I stopped at a Seven Eleven after 20 minutes to get a coffee and warm up / dry off as by now I was soaked and very cold. The Seven Eleven staff where very nice even if you could tell they thought I was mental. I found the nearest North Face outlet and purchased a pair of waterproof pants and headed for Tokyo.
Back on the freeway and at lower altitude the temperature soon warmed and I could feel my hands on the controls again, the bike felt good and I began to enjoy myself, so I pinned it for the city, using the speed limit as a guide, rather than a hard and fast rule the Japanese traffic moved out of my way and the truck drivers where especially obliging.
I arrived back in Tokyo’s urban sprawl as the dusky south east Asian evening begun and the raised freeway started to snake between the buildings, animated billboards lit up trying to sell me unknown products, and I imagined the atmospheric Akira soundtrack playing as the buildings flew by. I was heading to Yanaka in the east of the city and my route took me over Shibuya, I slowed down and the view of the futuristic hub of the mega city emerged from between the high-rises, I’ll honestly never forget that view, made that little bit more special for being seen from a motorcycle.
In the morning I had just enough time to make a pilgrimage to Bratstyle, who gave me a quick behind the scenes tour of their work shop before I had to return the Scrambler, my curiosity satisfied, it sounded good but the styling wasn’t the only retro thing about the bike, the gearbox was vague and clunky and certainly not to be operated without the clutch. The extremely wide bars really hindered the ability to lane split in town as I got stuck a few times as the mopeds filtered past. I do like looks and the chassis is fun and really rewards in the turns, I just couldn’t live with the gearbox and engine.
Blog Post Title One
It all begins with an idea.
Belfast to
Biarritz
/
Wheels &
Waves 2015
After watching the footage and pouring over another years images form the 2014 Wheels and Waves festival in Biarritz there was no option but to attend the 2015 event.
So began what is now called the 'BMW No.3' R80 project. After a late start and what seemed a constant wall of problems, the bike scraped through it's MOT just eight days before the depart date, giving me very little time to have a shake down before the 1600 mile round trip. The following days brought a full electrical check to find an intermittent ignition problem, and then a snapped clutch cable before we headed off to France on the 1600mile round trip regardless. A 6am start gave us a fresh yet enjoyable ride through Co. Down to the Border, with only a brief stop as someone forgot to tighten their battery cables.
The good weather saw us to Dublin, through the Wicklow mountains and to Rosslare in good time, and after the overnight boat we landed in France. Another warm sunny day saw us set off south full of the joys of motorcycling and adventure. After 50miles or so, as I approached another of France’s fine roundabouts, I found I was unable to change down the gears, no resistance in the shifter, nothing. I pulled to the side hoping for a quick fix as I’d broken the linkage before and had a spare with me, unfortunately it was all intact, I had a serious problem, and at the worst possible point as we were already in France and Ireland was a boat ride away.
There was nothing else for it but to try and struggle on, in 5th gear. But we were in France and we had cool motorcycles to see. So we set off with a burning clutch and a shuddering bike I hoped to make it all the way down France, but after another couple of nerve wrecking hours and as we took a fuel and food break it was obvious that continuing on in 5th was madness. But before throwing in the towel and calling for recovery, I called Billy McCutcheon who had given me plenty of advice and guidance as I built the bike, I told him the issue and my location, he responded with “this is going to sound crazy, but you have to turn the bike upside down”, he further explained that there was a spring in the gearbox that held the shifting mechanism up and it had probably snapped, allowing a lever to drop out of position, and that was the source of my problem. The only way to get it to re-engage without replacing the spring was to invert the gearbox and allow gravity to do the work of the spring. A tale he had heard 25 years before from an old biker but had never actually had first hand experience of. Well I’d nothing to lose at this point and set about stripping the tank, seat, mirrors and gauges off the bike in preparation for rolling it over. 3rd. was chosen as the gear I would have to spent the rest of the trip in, right in the middle, low enough to get moving and yet maintain a reasonable speed. With a few strange looks from the locals we wheeled the stripped bike across the road to a flat piece of grass and flipped her over, changed down 2 gears quickly and put it the right way up again, unfortunately no photos where taken as all hands where required at this point. I let Billy know it had worked and promised him a nice bottle of French Red.
With “3rd”. engaged and the bike restored to it’s former configuration we headed south. Arriving in Nantes at about 8pm we looked for somewhere to crash for the evening only to be told there was a festival on in Nantes and the whole city was booked out, so it was back on the bikes and on the road again for another couple of hours to find a room. We made it to the small town of Challans at 10, which was the original overnight destination before the my gearbox troubles, but we had hoped to be there hours earlier to relax and unwind for the evening, but a room and some greatly need beers were quickly sourced.
A 7am start the next morning saw us to Biarritz, but only after 12 slow hours in 3rd. gear, another short ferry ride and the last 3 hours having to put in some motorway miles with some very heavy rain, quite scary lightning, not to mention, some pissed off truckers having to pass a struggling r80 in the slow lane who generated great clouds of spray as they went, some very wet toll booth struggles with gloves, change and surface water that made it feel like I was riding in the sky. All in all a day I’ll not easily forget.
The festival was cool and we saw some awesome bikes, had some beer and a little wine, but couldn’t fully participate due to my bike being hard to ride.
We tried to find the ‘Punks Peak’ hillclimb on the Friday but had to give up due to some steep inclines and my smoking clutch,
going into the town centre was ruled out by the very hilly and narrow streets of Biarritz and the Saturday ride out was deemed a bit too much for the stricken machine.
After a couple of days at the festival it was decided to leave a day early to allow the ride home to be a little more relaxed, so we set off a day early on the Sunday and headed for home, the ride back was less eventful, although there was a 2 day search for some replacement spark plugs as my shuddering bike was beginning to shake the ceramic loose on mine, but a little tape held them together just long enough for the Motor-rad in Rennes to help me out. So after 1667 miles around 1400 of which were in “3rd” gear we made it back to Belfast looking to source a reconditioned gearbox and a new clutch. I’d definitely do it again, only next time, in a van.
