I’m Mike, also known as Mike The Bike (nickname of Mike Hailwood) for quite a few years. I joined the team at a late date. On April 25th I told the other team members that I was interested to participate in the adventure. I knew that they were planning this for some time and I didn’t know if they had a spot for me. But it was no problem and I was warmly welcomed into the team.
I live in the centre of the riveting town of Gorinchem, but originally I’m from The Hague. There, my parents worked hard on me in 1965. Since then, The Hague erased all traces of me in the city. The street where I was born, and where I lived for years are no longer there, or the houses are torn down.
I ride a motorcycle since 1992. My first bike was a Yamaha Diversion XJ600S, which I traded for a BMW K1100RS after 4 years. With those bike I made quite a lot of kilometers in Europe: The Alps, The Pyrenees, The Dolomites, first with a tent, later I decided for hotels. But, after some time, it faded a bit and I didn’t go out on the bike as often as I liked. With a real heartache I decided to sell the BMW, because it is not very economical to leave it outside. After some time, the bike-bug started itching again and also because a collegue of mine started his motorcycle hobby, I bought a bike. I found an ex-police BMW R850RT on the second-hand marketplace. With a respectable mileage (130.000Km), but a nice price and that was exactly what I was looking for. I did a bit of DIY, because the police don’t have buddy seats, and I also had to remove the police striping. All in all it was quite a bit of work, but it was worth it.
Meanwhile I did some 8.000Km on it, and it hasn’t put a foot wrong. Recently it had a full service and the mechanic was very pleased with the bike. It doesn’t leak any oil, there are no rattles and it runs smoothly. I got new brakediscs and pads, suspension is overhauled by HyperPro and the tires are new. I only have to put on a mesh for the oil cooler and I bought some old crashbars from another police bike. Always good to have some extra protection in case of an accident. You won’t fall very hard when you slide on a gravelroad in Morocco, but all the Tupperware on the bike is quite expensive if it breaks. Just like Jan, I took the KNMV Europe Assistance, because you never know what happens. The bike is 12 years old after all…
I equiped the Beemer with a BMW Navigator 3 (aka Garmin 2820) as a navigational aid. Unfortunately, Garmin doesn’t provide decent coverage of Morocco (just the main roads), so we have to work with the ‘Olaf maps‘. These maps are made by some guy named Olaf and it provides a much better coverage of the little roads and heights in Morocco. So now you can see where you’re going. You can’t use them for turn-by-turn navigation, because for the navigator, it’s just a picture. The unit will show exactly where you are, but it doesn’t have a clue of the road network. And obviously we also have good old paper maps with us, and a normal compass.
I don’t have pretty pictures of the Beemer, but this is it:
