A blueberry import business, an engine bought on eBay from a breakers in Ohio and a dodgy customs fixer to ‘oil the wheels’ of Peruvian customs officials, sounded like an EPIC last ditch effort to get Barney back on the road.
This was the plan - use the blueberry business to get round the Peruvian laws that ban the import of used motorbike parts, get an engine at 30% of the cost of a new one and use the fixer to keep the officials out of the way.
And have the bike back on the road in 10 days. #winning.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be - the night before a final decision was due, my Peruvian motorcycle contact (the one who helped me out of the hills post-accident and happened to moonlight importing blueberries) found out that customs had tightened inspections. The risks of losing £2,000 were too great.
So, what now?
Well, I’ve been home 3 weeks. And it’s been great. It’s a cliche, but my first taste of long-term travel taught me just how important my friends and family back home are to me.
But now it’s time - in my favourite Top Gun parlance - to kick the tires and light the fires.
Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce you to Tammy the Tenere.
Now for those you who are interested, Tammy, like Barney, has some serious pedigree.
Barney’s pedigree came from the bike that Steve McQueen famously rode at the end of the Great Escape - a Triumph Bonneville.
He looked cool. He SOUNDED cool. But he was a bit of a brute to handle off-road.
Tammy’s pedigree however is of a different type - the notorious Paris-Dakar Rally.
So why the change?
Well, one of the things I learnt in South America is that if you want to get the most out of your trip, then it’s worth making sure you’ve got the gear to allow that. And there were a number of occasions where I wasn’t able or wasn’t comfortable taking the bike where I wanted to take it.
Riding Barney through the Peruvian jungle, Bolivian ‘roads’ or literally into the Atacama Desert, was kind of like wearing a pair of Dunlop Green Flash to run an off-road marathon - they might look cool and people will respect you for doing it retro style….but ultimately, they’re gonna hold you back.
Tammy, on the other hand, is not a bike built for good looks.
But, she is a badass. A SERIOUS badass.
High-off the ground, built with rugged simplicity in mind and with a mass-hoo-ive front wheel and an itty-bitty back wheel, the Tenere is the production version of a bike originally designed for ‘Rally Raiding’ - long-distance rally racing, but re-purposed for mainstream long-distance ‘dual-sport’ (on and off-road) adventure riding.
And thanks to the miracle of t’interweb, Gumtree and a visit to a station car park in Rochester, she was mine with-in 48 hours of being back in the UK, in part using the $1500 I managed to get for Barney in Peru.
Being sat high up, she’s taken a bit of getting used to and I’ve used the last few weeks to clock up some miles on and off-road.
The engine is very different, which has a big impact. Rather than having a smooth two-cylinder engine, the Tenere has one big cylinder with a piston that moves up and down at about 50 - 100 times a second. That means two things - 1) you can stall very easily and 2) (leaving myself open to much piss-taking here) she vibrates more than an Ann Summers shop’s ‘accessories’ section the day after it’s been fully re-stocked.
So, where next?
Well I’m in the process of finalising plans to head south-east, leaving the UK on the Spring Bank Holiday Weekend.
I’ll publish details in a separate post later this week, but the trip will be much bigger and tougher than the last - it won’t be a walk in the park, and I’ll be doing it to raise some money for charity.