geriaune

Moto trip to Austria – Day 0

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This year we’ve decided to see… Slovakia, no… Alps in Austria, actually it was a second compromise 😀 Initially Andorra was the point, then maybe Spain, but all these more remote (from Lithuania) countries had one thing in common – bikes should be shipped there. And with shipping prices these days it would have been ~400-500EUR each just for that, when our previous trip was 650EUR in total (per person, with food, accommodations, fuel etc. etc.)… Granted it was in Romania, but still 🙂

So a compromise should be made – drive through Poland hauling motorcycles on trailers and then travel through Slovakia on a bike? So we thought, until a plan was presented 😀 Alps in Austria! That works too.

Preparing the bike for a trip:

  • Side-bag mounted
  • Fixed bent number plate and tail light
  • Turn signal blinker relay changed from aftermarket back to OEM with added resistor (LED fix). This will retain auto-cancel feature, which is nice when there’s a lot of things going on on the road and you forget to switch off your turn signal 🙂
  • Fork seals are leaking a bit after sitting during the winter. Have tried to clean these with a tool – no dice, maybe made it even worse 😀
  • Phone charger had to be mounted
  • Better phone holder and a waterproof case (a lesson learned from the previous trip) 🙂
  • Cooling issues were resolved previously (see older posts)
  • Brake fluid change?
  • Coolant change?
  • Had to come up with a solution to mount a top bag (supplied mounting strips were too short)
  • Adding a silencer to Cobra slip-on as there are very strict rules for sound in mountain roads (200EUR fine and you must turn around and go home)
  • Find a place for a full medical kit (also a requirement for every rider)

Additional things:

  • Trip logo: I had a Midjourney (AI which generates images from text) subscription, so made a couple of queries 🙂 had a laugh in the chat and that’s it 🙂
  • Phone battery doesn’t hold very long (~half a day from full charge), I had a new one, but did not want to risk changing it a day before the trip (same as with fork seals, now they are leaking even more) 😀

So. Day 0 was to prepare a bike (did not manage to change coolant and brake fluid due to lack of time) and get it on the trailer, which we all did on Friday (23rd of June). Next – Czechia.

In the video you can see a quick recap from the trip. I will (hopefully) release some more videos when I get footage from everyone else 😉 Also you’ll get an in-depth story on the trip, OsmAnd (GPS) logs etc. at my:

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