London

I keep experiencing the fact that, in a trip such as this, the traveller alone is responsible for every detail. As in, do not rely on airline staff or reader boards regarding boarding status, walk to the gate and look yourself.  Sometimes, the earlier announced delays dissipate. Voila! They are boarding your flight!

The flights have been pleasant enough. The British Airways aircraft, a 747-400, was crowded, but the headrest had wings that unfolded and I was able to sleep the whole way without floppy head. 

I was sorely in need of coffee though, but found this;

Their sign says best coffee this side of Milano. I guess so, depending on which side you start. I do think I must go back for another. I'm about a quart low. 

I'm Off

Well, I've boarded the first flight, Alaska 112 to Seattle. Then it is San Francisco, London, and Hanover. I arrive in Hanover at 11:35 pm on Sunday. 

More on Communications

I decided to get a satellite phone.  It will make it will make it easier for the NSA to track me, and as we all know, anything we can do to help the GWOT is our duty to do.

Just kidding.  I don't give a fig for the GWOT or the NSA.

There was a sale on Iridium Extreme sat phones at The Great Alaska Sportsmen's Show, so for 10% off, I bought one and have it charged and ready to go.  Write this number down:

881631574414

That is it.  It costs about a buck a minute, so I'm not keen on discussing your lumbago or last dental exam.  However, I'm always happy to read an email about every little thing that crosses your mind.

Just kidding, fig, etc.

Still working the cell phone piece of the puzzle.

Communications

I'm having a few issues on the phone front which I hope to resolve once I get to Europe. 

I will still be checking for and receiving email, and I have installed both WhatsApp and Viber for internet texting. Don't expect immediate responses because I must be connected to the web to receive and send. 

This is an evolving solution, so try email first. 

An Interesting Video

This video on YouTube is very interesting, and informative.  Those of you familiar with Alaska will immediately see the similarities between the river depicted in the video and many of the non-coastal rivers of Alaska.  The video is worth watching because of a few lessons that can be learned.  It also points out the danger of traveling in this part of the world -- but everyone and the motorcycle make it out okay.

Crossing a river in Mongolia

Tajikistan Visa Issued

I received word that the visa for Tajikistan was issued, along with the permit for the area that includes the Pamir Highway.  If you haven't looked at pictures of that part of the world, I really suggest taking a look, using a search engine for images.  It is starkly beautiful.  Those of you familiar with some of the remote areas of Alaska will find similarities with these mountains, I'm sure.

The passport is with the Russian Consulate now, and I hope to hear from them in another two weeks. In the meantime, here is a photo from western Mongolia.  It illustrates navigational issues, n'est pas?  For those who wonder, besides two GPS units, and maps and satellite images downloaded to the MacBook Air, I have 3 pounds, 4 ounces of paper maps, a U.S Army Corps of Engineers' compass, and a pair of cheap dividers.  But the dividers have a handmade leather case I stitched up for it yesterday, so they have that going for them, which is nice.

Bon soir! Or more properly, bon nuit!

DeLorme inReach link

As mentioned below, I have added a DeLorme inReach SE to the "electronics suite" to facilitate two way communications in those far off the grid places.  The Map Share link is:

https://share.delorme.com/DanielCooper

I will also make a link below so you don't have to come back to this entry to find it.

Are you feeling the love yet?

Semper Fi

Why Go to Marrakech?

Well, of course there is a story, and to quote Kurt Vonnegut, "All this happened, more or less." So shortly after I retired, and went on a road trip to America, The Smaller States, about which I have previously written here, I came up with this plan to go to Morocco as part of the Half Way Round The World And Back Tour.  Word leaked out very quickly, and one day I received a phone call from a local PDA, or Prominent Defense Attorney.  I can't really identify him or her, as that would be a breach of privacy.  So let's pretend we are Steve Van Goor, who always refers to attorneys by letters, and call this person "Attorney A."

The PDA, Attorney A, has a long and some say spectacular career as a defense lawyer.  But before Attorney A, who will be referred to hereafter as AA, became a PDA, and even before AA clerked for our local Supreme Court, AA decided to see parts of the world.  This was at a time when the local PoPo liked to get in some stick-time on the noggins of those persons who liked to experience a different space-time continuum through the ingestion of reality altering natural substances via inhaling the smoke.  Or, in the case of those who would later become POTUS, not inhaling but just hanging with homeys in the crib.  Regardless, if you just wanted to become a PDA, and not a POTUS, you couldn't have a drug bust on your rap sheet, so it was considered best if you smoked your dope abroad.

I want to pause and eliminate one person from the list of usual suspects.  I am not writing about Attorney B, who never got to actually clerk for Our Supremes because of the joint in the glove-box found by Customs at the border on the way into Alaska.  Remember, that was not even his joint, it was put there by the hitchhiker who was not present in the car at the border.  Besides, Attorney B never became a PDA, but a Superior Court Judge instead.  He or she now lives in a state of happiness not to far from the border of one of "Those States."  You know, the ones where green vegetable matter is licensed for sale by the State, and everyone, everyone, is "happy."

Back to AA's phone call, which went kind of like this:

"Uhm, Dan.  I hear you're going to Morocco soon.  Is that true?"
"Yeah," I says, "I'm headed out to . . ."
"Uhm, Dan, can you do me a favor?"
"Well, maybe," I replied, "but certainly nothing illegal."
"Nothing is illegal in Morocco," AA said, "and that's the point.  Can you bring back my bong?"
"What?  YOUR BONG??  Have you been visiting Colorado recently?  That's nuts!  I'm not on the best  of terms with CBP right now as it is, and bringing back dope smoking equipment with residue will light off every sensor in the place!  No way, give me a break, etc. etc."
AA countered, in his most jury-appealing way, "But listen to my story, and then tell me no if you can."
I muttered, and AA began in that halting, stuttering manner that persuades most juries to let his people go:
"I was in Morocco, it was a pleasant night.  I was in a little room, in the back of a modest place.  Fragrances filled the air, women, or maybe men, swayed in diaphanous robes, hookahs were bubbling, and there were even a few fezzes around.  Fortunately, they had just taken the monkey out the back, as it had eaten something that disagreed with its stomach.  About a week earlier, I had been at the bazaar and found an ancient, and very well-broken-in pipe.  One of those pipes with character, and it wasn't cheap either.  I can't really go into costs right now, as there are somethings its best you don't actually know."
I wanted to say something, but he was not about to be interrupted.  Good PDAs don't even let judges interrupt them, and AA is one of the best.  No judge has ever actually gotten him to sit down and shut up until AA was really ready to sit down and shut up.
AA continued, "So the bowl was full of some seriously good stuff, the monkey and his stuff was gone, I lit the thang off and prepared for an evening of mellow.  And maybe a late night of mellow, if the price didn't go up.   About fifteen minutes into this dream, strange sounding men speaking a foreign sounding language loudly started banging on doors and windows in the manner universally recognized as that of police on a raid.  They sound the same everywhere, regardless of the language they speak, and I knew my plans were not up in smoke, but to the contrary, they required an expeditious realignment of priorities, not to mention direction and locales (AA doesn't really talk like this.  I spruced up the language a bit because AA was still in his or her "I'm talking to a jury" mode, which can actually put you to sleep.)"

The long and the short of it is, in his or her haste,and an effort to keep the record clean, AA dropped the precious bong.  It has been AA's dream to have the bong recovered.  My mission was to go to Morocco, look for the blue door, ask for Fatima, and, assuming Fatima sell resides there, ask her if she still has the bong.  If so, I am to retrieve it and, using a blind drop double cut-out one-time FedEx number, ship the bong to an address in Colorado where AA has a "friend" who will do the actual hand-off.

I said, "What the Heck, AA, if you can get the Board of Governors to give me a $25,000 grant to go on this motorcycle ride, I will go to Marrakech and knock on the blue door and ask Fatima for your bong.  But no grant, no bong."

Somehow AA talked the Board of Governors into granting me $25,000, and so off I go to find a blue door in Marrakech.  Wish me luck on that, will you?

I'm really surprised AA can remember that far back.  There has been a lot of water over AA's dam, and I thought more had washed away.  I guess not, which proves once again that you just never, ever, ever, really know, do you . . .

Things Undone

What is left to do?  Plenty, I suppose, like getting the final documents packed, adding a few more clothes (since all of my gear is with the motorcycle), and finalizing the comm plan.  Let me explain about that a bit.

Here is what I am taking as communication devices:

This MacBook Air, so I can do email and blog, or read the news or a book if I am so inclined.  I can only use it, of course, when there is a wireless network.  Or maybe my cellphone.

My cellphone, an iPhone 4S.  I will have it in cellphone only mode (data roaming off), and I will purchase prepaid Vodaphone SIM cards to use for cell service.  If you get a text from a weird country code, it may be me.  I will also add a SMS texting client, but I have not decided which one yet, but I will post it here when I do.

My SPOT tracker.  This is a one-way device.  It will give you an indication of where I am.  There is a link below.  I can also use this device to summon help if there is an emergency.  However, it may not work in some parts of Central Asia and western Mongolia.  So there is need for a supplemental device.

A DeLorme inReach SE.  This device is a tracking device, but also allows two-way text messaging using the Iridium satellite system.  That means it is available everywhere.  I will post a link later this week that will allow you to follow the mason the DeLorme website, as I am still setting this up.

Of course, there are a myriad of other details as well.  Making lists of what people want me to bring them, etc.  My friend Barb wants a goat bell, I suppose because her husband keeps wandering off, and she needs to keep track of him.  Bells are cheaper than tracking devices, but not as accurate.  Maybe Barb should just get him a leash for his collar, I dunno.

Oh, and notifying the credit card companies I am leaving town.  They don't like it if you forget to tell them.

More later.  I have to finish the tax return, too. . .

One Week Left

One week from now, I will be leaving for Germany and the start of this trip.  I have been remiss in not keeping everyone up to date on the preparations, so let me try and catch everyone up.

Visas and such --  The process of finding the right person/company to help obtain visas and letters of introduction was similar to a childhood game where there were no rules, no boundaries, and the goal was to find a prized object not hidden, but located in a distant foreign land with unknown geography. Eating a single grain of rice with chopsticks is easier.  I was finally able to establish contact with STANtours, and they are helping me.  The cost for the Central Asia visas, plus the tour guide (mandatory) inTurkmenistan, came in at about $2,500.  That was what I expected.  The applications are all off with the passport to be processed.

Russia and the Crimea -- I intended to return through the Ukraine when I exited Russia Westbound, because I wanted to vista Kiev.  That plan is in a state of flux.  The only alternative is to go North around Moscow, and exit through Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.  Maybe the situation on the ground will have eased by September, and I can still get through the border into Ukraine.  There is also the question of whether Russia will even issue visas to U.S. Citizens now.  I may not get to Mongolia on this trip.

The motorcycle transport -- The motorcycle (which needs a name, right?  Something denoting power, and perseverance and toughness.  Give me suggestions.  Bonus points for mythical creatures or beings, even more bonus points if the name is in an ancient language) is aboard the Hoescht Express, through the Panama Canal now, and headed for Savannah, Georgia.  If you enter the vessel name in a website like vesselfinder.com, you will get location information concerning the vessel, as well as other information.  The motorcycle is in container AMFU-8609569, which you can also track.  This may become necessary if the container is off loaded from the Hoescht Express and loaded onto another vessel.  The motorcycle is now scheduled to arrive on April 11.  Yes, that's right, 11 days later than originally planned, which is why . . .

It's great to be a U.S. Citizen -- The U.S. is the only country of which I am aware that can charge you for proving to them that you have not broken any export laws before you can ship your property out of the country.  Mind you, this is not an export fee or license, this is the cost of proving to the government that you are a law abiding citizen.  And it is not paid to the government, but to a private company with whom you have never been, as lawyers say, in privity of contract.  Here is how it works:  The U.S. Government apparently is unable to perform its own security functions, so it contracts these security functions to private companies (Like the NSA does, and DoD, and CIA, and any number of other Agencies and Departments.  They have had great success with this model, right?).  The container in which my motorcycle was loaded was randomly selected by Customs and Border Patrol for further inspection.  Can't complain about that, but they didn't inspect it.  The container was moved to a bonded customs warehouse, where it sat for inspection for a total of 11 days, including the inspection.  The inspection was a simple scan of the container.  But the bonded customs warehouse is a private company.  And the container had to be hauled there by a private company, and it was being shipped on private vessels, all of which costs money.  Please remember that when you are shipping freight, you get charged based on two parameters:  whether the freight is moving, or whether it is sitting.  Yes, if the freight is sitting, you are charged for what amounts to rental of the equipment, and yard space.  So you are paying whether your freight is sitting or moving.  And it gets even better.  Lets look at some numbers.  The freight charge from Long Beach, CA to Bremen, Germany, for my motorcycle is $695.  That is an excellent price.  There were two other motorcycles in the container, being shipped at a price of $495 each (I paid more because mine is in a crate, which requires the company to use a forklift).  Total shipping charges for the container is therefore $1,685.  Now what did the three of us pay for the inspection?  $2,760, or 164% of the shipping price.  But there is more insult.  Included in the $2,760 was a fuel surcharge of $67.20.  Assuming a price per gallon of $5.00, that would be 13 gallons of fuel.  Assuming that the tractors only got 6 miles to the gallon of fuel, that would be 78 miles.  Where in the world did they take the container?  I hope it got to go see some place like Disneyland.

What I will be doing between April 1 and April 11 -- I am going to rent a car and tour around Germany, etc.  I would go crazy sitting here, and I can make use of the time to visit some places I otherwise would not see.  However, it also means I don't think I am going to get to Morocco this trip. It just depends, I suppose.

So that is the longish up date.  I will get some more out soon.

Alaska

We went to Glennallen last weekend to visit friends. This is why we live in Alaska, for the friends and the beauty of the land.