BIKES
TOMOS AUTOMATIC 3M
It all started with this baby that my parents bought for me in 1981, without me even asking for it. I was 15 at the time.
It had an earth-shattering 49cc, and it was with me for 6 months until I exchanged it for a brand new manual APN4 MS from a neighbour.
TOMOS APN4 MS
Something far more glamorous, with manual gears. Not to mention a re-bored cylinder to 70cc. All in all, the best moped in the world…ish. It also had a Hell’s Angels sticker so I would be taken seriously among the biker crowd.
It was with me for 4 years, and I went everywhere with it. It was responsible for me getting the bike and travel bug.
MZ ETZ 250
Not the prettiest two-stroke in the world, but it broadened my horizons. With a disc brake, it stopped reliably when I needed to, unlike the drum brake on my previous bike, which would just warm up the drum a bit before eventually stopping. The MZ also had that unmistakable two-stroke sound, which led to its nickname:
Penk Pe Re Penk Penk. I owned it for less than a year before I started working on the oil rigs, and decided to switch to Japanese bikes and prepare to take on the world
KAWASAKI KLR650 1988
I bought the legend that is KLR used in late 1989. Mind you, I never knew it would become one at the time. We did around 130k km together over the next 16 years. It never let me down, not even a tyre puncture. Just 2 clutch cables snapped and that was it. I even found my future wife in Turkey on it in 1991. Sadly, it got stolen in the UK in 2003
R1150GS Adventure 2002, DREAMS DO COME TRUE
In 2003, I bought a 4-month-old R1150GS Adventure with 5k miles on it. My daughter named it Medo (teddy bear in Slovenian). It is still with me, with 160k km on the clock, and probably will be in my garage forever.
The earlier version of this bike, the R80GS, was my absolute dream, but was way too expensive at the time. 22 years later, my paycheck increased, together with the GS engine size, and I finally got it.
I would like to point out that I got it 2 years before the “Long Way Round” and I did not copy anyone, as I have been accused every year since 2004, when the programme aired in the UK.
HUSQVARNA NORDEN 901 EXPLORER
And here we are. My current beastie. Purchased in 2023, my first bike from new. His name is Huso, and so far, he has behaved very nicely. We have done 18k km together so far, without any dramas. Even during a very hot trip to Morocco in August 2023.
He is my choice for my RTW trip over the next couple of years. It has lots of useful and pretty goodies on it to make sure we are reliable and lovely looking. You can see the list in Gear section.
WHY NORDEN.
I have owned nothing but adventure bikes for the last 30 years, so there was no other choice for me but the ADV bike. It just so happened that when I worked on my 23-year-old GS1150 in May 2023, I snapped a vital part in the engine and needed to wait 30+ days for a replacement part. During the waiting period, I spent too much time on YouTube and stumbled upon Lyndon Poskit’s review of the Norden. I immediately fell in love with the look (of Norden, not Lyndon) and decided to go for a test ride in Ljubljana, to see for myself how it purrrrs. Well, it does purrrrr extremely nicely, and after decades on a GS, it felt like I was on a moped on steroids. It is so easy to manoeuvre, and super quick off the mark. Long story short, I now have the GS part in the garage but have no time to do the work on the engine as Norden is now also in a garage getting ready for the RTW trip.