Many people tour countries on their motorbikes. Some on a whim, or some as a planned break. We want our journey to have a deeper meaning than a simple sightseeing trip, or motorbike getaway. We feel the journey is a large undertaking, and should not be merely for our own desires to ride motorcycles, but it should serve others as well. Sharing an interest in the Chernobyl incident, we count ourselves lucky to be from the UK, both being born in the months before the disaster; those born in Pripyat would not have been so lucky. The site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster may not seem a first choice holiday destination. It is, however, a reminder of how we should learn from the mistakes of the past.

The deserted town of Pripyat stands as a solemn testament to not only man's destructive potent to life on earth, but also to the sacrifice people are capable of in order to save it. While the calamity at the Chernobyl Reactor number 4 claimed many lives, exposed hundreds of thousands to radiation, and left the surrounding area uninhabitable, the actions of the fire-fighters, reactor workers and liquidators who put themselves in danger prevented the situation from becoming far worse.

During the summer of 2011 to raise money for Unicef we are planning to ride a motorcycle each from Durham in the north east of England to Chernobyl, travelling through France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland and finishing in the Ukraine.

We are hoping to get support from as many people as we can and start raising money towards the end of 2010. Readers of the blog can help by following us on the left, spreading the word and getting others to read and follow and donate if they want to.

Many thanks from the riders for everyone's support.

Saturday, 19 February 2011

"For my own Reasons"

Admittedly, none of us have posted much in the past few months, giving the impression that there hasn't been much in the way of preparation for this trip. In terms of communication on the subject between the three of us, that is absolutely true.
A prime example of this is tonight when, after a hiatus on the blog, I come back to find that apparently I'm not going to Chernobyl, "for my own reasons". This is news to me. Never in the past year have I said I wasn't going to go through with this.

So, A few rants and phonecalls later and here we are. I AM still going on the ride, there still isn't a set date, and the three of us need to work on communication skills on the topic.

So anyway, a quick update on my past few months:

Following the cancellation of several bookings, I still haven't gotten through my Mod 1 test which was originally set for last October, and am now waiting to get the time and decent weather (it snowed today!) to restart the course. After a rise in insurance cost for no apparent reason and a bad winter, I'm not insured to ride my CG at the minute. I'm also devoting whatever free time I get on working on my next car, a Nissan 200sx, sitting in my brother's garage some 30 miles down the road.
Because of all this, despite replacing a rotten vacuum pipe and cleaning up the sparkplugs (£12 each!!) on the 400 to get it running again, I haven't had bikes on my mind recently. Hey, I need to create my own balance to John's obsession, after all.
So to summarise, I'm back. In actual fact, I never left, but someone (John Bailey, I'm looking at you!) got the idea that I was.
Posted by Teggert at 01:40 0 comments
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