The truth comes flooding out...

There were a number of reasons for wanting to get to Dresden. Firstly we'd be picking up Kaspars, a man of many talents. He can fix things, speak several languages, and had promised us he had brought home brew from Latvia with him.

Secondly, Dresden marked the start of the 2 wheeled adventure since with Kaspars behind the wheel we could all get on the bikes and leave the dull autobahns behind.

Thirdly, it would be our first wash since leaving home 4 days ago.

The trip from Assen had been a slog since it's hard to entertain yourself on an autobahn, I mean you can't even break the speed limit. Our rendition of the Ace of Spades on our extensive range of musical instruments did help pass the time though, I don’t want to blow our own trumpet but from the admiring looks from other travellers we were bloody good!

So finally arriving at our digs in Dresden we unloaded all the crap out of the van, trying to ignore the mad fat woman shouting at us from an upstairs window. Only when the mad fat woman waddled downstairs to give us a bollocking did we realise we were in the wrong place. A few apologies about unloading a pile of shit in their garden and flattening their city a few years ago later we were in the correct place and Kaspars was greeting us with home brew in hand.

Only after we'd variously described the taste as a cross between creosote and sewage did Kaspars admit this was his "experimental" batch. Naturally the only way to wash away the taste was with copious amounts of Heineken.

So we saddled up for our first day on the bikes and headed for the Czech Republic and our first scheduled stop in Kutna Hora to visit the infamous “church of bones” where Leonard McCoy is rumoured to be buried, well when I say buried really he is on display with the 40,000 other poor sods who ended up there.

The ride there wasn’t without incident as Kaspars had downloaded some dodgy software for his TomTom (which he must have mixed up with his porn) since several fields, a slurry pit and a quarry later we had to confiscate the bloody thing from him.

At least we knew that the bikes were ok off road though, apart from Nick (our own personal cross between Tiff Needell and James May i.e. posh AND slow) who kept stopping without warning and causing mass pile up’s. To add insult to injury he kept banging on about his bike being the fastest,words which would come back to haunt him…..

In Kutna Hora we parked up and headed for the big church on the hill. Obviously someone had done a tidy seeing as there wasn't a bone in sight. Wrong church. Three churches later and we were still boneless. As it turns out 40,000 skeletons don't need a lot of room and the actual church was the smallest most unassuming one of the lot. Until you got inside. The Christians have got Lourdes, the Muslims have got Mecca and this place should be a pilgrimage for everyone who dresses in black, wears too much eye liner and listens to Marilyn Mansun. It really is a Goth's dream.

For the rest of us it's kind of weird and interesting.

After an unsuccessful attempt to exhume Leonard McCoy we headed for Slovakia and a campsite by a river overlooked by Trencin Castle. Next morning we were up early keen to crack on and following an hour or so riding we pulled into a lay-by at the bottom of a hill to check the map, after a few minutes we suddenly noticed a lack of faffing and realised that Nick was no longer with us. A quick glance up the hill revealed a speck in the distance which slowly materialised into Nick and coasted into the lay-by claiming that it had “just died”.

We all looked at each other wondering if we would rue the day we bodged a bike together and then gave it to Nick claiming that it had cost us £185.00 and was a "1 owner from new" bike. The truth was it had cost us about £15 and a couple of sexual favours to the MOT tester. I carried out a series of checks which involved removing bits from Oz's bike which inevitably led to massive sulking on his part since his bike was actually a 1 owner from new. The diagnosis was that the coil pick-ups had failed. Our cost-cutting plan had backfired and the truth had come flooding out.

As we were already behind schedule a decision was made to load the bike on to the trailer and put the spare engine in that night at the camp site. It was a fairly depressing position to be in after only 2 days of riding, espeically knowing that if only we'd doubled the budget on Nick's bike to £30 we'd probably still all be riding.

Nick climbed reluctantly into the van and we carried on until around 9pm that night, eventually crossing the border in to Northern Hungary where we accidentally found a beautiful campsite next to the River Tisza just in time to watch the sunset over the water. Kaspars was complaining about a new whine that the Transhit had developed but it stopped as soon a Nick got out.

1st job, put up tents and fix the bike, wrong, unfortunately instead of just cracking on with the bike we started cracking open cans of beer, the camp site owner then offered to cook us fresh fish (as long as we kept Charlie away from his daughters) and broke out his home made palinka. It was messy, suffice to say that thundertorms and putting up tents pissed do not mix.

We awoke the next morning slightly the worst for wear and realised that there was rather a lot to do. While Matt and Kaspars took the old engine out, Oz unpacked the new one, Nick rustled up some breakfast and Charlie, well we are not sure what Charlie was doing but he did emerge from his tent with a tissue stuck to his cheek.

Oz meanwhile presented the spare engine, which looked suspiciously oil-soaked. He assured us he had packed the correct engine and it was not the one that pissed oil everywhere during testing at HQ. The triumphant starting of the bike turned into disappointment as (probably predictably) oil spewed out of the engine, Oz, the cock-knocker had indeed managed to pack the wrong engine.

This was no time for quitting though so we convinced Nick all was fonzy. The unpalatable truth came out when a few miles down the road Nick complained about the bike being slow. The last time a bike was too slow for Nick it had seized.

Kaspars confirmed he'd been following Nick at 35mph in the van, and the seriousness of the situation was further evidenced by the film of oil spewed all over the front of the van by Nick's bike. It was going to be a long day...

To be continued...