Trachops MC Rally 2007



Day 1 - Wednesday.

Hooked up with Ian and Rick at a pre-arranged place, just outside Kingston-upon-Hull. All arrived within 5 mins of each other, which is some going considering my punctuality leaves a lot to be desired. Plan was to chill early on, have a few scoops and get a good night's rest, prior to the long haul upon reaching Rotterdam. Before we knew it we'd sunk 5 or 6 pints and it was 1am. The party had started.

Day 2 - Thursday.

Fat-boy's breakfast helped I'm sure and by 9am we were high-tailing east up E30 towards the Dutch / German border

Rotterdam and European time swept in like a hurricane....or at least that's the way it felt in my head as the ship's intercom welcomed in the day at 6am (5am UK time). Fat-boy's breakfast helped I'm sure and by 9am we were high-tailing east up E30 towards the Dutch / German border, into Germany and hopefully reaching a well known campsite by tea-time, near Magdeburg which takes us 3/4's of the journey. The ride to Magdeburg was good. We made quite a few stops for fuel and brews and lunch etc and the weather at this point was great. It looked like a balmy weekend was in store. At this stage the Rock & Blues texts were filtering through. Oh how we smiled :-) The smiling soon stopped when we reached our 1st destination, Rick's well-known camp site. To be fair to Rick, he is getting a bit grey and long-in-the-tooth and I suppose one German town looks, smells and feels like any other German town, except not all have well-known campsites do they Rick? ;-)

The twisty, flat, hedgeless countryside put a smile on my face at last, as I unleased the Bandit, but ya can't pitch a tent on smiles, so off we went to find another site and with the help of a local German biker we had a decent camp with showers sorted within 20 mins. Ian and Rick started cooking the scran and I rode off into the sunset to find wine wimmin' and song. The garage / store supplied the wine but didn't have a clue what I was talking about when I asked where the song and wimmin were :) We pitched up next to a couple of German bikers and Ian started to make small talk. Very brave of him I must say and Rick and I were pissing ourselves laughing at his efforts, thanking the Lord it wasn't us who had been collared. Over the garbled chat of pigeon English from Ian and German from the two Germans (of course) Rick's ears pricked up at the word "Trachops"! Turns out this couple were also on their way to Trachops and had decided to pitch here for the night. Bit of a coincidence and still 150km from Trachops MC clubhouse.

Day 3 - Friday.

Not needing to be at the Rally for any particular time we decided to go into Berlin for a few hours, before heading of into the countryside once again. I lead the way direct to Berlin City Centre before stopping and turning to the lads to declare I hadn't a fuckin' clue where I was. Turns out I did a sterling job in pathfinding, without actually knowing where I was going. Berlin is very nice as it happens and we stumbled across the German memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It was a moving moment, and one which led to a very sobering thought. Details at the end. We did lunch, did a beer and made a guess at which direction to head out of Berlin. At one point I pulled-over at what I thought might be an interesting 5 mins pause, but was quickly shimmied on by Rick and Ian apparently for stopping at a taxi rank. Little did they realise that I'd stopped at Checkpoint Charlie, which both of them had mentioned earlier as being summat they would like to see. Oh well lads...open yer eyes in future ;-)

I lead the way direct to Berlin City Centre before stopping and turning to the lads to declare I hadn't a fuckin' clue where I was

We were less than an hour from site and it didn't take us long getting there. Rick moved over for me to ride in 1st and we were warmly welcomed. This warm welcome soon transgressed into a VERY warm welcome when the Trachops soon realised Rick was back...with some buddies. No need to describe the site and the set-up as it is exactly how Rick describes it in one of his previous visits here. Let's just say that we were not required to pay in and found it very hard to pay for our own beer. The evening was going very well with English lessons, drinking lessons and Rick learning one of the fatherly lessons, which is "do-not-leave-the-keys-to-your-glorious-soft-top-Mazda-sports-car-at-home-with-son-while-away-partying-around-Europe". A phonecall from the missus left Rick feeling sick as a dog, knowing he had a wreck to go home to!!. Fair play to the Germans...while Ian and I giggled away at Rick's misfortune (in a jokey way) they showed immediate concern for the well being of the young hooligan drivers. No broken bones or ripped flesh...just bent and twisted metal. Sons eh?!?! This was the cue for Rick to sink a few more and I made us a few long and cool smokes which put us both on our backs very soon, leaving Ian to fly the flag for Salutation MCC.

Day 4 - Saturday.

I really could have done with not being woken by the sound of heavy rain, while desperately trying not to be sick and clenching a muscle, known as the sphincter, very tight at the same time!! Man I was ill...but by 11 am Ian had forced a beer and a joint down me and things started to look up. The Bike show made me laugh 'cos someone entered a very standard Fireblade, but seeing as 99.9% of all bikes on site were cruisers or custom chops maybe I could see the point. He didn't win. I didn't win the stilts race, none of us won the pig eye-ball spit or the wheel roll but we DID win longest journey!! Thankfully there was no need to ride the bikes up on stage, but we got a decent cheer and a fuckin' ace, but very heavy trophy. One German biker I later found out, was less than pleased we were there. AGAIN he'd travelled 400 + km to get there, only to be told he's been obliterated for the longest journey :) Two bands played for us on the night, one was a tribute to a well known German band called (translated) Dirty Uncle :) Not bad for a thrash metal outfit I suppose. The stripper was brilliant mind.

Day 5 - Sunday.

The roads were wet and like glass at times and coupled with the German driving it was of no great surprise to have seen 4 or 5 smashes en-route!

We woke to a fairly dry morning. An easy relaxing pack-up after breakfast and coffee and a bunch of fond farewells, soon turned into a wet and thoroughly miserable start to the return journey. We really wanted to make it as close to Holland as possible, but as soon as Rick said he knew of a camp site Ian and I changed the plans. We decided that Google was a better option than Rick's memory and a quick call to Alison (God Bless her) confirmed a site near Bad Essen which we found.....locked! However, a German security militia-man, working for the British Army, found us looking a bit dejected (I wasn't dejected cos I thought we could have then made it to Amsterdam) and got us in. The manager opened up for us and we had a great shower and scran before mullering 3 and 1/2 bottles of Red. Still maintain that the Dam was a better bet lads!! Grrrr!!! This leg of the journey was a bit worrying. The roads were wet and like glass at times and coupled with the German driving it was of no great surprise to have seen 4 or 5 smashes en-route! Thankfully all involving cars and not us, but to be honest Rick and Ian were ever-so-slighlty fuckin' worried during this leg. For some reasom the rain and lack of visibility didn't affect me in the same way. I did have one major moment when the back of my bike went 90 degrees away from the front due to the rain and an over zealous throttle.

Day 6 - Monday.

It seemed that we only had 3 hours or so before we would be in Rotterdam but somehow on this leg I managed to get us lost, or at least detoured on two occasions. Add this to the manic driving in Holland and the rush hour, we made the ferry by 6 pm a little shaken and stirred!! What stirred me more was the sniffer dog at the ferry terminal, but a good squirt of Bandit fumes from an over rich exhaust soon put paid to his snooping bastard nostrils :) We went for the buffet dinner on the ferry and what a scran it was. Well worth the coinage and again we battered 3 bottles of red and two pints...Ian needing to go that one step more with another pint and a brandy! I was shagged....Rick looked shagged and Ian looked like he always looks. So...with all three of us looking shagged we got our heads down, looking forward to Blighty in the sun.

Day 7 - Tuesday

Did this weekend trip really go into day 7? Bloody hell! Thankfully the sun welcomed us to Hull and we were quickly off the boat and on our merry way. Time for me to exercise the carbs seeing as convoy riding was no longer required.

The trip was pretty well more than I imagined it would be. The Trachops MC and their guests were fantastic hosts and my only wish is that we can host to the same degree of hospitality in the future. It was a long ride, quite hard and painful at times with Rick's back and my shoulder playing up. We saw some of the historuic sites of the old Eastern / Western divide and Berlin was well worth the effort.

The ball park figure to Trachops one way was around 1000km. That's 100,000m (a million metres). Now imagine this.....you ride hard and fast all the way to Trachops MC....you stop and you turn around and you go home. When you reach home you turn around and you do it again. Make this return journey 3 times and you've covered 6 million meters. Now the sobering thought....that's one life swiped away in the holocoaust every metre you ride to Trachops and back 3 times. Sobering. Never Forget!

Andy


If you wanna see the piccies... Click here!


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