'It's clearly a budget. It's got lots of numbers in it'. ....... George W Bush
People said that we couldn't do it; Around the World on £20 per day, ..... and they may still be proved right. We really started in January 2008 without a pot but with a very big plan, a lot of enthusiasm and very little idea of how to go about making it work. However, 9 weeks into the actual planning process and fingers crossed, it appears that Poor Circulation may have reached the financial tipping point where money is no longer a reason for failure. We've sold everything that we could, and much that we shouldn't, we've begged, we've blagged, we've borrowed and today the final piece of a complicated puzzle has fallen neatly into place. Imagine trying to complete a 1000 piece jigsaw without knowing what picture you are trying to create, ... then turn out the lights and you'll be somewhere close to the difficulty of the task that we unknowingly set ourselves back in January 2008. If we'd understood the accepted rules for travelling around the world when we first discussed it, .... then we probably would never have considered trying. Thankfully, we're not exceptionally bright and we just sort of ran along on blind faith, it was only after we'd achieved certain tasks that we researched how difficult they really should have been. If anybody is considering trying to do anything along the lines of a 'Poor Circulation', ..... our only tip would be to close your eyes, grit your teeth and 'Ask' for the things that you want. Yes, Alan and I have been incredibly fortunate in the way that things have fallen into place, ..... but trust me, outside of eating pies and wrecking bikes, neither of us have any special skills experiences or talents that have prepared us for this. We're happy to admit that all such talents lay with the various people that we approached for help and thankfully, ..... we accidentally approached the right people. Maybe sometimes our 'Ignorance' has been a genuine asset, ..... but then maybe the same can be said for George Dubya too. (Ooops,.. there goes 46% of our American audience, ... give or take a few hanging chads.)
According to the accepted rules of long distance two wheeled travel; the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook by Chris Scott, .... Poor Circulation is about to prove the equivalent of practical time travel. The accepted 'Planning Time' for an around the world journey is apparently 2 Years, yet Poor Circulation has been alive for less than 3 Months. That much of a difference worries me a lot. OK, we've cut a lot of major corners, some of which will surely come back to haunt us, but most of the essential bases seem to have been covered. Only two substantial things remain outstanding: Visa's and the V5 Ownership Document for my bike, but these should both be completed prior to April, ... but the rest of our minor tasks can be sorted prior to departure or as a last resort, somewhere en-route.
On first sight, the numbers in our budget are similar to those recommended in Adventure Motorcycling Handbook, though Poor Circulation's decimal point is one place further to the left. It's not that we couldn't have allocated more money for certain things, .. it's simply that we didn't have any money so we ran with what we had and blagged the remainder. As of today,.. that policy seems to have worked out quite sweetly.
While the major outstanding pre-departure purchases are mostly insurance related, there is still the little matter of getting from Eastern Asia to North America, .... though that is probably an ocean we'll have to cross when we get to it. North America to UK is not even an option at the moment, .. but then maybe the Tigers will have learned how to swim by then.
For both bikes, we have regular Bennetts TPF&T insurance cover for UK and western Europe which given our ages, was relatively cheap. (Bike, Cheap and Insurance in the same sentence, ... yes folks,. you read it hear first). Where it's required, Third party insurance can generally be purchased at border crossings along the way: Turkey, Russia, Canada etc. We understand that this insurance is also relatively cheap, and it needs to be, ........ it's going to be coming out of our £20 per day traveling budget. For Travel/Medical insurance, we're going to use Carole Nash and this should cover us for most eventualities for a lot less than £100 each. Consider where we are going, and that we're riding bikes that are excluded on most travel insurance policies, .... and this is a real bargain. Just how much of a 'Bargain' we'll only discover if disaster strikes. This is one area where we sincerely hope 'Not' to be keeping you posted.
From here onwards, we really just want to pack the bikes and head off into the mist but at least with the bureaucratic headaches mostly behind us, (we hope) ...... the next few weeks should be a hell of a lot more interesting.
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