|
_______
©2005-2006-2007
Dragin' Run., All Rights Reserved.
_______
Web
design and maintenance by
PGlenn@harleyseats.com
______ |
Our Journals: Round
The World by motorcycle:
|
We invite you to
read or browse our journals as we doin, do it to our
excess by doing
The Dragin' Run |
|
June 4th 2006 Update
|
Greetings All, it is
amazing how quickly time passes when you
realize that there is not enough of it to
get everything done. It is frightening to
realize that you have more stuff than can
possibly be loaded on the bike to
accommodate what you thought you
needed/wanted. And it is incredibly exciting
to know that in a few very short weeks that
the planning that has will finally be
translated into action and that we are
really going to make this journey. Again, I
want to thank all of the sponsors for their
time, effort and financial assistance.
Without their participation, the Dragin'
Run® may not have been something we
could have realized.
Tamara Smith and David Walker will be
joining us for some of the tour. Tamara has
been teaching for us at Perfect English for
more than three years. She is an avid biker,
an excellent teacher, our Academic
Coordinator last year and now a good friend
as well. David is also an English teacher
from the
UK and will ride with
us as far as Moscow. Then he returns to the
UK for a wedding but will catch up with us
in either Greece or Turkey in late January
or early February 2007 and make the European
leg with us. Tamara will ride as far as
Greece/Turkey where she will get a position
teaching, make a bit of money and then
continue when Janet and I return from our
tour of the Middle East in early 2007.
We
have finally made the decision to alter our
proposed itinerary. Instead of riding across
China and then
traveling through the 'stans, we will ride
northwest from Beijing to Ulaan Baator,
Mongolia and then head south into the Gobi
desert for the second time and then head
west and north and ride the length of
Mongolia. This will be a particularly
difficult ride because of the terrain (there
are very few paved roads in Mongolia) and
the fact that the Changs will be
heavy -
two-up and crammed with gear and not much
ground clearance. But we all agreed that
because Mongolia may be one of the last
pristine areas left in the northern
hemisphere, we have to try. Our goal in
Mongolia is 100 km/day. If we can do better
than that, OK; if not, still OK!
Then it’s on to
Moscow and then to
Belarus, the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and
Greece/Turkey. Here we leave Tam to travel
another modified route. We have a Ph.D.
friend who is an Akkadian scholar (she
studies the ancient near east and reads
cuneiform). She strongly suggested an
itinerary that takes us to Antakya, a city
located in a small strip of land that
extends down from the main body of south
central Turkey and abuts to extreme
northwest Syria. It is in this region that
the famous Crusades Castle, Krak Des
Chevalier is located. From here we travel
south into Lebanon to Beirut, then on to
Damascus where we can break free from the
cities and visit some of the world’s most
beautiful and historic sites.
By
mid November, our oldest son will join us in
Amman, Jordan. Hopefully he will rent a car,
bring a sleeping bag and travel with us
through Jordan with the main intent of
spending several days in Petra, the central
trading point between west and east from the
4th century BC until the 2nd century AD for
great caravan routes from Gaza, Damascus,
Aqabah and Palmyra (one of the sites we will
see in Syria).
Wadi Rumm, reputed to be one of the most
beautiful deserts in the world and the
location where much of Lawrence of Arabia
was filmed, is also on the agenda for
Jordan. Jay plans to travel by car with us
for most of this route (poor guy) and then
cross into Egypt for his return flight back
to the US.
Hopefully, the Egyptian border will be open
by the time we get there. It was recently
closed due to the terrorist bombing of
several hotels on the Red Sea coast just
south of Taba.
We
have been really concerned about being able
to ride in
Egypt because of the
required Carnet des Passages. The Chinese
Automobile Associations do not issue
Carnets, Canada wouldn't respond to our
inquiries and it looks like we were s*it out
of luck. But we just heard from the German
Auto Assoc - ADAC and they have agreed to
issue the Carnet so Egypt is on!
We are just about
finished our buying, except for a few items
that are easily obtainable here plus a few
items from the states. We have decided to
get a comm system so that Janet and I can
easily talk as we ride (BTW, we will be
married 42 years on June 6th), a couple of
power outlets so we can power the GPS and
charge batteries and a GPS program for the
phone as a backup to the Garmin we already
have.
Now all we have to do is
test the equipment, get familiar with the
bikes 'under load' and we can hit the road.
More to follow as we get
closer to our departure.
Regards to all.
Jack and Janet |
|
|
