HungusMaximist
27th January 2010, 12:08
Hot off NZ Herald
Incredible journey
By Joanna Hunkin
4:00 AM Wednesday Jan 27, 2010
It's an easy mistake to make. Anyone who has learnt to ride a motorbike will tell you, hill starts are not an easy business. You just need to twist the accelerator a little too hard and ... Vroom. You're up on one wheel.
Fortunately, when Rob Gray learned this lesson, he was just out of sight of the Suzuki dealership where, just moments before, he had picked up his shiny new, sponsored motorbike.
Still, the dealership staff must have suspected something was amiss when Gray and his friends, also collecting their new bikes, couldn't work out how to start them.
The truth is, it was only Gray's second time on a motorcycle. Yet somehow he and his four friends - Rob Climo, Tom Anselmi, Mike Jacobson and Misha Kravcenko - had convinced Suzuki to give them five gleaming motorbikes to travel the breadth of Europe, from Vladivostok to London, on the adventure of a lifetime.
The 25,000km journey, which they've named The 51st Traverse, will see them set off from the eastern seaboard of Russia in May and travel through some of the most remote and dangerous countries in the world, including Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia......
Rest of the recent story is here http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10622349&pnum=0
Visit www.51sttraverse.co.nz
Incredible journey
By Joanna Hunkin
4:00 AM Wednesday Jan 27, 2010
It's an easy mistake to make. Anyone who has learnt to ride a motorbike will tell you, hill starts are not an easy business. You just need to twist the accelerator a little too hard and ... Vroom. You're up on one wheel.
Fortunately, when Rob Gray learned this lesson, he was just out of sight of the Suzuki dealership where, just moments before, he had picked up his shiny new, sponsored motorbike.
Still, the dealership staff must have suspected something was amiss when Gray and his friends, also collecting their new bikes, couldn't work out how to start them.
The truth is, it was only Gray's second time on a motorcycle. Yet somehow he and his four friends - Rob Climo, Tom Anselmi, Mike Jacobson and Misha Kravcenko - had convinced Suzuki to give them five gleaming motorbikes to travel the breadth of Europe, from Vladivostok to London, on the adventure of a lifetime.
The 25,000km journey, which they've named The 51st Traverse, will see them set off from the eastern seaboard of Russia in May and travel through some of the most remote and dangerous countries in the world, including Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia......
Rest of the recent story is here http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10622349&pnum=0
Visit www.51sttraverse.co.nz