From the My Cross Egypt Challenge blog.
Enroute to the Cross Egypt Challenge, I made a little detour to South Africa. I remember reading on MV of some crazy people that were going to ride from Cape Town, South Africa to Dublin, Ireland in 2013. I did a little search and found their website and contacted Chris Venter, the organizer. He invited me out to his house to look at his stable of scooters and discuss the ride. This is a amazing under taking. There will no support vehicle. Everything on goes on the scooter. http://scooteraddicts.co.za/ There are three riders from South Africa and Dave from Orlando. LNL, better know as Stella's to us, is sponsoring them with 4 scooters. I asked why the 2 strokes and Chris said the LNL is over all the best choice for their gearing, power through sand, spares enroute and reliability. They can work on them and though the modern Vespa is a great machine, the modern parts, like the electronics, are not easily repaired in the field. There are two branches to their fund raising. The planning going in to this is tremendous. We in the U.S. do not appreciate what it takes for other people to travel the world. Dave, the American, will only need two visas as the South Africans need visas for 6 different countries. So, one of the major logistical challenges is getting all the paper work, not only for themselves, but their scooters to pass through all the countries they will be visiting. Astonishingly all the route is paved, except where the potholes are bigger than scooters.
The most important is the Red Cross Children's Hospital. They will be stopping in other Children's Hospitals in various countries during the ride. Then they are getting sponsors to cover their expenses. If you have interest in helping in either area, go to their website.
Chris is pretty much a scooter adventure junkie. He has even started on this yet and is rolling ideas around in his head....Alaska to Argentina......the four corners of the U.S.......including Hawaii.....
The planning calendar.
The map. The upper in the African part of the journey changes as the political situation changes.
Chris and three of the four scooters
The motorcycles we have seen in SA have the plastic yellow covers that really make the bike more visible. It is just a piece of plastic cut and attached with Velcro. I am getting me one made when I get home.
We also stopped into the Vespa dealer in Cape Town. This is the way a Vespa dealer should look. They have a great big genuine Vespa espresso machine and kindly offered us a cup. Mike and Tom are the main guys and Steve, a college student, is a new part time salesman. We had a great chat about Vespa's and Vespa. They get no marketing support Vespa and have been surviving on their own for over 10 years. I was told earlier in this trip when I came across a group of guys on Russian Ural sidecars, the reason there are not more scooters in South Africa is they are "bloody expensive". A new 300 is 85,000 Rand or over $10,000. Ouch! A new owner of a scooter, all of 24 hours, came riding into the showroom, literally and they installed a fly screen for him. We bought a Vespa hat and a locally produced bead art Vespa from Steve so we would be his first sale of working there.
You can follow the Cross Egypt Challenge on my blog http://crossegypt2012.blogspot.com/ and the official Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/CrossEgyptChallenge (no sign in required). I will start a thread on the forum rides next week and try to keep it updated but I am not sure how available the internet will be once the ride begins.
