You want to do what?

I was discussing with Phil from Zero just where I would pick up the bike. They're in Melbourne which is over 1000 km from home. Phil said that they could get it registered in a country town just 300 km away from me and they could arrange to get it shipped up to me from there. No problem, I'll just come down on the train and ride it back.

Ummm.... Phil's clearly distressed by the idea.

"No no it's fine" I say. "I love to use bikes for things they're not designed to do. It's more fun riding a GSX-R round a motorcross track than a dirtbike. It will be an adventure."

Phil's suddenly ok, he gets where I'm coming from completely. "oh you should speak to one of the guys who's buying one at the same time. He's planning on riding it from London to Melbourne!"

Wow, London to Melbourne. Suddenly my brain is spinning. I'd figured about 160 km, 100 miles per day would be the most you'd want to do. 80 km, 50 miles in the morning, plug in somewhere for 4 hours while you check out the town. Then 80 km, 50 miles in the evening to the overnight stop where it recharges fully overnight. That would be great touring. But London to Melbourne, that would be like 10 000 miles or 200 charge/discharge cycles. Hmmmm, That's possible. 100 days riding sounds about right and you would see an amazing amount of countryside with an enforced 4 hour stop every day. Still I wouldn't be happy about leaving the bike to charge while I went off to explore without it. It would need a lot of careful planning. Communicating your need for a charge point might be hard and you'd need about a thousand different plugs. Perhaps with a satellite phone and the number of a translation service you might manage it.