hoboworld.to

After waking up at 5:30am to get our day started so we could find a mechanic we coasted down the hill into cencenighe agordino after being told that there was a mechanic in Agordo that would be able to fix the BMW F650GS..We initially thought that it would be a good idea to get to town then find someone with something that could transport the bike to the mechanics.. However after successfully going the 1.6km down the hill from our campsite into town we had the bright idea to see if we could make it another 10km down to Agordo….

After spending 4 hours going to various mechanics in town and asking around.. (with a few Latte Macchiato’s in the mix) we got told that we needed to go to tecnomoto in Belluno because all the mechanics in Agordo either had too much work or didn’t do electrical problems. Which was around 30km away.. Could the bike make it another 30km of doing no left hand turns with the engine running.. With James in the lead we cruised the 30km down the hill from Agordo to Belluno to get into town and find round abouts.. f… Of course just to really mix it up a little they required us to do left hand turns !!.. With the electrical problem getting worse.. the bike was now not starting so easily when it went off during a left hand turn.. This of course had to happen on one of the busiest round abouts in Belluno. With heather walking her bike over to the edge of the road so she could straighten up the steering again so she could start on the journey to tecnomoto… After a 30km trip taking around 1hr 20minutes we finally made it to tecnomoto. We waited in line to ask about getting it fixed only to be told there was a bmw dealership 300meters further down the road which would be better suited to fix the problem than them..

So after several false starts getting back onto the road from tecnomoto we found ourselves on route to a bmw dealership… where nobody spoke english.. This was really turning into an interesting day.. The guys at the dealership eventually found someone who spoke some English so we could explain our problem to them.. They agreed that they could have a look at it that day, but it wouldn’t be fixed for a few days due to their current work load.. This lead us to another problem we had.. What do we do with Heather and the Luggage from her bike while I go and find accommodation. The BMW Dealership called us a taxi and we went in loops trying to find a campsite… In the end heather had run out of money and had to sit on the side of the road waiting for me to find the campsite with all her luggage.. At least she had a book to read in the 32c degree temperatures..

Heather on the side of the road.

After about a further 5km James found the campsite unloaded most of his luggage at the campsite reception and returned taking a further 7 trips back and forwards to get the luggage and Heather to the campsite.

James with Heathers Luggage. One of many trips

It was not sweltering with humidity more than before and we both sat down for a well earned beer and pasta for lunch at the campsite restaurant… Ahh the saga had finally almost come to an end.. At around 6pm we got a call from the dealership saying that it would take at least until wednesday to resolve the issue… At least we could have a few days off camping on the side of a beautiful lake to relax..

Kite surfing at the lake near the campsite

The same scene just before a huge electrical storm.

An Electrical storms a brewin..

Just before going to bed last night we went for a walk to watch the Electrical Storms coming in while at the same time working off our pizza’s for dinner. While on the walk we saw the most amazing site where there was hundreds of fire flies glowing.. We thought we may have had some dodgy mushrooms on the pizza but it was real.. Fire Flies.. Unfortunately the photos didn’t turn out well  🙁 maybe next time.

After spending the night at a great campsite very close to Predazzo on route to Lago di paneveggio for yet another mountain pass to cross. The camp site was the first we stayed at which had a proper restaurant serving fantastic Italian cuisine. We drank loads of good wine and ate pizza for dinner. Which is where we found our new mascot. Gnomie the wooden hobo 15.

Gnomie 15 our new mascot.

The following morning we woke and went for a walk into town before starting our journey again. On route over the mountain pass James came around a corner only to find that the corner was actually a foot thick gravel pit.. oops off he goes.. Thankfully a big Itallian Harley rider was there to help lift the bike and get us back on route.. Its amazing how friendly the Itallians have been so far… Its been very good.

The hope was that we would get to Cortina D’ampezzo. Unfortunately we stopped for lunch just outside cencenighe agordino. Where we stopped we did a small offroad section down to the sides of a beautiful river so that we could enjoy some nice scenery while we ate some food. Away from the noise of the road. Well that’s when things started to get interesting…

Heathers bike developed an intermittant electrical problem that only existed when her bike turned left. We took the front display and head stock apart trying to find what was causing the dodgy connection. Unfortunately we couldn’t isolate the problems further than the fact that her ignition block had something wrong with it….

James trying to isolate the fault

Given any normal area we could have just got back on the motorway and cruised into a normal town to find a mechanic to replace the bits.  Unfortunately this is the alps.. straight roads don’t really exist which makes riding more fun… especially when you can’t turn left. No more mountain passes for us until we get this problem resolved… On the bright side of things we had to wild cam so we could be near the bikes.. Of course this was because we didn’t want to pay the £130 excess for getting recovered on a Sunday from over 100km from the nearest recovery company that BMW would recommend. That’s probably ontop of some crazy other charges based on milage. In the end we camped in an amazing spot where we think the locals may not have been too happy for us to be!… Ooops.. we explained our situation to one friendly local who had the same bike as James and he seemed cool with it.. However I think the other locals had different ideas… At least we got an amazing view..

Scenery where the bike broke down