Motorcycle license obtained – now I’m learning to ride!

Tim in the desert on a KTM 500 EXC.

A few months ago I realised that it would make sense if I was to go out and get my motorcycle license. In Africa, sooner or later I was likely to want to rent or borrow a motorcycle, either to join a group of biking travelers for a day or two, or simply because there might be one I could borrow to nip into the nearest town or city. That’s got to be easier than driving a seven metre long truck into town, when all I want to pick up is some provisions, or a visa for example.

So I booked up for lessons at a school in Dubai near my office. Frankly the eight hours of ‘lectures’ I had to attend were truly awful, with training videos obviously stolen from both UK and Australian training schemes (so the vehicles were on the other side of the road to the way we drive in Dubai – very helpful if you are just learning!) one video taken from a UK comedy show (No, I am not joking) which was full of obscene, profane language from start to finish (it was supposed to highlight the dangers of driving when angry….go figure) , an instructor whose English was so poor I could barely understand him – despite the fact that this was the “lessons in English” class – and instructions for road use which were downright dangerous, stupid and just plain wrong!

Having taken the subsequent ‘Knowledge Test’ I was then entitled to learn to ride, and I’m sorry to say that with only very limited advice (ha!) from my instructors, I was a bit slow on the uptake. Specifically my clutch control just wasn’t very subtle – I guess 35 years of using my left foot to control the clutch had not left me with much finesse when it came to using my left hand instead. Still I eventually got the hang of it and passed the two handling skills test and the road test first time, so was finally able to add Motorcycle to my Light Vehicle and Heavy Truck licenses.

But I know that obtaining a license is NOT the same as learning to ride – it’s just the first step, so the first thing I did once I’d passed my test was to sign up for some off road riding lessons. My work as the official photographer to the Emirates Desert Championship means that I’d plenty of contacts with the MotoX riding community here, so I contacted Sam Smith of Big Red Motorsports and asked him for four hours of one to one instruction. You’ll see from the video just how I coped – the difference between my first few minutes of nervous riding, and my belting through rough tracks and the dunes just 90 minutes later, is clear to see.

My Thanks to Sam Smith, but also to my business partner Ian Barker for the loan of his Go Pro camera, and to Graeme Chart, my drumming tutor, who put together the great music track you’ll here on this, and all future videos I make for this page.

 

Thank you Captain, I’ll take her from here…..

My vehicle's new registration plate.

It’s now more than five and a half years since I had the idea to buy an overland truck and travel around Africa. For the next four and half years that’s all it was – an idea, albeit one I was determined to realise. Finally, in late 2015 everything fell into place and my finances permitted me to take that leap of faith. Now, a year and a couple of weeks after I placed the order for the chassis and cabin, the NYK Castor Leader RoRo vessel is steaming around the Strait of Hormuz as I write this, and will tomorrow dock at Jebel Ali port – just a few hundred yards from where I first started working in Dubai 25 years ago, when there were only 300 companies in Jebel Ali. Now there’s more like 30,000; how times have changed!

The NYK Castor Leader's position at 20.30 Dubai time
My truck is aboard the NYK Castor Leader, just 8 hours away from home. At last!!

Last week I spent a few hours at the Road Traffic Authority offices in Dubai trying to meet the right people, ask the right questions, and gather the right information, which would allow me to tackle the issue of registering the vehicle for private ownership in Dubai – not a straightforward task when the chassis builder is almost unknown to them, the cabin is not something they normally deal with, it’s truck sized but not, by their definition, a truck because they classify Sprinters as vans, and it’s six wheel drive but the only records they have of Sprinters here are two wheel drive. So next week should be ‘interesting’ to say the least.

While I was at the RTA I was delighted to hear that just a week earlier they had started issuing the “T” suffix number-plates, which was perfect timing and I decided was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I treated myself to a personal number plate.

T  Tim’s Travel Truck

1  Life

2  Eyes

5  Oceans

6  Continents

3  Axles

Yes I know you can argue there are 7 (or 5, or even 4) continents but that number has other, personal significance for me, so feast your eyes on the plate that will adorn my truck from next week and for the next few years. “Truck” still doesn’t have a name yet, but I’m giving it a lot of thought. Tomorrow I hope to drive down to the port and sneak a quick look at my vehicle on U.A.E. soil for the first time. I should actually get to drive it (him? her?) on Sunday next week, for the first time in Dubai. Woohoo!!