...someone is pushing a motorbike out of a garage. It is a classic, 1 cylinder, pointy tank, spring saddle, black and it is huge! I am fascinated by the scene. Then my mom takes my hand and we go back into our house....
This was my first encounter with a motorbike. I was just 3 years old and my fathers old bike was just sold.
At that time I was very young, but I can recall the scene as it just happened yesterday.
Years later. My Father and me are sitting in the living room and watching TV. It must have been in the 1980s. The Paris-Dakar Rallye. Of course the original in northern Africa.
I was caught by these motorbikes, extremely tall, high suspensions, all the gages and the big fuel tanks. How easy they just flew over the terrain, nothing could stop them, no distance seemed too far... I was in love!
"This is the kind of bike I want to have...sometime later."
My first bike, I was 21, was just one with all these characteristics. A Honda Transalp 600. Tall, rallye design and one of the most reliable bikes of its time.
20 Years, and several bikes, later these adventure bikes are still my passion. I rode a lot of them 1, 2 or 3 cylinders, 185-1215 ccm. All with their pros and cons. For this trip I fulfilled a dream that I could not afford in the old days.
A Honda Africa Twin. A bike that was build following the success of the 2 cylinder Hondas at the
Paris Dakar Rallye...
Since I am a small boy I read books about adventurers who discovered the world, spent days and weeks looking at maps and dreamt about it. "One day I want to see it all myself." That was sure.
I guess I got the travelling bug from my parents who would not even stay a long holiday weekend at home but try to see as much as possible. And I was always with them. Not that I enjoyed every trip, but the travel bug was mine now.
My third passion is photography. Even if I started pretty late to take photography seriously, I really enjoy to carry my cameras around where ever I am and document the moment.
You can guess, the ideal is to be able to combine all three obsessions into one big trip. So here I am.
Rosto