No we haven't given up

The Raid idea that I mentioned last time (4 years ago...) didn't happen either in the end. I was quite disappointed, especially because I had not only spent a lot of time prep'ing the bikes, but I was genuinely starting to get the hang of riding offroad. But sometimes it just isn't the right time. Instead of a big adventure in the Himalayas, we went on several shorter vacations to India, Australia, Tenerife, etc. But the idea of getting out there, outside, into large open spaces... never went away.

In the meantime Ness and I had decided to emigrate to Australia. And start a family - a decision taken so easily in a couple of hours, but turned our lives upside down far more than we ever expected. Before we could say "no more going out", Jake joined us in December 2010.

At some point just before Jake was born a Kiwi friend (Rich) mentioned that he had bought a Landrover to drive back to New Zealand. He even had pictures of his new truck. And a plan that sounded amazing! I was defenseless, and right there we decided to drive to Australia too :)

After Jake was born and the reality of what we wanted to do with a toddler became a little bit more clear (he can make things very clear!), we re-evaluated our plan to drive to Australia. Having had to deal with some family health issues and the NHS... the thought of something similar happening in a non-English speaking country, while being driven by visa entry and exit dates, made us consider what alternatives we had. It didn't take us very long to decide that we would explore Australia instead. It is easily big enough for us to spend a year getting to know it, before deciding where we are going to settle down (more on this later). So we're on plan a.. b.. c.. plan D now.

BTW I still have 2 pretty well prep'd DRZ400's for sale if anyone is interested.