Spain 2015!

I'm finally back in Europe for a decent ride.

I'm here from today, Monday Dec. 28th until Wednesday January 6th.

I rented a 2015 BMW R1200RT (wasserboxer) from IMTbike.com's Barcelona location. I haven't ridden it much yet, but thus far, holy cow it is nice.

I've had a couple adventures already this trip.

When I tried to check-in online for my AC1914 Rouge flight yesterday from YYZ to BCN, the system suddenly spit me out and said I had to get Check-In Assistance at the airport. Hrmph. Note, before I got punted, I had asked for a $241 upgrade to "Premium Rouge" and apparently that "was no longer available as an option".

When I got to the airport, things were bonkers there. I tried checking in at an automated booth, only to be told immediately that again, I needed a human. Looking at the check-in assistance lineup, I tried 2 other automated booths in a panic. And that's before I discovered that the lineup actually looped around into another isle beyond another row of airlines. Bonkers.

Eventually, due to my flight's check-in limits, employees came and fetched everyone on the Barcelona flight for a faster line. The attendant that greeted me wasn't sure why my check-in failed, but she did say that the charge for the seat upgrade had gone through already, though the system told me the option wasn't available anymore. Hrmph. Ahh well, got a nice comfy window seat.

I got through the yyz security line fairly quickly, thanks to the Amex Cloud 10 coupon I bought. I can't wait for my Air Canada Elite 35k level to kick in!

On the far side, the customs line at BCN was insane, but the officers were doing little more than stamping passports and waving people through. The guy never said even a word to me.

Then BCN had a problem but in retrospect, I'm REALLY lucky. Imagine hundreds of people standing around our empty and unmoving baggage claim island for 40 minutes when someone happens to turn around and see their bag on another island across from ours. I was a bit miffed because I was looking forward to my "priority" tag on my luggage getting me in and out of baggage claim and into a taxi before the main crush, only to have all our luggage spinning around this distant island together. However, when I grabbed my bag, I discovered that something had gotten caught on my bag, torn off the priority tag, and saved by only like 1mm, nearly completely removed my actual baggage tag. I have to imagine if the baggage tag had been completely removed, I would have been waiting around for a lost bag and my vacation would have been .. compromised.

And then the next adventure.

I picked up my rental BMW R1200RT LC (liquid cooled, aka wasserboxer). Everything was grand and solvable on the spot until I watched my personal GPS bring up its .. non-map. Oh crap, I forgot that I had deleted my full Europe map from my gps uSD, only to upload only around southern Germany for Oktoberfest. No Spain. The challenges I was about to face had not yet hit me.

To install existing but not installed maps on a Garmin requires the maps to exist on your PC's drive. To get those onto the drive, you need Garmin Express to acknowledge you own the device the maps are licensed to. To get that, you need a supported USB cable that tells the GPS to boot into PC interface mode so Express can chat.

And my only USB cable that fits was not accepted by the GPS. Queue the squealing brakes sound.

Called Garmin long distance, but they couldn't help; get the right cable and try again.

Fortunately, the hotel had a cable I could try, and it worked. Then I could get Garmin Express to download the 4.5GB map image. But the hotel wifi suuucked, so I resorted to using my tethered iPad to download the map.

Normally, that would have been an incredible expense, and by some measure, it wasn't pretty. Ended up costing me about USD 75 to pull it down using the Apple SIM's new roaming support with GigSky, which comes up as LTE. I had the map downloaded and installed on the GPS uSD within an hour.

And I gotta say, the Apple SIM saved me tonight. Knowroaming's unlimited plan only seems to partner with carriers that give me a slow 3G signal. Maybe USD 75 isn't cheap to some, but the vacation stress it solved for me was worth it.

Took the RT out for a little ride around the local bit of Barcelona and the maps are great. Traffic is a bit fast, and I lost count of the number of chicks on scooters that flew by. I was looking forward to dinner, so I packed it in at the hotel and visited its .. Eh rated restaurant, the

 

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Back in Germany again

I clearly suck at blogging.  Ahh well.  Whatever.

I'm finally back in Germany again.  I'm only here for a week, but it is grand to be here.

I'm heading to Oktoberfest with some friends next weekend, so I thought I'd spend some days with my motorcycle first, sort out my supplies and stuff and generally get the bike ready for a couple tours next summer.

One reason my supplies are in such a questionable state was due to the last weekend I was here two summers ago; my VFR died, and then my rental 1200GS died.  I was perhaps at a bit of a low, harried to get my stuff stuffed so I could leave.  And the 1200GS didn't actually get towed back to the bike place, it got towed directly to the mechanic, with my helmet and other stuff still on the bike.

As always, Stefan Knopf of knopftours.com had the TLS shuttle waiting at Frankfurt International Airport for me, and had my motorcycle parked outside of my night's room once the shuttle got me to Heidelberg.  35EUR for the shuttle ride.

My 2003 Honda CBR1100XX, despite not being touched in 1.5 years, started on the first hit on the switch.  I'm tellin' you, I love these Lithium rechargeable batteries.  I'm currently running with Ballistic Performance LiFePO4 (Lithium Ferrous Phosphate).  I'm told they don't survive (Canadian, presumably) winters very well, but the two I had stored on the CBR1100XX were both in peak condition when I put them on the Ballistic EVO2 charger/tester.

I've found most of my stuff.  Stefan has a huge basement for storing customer stuff, and a bunch of my stuff wasn't properly labeled or showed up after I left (helmet at the least).  He and I will go digging tomorrow morning to find the rest of it.

I'll only have a couple days with the bike, but that's okay.  I wasn't even sure what state things would be in, so I wasn't counting on anything.  Looks like I'll get three days, two nights on the road, then I come back Wednesday night, store everything, and hop on a train to Munich Thursday morning.

By the end of this, I'll be confident that when I do come back next summer for a couple vacations, I'll have the bike in order.  Can't wait!