Last Updated: Tue 16th Nov 2010 - 04:37pm
The 1150 taking a shower in Scotland
The bike that I am using for the trip will be a fairly standard 2005 BMW R1150GS Adventure.
Now the informed among you will realise that its the same model that was used by Ewan & Charlie in LWR. While I think the LWR was a great TV series its not the reason I bought the bike! Much in the same vein that the reason I want to go on a motorcycling adventure is not so that I can lead a revolution and be adorned on the walls and t-shirts of every student in the developed world (Che Guevara - Motorcycle Diaries incase you are wondering).
I'm not going to get into "this is why I think its better than other bikes" as I'll be here all day. However to sum it up in one line. "There are two opinions of the GS. There are those who have ridden one who think its fantastic and there are those who haven't who know its crap - Andyclift"
So there. The panniers are made by Vern @ ProjectVND who hand makes what must be considered some of the finest panniers money can buy. Can't fault these in any way shape or form.
Columbus V-900 Data Logger
One slightly non standard piece of IT kit i'll be dragging around with me is this the Columbus V-900 GPS Data Logger.
This little unit every second of the day records its position, height, speed, direction and about 5 other items I've yet to work out. It records this all onto a microSD memory card (2Gb) so enought for 25 million way points! Hopefully I'll try and build up a very detailed log of the trans Africa trip. The unit is very simple to operate just turn it on (or it turns itself on when the bike is started) and then it records away. Also it'll allow me to Geo Tag my photos/videos so that you can see where they are taken with me having to write it down!
I've written some software behind the website so that it turns the uploaded data logs into some maps. It's accurate down to around a meter, though the maps are done at 5000meters (overview) and 10meters (detialed view). It also records speed, heading and height along with the GPS co-ordinates. I got this unit from BuyGPSNow.com for around $100 which is very good value.
To power all this i've rigged up some power sockets into the panniers. Result.
EEE PC 901
I'm also taking this little NetBook (like a laptop but smaller) with me. The EEE PC 901 is well suited to travelling having only the fan as the moving part inside the machine and using solid state memory so vibrations won't destroy it.