The Silver Fern

@victor-meldrew said in Springboks v England - Test #2:

You have to seriously feel for the decent Pom rugby supporter

Yep - I know the guy, and I do feel sorry for him.

@tim The TSF Mod-Team ?

@mackerzzzz said in Rugby Commentators:

I'll tell you a real good way of fixing nz commentators. Sack every one we have at the moment and bring in acc and leigh hart

Fuck. Off.
Ever tried running backwards through a field of dicks?
Or chowing down on a bowl of cold flaccid dicks?
Fuck.
Leigh Hart couldn't commentate an order at the pub. Christ, he can hardly speak.
And the ACC - are typically of mild amusement for approximately 5 minutes. After that... well, it's just the first 5 minutes on a repeat loop anyway, with rapidly diminishing returns with each re-hashed lame joke.
Fuck. Leigh Hart and the ACC. Off.

So - 2019 London - Beijing
In general...

• A group "expedition" - organised by a company called GlobeBusters. For the last decade or so, every 2nd year they do a London-Beijing trip, and every other year - Trans-Americas (Alaska-Patagonia).
  I would recommend them - they did a great job of organising, support, etc. One thing to note - it was rather pricey, and that would mostly be down to using very high-quality hotels (where possible)... my ideal would have been a cheaper trip, with cheaper hotels, and maybe a nice 4-star once every week or two, whenever stopping for 2 nights - to get a good break/laundry-done.

• Started off from London's Ace Cafe with 20 bikes (mostly BMW GS, 3 Triumphs, 1 Ducati, 1 Honda CB500) and 2 support vehicles - a pimped-out Hilux, and a Mercedes van big enough to take a bike (or two at a pinch). The group was larger than I'd expected/hoped... and it did slow things down at borders or when choices of petrol stations was... limited.
  But - it gradually shrank over time...
  2 bikes had opted to only go as far as Almaty, another 2 only as far as Lhasa, and 1 guy came off with about 10 days to go - breaking half-a-dozen ribs, mangling his front-forks into a shape they definitely shouldn't be, and choosing to fly back to the UK rather than "be a tourist" by riding in either support vehicle or catching a train to Beijing.

• Ace Cafe at each end gave us a decent send-off/welcome.... London shouted us fish'n'chips the night before departure, and then breakfast the next day - with speeches and such bollocks
  Beijing welcomed us with bottles of cheap bubbly to spray all over the place, sweet cold beers, a decent spread, all sorts of "merch"... and speeches and such bollocks

Western-ish Europe...
From London to Turkey is a vague memory, but...

• UK, France, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-and-Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro, Greece
• Most of it was just getting the miles under the belt, trying to get out of Western Europe ASAP... quite well planned though, to keep the interest up... typically being a couple-hundred miles of motorway, and then an hour or so of some sweet twisties or country-roads, or something else a little more interesting - before reaching the hotel. So each evening, the recent/residual memory was the "fun bit"

Turkey...

• 3 nights in Istanbul - the first time we'd stopped for more than a single night. I'd never been before, so ticked off the major touristy things
• Safranbolu - nice enough old town, with an absolutely shite museum
• Cappadocia, Mount Nemrut & Ani

Georgia-Azerbaijan...

• Tbilisi - rather cool city, very unexpected. Very "bohemian", or "hip", or something... without (much) wankiness that typically comes with those words. Reminded me of a less self-aware Melbourne. Plenty of the old-world stuff (ancient statues, cobblestone streets, bathhouses), and then craft-beer pubs, weird-modern architecture, wine-bars.
  Oh - and look up the 1907 Tiflis Bank Robbery
• Azerbaijan - the sign from Georgia announcing that you're approaching the Azerbaijan border also proclaims at the bottom "Good Luck!". An excellent little dig at one's neighbour
• Caspian Sea - we caught the "ferry" from Baku to Turkmenbashi - a 13 hour crossing

The 'Stans

• Turkmenistan - interesting. Probably most people's choice as "least favourite country of the trip" - but it would be a contender for my Top-3... solely as it was interesting. This is a country where it's essentially still a totalitarian rule... by a nutter.
  Roads - mostly pretty shit, extended periods where they seemed to have laid black glass instead of tarmac. Not cool in the rain - we had one GS go down at reasonably high speed, no major damage to rider or bike
• Uzbekistan - stopped at several classic Silk Road towns - Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand
• Tajikistan - Probably my favourite country...
  The Tunnel of DEATH! - which was an interesting experience, but not one I'd want on my daily commute
  The adherence to Islam was very much waning this far east, and some of the ladies certainly had that "adultery-isn't-really-that-bad-of-a-sin" sparkle in their eyes
  The (bike) riding once we hit the Wakhan Valley/Pamir Highway... awesome. Riding along the Afghanistan border, unmaintained dirt roads along hill-sides, following rivers... so much fun... videos to come
• Kyrgyzstan - the first peek at high-altitude passes, and fermented horse-milk. Some reasonably fun rural dirt roads, absolutely crazy drivers, and corrupt traffic-police armed with speed-radar-guns.
• Kazakhstan - pretty much just a few days in Almaty, resting

China...

• Border Crossing, at high altitude - a full day to just get physically across the border. Then 2 days stuck in Kashgar, getting the bikes' paperwork sorted.
• Xinjiang province - oppressive. Police checkpoints everywhere, a very very police-state feel about the whole place. I probably shouldn't write too much about it, sitting here in a Beijing hotel not using VPN, but... look it up. Xinjiang, and the "Uighur problem".
• Tibet - the story goes that Tibet is now essentially "pacified" - and the guy that managed that, has been moved on to Xinjiang.
  There were certainly far less police checkpoints, etc - but still some
  But anyway - Tibet... awesome. Altitude, obviously. Snow-riding - not fun, when I'd swapped the visor out for goggles during the previous dirt road sections.
  Mount Everest - I've already posted about that... just awesome. The mountain itself - just being there - literally brought tears to several bikers' eyes. And the road to get up to Base Camp... motorcycle heaven. So many switchbacks... and chinese road rules - so safe overtaking is very much optional.
  And then - the Tibet-Sichuan highway - the G318 - some sections, contenders as being even better than the Everest Base Camp road. On a bike, dodging chinese fuckknuckles in Land-Cruiser-Prados - just great fun.
• Sichuan - some decent scenery, but the roads were already becoming rather "tame" compared to the previous month or two... so just ticking off tourist boxes on the way up to Beijing... Chengdu - pandas, check.
• Shaanxi - Xi'an - great city, with a couple of days off to rest/relax/drink, and more of the touristy stuff... Terracotta Warriors - I'd seen about 15 years ago - not a single bit of more excavation has been done since then, but there are shiny new restaurants/souvenir-shop complexes.
• Shanxi - at this point, we're just trying to get to Beijing, on roads absolutely rammed full of the infamous "red trucks" - what are presumably state-owned trucks, shipping coal from mines to power stations. Hundreds of them... thousands. I've got a video where I passed about 200 of them all queued up. So - lots of trucks, lots of coal-dust... doesn't make for traditionally enjoyable riding. Does, however, make for some very inventive interpretation of road rules at times... I was swerving up onto pavement to get around trucks, nipping back from the wrong side of the road into the middle of a police checkpoint, taking shortcuts through building sites, rice-fields, whatever.
• And finally Beijing - made it, 16,500 miles, I think I remember my GPS unit claimed.
  Beers were had.

@KiwiMurph said in Sunwolves v Blues:

@rotated I don't think there's anything sinister at all. He was sick last week (which if you look at his rugby and travel schedule the past two months it's not hard to see why).

I don't see any benefit at all in flying him to Japan this week. Just let him R&R. Player welfare of your young stars is important.

You don't see anything sinister in a Lions fan being in his kitchen, and then shortly after - a mysterious illness?

Papalii a better winger than Bridge.

Sorry to break this to all you guys, but it doesn't matter anyway, nobody's interested in the World Cup. It's just a money-spinner with fake enthusiasm pushed by the broadcasters, newspapers, and merchandising salesmen.

So... 10,000 miles under the belt, with a couple of days off in Lhasa.
I've been writing near-daily updates on my own website/blog if anybody's interested, but generally get in each night too tired to really do it justice.
But - figured I'd update the Fern on one of the very recent highlights.
Mount Everest.
HolyFuckBalls - how awesome.
The road up to the Tibet Base Camp - absolutely amazing. I don't know how many switchbacks there were - one person cited 200, another mentioned 348 - and I genuinely don't know if these are exaggerations or not. I've never done Stelvio Pass, which is apparently considered one of the best motorcycle roads in the world... but a few others in the group have. And the general consensus was... Stelvio Pass has absolutely nothing on this road.
Personal accomplishment - managed to scrape a foot-peg for the first time ever, and it was with knobbly tyres.
And then - at the end, a big magnificent bastard of a mountain.
The very first viewpoint, where we stopped for our first long-range view of Everest... it was a little weird... the road is now completely tarmac, but there was still somehow enough dust around to get in a few eyes, my own included.
And then - when we got up to Base Camp (the 'tourist' one, at Rongbuk Monastery - not the actual climbers base camp) - with Everest framed by the valley... cool as fuck. Just sat there for a couple of hours soaking the magnificent bastard in.
A portion of the road down the north side of the pass on the way to Rongbuk...

Representing Aotearoa with the black woollen singlet, Red Bands, etc...

@Dan54 said in All Blacks vs England I:

@Winger Has any team ever been scared of a jersey??

Every NZer, terrified about a return of a grey alternative jersey.

@shark said in Life changes:

What's this tweetering all about

@Virgil got some wet pussy, and broke his TV. Now he's agreed to do some insurance fraud.

@Bones is flirting with @R-L , but is way too keen on poo action, which seems like it might be a deal-breaker.

Just, you know, standard Fernin'.

I was so simple in my wanting cathartic release.
I walked home from the stadium through deserted dodgy areas, no mugging.
I went to a standing bar, got thoroughly re-drunk, yelling “fuck” at the ceiling once in a while. Much to the amusement of locals.
Then I went down to the riverside with a couple of drinks and cigarettes, found a gang of teenagers hanging out causing trouble. Sat down close to them, and when I got eye contact... gestured to the litter-mess they'd caused. They cleaned their shit up, and left.
What do I need to do to get beaten up in this country? I just want my body to feel like my mind does.

And now, at Mangawhai Tavern... Leigh Hart has walked in... he isn't drinking his shitty unfunny wakachangi beers, that's for sure.
I dearly want to explain to him how he hasn't done a single slightly amusing thing in his entire career, and “comedy” in NZ would be well served by him just disappearing, complete with his gimmick “beers” and chips and whatever else ... but he is quite the large fluffybunny.

Fuck.
Just... fuck.
10 minutes of "we're going to blow them off the park", 92% possession, then... shit.
Then - 13-31 - I've got a massively pissed up "I'm Richie Mounga's cousin" next to me, apparently with $400 on the game vs his mates, staggering/falling all over me yelling "we've won, give me the money Uce" to his mates,

• French ref - so many times obviously changing his mind in the middle of a decision... just - fucked up

Then... fuck... just fuck...
Yeah - that final couple of minutes...

• I feel sorry for the Wallabies fans, and the team (other than Foley and Swain) - they could have, should have, did, deserve that win - but fucked up by 2 moments
• Of course - a game is just a whole set of "moments" - so the last becomes the most defining - and Foley... fucked up - miscalculated the determinedness of French referee-ing
• As somebody else put it - "welcome to French refs, mon ami"
• Correct call, and should be made more often, but... I can understand the fury of losing due to it
  -- Hopefully it's made more often in the future... and while controversial, it becomes the standard-by-precedent

Oh, tit-watch: zero. But the barmaid from neighbouring bar insisted on giving me a hug on the way out, so... future tit-watch: ?

We were promised shiny new things!!
Fuck this shit.
I'm off to the pub to see if I can start a riot.

Seattle Times: "Weird Australian gets kicked out of 12 breweries in one night, for sobbing and banging his fist on the bar"

Was based in London for this WC... but decided I'd hop across to France to watch the Final. Caught the train over to... can't remember - not Paris, a relatively small town... but with a train station for the Eurostar?
Went over, started to panic when I thought I might not find a place open early in the morning to watch it... but found a likely venue.
Turned up early in the morning at this bar, they had a free breakfast spread on, welcomed me in.
We all watched it together - me getting really rather drunk sitting at the bar nervously chopping beer after beer. The locals started enjoying just watching my reaction more than the game I think... and at full-time - they all congratulated me, plenty of hands shaken and pats on the back.
I wandered off in a daze, plenty of locals seeing my All Blacks jersey and congraatulating me... had some lunch, fucked up the timing for my return train - running drunkenly through an international train station - the local gendarme/border-control saw the jersey, congratulated me, asked me which train I was on - the one leaving in about 5 minutes - and ran me through the staff corridors, completely bypassing customs/border-control/etc - to get me onto the train with about 30 seconds to spare.
Pure class - on their part, if not mine.

38 minutes - I finally had to sign up instead of just lurking, to get rid of the highly visible white screen while at work.
Dammit.

Sitting in Osaka watching those magnificent bastards.

Sake was had.

Fuck I love watching that.
There's so much to enjoy... the rugby itself; then the TMO taking an age - with the crowd going absolutely feral in panic; and then the missed kick, followed by the 2nd chance to really REALLY rub their own salty tears into the wound.
Perfection.

@Victor-Meldrew said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:

Don't forget cocaine!
NEVER forget cocaine.

@Nepia said in All Blacks v Ireland - 2nd Test:

Maybe I'm just mature enough to handle losses (nope that didn't sound right even as I typed it).

I know what you mean. From the other side.
I keep thinking that I should be mature enough to take losses like this (watching on TV), and 2019 SF (at the stadium). But I'm not. I fucking hate it. I'm an immature little shit who can't handle the All Blacks losing.
Fuck the world.