Thinking about Elephants past

So many good ideas start in the pub. Whether this one originated there or not I can't remember as the mists of time have rolled in and shrouded everything but I wouldn't be surprised. Back at the start of 1973 I'd heard about this semi mythical winter motorcycle rally held in Germany. Stories told that it was started in the 50's by survivors of the Russian campaign in WW2 and that they only used the same bikes that had withstood everything the Russian winter could throw at them. They'd chosen to hold it in the Eiffel mountains as the winter conditions there were particularly bad. Anyone was welcome but no cars - you had to go on two wheels and expect the worst. My girlfriend at the time was already being referred to as a motorcycle widow when I set off with a friend at the end of January ...

Fast forward to 2012 and the Elefantentreffen (Elephant Rally in English) is still going strong. It's now probably the best known winter motorcycle rally in Europe with getting on for 10,000 now making their way to a new site down by the Czech border - chosen because the conditions are even worse than the Eiffel mountains.  I've now been four times but all of them were during the 1970's before this new site came into use, so to go again will be, like the first time, a voyage into the unknown.

I've thought about going again over the last 10yrs or so but for most of the time my winter sights have been looking to the far south where sun rather than snow rules the winter landscape. Given a choice between sunburn and frostbite I've been packing the Factor 50 every time. Additionally I haven't really had a bike suitable for the trip. It's a round trip of about 1500 miles with the vast majority of it on the autobahn. For that part something big and powerful would be the weapon of choice but closer to the rally site everything flips in the opposite direction. A big heavy bike with a high seat is the last thing you want in snow and ice and bikes have got much bigger and heavier as the decades have passed.  There were two bikes with exactly those characteristics in my garage, both of which had been bought and outfitted with winter trips in mind but to the sunnier climes of the Sahara rather than the snow fields of Bavaria. To go on either my XR600 Honda or my CCM604 would be silly; both of them are perfect for rough terrain but if the tyres slide on snow or ice, as they certainly will, the high seat height makes them uncontrollable. I'd be pulling them (and me) out of some foreign ditch for certain. On the last visit in 1979 I used a small 100cc Suzuki trail bike and, while slow on the motorway, it was just about perfect in the snow. If I had something like that now I probably would go again, but I don't.

Or at least I didn't. About a year ago someone offered me a mid 70's 120cc Suzuki commuter bike that they were wanting to get rid of. It had been left in a garage for about twenty years and didn't run but they thought I might be able to do something with it. Either way, it was me or the dump. Nothing happened for a few months and I thought they'd just taken the easy option of scrapping it but these things obviously take a while and it eventually turned up in mid summer. First impressions were not bad. All the bits were there, it wasn't too rusty and I was sure I could work my way through the engine problems. I set about taking it to bits and within a month or so I'd deseized the engine, bought a few missing bits and managed to get it running. Despite the long period of idleness it didn't sound too bad. That's when the thought of using it for the Elephant rally struck. In late summer sunshine it's hard to imagine the biting cold and long dark nights of mid winter which is probably why it sounded like a good idea. If I'd had any sense I'd have remembered that I spent a week in bed with flu after coming back from the last one. And that was real flu, not the "I'll have a few days off work" man flu version. It was probably the mists of time drifting over the memories that encouraged me to consider going again. I still have a number of photographs from that trip but of course you only take them during the good bits so they form the dominant memory.

This is a picture of the bike as it was when I got it -

And one in mid September 2012 when I had it running -

Over the next few months I started making all the bits I thought I'd need to make the bike more suitable for the journey. It already had a rear rack so that was one thing I didn't need to make but I'd need more luggage capacity than that. On the last trip with the TS100 Suzuki I had no way of carrying luggage at all and it was just strapped onto the pillion seat with whatever I could find. There were non stop problems with things working loose and I was determined it wasn't going to happen again. In addition, back then there were three of us doing the trip so as well as mutual support we could split the luggage over the three bikes. This time I had to load everything onto the little Suzuki and as I wasn't going to be taking much that was surplus to requirements making sure I didn't lose anything through sloppy packing was paramount. As you can imagine finding accessories for a 35yr old bike is close to impossible but at least these days I had some capacity to make parts if they were not available. Back then if I couldn't make it with Meccano or the grown up version, Dexion shelving, it didn't get made. Whatever the cost of the welding evening classes I took twenty years ago, it was money well spent!

Reloading the luggage yet again during a fuel stop on the 1979 Elephant trip -