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Today is exactly one year since I suffered near-fatal head, face and leg injuries when a car hit me at 40mph, and it’s also the end of this leg of my worldwide travel adventure, after more than 10,000 miles through 12 countries. But it’s not over.
Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France. Three tanks of super, one currywurst, two pints of coffee, one conversation with an inquisitive German, two with curious Belgians, one singing session with German truckers. The sun is out in France! Dry out, mostly, and check into the same Calais motel as an English couple who left the same Berlin motel this morning. Berlin to Calais, 600 miles, ish. Easy in a car, not so easy riding an off-road bike in heavy rain, but an absolute doddle compared to the hell that will be tomorrow’s 400 mile endurance event on British motorways. Give me a German autobahn in the rain over that, any day. Oh yeah, a quick word to the 100 German Hell’s Angels who pushed in front of me at the petrol station: You are all puffs, you look ridiculous, you don’t know how to ride a motorcycle, and the only way you’re scaring anyone is with the disgusting smell of your stupid beard that makes you look like a constipated walrus, you ridiculous, obnoxious, incompetent, malodourous, embarrassments to the worldwide brotherhood of bikers, to which you stupid fucking pricks do not, and never will, belong. Die under a bus, you pointless wankers.
Best view I’ve had all day is the one from an anonymous motel room outside Berlin, because I’m dry in here and not peering through a rain soaked visor, after spending the day nearly drowning in torrential rain and seeing nothing but the backside of Polish HGVs. Actually that’s not true, there was also one brothel, or "24 Hour Night Club", about every ten miles, a 47 mile traffic jam, 632 potentially fatal near-misses due to insane Polish driving, and another thirty or so that were due to a couple having sex on a motorway bridge.
Realising that Riga can’t be beaten, I decide to finish on a high note, load up the bike and make for home. A quick blast through Latvia, Lithuania, and a sizable chunk of Poland, leaves me with two or three more days riding before I will be home and can start planning my next trip to Riga. So until the next one begins, my travels are over.