Packing up to cross the Pacific

Yesterday was a pleasant blast up the country to Seoul - we avoided the main routes, instead diverting through the farming areas, and a couple of National Parks - again beautiful riding.

Approaching Seoul was a pain - it's a huge city (the 5th largest in the world), and things are not made any easier as motorbikes are not allowed on the motorways - and guess where the main signposts for Seoul point to!!!

Anyway, we pretty much made it ok, we had a slight 'diversion' to Incheon (about 20km west of Seoul), and it poured with rain for the last couple of hours - the last couple of hours were all the approach to Seoul. Anyway, we made it.

So, off to the packers.

We were due at around 3pm, we were told it was about a 15km ride, which would take around 1 hour. So we left nice and early - 1:30.

We had a GPS waypoint for the packers. and a GPS track that 'should' be ok to follow. We missed a subtle left fork in the road, but no problems there - we would simply hook back up with the track further on. Little did we know we were entering Seouls equivalent of 'Spaghetti' junction, flyovers, underpasses, one-way roads, bridges - and the worst thing was that we still needed to get over the river to the south-side!!

Anyway, we managed to get back on track, and hadn't really lost much time, in fact, things were looking grand.

2km to go, the waypoint was right on the nose, then BAM - we were suddenly on a motorway, heading for bleeding Incheon again !! We passed a number of highway workers who stared at us (nothing new there), who seemed to be in some sort of state of shock.

So, 5km, 10km, 20km and still no off ramp, 25km and we arrived at the toll booth, and what a reception - fluorescent jackets everywhere, poilce cars - you name it; we had caused a bit of a stir... One of the police officers put me on a mobile phone to an English speaker, but before she could finish her sentence 'Do you know it is illegal to....', I interrupted with 'We're lost, we're trying to find the airport, etc, etc, etc' . The police ushered us off the highway, and we were left to navigate back via the busy suburbs.

Finally at the packers (about a 2 hour journey), we set about stripping the bikes ready for crating.

First a measure up;

Then onto the crate;

Then pack the panniers and wheels around the bike;

Then finally some pallet wrap;

Result - 3 Teneres, ready for the US;