King Croesus

Mar 9, 2010

A couple of modern-age Norwegian explorers go on an around-the-world tour on 70 year old Danish motorcycles, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

Last night, NYCVinMoto and Bar Matchless hosted a slide show presented by a couple of Norwegian blokes named Klaus and Tormod who are on what they call "The Dumb Way Round" -- a dig at Ewan McGregor's well-funded documentary "The Long Way Round" where McGregor and company went around the world on brand spankin' new BMWs, while being followed by a camera crew in a support vehicle.

The show featured photos of the Norwegian's trip to date (Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, South Korea, and so on) and stories of their adventures in these places -- general themes being finding shit-faced old men with gold teeth and welding rigs willing to repair broken forks and frames in towns with spotty electricity, and drunk Russian women in bikinis at Russian biker rallies. When the slide of a bikini girl came up, Jason whispered that Tormod had confided to him that the Russian women were easy. "I think he's been frustrated by the women here in New York," Jason said.

"Tell him, welcome to the club."

You can read about their trip so far, and follow along as their adventure continues, on their fascinating and hilarious website <a href="http://www.kccd.no/home_en.html" target="blank">The King Croesus Contempt for Death Trip</a>.

In addition to selling T-shirts to help fund their trip, they also held a raffle where the winner was offered the opportunity to shave Klaus' beard -- which has been growing since they entered Russia. I bought a T-shirt, but not a raffle ticket, and, in fact, I didn't even stay for the spectacle, though I must admit I was curious to see who won. For 100 dollars extra, they said, the winner could wax it.

Our friend Rosko was there, recently back from a trip of his own. His wife is Australian and they go there once a year. He came over and shook my hand. "How's the arm?" he asked.

"Not bad," I said.

"When do you think you'll be riding again?"

"Not sure. The weather has been so nice, I was tempted to go out this past weekend." I raised my arm over my head to demonstrate having my range of motion back. "It's still a little weak, but not too bad."

"Best to wait until you're 100 percent and have no lingering problems," he said.

"Yeah," said Jason, "It's not like you're getting paid to ride or anything."

"Yeah. I suppose," I said, and changed the subject. "How was your trip, Rosko?"

"Uh, it was okay..."

"Yeah, I heard about your ear," said Jason.

"Your ear?" I said, "What happened with your ear?"

"A cockroach crawled into it, and I had to go to the emergency room."

Suddenly, the slide show had competition for the evening's most interesting story.

"I was sleeping on the floor," he explained, "and about an hour after lying down, <i>whoop</i> a cockroach crawled right into my ear."

"What did it sound like?"

"Pretty much exactly how you'd imagine it would sound like."

"So what happened?"

"I couldn't get it out, so I went to the emergency room.."

"And they just pulled it out with tweezers or something?"

"Well, at first, they tried to coax it out."

"Coax it out? How? By dangling a crumb of food outside your ear?"

"It was kind of funny. They turned out all the lights, and everyone tried to be really quiet. It didn't work."

"So then what?"

"They poured oil in my ear to suffocate it, hoping that when I tilted my head and the oil poured out, the cockroach would come out with it. Didn't happen. So they managed to kill it, but I had to come back the next day for them to extract it. The doctor used this long, tweezers kind of thing. It took a long time. He couldn't get a grip on it. Finally, he was like, 'I got it, I got it,' and then, snap, it broke in half. After they finally got the bulk of it out, they used a vacuum cleaner-type thing to suck out the remaining bits."

"Like some kind of gentle ear vacuum?" said Jason.

"Um...it was pretty intense, actually."

I stood around outside with Jason and kicked tires on the old bikes and watched as the Norwegians let a kooky old man in a long gray beard take one of the bikes for a spin around the block. "Who's the old guy?' I asked Jason, thinking it would be a shame for the bikes to make it several thousand miles through the Mongolian desert only to have one of them smashed to smithereens by a New York City bus.

"That's Dave Roper," said Jason. "He's a legend."

"Who?"

"Dave Roper, He's the only American to have ever won an Isle of Man TT. He's the guy to beat on the vintage circuit."

I felt dumb for having worried.

When Dave Roper came back around the block and parked the bike, Jason took a million pictures of him and Tormod posing with the 70 year old Nimbus.

Cameraless, I hopped a bus home.