FEATURE – Postie Bike World Trip – Pt 2

Words: Mike Ryan and Bob Dibble. Photos: Bob Dibble

In the first part of his epic around the world journey on a humble Honda CT110 ‘postie bike’ (see JUST BIKES #365), Bob Dibble encountered heat, cold, altitude and the sort of long hours in the saddle that’d challenge the most-seasoned adventure traveller. He also encountered surprising road and fuel conditions in the USA, but what lay ahead, specifically beyond Western Europe, would provide its own surprises; not so much in the road and trail conditions, but in the warmth and hospitality of strangers.

As mentioned in part 1, Bob had his little postie bike fitted with a home-made, foldable sidecar and did the entire journey solo. This latest journey followed an epic drive through the US, Canada, the UK and Europe in a classic Holden sedan in 1997 and a round-the-world trip on a Yamaha Diversion with a sidecar eight years ago.

Don’t forget, too, that this latest trek was done after diagnosis of and treatment for prostate cancer.

Little Bike, Big Attention

To recap the North American section covered in Part 1, Bob’s trek on The Mighty Runt started in Vancouver, Canada, in May, 2017, and following a roundabout route that ticked off several highlights in the USA, concluded in Toronto in mid-July.

In Toronto, the CT110 was fully serviced, then packed for airfreighting to the UK, where the trek continued in early August, 2017.

Just like they did in North America, Bob and The Mighty Runt attracted attention on the other side of the Atlantic.

With good road and weather conditions, the journey through the UK and western Europe was largely uneventful, but Bob still decided to challenge himself and his postie bike by taking a roundabout route that included Liechtenstein, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Greece, Germany and the Czech Republic, amongst others. Bob also deliberately sought out similar mountain passes to those he targeted in the US.

“A highlight in Europe was the Grossglockner Pass in Austria. I went up very early on a Saturday morning, trying to get cool air so I wouldn’t have overheating problems, but it was still a challenging ride. You’re up around 2,700 metres at the top.

“I was doing the tourist thing at the top of Grossglockner when all the other Saturday riders started coming up. I swear, there was millions of dollars’ worth of bikes sitting in the car park, but only one that anyone was taking any notice of – mine!” Bob laughed.

Home and Back

By late September, 2017, Bob had reached Bulgaria, where he decided to take a furlough – “bugger riding in the snow!” – that turned out to be longer than expected.

Scheduled post-surgery checks back home in Australia revealed Bob required further radiation treatment, so what was going to be five months off the bike stretched to eight. By the time he was reunited with The Mighty Runt (July, 2018), Bob was in the Northern Hemisphere summer – good riding weather for that part of the world, but likely to be more challenging further east, as both summers and winters are extreme in that part of the world.

Given he covered similar ground in his 2011-13 trek, Bob had a fair idea of the sort of road and weather conditions he’d encounter as he exited Europe. The unknown, though, was the politics. Unstable regimes, conflicts and straight out wars could force changes to the itinerary, but Bob was pretty philosophical about it all, given what he’d just been through.

Rested and ready for the road ahead, Bob was also prepared with a couple of sets of carby bolts added to his kit. It turned out he’d need them almost immediately, as those bolts managed to go AWOL for a second time in Bulgaria – good thing he packed spares!

One thing Bob won’t carry, though, is GPS.

“Sometimes it can be incredibly useful, but it can be incredibly inaccurate, too,” Bob stated.

“If you don’t use GPS, you actually have to stop and talk to people. And the greatest thing about travelling on a little bike like this is that, when you stop and talk to people, you never know what’s going to happen. And people are pretty good the world over.”

While Bob had contacts he could call on for help on the route so far, he’d be relying on the kindness of strangers as he travelled further east. His faith in people being good would be rewarded on several occasions.

From Bulgaria, Bob continued on to Turkey, where the sights were amazing, but the roads much less so. Those sights included Anzac Cove and, much further inland, the Cappadocia caves.

The days in Turkey were constantly 35 to 40 degrees, but Bob said the smog was a much worse problem than the heat, especially at sea level. Despite this, The Mighty Runt kept going, which obliged Bob to keep going, too!

“Joe from One Ten Motorcycles would say to me over and over, ‘Listen to the engine. Listen to the engine’. It’ll tell you when it’s feeling not too good.”

Daily tightening of bolts and religiously changing the oil every 1,000kms kept the engine feeling good, but the same couldn’t be said for some other parts of the bike.

An exhaust extension, footpeg bolt and a bunch of gear on the sidecar were all lost in Turkey as rough roads rattled all sorts of items loose. Those roads were also challenging for other reasons, with cambers all over the place that would be tough for a two-wheeler, let alone a sidecar outfit with its different points of balance.

“You had to be extremely careful going downhill – on the left-handers, it’s very easy to lift that sidecar wheel and flip over,” Bob explained. “Go around a left-hander where a truck has been and the side of the road will be compressed, so your bike is a foot lower than the sidecar. If you’re not expecting that, you go over.”

Major mountain climbs in Turkey tested Bob and The Mighty Runt, too, especially when high winds felt like they’d fling both bike and rider off the road. Huge tunnels in the east of Turkey, part of a hydro-electric scheme, had to be exited with caution, as the wind could be ferocious.

Despite these challenges, Bob’s daily mileage remained remarkably consistent. From ultra-smooth bitumen in Europe, to goat tracks in Kazakhstan, Bob covered between 200 and 400 kms each day. Sure, it’d take longer on the rougher roads, but Bob logged remarkably similar mileage day after day after day.

Kindness in Karabakh

After Turkey, Bob had planned to ride through Iran, which he may have accidentally done anyway, but that’s another story! A visa collected in Armenia had conditions he couldn’t comply with and compromised visas he’d already organised for India and Pakistan. So, with typical Aussie improvisation, he decided to get a visa from Azerbaijan as well, which led to time in Karabakh, a “country” most people have never heard of, but one that Bob will never forget.

“Azerbaijan and Karabakh had a war in 2016. It’s an ongoing hatred that goes back to Soviet times and the whole border region is just completely obliterated.

“You go through a village and there’s not a roof remaining on any of the buildings, bridges are blown out and there’s almost no infrastructure left.”

With tensions still high in the region, including regular casualties from skirmishes, Bob had to be careful here, but he found that people in this grim situation simply got on with life and were more than keen to assist him on his journey.

“I went into a village in Karabakh. There was only one building with a roof and it was a little shop. I thought, ‘I’m going to go into that shop and buy something’. I went in there and there was hardly anything in the shelves, but a little old lady - who was ten years younger than me but looked ten years older – came out with a great big smile on her face.

“I bought a couple of cakes, just so I could spend some money there. Well, she picked up two more, wrapped them up for me and wouldn’t take any money at all. She’s got an Australian flag hanging on her shelf now.”

This spirit of generosity, from people that essentially have nothing, would be encountered again and again. Bob could only offer his thanks and a small stock of Aussie flags and toy kangaroos he carried with him, but ran out of these as so many people proved so helpful.

While travelling through Karabakh was sobering, Bob’s efforts to get to the Caspian Sea and continue the trek in Kazakhstan were almost comical.

“If you go to Karabakh, you need a visa, but if you’ve got that visa in your passport, you can’t get into Azerbaijan. The only common border is Armenia, so I had to go back to Armenia, up into Georgia, and then back down into Azerbaijan!”

Boat to Somewhere…Eventually…Maybe

Despite setbacks, Bob reached the Azerbaijan shore of the Caspian Sea by mid-August, 2018, aiming to ride down to Baku and link up with a ferry to get across to Kazakhstan.

Knowing the ferry service in this part of the world to be notoriously unreliable, Bob decided to take a chance when he was told of both a closer port and a ferry leaving soon…

“It was leaving at 3 o’clock that afternoon, so I thought, ‘Geez, I better grab that’. We eventually got on that boat at 7 o’clock the next night! It came with a bunk, but no facilities whatsoever and the boat takes 22 hours to go across the Caspian.”

While on the boat, Bob got chatting to another Westerner who turned out to be a marine engineer: “He pointed to a metre-wide bubble on the hull and said, ‘See that bubble? That’s just rust painted over rust – this ship should not be afloat’. I didn’t really want that information!”

In Kazakhstan (and not at the bottom of the Caspian!), bureaucracy put the brakes on yet again when a simple piece of paper prevented Bob from continuing.

“When the boat got in, at about 9 o’clock at night, I was the first vehicle unloaded. But I didn’t get through customs until quarter to 9 the next morning. When you’re 71, you don’t really want to be having sleepless nights like that!” Bob laughed.

“We went round and round in circles. They’d lost a piece of paper and it turned out it was sitting on the insurance guy’s desk. I was not happy, I can tell you!”

The roads in Kazakhstan were some of the worst Bob had encountered, but he knew what they’d be like, having ridden here on his last sidecar journey in 2011-13.

Ironically, on the only good bit of bitumen for hundreds of kilometres in the Kazakhstan desert, the bolt holding the CT110’s swingarm came loose and proved impossible to get back in.

“Eventually, a couple of fellas roll up in a low-loader truck. You could call these guys honorary Australians. They didn’t speak English, I didn’t speak Kazakh, but I could hear their words in Kazakh, essentially saying ‘She’ll be right mate’.

“The three of us picked the outfit up and put it on the truck. They arranged a mechanic and dropped it in to his place - just wonderful. And the funny thing was, my bike was in a lot better condition than their truck!”

Another irony here was that, despite the appalling roads, fuel quality in Kazakhstan was better than anywhere in North America. Bob explained that, in the USA, 87 and 91 octane are the common grades, which The Mighty Runt doesn’t particularly like. Outside of North America, there were no problems with obtaining 95 or 98 octane petrol, even in the middle of the desert.

Kindness experienced in Karabakh would be repeated in Kazakhstan, too.

“In Kazakhstan, I had people coming up and giving me money. I’d said ‘No’ and they would insist – you just couldn’t get away without taking something. These guys, they’ve got nothing, but their generosity is amazing.”

Back to South East Asia

In September of 2018, Bob had to return to Australia for further check-ups, which combined with the visa problems mentioned earlier, meant the planned ride through Pakistan, India and Bangladesh to reach Asia had to be bypassed. That in turn meant the journey with The Mighty Runt continued in Malaysia.

When Bob mentioned he rode through ‘Thirty and a Half’ countries on this trip, we knew there was a story there. It turns out the “Half” was Laos.

“I tried to get across the Thai border at one of the friendship bridges, but they wouldn’t let me through,” Bob explained. “Laos has got this rule that you can’t get in there with a motorbike under 250cc. I tried one of the smaller crossings further down the border and they weren’t going to let me through, either. I tried one more and they were very helpful, but still weren’t going to let me through. So, I figured I’d earnt half a point for effort!”

While Laos was a no-go (at least on a 105cc sidecar outfit!), Malaysia and Indonesia presented no such problems, with that part of the journey completed relatively easily before the home stretch in Australia. With its mix of bustling cities and incredibly tranquil countryside, Asia had some extreme contrasts. Some extreme humidity, too, but Bob’s a Queenslander, so it was almost like being home!

Bob called the final leg in Australia the ‘Vegemite Sandwich Run’, but it would prove just as challenging as anything he’d encountered to that point.

Mighty Runt Comes Home

Taking the long way home to Queensland, Bob started in Adelaide in November, 2018, riding roughly parallel to the Darling River heading north east.

Problems were encountered almost immediately, including losing the carby bolts for a third time, but running repairs kept The Mighty Runt going.  

Heading into New South Wales, Bob stuck to dirt roads to avoid highway-speed traffic, but on the stretch from Wentworth to Bourke, a ‘rough surface’ warning proved to be an understatement. Mile after mile of corrugations here nearly shook the little CT110 outfit to pieces.

“The worst roads I encountered were in Kazakhstan. But Australia was harder on the bike,” Bob said. “The corrugations were really tough on that little bike. Because it’s such a short wheelbase, it walks all over the place. You try speeding up, you try slowing down, but nothing works.”

A mirror and front mudguard said ‘goodbye’ to the bike here, with clothes and tools shook loose from the sidecar, too. Fortunately, these were recovered while Bob had some R&R in Louth, en route to Bourke.

“The Mighty Runt suffered, but never bitched,” Bob added. “I don’t know what Joe and Dan (at One Ten Motorcycles) did to that motor, but whatever they did, they should do it every time!”

Despite this, a service at the Honda dealer in Moree made the Runt a little happier for the leg into Queensland and a special appearance at One Ten Motorcycles on 24 November, 2018, which was the official end of a journey that started 19 months earlier and had covered almost 44,000kms.

Bob now holds an unofficial record of the smallest sidecar ridden around the world, ridden by the oldest rider, but it’s probably no surprise that he’s thinking of the next journey. Yep, Bob’s not done with the Runt just yet.

Mightier! Runtier!

Even before he finished this trip, Bob was thinking of the next one and how he could make The Mighty Runt better for it. We couldn’t mention this in Part 1, as Bob was keeping the story under his hat – and away from the wife! But now, ‘The Boss’ has given another trip her blessing, so work has proceeded apace on both bike and sidecar.

Those bone-rattling corrugations on the Darling have seen the CT110’s forks replaced with units from a CT200, the rear mudguard chopped and a higher, MX-style front mudguard added.

The ‘Mark 2’ version of the sidecar is more of a “box” design to stop items falling off, a semi-elliptic leaf spring has been added and it will also fold up against the bike, rather than hinge over it, reducing the height for freighting. The new version also has less bolts to do and undo for packing.

Exactly where Bob will take the new and improved Mighty Runt has still to be decided, with South America (Bob likes big hills!) and the four points of Australia being pondered.

Either way, you know that, wherever he decides to go, Bob will complete the journey and complete it in style on The Mighty Runt – Mark 2!

Bob extended the most significant thanks to wife Yan – The Boss! – for her support and the sacrifices she made to allow Bob to complete the ride. Thanks also to Joe, Dan and the team at One Ten Motorcycles, plus Lawrie, Teabags and Frank Wheeler for support, both moral and physical, as well as all the other people who helped out with bits and pieces.

Bob Gets Posted

 What we’ve featured in this two-part special covers only part of Bob’s amazing journey.

Responding to the interest his trek has attracted around the globe, Bob’s written a book.

Titled ‘Bob Gets Posted’, the book will cover the entire trip, along with what led to taking on such an amazing journey in the first place.

Bob confessed that writing the book took some time – harder than riding a sidecar outfit around the world - and he walked away from the laptop on many an occasion to work on the Mark 2 sidecar as a ‘sanity break’!

Despite this, the book is progressing and should be available soon. Watch this space!

Building The Mighty Runt

Joe Hanssen from One Ten Motorcycles first brought Bob’s journey to our attention and has been one of his most enthusiastic supporters.

Given what the little CT110 achieved, Joe’s justifiably proud of what he and his team delivered to Bob – a bike that not only survived but thrived on this truly epic journey.

As Bob bought it, Joe said the bike was essentially a stock CT110; mechanically sound and in roadworthy condition.

So, how do you prep a CT110 to survive such severe punishment over more than 40,000 kms?

“We decided to start with the motor - pull it down and completely rebuild it, with absolutely NO short cuts,” Joe explained. “Although we were out to improve performance, the bike had to be reliable and still look like a Honda CT110.”

Bored 1mm over, a new con rod kit was fitted. The standard valves were retained, but reseated and the head mildly ported.

A new cam chain, tensioner, cam chain roller, oil pump drive, gearbox bearings, seals and o/rings were all fitted, along with a fully rewound stator and new gaskets throughout. German made sprockets with a 428 X-ring chain were fitted and an oil cooler was added for the sort of continuous running Bob would be doing.

New clutch plates were used, but surprisingly, the gearbox was made up of mostly second-hand parts.

“We have so much in the way of second-hand parts here, so we went through all our gearbox parts and picked out the best in gears/shafts/selectors etc.,” Joe said. “As CT110s do a lot of low gear work with Australia Post, we decided to rebush a good first gear.”

On the cycle parts, the frame was thoroughly checked for fractures and proved to be OK.

A wider, longer seat from a Honda CT200 was fitted and positioned higher to better suit Bob’s physique: “Because Bob is a large frame guy, wider/higher handlebars were fitted, too.”

Bigger, heavier rear shocks were also fitted, as well as a steering damper and higher grade battery.

Simpler things, like checking and re-greasing the steering head bearing, checking the swing arm and fitting new rear wheel cush drive rubbers were also part of the preparation.

On the wheels, new bearings were fitted, with thicker heavy-duty spokes added. Front and rear 300 x 17 road trail tyres had ultra heavy-duty tubes fitted, plus rim tapes for extra strength.

Finishing touches included a brighter headlamp globe and adding a USB socket for mobile devices.

As the motor was virtually faultless throughout the trip, it’s no surprise that Bob’s turning to One Ten Motorcycles to help build The Mighty Runt Mark 2.

Want a postie bike to go around the world? Contact One Ten Motorcycles! Call (07) 5495 3944, or go to: onetenmotorcycles.com.au