The title 'Poor Circulation' is a reflection of our state of health and the fact that we had little or no money to execute our plan to ride around the world.

Financially speaking, those that had gone before us recommended a budget of £20,000 each, .... and that amount of money we simply didin't have. Alan already owned his Tiger 955i and I managed to sell my old despatch bikes and a few other possessions in order to buy my own slightly older and previously enjoyed Triumph at a knock-down price on eBay. Once we had the bikes, it was then a question of being a little 'Inventive' in how we approached the rest of requirements.

Thankfully, eBay is an amazing place to sell almost anything, no matter how useless the item may be to you, ... somebody out there will bid and buy it from you. We simply took everything that we owned, but didn't need for Poor Circulation, and sold it. The money from this, together with money that we managed to save from our general work provided us with a budget of around £20 per day for the trip.

The next stage was to convince people and organisations to donate products to help us. Talking with friends in the bike trade, they are literally inundated with requests from would-be adventurers seeking substantial sponsorship. In order to stand any chance of success, .... Poor Circulation needed to be slightly different. The first unique advantage was that we were already writing articles for The Riders Digest Magazine which would provide additional exposure for any businesses that chose to help us. We made a comprehensive list of everything that we could possibly need, from Oil Filters to Ferry Passage, and then simply approached every known company that could provide them.

We decided that the best possible approach was to ask each company for a very small part from our overall wish list. In doing this, we hoped that people would be more willing to send something to the value of £10 or £20, .... and in doing so, would not want to take control of the overall journey.

So far, this approach has proved to be amazingly successful. Many of those that we have approached have simply ignored our begging letters, some have sent the items that we requested, .... and a few have far exceeded our requests with offers of support beyond our wildest dreams.

Beyond the need for spare parts, tools and clothing etc., some financial support has been provided by my courier company CitySprint and The Riders Digest Magazine who will be publishing our articles over the coming months. With this financial support and the free products that we had already received, we were still a long way short of the £20,000 that was recommended by other world travellers. If we couldn't stretch the money, ..... the only other option was to shrink the need for it.

Poor Circulation is a strictly 'Self Catering' affair. Thankfully, through various bike related websites we have secured offers of free accommodation in various parts of the world, ... mostly from people that we are yet to meet. From various outlets we now have full portable cooking facilities and we hope to pick up locally produced low cost food along the way. We'll simply eat what we can and camp wherever we find a suitable spot at the end of each day.

Our greatest future expense is going to be fuel and passage from Japan to Canada. Once outside of western Europe, fuel prices will reduce, but it will still eat up an amazing chunk of our remaining funds. We've managed to set aside a fund to take us from Japan to Vancouver and as we get closer to that part of the journey, .... we'll decide on the best way to stretch that money to the max. Hopefully, we'll be able to use 'Air Freight' for the bikes. Although at first glance this appears to be more expensive than 'Sea Freight', when you finalize the calculations, .. there appears to be very little difference in the final costs. At least by flying the bikes to North America, we'll keep control of the timetable, ........ and on a journey like this, Time = Money.

As for transporting the bikes back to London at the end of Poor Circulation, ..... we'll simply have to cross that ocean when we come to it. There is no money in the pot to cover it and we've got to wonder if what remains of the bikes will actually be worth bringing home. And of course, ....... we might not even get that far.

Blue88