Not dead yet..

Cienciano

KamiKazi wrote: »

I'd love an S1000RR!

That's all we need to see. So, you'd love a beemer.
Nothing wrong with that, it makes you a better person that all the skangers on their jap shítheaps

prunudo

I tried logging on this morning and I see he has made the videos private, I'm raging as I'd only got as far as Alberta although by what I read here I probably saw the best bits of the trip.
Great series, Well done Oisin

Ayrtonf7

Did it get removed ? Finally decided to read this thread and now its gone from youtube ?

prunudo

Ayrtonf7 wrote: »

Did it get removed ? Finally decided to read this thread and now its gone from youtube ?

Yeah, appears to be unfortunately. I was subscribed to his channel and can't see any sign of it now. Maybe he got a DVD deal

Wonda-Boy

Yep, he deffo must have got signed up for some kinda deal.....lucky bastard.

thecivvie

Maybe he is trolling here and decided we would buy a DVD, I will

galwaytt

...is there any way of contacting Oisín ?

All his info is gone from YT, not just the videos. Can't see him on FB either.

Cienciano

galwaytt wrote: »

...is there any way of contacting Oisín ?

All his info is gone from YT, not just the videos. Can't see him on FB either.

Have you tried the adventure rider forum?
http://advrider.com/forums/member.php?u=100971

He'll probably post up on his thread why the videos were taken down
http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=870156&page=16

Hunterbiker

He seems to have edited the 1st post in that thread yesterday...

Fiskar

Pity, watched to Part 23 and was settling down for another bout of foul language (mind you he was pretty pissed off in Mongolia .
Only 2,000 views on some of them so don't know whats the story. If they were to get to TV there would need to be some heavy editing on the language front.
Ah well, at least the long way round is free to view!

Myrddin

Ah ffs, I only found these yesterday & had watched the first two. Reeks of a dvd deal or something alright, which is fine like I'll buy it, I just wanna see the rest of it!

Cienciano

Is it possible that a music company got in contact with him about the soundtrack being copyrighted??

TheFairy

Nah doubt it, everything has dissapeared, FB, YT etc etc. Hope he has got a deal, I'd love to 1, see it all again on a DVD, and 2, maybe see him do more trips?

thecivvie

Videos are there lads, well for me anyway

beefjerky

thecivvie wrote: »

Videos are there lads, well for me anyway

Yeah all back up now it seems, wooo! I can finish watching it now

Cienciano

He thought no one was watching them :eek:

Myrddin

Morning!
Well I'm truly stunned that anyone even noticed they were gone!

Don't worry I'm still alive....... and no it didn't get picked up for a tv deal.... or anything like that.... all that happened was no one was looking at them when I looked at the analytics.... so there wasn't any point playing to an empty room....


Videos are live - will leave them up.

Source

Empty room? Bloody analytics!

Hunterbiker

Very pleased it's all back up.

This thread has everything...

Discovery
Anticipation
Sudden disappearance
Tension and worry
Anger and resignation
Rediscovery and ecstasy

It's better than the TV

spoofilyj

Absolutely brilliant, I watched all the Not dead Yet videos over the weekend, amazing!!

I was hungry for more so I read till he got out of Mexico on his first trip on the ADV rider site, now it appears that these have now been removed so I'll just have to wait till the books arrive from Amazon...

I would love to get an idea of costs for these trips, how much it costs to ship the bike and then over all budget for each trip, i would imagine you would need at least 10,000 for surviving the trip alone then probably another 15K on bike and gear.

Oisin is a legend I'd love to have a couple of pints with the man and hear more about his adventures.

BrokenArrows

I think someone needs to point Oisin at this thread on the adv rider forums!

Gallant_JJ

Brilliant series, he seems like a real likeable fella. I had the fortune of taking a couple of months out a few years ago and driving to Mongolia, albeit in a Transit Van. Took in the Stans too. Would love to have had the ability to do something like this. He has a great way about him. Gem of a find OP.

underwaterdog

Just noticed his books have gone from the Kindle store. Hopefully he'll put them back up soon too.

Wonda-Boy

Something a bit fishy here TBH, whatever about taking down the UTOOB stuff taking down the books n all.....very strange.

Gallant_JJ

On episode 16, shock has busted on the bike, as he said himself. On our trip across Mongolia, we broke down at the exact same spot, it's an incredibly tough piece of road. We actually met 2 lads from Portsmouth in the next town who were doing the exact same trip as Oisin. There was actually 3 in total, but their friend was only riding a bike a little over a year, and had been fine up until Mongolia, was really struggling, constantly falling off, and they were only managing to complete 60 miles a day.

Cienciano

Gallant_JJ wrote: »

Brilliant series, he seems like a real likeable fella. I had the fortune of taking a couple of months out a few years ago and driving to Mongolia, albeit in a Transit Van. Took in the Stans too. Would love to have had the ability to do something like this. He has a great way about him. Gem of a find OP.

Ehhh, you can't just drop something like "a trip to Mongolia in a transit van" into conversation and not expect questions!
What was it like? Did you sleep in the van? Was it a camper Why? Any good storys from it? How far across mongolia did you go? How long did it take?

thecivvie

Gallant_JJ wrote: »

On our trip across Mongolia, we broke down at the exact same spot, it's an incredibly tough piece of road. .

Cienciano wrote: »

Ehhh, you can't just drop something like "a trip to Mongolia in a transit van" into conversation and not expect questions!
What was it like? Did you sleep in the van? Was it a camper Why? Any good storys from it? How far across mongolia did you go? How long did it take?

Add to that, did you go across Russia or fly over. I have had a long time dream to visit Russia and seeing these videos has re awaken the dream, to the extent that I am seriously looking at buying a GS in the next year or so

Gallant_JJ

Difficult to sum it all up in a post, but it was fantastic. There were 5 of us in a Transit LWB Jumbo Crewcab. Our route differed from Oisin's in that we got in quite a few more countries. Drove from Ireland, to the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Rep, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, back to the Altai region in Russia and finally Mongolia. One of the first highlights was Romania, beautiful country, managed to take in the Transfagarasan from Top Gear fame, stunning.

Our route was nigh on identical from the Altai region in Russia, through Mongolia to Ulaanbaatar. When I say identical, we hit the same towns and I recognised some sections of roads. Generally when crossing Mongolia from the west there is two routes, one north and south. We and he took the southern route, the northern route is almost impassible for the majority of the year.

Oisin does a great job in his videos of portraying how difficult it is, road conditions were extraordinarily bad. Had a road map but its sole use was to pinpoint the rough location of towns, navigated mainly using a compass and the mountain ranges. Complete guess work too as to which track to take. At one stage we were climbing on foot to elevated ground to try and establish what way the various tracks were heading. Its soul destroying to travel along one of those riveted dirt track for miles only to find it disappear completely.

In episode 16 hes comes to a Y in the road with a signpost with Altai town marked both directions, I distinctly remember it. He gambles on right only to get completely lost, we took a left.

The road where he breaks down between Khovd and Altai is extremely tough. Mile after mile of that riveted road, eventually took its toll on our van too, busting both shocks. This absolutely shook the daylights out of the van, windscreen cracking, dashing coming free from the van, floor falling out of our roof rack, end result was the fuel pump giving up.

In terms of stories this is where one of the more eventful stories began, a lad in a Dakar truck who was passing offered to give us a tow, which we were extremely grateful for. He hooked us up and took off at about 50 mile an hour, where before we had generally travelling at 20-30mph at best. He then seemed to completely forget he was towing anyone at all, flashing the lights, blowing the horn, waving blankets, letting off the fire extinguisher, nothing could get him stopped. The van was falling apart around us, wheel arches collapsed, tyres blew out, airbags blew and he continued to drag us along. My big fear was we would end up flipped onto our side but he finally stopped.

We ended up getting a lift back to Khovd and arranged a local truck to pull us back. Is a similar manner to Oisin's video, 6 of us jambed into the cab of a small rigid truck for a 6 hour journey. The tow back ended up in another hair raising experience. We had plenty of spare wheels so we jacked up the van and changed them, packed the shocks with bits of timber. The brakes were shot on the van so every time they slowed down we ran straight into the back of them, likewise going down hill. Eventually when we came to a steep hill coming into Khovd, they unhooked us and pushed us down, in the pitch darkness with only a torch, no brakes and no power steering. At the bottom they hooked us back up and towed us the remaining journey.

As Oisin has said in his video, the Ukraine felt like the real start of the trip, first run in with bent authorities who straight away were looking for money. This was the story of every border crossing apart from heading into Uzbekistan and Mongolia. Russian Mongolia border crossing took 3 days though.

When we were at the Kazak Uzbekistan border we were told there was a fuel crisis in Uzbek, which sure enough there was, people queuing or weeks to get a fill up. We had the capacity to carry over 100 litres in jerry cans, so we filled these along with anything else we could find, water bottles, coke bottles etc. We reckoned we were in a position to cross self sufficiently, but as it turned out we got talking to a Uzbek farmer from who we bought 50 litres for $75, about 4 times the going rate.


In terms of accommodation for the trip, we generally camped beside the van, on some occasions slept on top of the van and some nights in hotels, motels etc. You can see from his videos how windy it was, the van itself was great shelter from both the sun and wind.

I think the videos do a great job of portraying the Mongolians, they couldn't have been helpful enough, really hard working and nothing phases them. Mechanically they will chance their arm at fixing anything. Its an extraordinary tough environment, the winter before we arrived it had got as low as -50 degrees and they lost over 2 million head of animal.


Apologies if the post rambles a bit, but as I said its extremely difficult to sum it all up in a post. Any questions just ask.

Myrddin

Spent the day downloading Oisin's videos, not a hope I'm risking missing it all incase they get removed again.

Notch000

Gallant_JJ wrote: »

Difficult to sum it all up in a post, but it was fantastic.

Apologies if the post rambles a bit, but as I said its extremely difficult to sum it all up in a post. Any questions just ask.

Nice write up, do you have any video or photo links ???? thanks

Cienciano

Gallant_JJ wrote: »

Difficult to sum it all up in a post, but it was fantastic. There were 5 of us in a Transit LWB Jumbo Crewcab. ...................Any questions just ask.

Great post, thanks!
Were you and your mates on some sort of drugs when you came up with the idea initially? :pac:
Sounds like a great trip! How long in total did it take?