The next day, I returned the bike at the planned time. I was hoping my little accident of day 1 would go unnoticed, but they found out. I’m an honest person, but the bike was already scratched all over, and I did not really know what their policy was on cosmetic damage. After a phone call to the Honda dealership, they decided to charge me the price of a paint job: 110 Euros. I’m sure they are going to buff the fairing and pocket the money but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. For the safety of the next customer, I did give them a list of all the other (more serious) issue the motorcycle had.
When dealing with the paperwork, the girl paused for a moment, got up and checked the bike, phones someone and had a conversation where the word « kilometros » came up quite often. Lucky for me, they had made a mistake on the contract (and the website) and had given me unlimited distance where normally there would have been a cap. I explained to her that this had been a major selling point for me to which she replied that even if there was an advertised limit, things could always be arranged. What they wanted to avoid, beside extra maintenance, was Germans (and she specified Germans) renting cheap scooters and driving them all over sort of like I did. Cheers to you Germans, abusing scooters all over the world.
So the tally is 2192 kilometers. A big loop around during which I saw a lot of Greece and I tell you, it’s beautiful. This adventure ended up costing me more than expected (what a surprise), but it was worth every euro. I wish I would have brought my camping gear as the landscape was full of opportunities to set up a tent and enjoy the view, but all that extra equipment would have made the remainder of my travels more logistically difficult.
While driving Greece, I learned a few lessons and feel like I improved a lot on my driving skills. The roads were nowhere as difficult as those in Vietnam or Thailand, but I had a much bigger motorcycle and was driving generally much faster because the bike allowed me to (all while keeping a safe margin of error (except that time I crashed (which was almost unavoidable))).
I’ll call this my 4th adventure riding trip and just like the three previous ones, it will be memorable and will be the stuff of stories for years to come. While walking around Thessaloniki that afternoon, I felt a sense of relief not to be riding a motorcycle.
But that’s only going to last a short time before the open road calls again.
