15-03-2008 First show in Indonesia @ "U Mild U Bikers Safety Race to Asia"

We just got back from our trip to Indonesia for our first show there, it was a amazing experience!

Monday the 3th of March we left to the airport for a 15 hour long flight to Indonesia.
Finaly Arrived at in Jakarta we were picked up by our local guide who would took care of all our need for the upcoming week.
On the way to our hotel we couldn’t believe our eyes, no one is following the traffic rules!
Its complete chaos and if you want to go somewhere 10km away you need at least an hour to get there because of all the traffic jams.

After one short night in Jakarta we had to get up early for our flight to Palu, the city where the event would take place.
Palu is a small city on the island Sulawesi and people there don’t see tourists very often, so being white there already is something special!
After dropping off our stuff at the hotel we went to have a look at the venue, the place was still empty and it didn’t realy look like a place for a racing event...
But that soon changed, in a couple of days they transformed the place into full racing paddock, big stage, custom bike contest and several other activities.

On the first day in Palu i got to see my bike, a brand new Honda CBR600RR '08!
The guys from Horse Power Big Bikes Jakarta prepared the bike for me with a 12 o'clock bar, crash protection, custom made tank and several other mod’s.
All of the other adjustments for example the handbrake and sprockets i brought myself.

I needed some time to set up the bike and get used to it, the '08 model is much more aggressive than the '06 model that i am riding at home.
On the second day we went to a training spot; a small bumpy road on the outside of town, very difficult to practice but in a few minutes i was getting the hang of this new bike.
Stephanie also wanted to ride the 600, but the aggression of the bike in combination with the bad roads made it very difficult for her...
The organization of the event heard this and immediately arranged a 150cc Yamaha for Steph! Thanks U Mild and Yamaha!
It also took her only a few minutes to get used to the bike and it didn’t take long before she wheelied the whole road!

Saturday was the first show day, in 15 minutes we had to cover the entire circuit that was about 2 km long.
That’s a very short amount of time to ride on all the places, but with a little improvise it went great and the audience loved it.
The people standing on the bridge were running from the left to the right and vice versa to catch a glimp of the action!

The rest of the shows also were a big success and all the girls in the audience were screaming Steph's name!
With the last show on Sunday we had to stop early because the police could not longer hold the spectators back.
All the people on the bridge massively wanted to go on to the track to see the show!

We had frontpage articles in allmost every news paper and also been on national tv and radio.
Even the police came to ask me if i could stunt one of there police bikes! Off course that was an offer i could not refuse so i pulled some wheelies in front of the police station!

I cant wait to be back in May for the next event in Padang, Sumatra.

Thanks a lot to U Mild for the good organization of this event and taking good care of us during our stay!

- Johnnie

Click here to check out the pictures!
Also check out some of the newspaper articles in the press section.