There are starts to a vacation that simply run smoothly. You put your things on the bike, wave goodbye to everyday life, set off and somewhere beyond the horizon, mountains, lakes and good coffee await.

And then there’s my start.

I set off from home in the morning. The old lady was ready, the fresh rear tire fitted, the slave cylinder repaired and I was full of anticipation. Finally on the road again. Towards the south, towards the Alps, towards the northern Italian lakes. After the France-Jura tour in April, there was just something left open. Back then, I had only seen the Alps from afar. This time I wanted to get closer.

Everything went according to plan until Kassel. And then came the first bad news of the trip: The left blinker was dead. Not weak. Not bitchy. Not “maybe I’ll signal again later”. But completely dead. No indicator light in the cockpit, no flashing at the front, no flashing at the rear. Nothing. For a motorcycle tour, that’s about as helpful as an umbrella made of kitchen paper.

So I stood at a rest area near Kassel and started making phone calls. Workshops in the area, BMW workshop in Kassel, someone had to be able to help. The normal workshop couldn’t do much more because there was no service employee left. At least I got a BMW emergency number in Munich.

I actually reached someone there. And then began the part that you can tell later with humor, while at the time you find it about as funny as a wasp in a helmet: waiting. Three hours. At around 27 degrees. Without shade. In motorcycle gear.

At some point, I retreated to the rest stop restaurant because there was simply no air outside. Currywurst, chips and Coke became my improvised crisis food. Not exactly Alpine cuisine, but perfectly adequate at that moment. Meanwhile, the same question kept running through my head: was that it? If the blinker can’t be repaired, the tour is over. It was clear to me that I couldn’t continue without a working blinker.

At some point, roadside assistance arrived. The man was friendly, but also said directly that motorcycles were not necessarily his specialty. His first official act was to connect my notebook. I already suspected that this would be about as useful in this case as a weather report from last week. The hazard warning lights and horn were still working. A cable break was therefore rather unlikely. Everything pointed to the switch.

As he didn’t have a suitable precision tool in the vehicle, he offered to drive to the workshop together and open the switch there. How much would it cost? Difficult. How long it would take? Also difficult. Whether it would work? Also difficult. In short: everything was difficult. But there was no real alternative. So I went along.

The switch was opened in the workshop and the diagnosis was clear: corroded inside. The button for the left blinker could no longer be saved. A new switch? Not available. Apparently no longer manufactured for the machine. The old lady is no longer quite as good as new, even if she probably sees it differently herself.

Then came the improvisation. There were other buttons on the left-hand switch block, including the ABS button. The idea: re-solder the ABS button and use it as a blinker button in future. No guarantee of success, unclear duration, unclear final costs. At that point, I was already looking at around 80 euros just for a check. What should I do? Cancel the tour or let the soldering iron do the talking? So I said: Do it.

The helper disappeared with the switch, picked up the soldering iron and got to work. I waited in the workshop, where it was also quite warm. At some point he came back, reassembled everything and then the little miracle of Kassel happened: the left blinker worked again.

Not original, not elegant, but functional. And on this day, functional was about the same as Christmas, a birthday and a free pass at the same time.

However, the bill was less Christmassy: 262 euros. A hefty price, but at least the tour was saved. And to be honest: at that moment, it was more important to me to be able to continue driving than to philosophize about the amount for a long time.

Around half past six, seven o’clock, I finally set off. My destination for the day was Aalen, which was still about four hours away. The sat nav indicated an arrival time of around 11 pm. And that’s exactly what happened.

So I drove off into the sunset. That sounds more romantic than it was. Because at some point the sunset was gone and what remained was a rather dark, long, tough highway drive on the A7. It dragged on. At some point it was no longer fun. But I made progress. I finally arrived in Aalen shortly before 11pm. Tired, sweaty, 262 euros poorer, but still on the road.

And because this first day obviously still needed a little technical supplement, I discovered in Aalen that my GPS tracker had now also hung up and was no longer working. Blinker saved, tracker offended. Technical assessment: still room for improvement.

But the old lady was there. I was there. The journey wasn’t over. And sometimes that’s enough for day 1.

Conclusion: Sometimes a single defect is enough to suddenly turn anticipation into uncertainty. Day 1 was exhausting, expensive and nerve-wracking – but it ended with the most important realization: the journey is not over yet.