Just because there is no pay cheque doesn’t mean it’s not productive, just because there’s no boss doesn’t mean it’s not work, just because its fun doesn’t mean it’s easy. Enforced homelessness, it’s a constant battle to find comfort and privacy whilst living with consideration and politeness. Ok I'm not on the streets but soon hopefully I’ll be on the road. Not carrying my possessions in a trolley, but having them stored in various boxes in various sheds and garages, knowing where to find most stuff and being absolutely clueless as to where it might be if it isn’t where I thought it was. Sometimes you just want to close your door behind you and sit in a space that you have all to yourself. Go to a garage where my tools are or to a bathroom where my toothbrush is. That last happened in a hotel room in Kathmandu (the toothbrush not the tools) and then there was no electricity to see the toothbrush or water to brush my teeth. Then there was a tent in the Rockies (for having a door to shut behind me, not a bathroom).
Oh it all sounds so glamorous and I suppose it is but between the glamour is trying to make yourself invisible when you just feel like the hospitality you accept gratefully makes you conscious that your presents is all a bit invasive.
And anyway it’s not all beaches and mountains, bike rides and blogs. If you write about the fun its sounds like bragging if you write about the hardships it sounds like ungratefulness and if you don't write at all the blog shrivels and dies. The summer consisted of trying to get someone to publish the story about the last trip, buying 2 bikes for the next one and selling a third as a non starter, then preparing them both for another overland journey. I know from experience what’s necessary and what’s not, and then the frustration that you have most of that already but it’s in another country. And so are the tools to alter and fit them with. There is a lot to be said for never stopping, kit out the bike and keep on riding, but it hasn’t worked out that way.
When ya on the road you survive, you improvise, you utilize and use ingenuity, off the road you try to remember where and when you last had the thing you need. Another bike in another country another starting point and another unknown stopping point. Just leave Denver and head south. And back? I'm not thinking about it. You can either torture yourself with a deadline, a ferry or flight, a fixed date and destination an unimaginable distance away; or ride with a vague sense of direction but untimely no intension other than to stop when its time. Both have their advantages and hardships.
The same can be said for company, ride alone and take all you can carry, borrow nothing from no one and have no one to share your independent and solitary experiences with, but experience what only the solo traveller can. Native life, wild life and inner reflection aren’t attracted to conversation but come because there isn’t one.
But share the load, share the road, halve the responsibility and diminish the fear, laugh out loud in your crowd and your loneliness, nervous natives and nature will all be gone. The pros and cons of companionship. I've travelled with myself long enough to know what I'm like, to know what I like. Usually the opposite of what I have.
Preparation has been a pastime, an obsession but with the ease of familiarity and comfort of experience, combined with money saving minimalism, knowing that every penny saved on flashy equipment is an extension to the trip. It also means a less desirable bike in the eyes of the opportunity taking and trip ending thief.
As always the neighbouring countries citizens have given there grim warnings of crossing the border, drug cartels and gangs, shootings, muggings and other horror stories which no one has actually witnessed firsthand, ‘take a gun’ I'm warned, ‘actually take two’ I don't think so. I’ll take it all with a pinch of salt, I’ll take wide eyes, alertness and as fewer chances as possible, but I will not be carrying a piece because I'm not in a movie, I'm not scared and I would probably just crack myself up at how ridicules I looked if I ever was in a situation where I actually had to point it at someone. May be I should hold it sideways and say ‘motherfucker’ a lot that always looks pretty cool in the movies.
‘Take a gun’ they say, for fucks sake, Americans always want to take their guns, like a 4 year old with a teddy bear they just feel safer with them, I think I’ll just take Monklet, what could possibly go wrong?
I always find guide books far more informative and easier to relate to after I've been to the place they write of. Nothing worse that have preconceived ideas and high expectations only to find that site is closed, covered in scaffolding, off season, obscured by clouds or tourists. Actually there is something worse and that's not even knowing the site was there in the first place and missing it, so if I just check my guide book every night to see what’s in tomorrow’s vicinity I can be pleasantly surprised and get satisfaction without the anticipation.
Maybe it’s because it’s still 4 weeks away, maybe because I'm so familiar with what will be the first few days riding , maybe its because I'm going with a friend, maybe it’s my complete lack of research, but hopefully it’s because after Asia alone, it can’t be any scarier than I have already witnessed. And that's why my nails are not bitten and my nerves are not threaded. I'm just waiting. Waiting for the thrill of the journey and not concerned about the pot holes pit falls and all the other things I can’t change. That’s why I've had noting much to say. Ultimately it’s just waiting for the departure date, prepared to a degree, researched to a point, not complacent but on top of things, pacing methodically through a list of trivial ‘to do’s’.
There is one thing, I have half my bike this side of the Atlantic, I bought back the head and cams, cylinder and piston, valves and springs and then another complete head too.
Not entirely satisfied with the suitability of my miss-matched head components and not convinced my cylinder was round inside there may be no perfect circle but there is defiantly imperfect ones.
So for peace of mind and in the name of oil conservation I am having them checked out here so I can be sure the top end is tiptop and I can divert my attention to the lumpy bottom on my return. Nothing like having an airline imposed weight limit and a bunch of road survival equipment to take with you and just when you have juggled your weight limit to the max you have the entire top end of an engine to take with you too.
Road trips shouldn’t start with a flight, I have an over active fly-ride problem and I'm still over weight. Are they really going to accept my aluminium panniers, one as check in one as hand luggage, and if they do will the carrousel rip my Mongolian and Korean stickers. And can’t I find something more important to worry about, bandito's and drug barons, corruption and carless drivers, paperwork and police, illness, immunization and imminent death, kidnapping and mugging, heat and humidity, breakdowns, bribes and boarder controls. No I think my luggage is plenty for now.
