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Well, then, it’s done. Or perhaps it has started. Maybe both.
Around 4pm today, after saying the hardest goodbyes, I left Seattle on Day 0 of this crazy adventure on which I’ve embarked. After four years of dreaming, two years of scheming, a year of planning and many days divesting and boxing up my life’s goods and savoring final moments with my wonderful friends, I’m actually doing it.
Ho. Ly. Shit.
I’m exhausted and sore. Sleep now.
* Hopefully without the tragicomedy in the original.
Today has been pretty productive. So far I have:
I also had coffee and conversation with my good friend Tabasco, who luckily got first dibs on a big pile of clothes that I’m giving away (not to worry, gentlemen, he took mostly work clothes. Being a blacksmith, he is rough on work shirts and such). This evening, I’ve got plans to visit with other dear friends.
Yeah, good day!
Oh, and here’s a neat photo that was recently taken of me by Jeremy Center, a most excellent photographer I’ve known for a few years. Check out his work!
Many moons ago – in fact, back in August before I’d even bought the bike – I posted an expected itinerary. For a number of reasons those plans have changed somewhat, so here’s a revisit. The big change is that I probably won’t be venturing into the Baltic Republics or Scandinavia, sadly. I guess I will just have to save those places for another trip. :)
April 15th – June 1: USA (and a tiny bit of Canada)
June – October: European Pinball
Also mixed in there (dates unknown) will be likely visits to Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, the UK (including the Isle of Jura, whence come the Shaws – my maternal grandfather’s family), Swiss Alps. Maybe Paris again, because it’s so beautiful.
Assuming the UK happens in August, and not factoring in any of those other spots, that looks something like this:
Fall: Ride into the Danger Zone
When I wrote up the initial draft of this itinerary, I certainly didn’t expect multiple democratic revolts and a civil war to erupt across the entirety of Arabic North Africa. As a result, these particular plans are the most volatile. If Libya proves to be out of the question, I’ll probably try to figure out a way to see Egypt and Morocco, and will sadly end up skipping Tunisia. Unless I can manage to purchase transport on some freight ship, rather than a ferry.
Winter 2011-2012
Spring – Fall 2012:
I’ve purchased all my new riding gear for the trip. Here it is, from top to bottom (photos of me in gear forthcoming once the helmet arrives):
Sorry about the radio silence of late – more soon, as the date gets closer.
tl;dr: I don’t like making concrete plans when I travel, preferring to sketch out a plan and letting the details fall into place on the fly.
I started traveling relatively late. My first trip abroad (not counting excursions to Canada – no offense intended to my many wonderful Canuckistani friends) was in 1998. I was 30. Shameful, I know, but my youth was misspent in ways other than itinerant backpacking around Europe.
After a year or so of contracting at Microsoft, I realized that I could reasonably afford to travel for a spell without worrying about whether I’d still have a home upon my return. I first considered a trip to Europe, but realized pretty quickly that I wanted to go for something less familiar. I decided to go to Thailand for a month by myself. I was (and still am, after four trips) fascinated by Thailand and SE Asia, and was intrigued by the concept of my first trip abroad being a country that is ~95% Buddhist. I expected it would fry my circuits a bit, and I was OK with that.
So I bought a R/T ticket. I had an arrival date and a departure date. Through friendships forged while I lived on Orcas Island, I had a reservation at a guesthouse in Bangkok called Shanti Lodge, which sounded to me like some magical oasis in the heart of one of SE Asia’s most dense and chaotic cities (turns out, it was and still is exactly that). I had a vague idea based on my readings that I wanted to go to Koh Phangan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand, off the east coast of the long tail of the southern portion of the country. I had no more concrete plans than this.
The morning after I arrived in BKK, I met a delightful German couple who were on their last 36 hours of their trip to Thailand. I was fresh and green and had no clue what the hell was going on around me. We hit it off, and spent most of the remaining waking hours before they returned to Germany wandering Bangkok together.
The next evening, after they left, I found a new adventure. Anthea, a cute British woman staying at Shanti, was headed to Khao San Road with friends for drinks and socializing. At this point, I don’t remember if she invited me or I invited myself, but no matter: I found myself on Squalid Backpacker St, beer in face, munching on dried cuttlefish, fried crickets and grubs, flirting mercilessly and soaking in the hot, humid culture. Over the course of the evening, I mentioned to Anthea that I was headed towards Koh Phangan, and she said “You must go to Thong Nai Pan – it is the BEST beach on the island.” With that sort of recommendation, where else could I go?
A few days later, after a night train ride with its own stories and a passenger ferry that was more than a little skittish-making, I found myself on Koh Phangan. I got my bearings, found a ‘taxi’ (actually a small Toyota pickup with lining the sides of the bed) pointed to Thong Nai Pan, and hopped in along with three other passengers. I chatted a while with two of them – a brother-sister pair from North Carolina, then we all settled into silence for most of the remaining ride up and over the spine of the island. Eventually, I struck up a conversation with our remaining passenger, who clearly understood the lay of the land here much more – he was wearing a sarong, didn’t have a massive backpack, and just seemed … mellow. Turns out he was also a Stuart – a choreographer in Sydney for half the year, Thai beach resident the remainder – and on the return trip from the Malay border for a visa run. He asked if I knew where I was staying, and when I confessed that I didn’t he just said “Come with me.” He dragged me to his favorite “resort” on the beach, a cluster of a dozen or so bungalows with a bed and mosquito net and a bathroom. For five dollars a day. Thirty steps from the beach. I decided that this would be just fine.
I’d “planned” to stay on Koh Phangan for four or five days. Suffice to say, I stayed for ten – and the only reason I left was because Anthea, the cute British girl from Shanti, was going to be in Phuket soon, and I was at least a little smitten.
So then, off to Phuket! I had a phone number in my notes, for Kim and Apichart (the owners of Shanti Lodge, who I had briefly met while living on Orcas – which is a story unto itself). I called and spoke to Kim, relaying the close mutual friend we had, and she basically said “So, do you want to meet for dinner and get your bearings, or would you like to come stay at our place?” Of course, I opted for the latter! I ended up there for another ten days or so, spending time with Kim and Apichart and their delightful children, and with Anthea, who arrived a day or two after me. I thought about heading elsewhere, but decided that was foolish. I only left when my flight home drew close, in order to give myself enough time to wrap up details on a suit I was having made.
This trip – my first time really traveling – helped me realize that I like having loose, flexible travel plans. I’ve done my best to continue living this travel philosophy since this trip, whether traveling solo or with a partner. I fully intend to keep as flexible as possible while on my upcoming adventure.
Given that today was a gloriously beautiful fall afternoon, it seemed like a great day for a ride – a chance to take the new bike out a bit further afield than I had thus far, get a little twisty. If you ride, you know the drill.
Sadly, my lack of appropriate warmth won out over my ambitions, but I got in a good ride regardless:
Seattle => 520 => Novelty Hill Rd => Monroe => Cascade foothills => Snohomish => Kenmore => Seattle
I even managed to get myself a little lost! w00t!
And while I was out, I thought of a possible name: Buzzby. I’m gonna roll that around in the brain for a bit, see how it feels.
Today I learned about an interesting little treaty known as the Schengen Agreement that created an essentially borderless region throughout the member countries – most of the countries in the EU. This makes border crossings much easier once you’ve entered one country in the Schengen Area.
That sounds good, right? Yep. So, why complications?
Because of one little fact: residents of non-Schengen countries are only allowed to spend a total of 90 days in the Schengen Area in any 180 day period.
Trip plan, meet wrench. My current itinerary has me spending somewhere in the neighborhood of nine months in this zone over the first year of travel. I guess I’m going to be spending a lot of time looking at maps in the near future to determine how I might go about visiting all the places I’d like to see while staying in these constraints.
This is going to be tricky.
This was a good week for planning. There have been a number of looming Big Questions, and I found tentative answers this week to three of the largest.
Q: How do I get from Europe to Egypt?
A: The first reasonably scheduled item on my itinerary after getting to Europe is to make it to Egypt in early October to rendezvous with my friend Amani, who is going there to meet much of her Dad’s family for the first time. There are, of course, a number of ways to get to Egypt from Europe – including overland via Syria and Jordan, or by taking a ferry to Tunis and then riding through Libya. It seems unlikely that my schedule allows for the first option (unless I skimp on other earlier parts of the trip – for example if I only spend a month in Scandinavia), and the second option would result in a fair bit of backtracking as soon as I’m ready to leave Egypt.
Luckily, there’s a reasonably new ferry service from Venice to Alexandria. It looks like it has only been running for a year or so – and I hope it’s still running a year from now! It’s a longish trip – three days on a ferry, with a stop in Tantous, Syria – but looks to be the best option at the moment (I’ll keep Tunis as a backup plan).
http://www.visemarline.com/en/homepage.php
Q: What’s the best plan of action for shipping my bike to Europe?
A: Most of what I’ve read indicates that it’s far easier to ship bikes by air from Canada than the US. OK, I live in Seattle, so that’s just a quick jump to Vancouver and then I’m golden. However, a few weeks ago I decided that it would be good to start my trip by riding across the United States. I’d like to see my parents one last time before embarking on this wild adventure, and I also think it would be good to have a long shake-out ride to see if there are any big issues that surface along the way, which I might be able to resolve before being in the middle of, say, Finland. This would require me to ride from NC to Montreal (most likely), adding another big chunk of mostly highway travel before I could actually be in Europe.
I did some more research, and (re-)discovered Warren Motorcycle Transport, a Florida company that has been organizing motorcycle tours of Europe for about 25 years – and has spun off a sideline shipping business. They ship (with Lufthansa) out of most of the major hubs on the East Coast, into Frankfurt or Munich. One of their departure hubs is Washington DC, which is only about five hours from where my family lives. Even better, they require that you fly on the same plane as your bike, so arrival basically means clearing customs, going down to freight, and riding off into the start of the adventure. This is much much better.
http://www.gate.net/~bikeship/
Q: How in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster am I going to ride across China?
A: It is apparently quite the bureaucratic nightmare for foreign travelers to enter China with their own vehicles and travel inside the country. In addition to requiring Chinese plates for the bike, the usual visas and other paperwork, travelers are required to hire a guide – who serves, as far as I can tell, as an escort to keep people from going where they shouldn’t. This isn’t cheap for solo motorcyclists, since it also involves the guide’s vehicle, lodging, food and so forth – estimates I’ve seen fall in the $100/day range. Of course, if you’re in a car, the guide can ride with you, making it much more reasonable.
However, there are a few motorcycle adventure touring companies that organize large Eurasian trips which include travel through China, and at least one that allows folks who approach China on their own to join the tour for just that part of the journey. For a (understandably hefty) price, they arrange all visas, plates, and guide – along with lodging and itinerary.
Getting through China and into Southeast Asia has been one of the biggest mental hurdles thus far, and I’m glad to have at least one option to make it easier. Yes, it’s the “throw money at the problem” option, but I would’ve had to do so anyway were I to undertake China on my own, and would’ve likely accelerated any travel through the country in order to keep guide costs down. This approach gives me the option of letting someone else handle all the logistics – for what would otherwise be one of the most logistically challenging countries of the entire trip.
http://www.adventurebiketours.co.uk/china.htm
I’m sure there will be more big questions in the days and weeks ahead. I’m sure I’ll have more “this is crazy / it’ll never work / what the hell am I thinking?” moments. I’m also sure that I’ll remember to breathe, do the research, and find solutions.
