My biking retrospective
Today marked the first week since I hit the road. It seems like ages since I departed Chicago and I must say the trip has given me the desired effect and changed my perspective on biking and bikers. Long I thought them to be criminal gang associated thugs. But the truth really is far faaar from that misconception. They are a really friendly bunch of people that will always help each-other in trouble. Even in the first week I have met loads and they are just normal people with a desire to explore the world. Just as an example I would mention the moment when I was riding on a road somewhere in Illinois and I noticed in my rear-view mirrors that my luggage was slipping to one side. I quickly pulled over after checking there was nobody behind me. But just as I got of my bike I car pulled up just in front of me and I was a little embarrassed when a driver checked that I was OK and if I needed any help. I was amazed. One of the points of the trip was also to see if biking is really for me, am I really for it. To be honest after the escapade in Yellowstone and all the wet and cold weather I had to endure I realy realy miss my car, the fact that I push the button and warm air starts blowing in my face, the fact that even if it is cold outside my fingers don’t get frozen onto the steering wheel. If I would encounter a buffalo for example I would at least have some thin piece of metal between me and the hairy beast.
This was written upon my return to the UK…
After the second week most of the stuff I had to deal with was becoming a routine. I still had some issues with filling up as it seemed that every petrol station had a different way of doing things. The rest was not difficult at all. The biggest challenge was to decide where to go and where I am going to sleep but in truth the latter wasn’t actually that bad. Towards the end of the day, about 5pm I would start to think about this and I either tried to look for a campsite but that required more time as I had more work to set up the camp and tent. The quick(er) and easier but more expensive way was to find a hotel. A campsite usually cost about $20-$33 and a room would set me back from $70 to $110. I wanted to find good deals by using apps from Hotel.com or Trivago but for that you need a reliable mobile broadband which wasn’t always there to deliver. In fact the Hotels app would often tell me I need an internet connection and just wouldn’t do anything despite the fact I could browse the internet.
One thing that (sort of) felt worrying was a casual observation from a few people I met on the road who thought I was quite brave of travelling round a foreign country, on a motorcycle and on my own. However, I didn’t have a feeling at all that I was doing something brave (or ‘stupid’, which could be philosophically a different way of saying ‘brave’).
But as my general experience of the whole trip goes I really liked how the whole trip helped to detach myself from the day to day rubbish and problems of my life. Now I just had to stay on the bike (meaning not fall over) and not get the bike stopped (ie. run out of petrol). I managed to do both just fine. There was that little incident in Custer state park where I nearly fell over … what happened was that I had to stop for a warden to pay the entrance fee. The road was slightly on a decline and as I was sitting on the bike and kicked out the stand the bike rolled and the stand folded back nearly tipping the bike over. Got the warden to help me keep it upright but it taught me a valuable lesson about keeping the damn bike in gear when on a hill. For those who don’t know … these bloody things don’t have a handbrake. I also quickly learnt how to park the bike in carparks as a lot of them slope down towards the kerb. Not really noticeable when you park your car but damn noticeable when you almost give yourself a hernia trying to reverse the motorcycle. Also, and you have my word on this, this procedure does not look cool ;-)
