After 34,000 miles and 10 month of riding, I have reached my journeys end, New York City. My trusty BMW is now with the shipping company and will hopefully be back in the UK in around 5 weeks, personally I will be flying back to England on Monday 12th October, almost exactly one year from leaving on 16th October 2008. This leg has been considerably longer than the first to South East Asia, when I clocked up 18,000 miles in roughly the same time frame and bearing in mind that the circumference of the planet is 25,000 miles, it puts in to context just how big the Americas are.
Its been a long but enjoyable road and I would like to thank the many fantastic people I have meet and spent time with along the way. I have been fortunate enough to spend time with some old friends and I have also made some great new ones along the way. The things that you see along your travels are great and beautiful, but without the people, a journey of this length would be empty.
Leaving Vancouver and heading across Canada
I rode out of Vancouver on Friday 4th Sept after spending a week enjoying this great city and the company of two great friends I had made on my travels to Asia, Bobby and Jessica. In the time I was there I managed to get in some yoga to stretch out the aches and pains of the 7000 miles I did in Alaska and the Canadian north, as well as some great food and some serious R&R. From Van I headed to Whistler to spend a couple of nights with Mike and Lori who own a place there and enjoyed some good banter, with of course some wine. From here I headed to the joint national parks of Jasper and Banff, that run down what must be described as the most spectacular part of the Rocky Mountains and the Canadians have been gracious enough to build a road all the way through, The Icefields Hwy.
Its the kind of place that you want to just take in the views, kick back with your feet up on the crash bars and ride through slowly. Which is precisely what I did. There are days when you just want to do some miles and days when you just need to take in your surroundings, absorb the energy of a place and experience what you are on the road for. The Icefields Hwy is exactly what you imagine when you think of Canada's Rockie's, it epitomises the Canadian image and hence it is used in almost every brochure you will see of this country, its is beautiful.
It took me two more days to ride across the flat lands of Alberta and Manitoba once I rode out of the Rockies and to my next destination of the Flying V ranch, owned by friends that I made while in Montana, Rhonda and Alan. Alan attempted to turn me in to a cowboy, but unfortunately my abilities on a horse, are only matched by my abilities at ballet dancing and my attempt of riding bare back was meet with an extremely undignified departure from the said animals back, followed by an extremely rough landing and some extreme bruising to my ego.
I did slightly better at driving his Semi truck, whilst I may not have found a new vocation for my life, I did enjoy it immensely, in fact I was like a kid with a new train set, and if you would like to wittiness this, please have a look at the video at the end of this blog.
Back in to the USA
I crossed in to the US at some tiny border post, where clearly not many Englishmen on lard arse BMW's ride through. After nearly being strip searched, I was allowed in to the Land of the Free!
It took 4 days of meandering travel to ride across the sates on North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin,past the great lakes to Illinois, Indiana, stopping off at the rev head destination of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where unfortunately there was no racing, but at least i picked up a sticker for the bike,Ohio and eventually arriving tin West Virginia late on the evening of Thursday sept 17th to visit my friends Summer and Andrew. I met Summer way back in 2006 when I was traveling in Uganda. The weekend was spent indulging ourselves in way too much alcoholic consumption at the river festival called Gualeyfest.
I took a weeks break here to recharge the batteries and look around the area and catch up with old friends, never something that should be rushed.I left West Virginia heading to Philadelphia , on one of the wettest journeys that I have ever done. It rained for the entire 300 miles and I arrived my friends Marc and Suzanne's house, more like a drowned rat than the round the world traveler that there had been reading about in my blog. However, no amount of rain could damped the pleasure I felt in seeing such good old friends.
I have known Marc since I was 16 and we have always been biking buddies, having both ridden as motorcycle couriers as well as doing many a stupid thing on two wheels. Marc came to America way back in 1985 and I worked with him roofing when I lived here back in 1991. We have always been good friends and it was great to catch up with him and Suzanne over a cold pint and of course have the piss taken out of me for looking like a hippy.
New York City
I rode up to NYC on Sunday 4th October to catch up with a fella that I meet in the Himalayas when I was riding up to Leh in Kashmir , India. Will has a swanky penthouse in Manhattan and as I have never been to NYC, I snapped up his offer to spend a few days with him and to see this iconic city. New York is without doubt one of the places that you must see before you die. No where else has the image and some would say ego as this place, it is truly a 24 hour city and the energy on the streets is palpable. I loved just wondering around the busy streets and seeing such famous places as the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Centre, Grand Central Station, ground zero, Macy's, Times Square, the list is endless.
After living for 5 years I am a bit over living in big cites, and I have to say that I doubt that I would like to live in this one either, but to visit and just see how this monolithic place operates is a spectacle in its self. I was somewhat taken a back by ground zero, in that its just a big building sight. America being America, I expected a monument to have been erected and something in place to commemorate the attacks of Sept 11th 2001, after all it is 8 years.
I walked around Central Park which is quite a spectacle in such a busy city and it always seems strange that the most expensive properties in a city are the ones that over look nature. Man can build what he wants, but we all feel better when we can see what nature provides.
I dropped my bike off at the shippers on Thursday 8th October and I fly out on Monday 12th to the UK.
Some Views on America
Its hard to imagine that America has a long tern glowing future when you observe the unhealthy state of so many of its citizens. I have never traveled amongst so many sick looking people. For a long time we have all been aware of the obese in America, a trend that unfortunately Britain along with many other western countries following.But its not just the overweight that look unhealthy, so many men and women have pasty complexion and skin, which is the biggest indicator of an diet devoid of nutrition. Not caused just by eating at fast food outlets, but feeding themselves at home. Supermarkets have row upon row of medication for stomach acid and indigestion. Rows and rows of vitamins, adds on TV continually trying to sell you a chemical cure for all your ills.
As America is "the" global icon, are we all destine to go this way? Is the whole world going to poisons self with food that lack any nutritional value? I sincerely hope not , but how do you change this? You can walk in to a store the size of the average British supermarket, that only sell vitamins. Whats wrong with good food?
But for all its ills and failings, America, as I have said before it a great place to visit and I have never been shown so much hospitality as I have here, the people can be slightly over nationalistic with all the "God Bless America" rhetoric, but I do truly love it here.
In Conclusion
The Low Points
* Crashing after hitting a dog in Argentina
*Waiting for seven weeks to get the damage sorted out
*Freezing my balls off crossing a 4900 metres pass in Peru at night. Thanks Christian, I would have turned back if you had not been following me
* Eating guinea pig in Peru
*Being so far away from my friends and family
*Deleting my entire Itunes catalogue
*Almost drowning in monsoon rains in Ecuador
*2 and half weeks of rain in Alaska, and camping in it
*Riding the Ruta 40 in 100mph side winds on road tyres
The High Points
*Seeing Torres del Pain mountains in Chile for the first time, then waking up with them as my back drop
*Riding in the Ushaia, the most southerly city in the world.
*Riding through the desolated beauty that is Tierra del Fuego
*Riding out of Mendoza after getting the bike repaired
*Seeing the Nazcar Lines in Peru
*Crossing the equator in Ecuador
*Riding across the Arctic Circle
*Meeting up with me old mucker Baggy in Philly
*Riding over the Andes, time and time again
*Wine tasting in Mendoza, quite a few times
*Riding in Peru at over 4000 metres for what seemed like weeks
*Eating freshly smoked salmon in Alaska
*Getting off 1000km of dirt road in Argentina and feeling beautiful smooth tarmac
I had a thirst for travel and now I have quenched it. I feel satisfied and content with my choices and achievements. Thirst always re-occurs and I am sure this one will indeed re-appear in my life at some stage, but for now I have drunk my fill. I have ridden from one end of the Americas to the other, along the way seeing some of the greatest sights there are to see in the world, some of the most spectacular landscapes and greatest cities, meet some fascinating people, ridden some of the greatest roads there are and learnt much about my-self along the way.
Many people are now asking me what next. Well, Im not quite sure to be honest, I have some ideas that I need to look at closely when I get back and there are some other ideas that are not in the UK. It will not be easy to settle in one place after experiencing so much freedom, for so long , but also I have reached a point of travel exhaustion, when new things are no long stimulating me, its time to sit still and push my life in a new direction. This adventure has its roots back to March 2005 when I met a guy in Luang Prabang, Lao who had ridden out from London. This has been without doubt one of the greatest events of my life and it has changed me, for the better, immeasurably. Leaving England on April 2nd 2007 was a hard day, heading out in to a path with no experience of over land travel was daunting, you have no idea what the road will have in store for you. Now I have come to the end of the road its time to reflect on the great places I have seen, things, good and bad that I have experienced and to draw lessons from it all. I am in no doubt that it was the right thing for me to embark on this path, leaving Woodford Motorcycles and stepping in to the void of uncertainty was exactly what I needed so that I could rediscover who I was as a person and not just be Stuart the motorcycle dealer with only one focus, money.
I now have a whole world of opportunity ahead of me and a new view on the world, this could be a very interesting period.
Thank you all for you support along the way, when there have been difficult times and there have been many, it was having friends somewhere out there that cared and where there to help, that made the difference between giving up and quitting. So until the next time and there will be one, adios amigos , X.
