Far Horizons: Across the Great Divide

By Andrew Earnshaw

Stalked by a black bear, encountering a close shave with a bull buffalo, having his tent eaten by an elk and being mugged by a gang of racoons; these are just a few of the adventures the author experiences as he attempts to circumnavigate North America by motorcycle in 2009. In doing so he discovers a land and two countries that feature a number of different divides – political, national, cultural and geographical.

The early chapters describe the minimal planning that took place and the doubts that hit him when he begins his journey, finding his motorcycle impounded by US Customs, but then gradually transform with the release of the bike into a classic road trip as he delves down the Appalachians into Alabama, meeting kindred spirits from the biking world on the way and warming mile by mile into a deep appreciation of the splendour of the landscape and the warmth of the inhabitants.

Later into the journey he travels through the First Nation reservations and looks into the history surrounding the demise of the Great Plains culture, describing the victory of the Sioux and their allies at Little Bighorn then the massacre at Wounded Knee, meeting descendants of those involved.

The book is light-hearted and written in the spirit of gentle adventure by someone who admits to being a ‘pretty slow rider’ and a navigational incompetent to boot. If he manages to get back to Baltimore it will be a small miracle and hopefully, by the time he gets there, he will have finally found out what the ‘Great Divide’ really is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780885810

Book preview

Mugging

CHAPTER 1

A Bad Day on the Cabot Trail

I’d departed the Balmoral motel in the late morning with high hopes of a nice day’s ride up to the north of Cape Breton, thus completing this most north easterly leg of my road trip around North America. Unfortunately, over the past three and a half months it seems that I’ve developed the uncanny ability to misjudge distances, get lost or merge both together, making incompetency an art form. On this occasion it was difficult, if not impossible, to get lost, since the island of Nova Scotia runs north easterly up the eastern side of the Canadian part of the continent, so all you have to do is head in a north easterly direction and you’ll end up in roughly the correct place. But, oh dear me, had I managed to miscalculate distances.

‘Yeah, it’ll be about a seventy mile trip up there I reckon, maybe a hundred and fifty miles round trip,’ thought I, glancing over my ‘boys own atlas’ sized map of the whole continent that had served me on the previous 17,900 miles or so of getting lost. The bike started as usual, on the button and off we chugged, following the signs for New Glasgow.

Up until now, Nova Scotia had felt much more like England than Scotland, after which it is named; a bit like Devon or Cornwall maybe. This had been underscored by some of the place names – Truro for example. It even had a little town called Pugwash, which brought back memories of teatime television. The further north we went though, the more it felt like the western side of Scotland; that is to say absolutely lovely. The scenery had prompted a couple of stops for photos, the most recent being a broad inlet which offered a nicely balanced picture with the waters of the estuary reflecting the deep blue of what was now a virtually clear, bright late summer sky. Something caught my eye out across the water. I couldn’t quite see properly with the old eyeball mark one but, having scrabbled around inside the top box for my binoculars, I could now see clear as day that it was an eagle.

He, or she, was sitting on a mudflat doing absolutely nothing at all. It could have been a stuffed one. A slight gust of wind ruffled the white feathers on its neck and that was all the movement I could see. The pity was that it was straight across the mudflats from me and it would be too difficult to get any nearer. Not for the first time did I rue the lack of a telephoto lens for my trusty camera. So after a bit of Bill Oddie style ‘twitching’ I loaded the binoculars and camera back into the top box and headed up the road, a memorable one frequented by many a local motorcyclist, called the Cabot Trail.

After quite a few thousand miles since a really good corner, it was great to be swinging around the bends that clung to the hillsides around the estuaries and cliffs of the trail. The road varied from OK to pretty near diabolical which is just about perfect for my machine of choice, a BMW R1200 GS Adventure, the same one that Charley and Ewan took on their ‘Long Way Down’ trip. Being a big trail bike, designed for adventure touring, it can certainly handle an uneven road like this one was, so I admit that I was enjoying myself but I should mitigate that with the fact that I’m not a particularly fast rider.

As I swept around a fairly sharp right hand bend I came upon a car, a silver-grey Chevrolet Impala. The car was travelling very slowly without indicating but was clearly about to pull over into a dirt lay-by on the roadside to the right. No worries, I’ll just back off on the throttle, let him get a bit further over, then I can pass him safely. As I started to accelerate to pass him something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye – the very slightest movement of the front wheel.

I don’t know if it’s the years gone by of commuting into central London from the outer reaches of darkest Kent, but things like this sometimes spring out at me. It can be that little hover or the slightest shimmy that a car can make before it commits to its manoeuvre, or maybe the way a driver looks straight through you, or – in this case – the tiniest lateral turning of the wheels that tell you something isn’t quite right. ‘Oh my God! He’s not going to do that is he?’

Yep! A complete 180 degree ‘U’ turn – right after a blind corner, not bothering to even look to see if anything’s coming. Panic grips the heart and chest, vice-like, as a flood of adrenaline is released. The thought flashed through my mind that this was it. The car was too damn close and, having now accelerated, I was travelling far too quickly to avoid a crash. More than that it looked like it would end up being a big one too, there just wasn’t any way out and I’m probably a hundred miles at least from the nearest trauma unit. I hit the brakes in panic mode as the world slowed down to slow motion, as if events were now being framed in some giant strobe. The end of the trip was spiralling towards a painful conclusion.

CHAPTER 2

Plans for Departure

I’d always had a dream to travel somewhere far away by motorcycle, but it took the failure of my second marriage to spur me to do something about it. So while the divorce lawyers were weaving their peculiar magic on my future bank balance – making it disappear faster than my hair line, I was spending what money was left on kitting out a bike to take me somewhere interesting. The result was a Yamaha TT600 RE resplendent in its extended range Acerbis tank and Metal Mule panniers (which gave it a ludicrously wide posterior for such a skinny tyre’d little trail bike). At a crucial point in divorce proceedings I made for the Continent with dire warnings from one set of solicitors that I’d better not be ‘making a run for it’. Chance would be a fine thing indeed.

A month of blatting across eight countries was a wonderful introduction to the life of an itinerant rat of the road. The brain went into freedom mode and didn’t really fully recover on my return. Plans were instantly afoot for a more ambitious trip and the only consideration seemed to be where next? At the same time I renounced the life of male tart in the dance clubs and studios of Aberdeen (enjoying the company of some fabulous Scottish ladies it has to be said) and settled down with a petite example from the centre of the Celtic universe: Portlethen, Aberdeenshire. Diane was made of the right stuff for travel adventure too – someone who claims she will try anything once.

Sadly, plans had not progressed too far before a somewhat sobering event happened – well maybe two things. The first was a bit less serious than the second. My divorce came through and I was somewhat the poorer than before and needed to buy a new house. That wasn’t too good, but the first Christmas in the new house in Milton Keynes coincided with quite severe stomach pains and the passing of blood.

At first the Doctor wasn’t too worried and decided it was probably not a good thing to take the investigation too far too soon and overload the creaking health service. But the stomach pain just got worse and I was booked into the hospital for an examination and blood tests were taken. Coming home from work one Friday evening there was a message on the phone to say that there was an abnormality in the blood tests and would I please contact the surgery. This came some time after the surgery had closed (of course) so I spent a very nervous weekend waiting for the news. The test failure turned out to be diabetes, which was a bit of a relief if that was all it was because all the signs were starting to point to the (admittedly remote) possibility of having bowel cancer and that result was still to be decided upon.

To cut a long story short it wasn’t bowel cancer but in addition to the diabetes there was a growth, which needed removal. So it was off to the hospital for an outpatient’s operation. It’s quite amazing what devices they manage to produce down a tube that has been inserted somewhere I’ll leave to the imagination. The first attempt was with a pair of cutters that resembled a cross between the device used by ‘Jaws’ in James Bond to can-open space vehicles and Edward Scissorhands. The result was an internal bloodbath.

The lovely lady conducting the massacre patted me on the shoulder and said, Don’t worry, it looks bad on the screen, but everything is really small you know. I certainly hoped so when the next implement was presented on screen. This resembled an industrial arc welder. I’d guessed right! We’re just going to pass a small electrical current through the growth, she purred in my ear. It might pinch just a little because it’s in an area where there are a few nerves. Oh dear.

Now that Diane had arrived on the scene I had a bit of a problem. The TT600 was too small for a two up long distance tour. It was a great little bike for the back roads of Europe but I have to admit that we (the bike and I) both struggled a bit on long distance motorway mileages. And the poor thing positively sagged with the gear that I took with me to Europe. It bravely suffered the four and a half thousand miles right to the point of parking it outside my house whereupon it sighed and the back tyre went down. Now that’s what I call reliability!

No, it was clear that a larger mount was the order of the day, but how to fund the purchase of another bike? The divorce had been bleeding funds straight from me to my barrister’s next Porsche. A chance conversation over lunch at work with a colleague got me thinking about running a company motorcycle and, after a few e-mail exchanges with Jeffrey, my long suffering accountant, I decided to add one to the company fleet (which comprised of one van). Before buying anything a few considerations needed sorting out first though. Where did I intend to go? Would I be riding off road much? How much luggage would I be taking, for instance would I be taking camping gear? Was Diane coming with me for the whole distance, part of the way or not at all? The truth is that I’d already got my beady eye on a BMW GS.

I’d owned one of the early Gses back in the mists of time, a conversion with a huge Gaston Raiher Paris Dakar tank. I’d once declared my undying love for them and swore I’d never have a garage that didn’t have one in it before promptly selling it and buying a Suzuki Bandit. How fickle we are. What swung it for me was the ferry ride back from the European trip where I met a couple from Northern Ireland who had done a similar trip on a new GS. They recounted how well it had coped with them and their luggage and how effortlessly it had cruised at 90 miles per hour on the French roads. My asthmatic little TT looked a shade pale in comparison and I thought to myself, ‘This is what you’re needing my boy if you want to do this seriously’. The little Yamaha seemed to sniff disloyalty in the air and promptly fell over onto the GS as I untied it when the ferry docked at Dover, a kind of Japanese version of a ‘Glasgow handshake’.

Before further considering any other bike, Diane and I headed down to the BMW dealers in Dundee for a test ride. We were shown a standard GS test bike and told to give it a thorough test. The roads were a little damp and the air sharp and clear. As we pulled out of the road to the dealership a guy thudded past on a Harley. We chased after him and tried the bike down a twisty road, which it handled very competently. To buy a bike like this I’d already decided that my sports tourer, a Ducati ST4, had to go. When we returned and had a look around the bikes in the showroom, a big red beastie dominated the scene. It was an Adventure version of the breed, kitted out with the full monty of optional extras.

I quickly worked out that the difference in price would be offset by the tax that I would be able to re-claim, so the price was much nearer to the standard bike than it should have been. The deal was done when they agreed to buy the Ducati, leaving a very happy salesman and a somewhat dazed customer.

The next thing to decide was where to go and when? Where to go was quite easy to decide upon. With a few question marks on my health I decided it would be best to cover one or more western countries and the easiest to get to seemed to me to be the USA and maybe to include Canada. I’d always dreamed of riding across America, maybe a bit of Route 66 and also of taking a Harley up the West Coast highway. I’d read stories of both in magazines and it whetted the appetite for sure, but if it’s worth shipping a bike over there why not do something a bit more ambitious? Why not ride right the way round?

When to do it was a bit of a no-brainer really – my contract was due for re-negotiation each May and I had been at my current clients for quite a while. It was now February 2008 so May 2009 seemed a good cut –off point. I’m sure they would be fed up to the back teeth of me by then. So a few fairly bold decisions had been taken: hopefully get a contract extension to save up for the trip, buy the bike, equip it and decide on a route. Oh yes! I nearly forgot. There was one other thing: kill the polyp-growth.

I started talking to people about my ambitions. I’m not sure they all believed I would actually go and do it. I explained to the Health Service that I needed to be fixed by May 2009. Oh, I’m sure we’ll be able to manage that, they said. I wasn’t quite so sure. The diabetes was deemed diet controllable, which was a shame because that meant giving up Cadbury’s chocolate. Worse than that though, was the feeling of fatigue that just got worse and worse and was accompanied by a horrible light-headedness and muscle aches. I think my body was struggling with getting used to a sugar free diet.

What was needed was a shakedown trip, for the bike, which was now sitting in Diane’s garage, immaculate in its red livery, and, perhaps more importantly, for Diane and I. On the previous European trip I was conscious of having scooted through Switzerland with just a quick stop over in Luzern. So Diane and I decided to ride down there and try a few of the mountain passes. Just before that I did a little solo jaunt to meet a few of the boys over in Northern Ireland for the North West 2000 road races.

On the way back from the races I met up with Diane in Ayr for a ride back to Aberdeen via the Western Coast of Scotland. It was during this return leg that I managed to fall off the bike.

I think the only time I’ve ever done anything so stupid on a bike was on my first ‘real’ bike at the tender age of seventeen. I’d been in the Royal Navy for a while and had bought a Suzuki TS185 trail bike with my meagre wages. Whilst on leave I went down to the old church youth club to meet up with a young lady I was quite keen on. After the club finished I swaggered out to my steed, popped the key in the ignition and kicked the bike into life. There were a few girls across the road at the bus stop and I could well imagine that they were very impressed by this cool guy with a sexy trail bike. I then rode off with the steering still locked and promptly fell off on my arse.

This was a big lesson for me about bikes. On a bike you can go from cool to fool inside one single second. And so it happened to me for a second time in life on one of the Scottish Islands having just disembarked from a little ferry that takes you across the Clyde. We were riding up a wooded hill when we came across a young guy pushing a motorcycle. In the spirit of biker brotherhood I pulled over and said to Diane that we’d try and help him. She took this as a request to dismount and stood up on the pegs. As she did that I tried to put the side stand down with my left foot.

In doing this, the laces of the hiking boots I was wearing caught on the serrated metal footpeg before I could fully lower the side stand and, worse still, my foot was stuck and couldn’t support our weight. At this point we were OK as the bike was balanced but Diane continued to climb down off it. I should have shouted ‘STOP RIGHT THERE MISSUS!!’ perhaps intermingled with a few choice Anglo Saxon phrases, but I couldn’t quite get to that and instead just spluttered out, no, no, nooooo as we curled gracefully over leaving a rather bemused young biker wondering why this rescuer had promptly dumped himself, girlfriend and bike onto the side of the road. It was a fine introduction to biking for Diane too.

Lesson one: do not wear footwear with laces whilst riding your motorcycle. Biking boots are lacking laces for at least two good reasons: they can get tangled up in things and they tend to let water in. I needed to invest in some decent motorcycle boots. The ones I had worn whilst commuting in London stank like a week long dead hedgehog, hence the decision to use hiking boots which were a bit less pongy. The problem with biking boots is that they’re generally poor for walking around in, tending to chafe the back of your legs but I’d decided they were essential from now on.

The NHS then went to town on the polyp for a second time. I was mite relieved when they told me that I was going to be ‘sedated’ and happily let them pump me full of some drugs that left me decidedly happy with the world. Lovely stuff.

So, thus operated on and suitably mangled, in the August of 2008, Diane and I departed Scotland on a shakedown trip to Luzern via the Bulldog Bash which is held every year at Stratford-on-Avon and is hosted by the Hells Angels. We’d been invited by two friends, Stuart and Denise, who have been going to the bash for quite a few years and declared that, despite it being run by the Angels, there was ‘nothing to worry about’ – not that we were particularly worried anyway. I wish they’d told the police the same. When we got there we were met by a wall of police commandos carrying what looked remarkably like sub machine guns; the reason soon became apparent.

A guy had been shot dead on the M4 motorway the year before after leaving the rally. I have to say that the greeting from the Hells Angels was a lot more friendly than it was from the policemen but then they were charging us a fine sum of money to enter the rally. It is of course an absolute certainty that any rally in the United Kingdom will be accompanied by rain and this is most especially the case if the aforesaid rally involves even the merest whiff of a tent being erected. The more tents erected, the heavier the precipitation will occur. And in the case of the Bulldog Bash there are quite a few thousand tents involved. So, by the enshrined laws concerning the confluence of motorcycles and tents, very quickly the campsite became a quagmire. But the rest of it was fun.

After the rally Stuart and Denise headed back north to Heysham and Diane and I trekked down to Milton Keynes for an overnight stay prior to heading south for the Dover Ferry. I love ferries. There’s always a squad of bikers heading outbound or back home and they are always friendly and chatty. It crosses nationality too. On this voyage there were a bunch of German riders returning from Ireland who were very sociable. Added to that is the excitement of a new country or shoreline and a sense of adventure. Our trip to Switzerland took us through France and into the Alps. We rode six or seven mountain passes, got lost, tested the intercom out and managed to find Italy on a visit to the Moto Guzzi factory which was closed. We also managed to test out the waterproof properties of our new tent which was made by a company called ‘Big Agnes’. Agnes the tent remained dry under very, very testing conditions involving the lake flooding into the campsite. This, combined with the earlier deluge at the Bulldog Bash, which was of equal biblical proportions, really gave us confidence that we’d picked the right tent for the occasion. But would Agnes stay the course? All will be revealed in the fullness of time…

The bike had been living for a number of weeks under the name ‘Mutley’ because I thought it sounded like the cartoon character from Wacky Races whenever the starter button was pressed. Also, in my younger biking days, a Mutley pin badge was my main talisman; it seemed like a good time to resurrect him for the trip. Thus named, the bike performed beautifully throughout the trip. All that was needed before heading off for the States was a service and a new set of tyres. The main lesson we learned on the trip was that we were carrying too much gear and we swore, by God, that we were going to travel light next time round. Oh dear! How wrong can you be?

By now I’d made it quite clear at the office that I wouldn’t be looking for any more work and that I was offski. My manager at work, a lovely lady called Alison was very understanding and cut me a lot of slack when it was perfectly obvious that I’d stayed there a bit too long. Itchy feet would be an understatement. The mail office also worked like Trojans to pass through all the bits and bobs that I was buying via the internet in the belief that they were ‘necessities’ for an adventure on this scale. ‘What the hell are you doing Andy? Building a bike at your desk?’ said Sandy the mailroom stalwart wrestling some odd shaped box. Nope, but not far from it Sandy old bean.

At the same time my friend Gina was gamely bringing in bits and bobs of camping gear from the Mountain Equipment Co-op in Calgary every time she flew over to give me an ear bashing for some work related misdemeanour or other whilst unloading water purification devices onto the desk. I was very fortunate that the client I was working for were based in Calgary and that Gina was managing the mini project I was working on, and was amenable to doing the odd bit of shopping for me. The MEC, as it is known, is ridiculously cheap compared to the prices in rip-off UK and almost all my camping gear ended up coming from there.

So as the year of 2008 exited stage left, things were coming together very nicely. I’d been talking to the export companies and had decided on sending the bike by sea. I’d come to this decision after reading quite favourable reviews on the Adventure travel websites. Basically, it seemed that you could pop the bike down to Southampton, virtually ride it on to the ship – which apparently was like a huge car ferry – and ride it off at the other side; it sounded simple enough. The alternative was to get the bike crated and shipped by air. Doing it this way, to minimise the cost, the bike needed to have the front wheel removed so the crate could be made as small as possible. The cost of both methods was much the same when the cost of building a crate was taken into consideration, so it seemed to me that the method with the least hassle was to ship by sea. After a few e-mails to the shipping line and to a customs agency recommended by them for customs clearance work at the US end, I decided to go with the sea freight option and started to gather together the paperwork needed. Everything was starting to slot into place.

Other than buying the bike and equipping it and carrying out the necessary bookings, insurances and shipping paperwork, I tried to avoid any detailed planning. I seem to live all my work life being driven by plans, it goes with the nature of the work, but I was desperate to live for a few months in relative freedom. I wanted to do something a bit more organic. Let the journey begin and develop in its own way. Either that or, in the words of that most eminent of Roman Generals, Russell Crowe, drive off the ferry and ‘Unleash Hell!’

There were, however, some things that I definitely wanted to fit in. As a boy of eleven I’d watched with unbridled fascination and excitement as man first walked on the moon. So a trip to the Kennedy Space Centre was one of the few ‘touristy’ things that I wanted to carry out. I’d also read a lot about the native tribes of America and the career of George Armstrong Custer, about the death of the Great Plains way of life and wanted to ride through the areas described, visit the Little Bighorn battlefield – that sort of thing. I certainly wanted to see Wounded Knee for myself having read about the massacre there. That bit would be a bit of a pilgrimage for me.

Other than that and a drop in to see Elvis, I decided very early on to mostly avoid cities. I wanted to ride through small-town USA and Canada to get a feel for people and the places. Were they really like the ones portrayed in films? Did I need to learn how to play duelling banjos and avoid showers in creaky motels with a house on the hill? What was the gun culture like? How would I cope sleeping out in bear country in a tent? These were all things that interested me and made the thought of landing in this huge continent with just a pair of wheels and a few odds and ends truly exciting; the stuff of dreams and a search for a real wilderness.

The map that I bought covered the whole of the United States on which I drew up a very basic route. Ship the bike to Baltimore, head for Cape Canaveral in Florida then head north and west to Nashville, Memphis and eventually Los Angeles. Do the West Coast Highway, nip over to Yellowstone then up to Vancouver. Then start the trek eastwards over to Calgary for the Stampede (if possible), down to Sturgis via Bighorn and Wounded Knee and then round the lakes (taking in the Harley Davidson factory). Finally nip down the east coast via New York and back to Baltimore. Easy peasy. Hmm – seems like a lot of cities in there though!

The two key dates that mattered were the Stampede in Calgary and the bike rally at Sturgis. I just had to try and get to those two destinations on time. The Stampede was in the first week or so of July and Sturgis was a month later give or take a week so it all seemed perfectly achievable if I left at the beginning of May. It was also quite important to make Los Angeles by the 4th of June and Seattle by the 3rd of July since those were the dates for Diane’s flight in and out. The bike was booked in to the shippers on the 17th of April a date that initially dragged then suddenly arrived in no time at all.

In the meantime it was important to read as much as possible about serious motorcycle touring and to build up the equipment needed to survive four months on the road. One invaluable source of information was the sixth edition of a book titled ‘Hints & Tips For MotorCyclists’. My copy is well used and seems to date (judging by the inscription in the front cover) to 1919 when it was presented to C T Price of 114 Shakespeare Rd, Acton W3. It gives some wonderful advice on all manner of trivia and important motorcycling matters that will undoubtedly prove useful. For instance the paragraph dealing with dogs may also come in useful if we chance upon something like a black bear no doubt. ‘Dogs (and bears) have caused many accidents. Pass a lively dog (bear) rather cautiously, and if he evinces an inclination to charge you, swinging the arm up, as if to hurl an imaginary stone, is more efficacious than cursing him or addressing him as ‘Good Dog’ (or bear)’. Hmmm, yes that should work quite well.

CHAPTER 3

A voyage around my motorcycle

In the days before the bike’s departure for Southampton Mutley sat in the garage at my rented bungalow in Portlethen. It sat there, alongside my old Ariel Red Hunter, nigh immaculate having been serviced, cleaned and polished following the jaunt to Switzerland. It almost seemed a shame to ride it off to possible destruction and certain heavy wear and tear, but this journey is exactly what the bike was designed for.

The most noticeable feature it has is a huge thirty three litre fuel tank giving it a range of well over four hundred miles if you ride gently, which generally I do. It is also equipped with electronically adjusted suspension and traction control. The brakes, which are powerful and progressive in their ability to pull the bike up, have ABS which helps prevent unwanted slides from over-braking when switched on. These are all options fitted from new. A pair of alloy panniers with a matching top box give the bike considerable ability to carry luggage (although it is never enough) and a full set of crash bars wrapped around the tank ensure that it can survive fairly major spills. Since buying the bike I’d fitted quite a lot of additional extras to help with long distance travelling. Most notable amongst these were a GPS satnav, which used mapping uploaded from a small netbook computer running a programme purchased from the satnav manufacturer Garmin.

The original silencer supplied with the bike was replaced with an aftermarket carbon fibre one made by a Dutch company called Bos. The new silencer was a little louder with the removable baffle still in and apparently considerably louder if it was removed, although I opted to keep it in and be civilised. It did seem to endow the bike with a little more mid range power. Once I’d ascertained that Diane could be quite entertaining whilst sat on the back of a bike I fitted an intercom made by a British company called Starcom. In theory we would be able to listen to music from either of our I-pods, but on the Swiss trip we’d just used it for chatting whilst on the move.

Over the months of preparation I’d also put together a fairly comprehensive toolkit to add to the rather spartan one supplied with the bike. I read somewhere on one of the Internet travel sites that the best thing to do was carry out all work on your bikes from the travelling toolkit before you leave on the trip. That way you learn what is missing from your kit. It seemed like a good idea and I’d been doing that for about six months. The trouble was not much needed doing to the bike, so I also regularly thought through the kind of things I might have to do: remove the wheels, fix a puncture, tighten bolts, repair a bit of crash damage, electrical wiring repairs – these kinds of things. Punctures were quite likely and something I was dreading. I’ve replaced tyres on older bikes but not on something that runs tubeless tyres. I included a puncture repair kit and lots of inflation canisters along with a very neat small hand pump, which would pump air supplied from the canisters and also allow the inflation to be continued manually. I was fairly sure that a puncture in a remote place would be accompanied by a lot of drama (not to mention swearing) and some remote roadside in bear territory is not the best place to learn these things, but likely as not that would be the case; shit happens.

The single most important modification was a rather dramatic reduction in seat height, achieved by fitting an aftermarket seat. My legs were just too short for the standard seat and I traded a considerable amount of seat comfort just to be able to put my feet on the ground safely when stopped – as long as my laces remained free of the foot pegs!

In trading the Ducati for the GS there was a big loss of power and speed. Although the GS had a nice torquey engine and could cover ground at a respectable pace it certainly wouldn’t be able to show the Ducati a clean pair of heels. But that wasn’t the point with a bike like this. The point was that it could handle just about anything that a long distance trip could reasonably be expected to throw at it. The long travel suspension could be adjusted at the press of a button to tackle quite serious off road riding, even if this particular rider didn’t have the skills to match the bike. It could be set to a sport mode and hustle round corners very respectably and the big lazy twin cylinder boxer engine could dig out gobs of torque to pull the heaviest of loads in what appeared to be a seemingly effortless surge. So speed was out and capability in.

Pressing the starter button resulted in the Mutley letting out a wheezing chuckle which was quickly silenced as the engine caught and chugged into life. At the time there was a very well known spoof on the internet taken from the film ‘Downfall’ about the last days in the bunker with Hitler. The spoof version translates the original German transcript describing Hitler’s fury when the Generals tell him that his favourite Honda has been written off and they’ve replaced it with a GS. In his resulting screaming fit he describes the GS as a ‘bleep bleep tractor’. And that’s just what they feel like to me too.

Sitting on the bike the world was viewed through, round or over a substantial screen on top of which I’d mounted a tiny additional screen supplied by a firm called Touratech who specialise in adventure motorcycling accessories (especially BMW ones). On the standard GS Adventure there’s also a pair of ‘winglet’ screens to the side alongside the petrol tank which added to the wind protection even further. All of this made for pretty comfortable motorway-speed touring despite the brick like properties of the lowered seat.

BMW motorcycles don’t follow in the footsteps of their car manufacturing brethren – who aren’t averse to styling an attractive automobile or two. No. BMW motorcycles make an art form out of pug ugly. And the GS Adventure is the ugliest of the breed. But somehow they grow on you and before long, after a spell with the polishing duster you stand back and admire them in the same way as a pot bellied pig breeder might admire his best sow the night before an important show.

I’d almost go as far as to say that they put form and function before beauty, but I find myself hesitating because, for example, the odd squinty headlight arrangement on Mutley is far from beautiful and manages a disappointingly poor show after sundown. I just hoped that the much vaunted electronics package that came with the bike didn’t prove troublesome and kept reminding myself that this bike was built in Germany. Germany for goodness sake, what could go wrong? Then someone told me that they were actually built in the Czech Republic. Oh great. Then again the Panzer 35 T was also built in Czechoslovakia and that gave us a bit of a scare in France.

The wiring on the bike is called ‘Canbus’ wiring. I didn’t have a clue what it meant when I bought the bike and my knowledge hadn’t budged an inch by the date of departure. I just hoped it was beneficial. On the trip to Ireland the heated handlebar grips, designed to keep the pinkies nice and warm, went on the blink. A phone call to the dealership led to a piece of dubious advice: ‘switch the bike on and off again’. Hmmm, motorcycle dealers have started talking like IT support help desk geeks. Strangely enough it worked. It transpired that the main electrics don’t have fuses and the bike’s computer works out the problem (whatever it is) and resets it. Could I trust this in the middle of the desert? Can it fix punctures?

Time would tell. It was too late to worry about these kinds of things. The adventure was about to begin. No pun intended.

CHAPTER 4

Departure

On Thursday the 16th of April 2009 the weather in Aberdeen was a rather typical cool, overcast grey. Rain didn’t seem far away. I’d spent the day at work and wrapped up at two pm to head off to Portlethen and begin the journey south. The plan was to ride down to Milton Keynes and stay overnight there before heading to Southampton. The bike would then be dropped off at the quayside and I would return to Aberdeen to work for another two weeks or so before flying out to meet it in Baltimore.

A few days before leaving there was a bit of a disaster when I inadvertently closed the electric garage doors onto the bike’s top box. The problem was that the ignition keys were in the top box lock – one key opens everything – and the key was badly bent. I only had the spare key and that was a flimsy plastic affair that didn’t look up to the job so I urgently ordered a pair of new keys from a dealer in Northampton. I just hoped and crossed my fingers that the new keys would fit and everything would work.

Arriving home from work at my rented bungalow in Portlethen, I quickly hauled on my new BMW riding suit and boots and backed the bike out of the garage rather tentatively. Now was not the time for a silly spill. I started the bike and warmed it up, taking a few pictures of it and noting the starting mileage on the odometer, which showed five thousand seven hundred and ten miles. The panniers were already packed with as much camping gear as I could get into them and dozens of checks had taken place to make sure that nothing was missing. We were ready to roll!

At just past 3pm we (the bike and I) pulled out of the driveway and headed the short distance to the A90 and the south. Everything sounded good, everything felt good. The suit, which I’d bought at a slight discount from the BMW shop in Dundee, felt to be just about the right size, any smaller would have been too small, the next size up would have fitted an Orang Utan. It was really designed for hot weather and is often used by desert racers so I couldn’t expect it to be the best thing since sliced bread in cool weather like this, but it seemed to maintain a comfortable if slightly cool temperature.

Everything seemed to be going fine as we slipped steadily southwards along the familiar green farmland with the hills that mark the beginning of the Grampian Mountains to our right. It’s a very beautiful part of the United Kingdom. It takes about an hour to reach Dundee beyond which is another picturesque stretch of roadway down towards Perth with high hills and ancient watchtowers. The weather just about held off with a few spots of rain appearing on the screen. I had a choice of routes and I decided to head via Edinburgh on to the A1 then straight down the Eastern side of England until the start of the M1 down to Milton Keynes; very easy navigation.

Night time fell quite early as I arrived in North Yorkshire and ushered in rain – lots of rain. I decided against regular stops. One tank of petrol had lasted up until just south of Leeds, so I filled up, grabbed a quick coffee and a bite of a sandwich then pressed on through the wall of spray. It remained like that until just north of Milton Keynes when the rain gave way and all I had to contend with were damp, rain sodden roads. After five hundred and fifty miles the suit had held out and the bike had coped perfectly well but the rider was decidedly rough around the edges. It was 11 pm and there was a relatively early start in the morning.

As I turned in for the night, with the bike sitting obediently out at the front of the eco-house that I shared with my daughter Suzannah, I wondered how I would be able to handle over a hundred and twenty days on the road. Would I be able to shake off the aches and pains that seemed to come from the diabetes? It was hard to get to sleep. However tired I was, I found that I was still buzzing from the ride down.

In the morning Suzannah was up with a cheerful ‘hello’ and off to work. I had to shake a leg pretty quickly too and before long was back on the bike heading for Northampton to pick up the replacement keys. It was a huge relief to find that they fitted. So that was it; time to get the bike to the ship and wave it goodbye.

The weather hadn’t improved much and was soon bucketing down. The traffic was heavy as usual around the M25 motorway that orbits London. The bike, with its panniers fitted, was fairly wide and I didn’t fancy too much filtering through the busy lanes. It would be really stupid to end up having a bump at this stage of the adventure, so I kept things nice and easy and joined the queue of cars a lot more often than I would normally do so. Good practice really since I’d heard that filtering was only permitted in California, might as well get used to queuing.

The precipitation, that had seemed a permanent and enduring feature of the trip so far, cleared south of London and patches of blue appeared warming things up nicely. I stopped off at a service area and checked out my paperwork for the umpteenth time over a coffee. Everything seemed in order so there was just the short hop past Winchester to Southampton. As I drew up in the docks at the shipping line’s office a real feeling kicked in that this was the start of the adventure, the bike was off across the Atlantic and I’d be joining it pretty soon. Paperwork completed I was instructed by Debbie, the shipping agent, to ride the bike round to the dockside holding area where an inspection would be carried out and the bike taken over by the people who would load it. The ship wasn’t due for a few days yet and the bike would be accompanying a group of brand new Jaguar cars, which were on their way Stateside to adorn some posh showroom.

The dispatcher at the dockside office looked the bike over and sucked his breath in through his teeth. ‘Is there anything in the panniers?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, they’re full of camping gear.’

‘Won’t be when you get to Baltimore,’ he replied. ‘Baltimore’s notorious for theft. They’ll even nick the petrol out of your tank’.

Great!

‘We can help you put tywraps on the panniers if you like?’ he helpfully suggested. Might be an idea, at least I would be able to see at a glance whether the bike had been tampered with, but I thought that tywraps would be like honey to a bee where customs were concerned so they’d probably be opened anyway.

It was just one more worry to go along with the nagging feeling that the bike might get damaged in transit. I’d taken out shipping insurance for this but it didn’t relieve the worry about what I would do if all that was left at the other side was a pile of scrap metal. To make matters worse I’d read an article on the internet telling me that the very vessel the bike was due to ship out on held the record for the biggest damage claim in motor shipment history, when hundreds of BMW cars were wrecked in a typhoon a couple of years ago. I was beginning to wish I’d crated the bike up and shipped it by air.

The final two weeks at work seemed to drag for ages. I was able to keep track of the bike’s progress via an internet site and noted with some dismay that the sailing was delayed by a few days. After that the ship seemed to be going in the wrong direction, heading across the channel to Belgium. As much as was possible, lingering doubts about the shipping side of the enterprise were relieved by the endless list of things to do: moving out of the rented house, finding storage space for all the possessions that had built up in four years of working away from home (not least the small fleet of motorcycles that I’d gradually collected!), wrapping up the paperwork on the small project I’d been working on to avoid the ire of Gina. The list seemed to go on and on.

I’d pre-booked myself into a hotel in New York, the ‘Pennsylvania’, for one night and a Quality Inn motel in Baltimore for two nights, dates that fitted into the ship’s estimated arrival time in Baltimore. I guessed that I would probably have to book one or two more nights in the motel. The trouble was that, having booked the cheapest price possible, I now made the mistake of researching feedback about both the hotel and the motel. The signs didn’t look too good.

Feedback for the hotel was less than glowing with complaints that the rooms were poor and the queue for checkout was up to an hour and a half wait, but the motel took the biscuit. One traveller, who claimed years of experience in the overnight stay arena, said it was the worst place he’d ever stayed, frequented by ‘dodgy characters’ who probably carried guns and sporting doors that had all been ‘kicked in’ at some point or other. Further feedback indicated that it was in a bad part of town, but they found that the staff were always very friendly. Well that’s a relief!

A number of latent fears came flooding in on reading this litany of disaster. Everywhere I turned on surfing the internet I came face to face with doom and despondency. A UK motorcyclist who had blogged his trip ended his blog by recording a nervous journey through Baltimore, being too scared to photograph the scene before him for fear that the people lounging around each street corner might attack him when he came to a stop at traffic lights. The picture of urban decay, streetgangs and rampant crime backed up some of my work colleagues’ viewpoints that I was probably going to meet a grisly end. The street view of the outside of the motel on Google Maps seemed to bear them out.

But it was too late to cancel any plans. I decided that an adventure is an adventure and that not many places can be worse than my childhood stomping ground. Baltimore was probably like the canal end of Swinton, South Yorkshire, with the added excitement of guns. Well actually we did have air pistols to wing each other with, so maybe it’s just the same.

Suddenly it was time to say goodbye to my work colleagues and ballroom dancing friends and head south in my trusty Toyota van, loaded up to the gunwhales with my workaday motorcycle – a Honda Hornet, clothes, books and other chattels. Saying goodbye to Diane was really tough but was sweetened by the thought that then next time we would see each other would be in sunny Los Angeles. If I made it across the States in one piece, or maybe more to the point made it out of Baltimore alive.

My alarm went off at 5am. I hadn’t slept much. Dawn was only just starting to break as I got up and dressed and checked with Suzannah that she was awake. On the one hand I felt that I was completely prepared for the journey. I’d packed and re-packed, checked and double, treble, quadruple checked everything and I was sure that I was ready. But the first hour of that morning was like being in a dream. I’ve travelled a lot in my work but this was decidedly different. Where at work much of the effort is done for you and you are booked on a business class ticket with a taxi to take you to the airport, this was at my own expense and with no sight of a job when I got back. So if things went wrong the only person who could fix them would be me. The freedom of breaking away from normal life was just starting to hit me.

My son Matthew had offered to come along and see me on my way along with Suzannah who was driving us all down to London Gatwick airport. Suzie and I laid bets on whether the ‘creature of the night’ would be out of bed by the time we arrived at his house. As we drew up outside it was readily apparent that he was still in bed, no doubt snoring away happily.

A call to his mobile managed to raise a muffled response and we agreed to fill up with petrol and come back to allow time for him to vacate his pit. Eventually we were loaded up and on our way. It was a pleasant morning – the 3rd of May. Contrary to its reputation, I find Milton Keynes to be quite a pleasant place and on this morning it was showing its spring finery with multi-coloured leaf displays along the green parklands that border the roadways through the town. It passed my mind that it would be autumn by the time I cast my eyes over it again.

At the airport it was certainly a poignant moment to say goodbye to Matt and Suzie after a quick snack and a coffee at Starbucks. I guess in all of our minds was the possibility of having an accident or serving oneself up as supper for a bear. I really didn’t know what the risks were so I chose to ignore them, but this was one point on the trip where they seemed to come out from the shadows. We waved a lot as I headed up the escalator and through to the departure gates. They put a brave face on despite the fact that their inheritance was departing up those moving stairs just as quickly as their father.

CHAPTER 5

First Impressions – New York

The flight over the Atlantic was a bit bumpy, something that caused the odd squeal from the Italian girl seated next to me. It’s nice to be able to see a new destination as you descend into it but sadly that wasn’t on the cards. Thick rain clouds blanketed JFK airport almost down to ground level. At the very last moment we were able to glimpse a wet shoreline, then approach lights, then runway and, with a heavy judder and a whispered Italian prayer, we were down.

I was arriving in New York at a time when the global banking system was on life support following a virtual meltdown and when there was still a heavy post 9/11 leaning towards homeland security. There weren’t any real signs of the former just yet, but there was a big queue to get through immigration because they took their time with questioning. The feeling of being in a different country was highlighted by the uniforms of the security staff which reminded me of the NYPD, all pressed neatly and covered with impressive badges of office, a sharp contrast to the UK where some of the officials look like they do a bit of knitting in between flight arrivals.

A very smart lady with lip-gloss and uniform was moving up and down the queue helping and directing people in a polite yet direct way, but at the immigration cubicle that changed and I got a fair old grilling. It surprised me that no-one, at any point, questioned me about my travel guitar which had all the appearances of a gun in its case, pretty quickly though I was through immigration, out of the doors to the taxi rank to be met by a bombardment of the senses.

A dapper older man with a black pencil moustache and checked cap greeted me. ‘$50 for that yeller feller or 19 bucks for mine – take ya right to the hotel. Choice is yours.’ He declared. It felt like I was being railroaded, but I went for cheap and was immediately bundled into a people carrier with no discernible door to the back seats, so I had to squeeze past a huddle of sardine-packed young Italians who were checking their mobiles and chattering excitedly. As soon as the vehicle couldn’t be packed any more our smart driver climbed in, switched on the CD player and off we rock and rolled to motown and rock classics blaring out of the speakers.

It was raining heavily and, in the late afternoon, was pretty gloomy. Not the best conditions for city appreciation, everything seemed a bit dirty and faded. The traffic was nose to tail in a logjam. And this was a Sunday! To the cheerful strains of ‘Saturday night at the movies’ we inched along, eventually passing through a tunnel and getting a glimpse of the splendour of the Manhattan skyline.

After a little tour around the packed streets of Manhattan, crammed with honking, jostling yellow cabs, we arrived at my hotel first. It looked less than pristine despite the impressive cliff of a frontage sitting directly opposite the Penn train station and Madison Square Gardens. I suppose it couldn’t have been more central but I was tired by now, probably from the jetlag, and fed up of hauling a set of heavy bags full of my remaining camping gear, clothes and biking gear. Once in my room, I dumped my bags and looked at the faded room. It was more or less reasonably clean but felt decidedly downbeat, almost threadbare. Peering through the window revealed a red brick wall. Lovely.

Oh well! I decided I was only here for one night and that I should get out and have a look at the streets of Manhattan while I had chance so, pulling on my waterproof walking jacket, I took the lift down and strolled out into the mad rush of 7th Avenue. Policemen with plastic covers on their NYPD hats (just like the movies) whistled at the traffic queues as taxis honked and honked at each other and anyone else foolish enough to get in the way. Huge trucks nudged through the mayhem and thousands of tourists wandered at varying paces along the soaking pavements. I headed down 7th Avenue in the general direction of Times Square, past Macy’s, wondering if I should buy a ‘pay as you go’ mobile phone.

The shops selling the phones had what looked like cheap deals but seemed to be a bit on the shady side so I decided to hold on until I could find a ‘pukka’ shop, whatever that would look like. To be frank I was a little bit lost in this huge teeming metropolis. I could make out the Empire State Building but its head was wreathed in low cloud and I found Times Square to be a huge reflected splash of neon colour, but I was wet and tired.

As I wandered back towards the hotel a familiar sound made me look up. A German rider swept past on a BMW touring bike, loaded up with gear and seemingly a bit lost, which is what I was without my bike. I thought about the bike sitting somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic and hoped it was OK. Never mind, two or three more days and I should be picking it up and heading south. I couldn’t wait. I took a few pictures and then tramped back to the hotel via the train station where I picked up a ticket for the morning. After quickly scoffing a pre-packed salad I ended up crashing out with the hubbub of noise continuous outside the hotel. It was a slightly inauspicious start to the trip.

The noise from the taxis and police sirens seemed to abate sometime after midnight, as if the city had had enough of itself and calmed down. It didn’t last long. Sometime after 3 am the volume was turned back up and pandemonium was back in full swing by daybreak. I abandoned the bed with its slimline, faded pillows, cleaned up and headed down to 7th Avenue for a second look.

The rain had cleared up overnight and it was a reasonably bright day, so I got a chance to see the city properly. It really did remind me of the New York of the movies. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise when somewhere turns out to be how you would have imagined it to be, but the high rise brick alleyways with metal fire escapes, the massive armoured security wagons, black and white police cars and yellow cabs were at once alien, yet strangely familiar. People were heading hither and thither at pace with little time on their hands, just like any huge city really.

It was always in my outline plan to return to New