Keep The Shiny Side Up: A Motorcycle Adventure Memoir From Germany To Turkey & Back

By Sherrie McCarthy

"Self-awareness is where the real zen of motorcycle riding occurs."

Sherrie and Patrick were no strangers to overland motorcycle travel. They met in South Korea during Patrick's first trip around the world on his motorcycle. After joining him in Argentina to ride pillion Sherrie was hooked – both on Patrick and motorcycle travel. And so a dream was born – she too would get her motorcycle license and the next trip would have them each riding their own bike. She packed up and moved to Germany and they began to plan and plot. Only when it became apparent that saving for an around the world trip would take longer than either were willing to wait, they switched plans and decided to ride from Germany to Turkey and back via the Balkans.

This is the story of their 3 month trip which included Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey. Greece, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia. From the majesty of Mt. Nemrut to the amazing and open people they met along the way, Sherrie writes candidly about the ups, downs and pure bliss that is motorcycle travel. Food, mountain top crashes, and horny deer are all just part of this trip.

Her first trip riding solo, it is an intimate account of why someone with a week old motorcycle license would jump on their bike and ride away. (Hint: It helps if staying means your homeless.)

The Happiness Project meets The Motorcycle Diaries, the book is for anyone who dreams of packing it in and riding off into the sunset - or for anyone who just likes to read about it.them dreaming about the open road. And so they make a compromise, 3 months rather than a year. A summer of adventure riding from Germany to Turkey via Romania and Bulgaria, and back via Greece and the Balkans.

Her first trip riding solo, Sherrie writes candidly about the ups, downs and pure bliss that is motorcycle travel. From the food to the drivers, the wonderful people they meet along the way and mountain top crashes.

The Happiness Project meets The Motorcycle Diaries, the book is for anyone who dreams of packing it in and riding off into the sunset - or for anyone who just likes to read about it.

Note from the publisher: Unleash Your Motorcycle Adventure Series is written by an adult and is intended for adults and therefore on occasion (and sometimes even more often than that) adult language is used. If you have a strong aversion to the use of the F-bomb, particularly when the person slinging that “type of language” is the female of the duo, you may find your enjoyment of the book somewhat diminished on occasion. Unleash Your Adventure has made an effort to remove unnecessarily foul language from the book. There are points though where we feel the integrity of the scene and Sherrie’s general personality requires the occasional swear word. Otherwise, if you ever meet her in real life, say at a Horizon’s Unlimited meeting or in some random port, you (hopefully) will not be as horrified and can not say we did not warn you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unleash Your Adventure
• Release date: Mar 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311605047

Sherrie McCarthy

An avid reader, traveller and writer, I wrote my first book at ten years old, and promptly destroyed it a month later when my classmates refused to stop talking about it. It suggested a temperament that might be counter productive to my declared dream of becoming a published author.I teach English to support my travel habit, and I am replacing teaching with writing.When I am not writing a book, I am blogging or writing my Chasing Summer column:http://theindependent.ca/author/sherrie-mccarthy/

Book preview

Sherrie McCarthy

Keep The Shiny Side Up: A Motorcycle Adventure Memoir From Germany To Turkey And Back

Copyright © 2018 by Sherrie McCarthy

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Contents

1. Enter The Black Devil & Exit My Sanity

2. Planning To Leave

3. Austria & Hungary

4. Operation Meet Joscha & Ed In Romania

5. Bulgaria

6. Efes

7. Pamukkale & The Mediterranean Coast

8. Mt. Nemrut

9. Cappadocia

10. Crash Boom Bang

11. Greece And The Balkans

12. The Night Of The Horny Deer

13. Home Sweet Home

Next In The Adventure

Motorcycle Videos, Maps Oh My!

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About The Author

Publisher’s Note:

1

Enter The Black Devil & Exit My Sanity

Beneath me, the Black Devil shuddered to a halt in the thin layer of snow. Torn between tears and screaming my rage, I chose to let vent to both. Screeching like a banshee I hurled the Black Devil to the ground and proceeded to jump up and down on it for good measure. I was aware that my sanity was very much in question and yet I felt that this was the only action that would enable me to hold onto what scrap of it was left.

The Black Devil is what I christened my Simpson Schwalbe, a scooter that had been manufactured in the DDR (the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or East Germany). And this was not the first time the Devil had proven to be unreliable. In fact, the only thing I could rely upon is that she would crap out just when I needed her the most.

Exhausted, I slumped down onto the curb and reached into my jacket to fish out my cell phone and call my boyfriend Patrick. On the screen I see I have a missed call from him. Turns out, thanks to the late and unexpected snowfall, this morning’s motorcycle lesson had been canceled anyway. I let some choice words fly at Patrick before hurling the phone across the street. The result of such spite was that I spent the time waiting for Patrick on my hands and knees searching for it.

I wish I could write that such behavior was out of character. But I am the type of person who is always prone to the occasional explosion. The problem was less the anger itself and more its frequency. It had been on a steady rise. The fact that I was so overworked explained some of the meltdowns. As a Canadian living in Germany, teaching English freelance meant that I could take 3 months off of work and fulfill my dream of riding solo on my own motorcycle on an overland journey. More importantly, it meant doing so without the fear of losing my job and/or being homeless when I returned - something that is never pleasant but as a foreigner is particularly frowned upon. I would walk back into my courses that October and pick up where I left off. It also meant I was not going to have any income for the months of July, August, and September. And so in addition to saving like a maniac, I was also taking on extra courses so that I could pay for the aforementioned dream trip. All work and no play makes Sherrie a raving lunatic.

Adding to this stress was the Black Devil. She came into my life to make it easier. An essential difference between Germany and Canada is that unlike Canada, a learner in Germany can only practice driving with a licensed instructor or in an enclosed compound like the ADAC (Germany’s national automobile organization) training grounds. That means either 40 Euro for 45 minutes of road time or 10 Euro an hour on a compound with a lot of nervous teenagers and their parents. Neither is ideal. However, like it or not, I still needed to practice riding on the road in order to pass my test. Even if I had had a motorcycle license from Canada, Germany requires Canadians to retake the motorcycle test. As it was I did not have a Canadian license either. So I was starting from scratch.

The Black Devil seemed to be the solution to this problem. Since I had a car license I was allowed to ride a scooter that went under 50 kilometers an hour. And the Simpson Schwalbe was a loophole in and of itself. Because it had been produced and classified as a scooter in the former East Germany it meant that it was an exception to the 50-kilometer ruling. Even better and more to the point, was that it was a small motorcycle with a scooter frame. And so I had a mini-motorcycle that looked like a scooter and that more importantly required me to use a clutch to switch gears. I already had purchased Betty, the BMW F 650 GS that was to be my faithful companion on the ride to Turkey and back. I could practice my evasion moves with her on the compound and use the Black Devil to ride around the city and get used to German traffic rules.

It seemed like a brilliant and cost effective way to prepare for my test. And so we bought the Black Devil, that beast I was so proud to own and that spawned as many tears and moments of intense hatred as moments of bliss and love. Riding her to work seemed like a great way to get practice in. Except, as well behaved as The Black Devil was on weekends, as soon as there was an appointment I needed to make the monster would stall …. and refuse to come back to life again. This was not the first time she had pulled this on me. It was just the last.

Perhaps the Black Devil had merely been trying to protect me from myself. Just as I was working too much and this was doing definite damage to my psyche, motorcycle lessons from the school I had signed up at proved to be an exercise in masochism. There was less instruction on what I should do and more screeching about what an idiot I was for not knowing instinctively how to do it. Which of course made me nervous and caused me to drop the bike more than once. Which extended the number of hours of hell I was to participate in.

So it is safe to say I was terrified and somewhat shell-shocked when my test was set for the Saturday that was exactly one week before our planned departure date. Neither one of us had a backup plan should I fail the test. We both had given work notice of our sabbaticals. More to the point, we had our apartment already sublet. Failing did not just mean having to wait 2 weeks to retake the test and start the trip. It meant we didn’t have a place to live.

I still have not decided if the reason I hugged my instructor when I passed showed just how ecstatic I was or if it was a case of Stockholm Syndrome. Either way, we were ready to ride.

2

Planning To Leave

Patrick and I had been talking about going around the world on bikes ever since I had met Patrick on his first round the world motorcycle trip. We were both in South Korea working as English teachers. He was refilling his travel funds while his bike took the slow route to Chile via cargo ship. I was teaching English and using it to fund my backpacking adventures. A fresh graduate from the University of Stuttgart, Patrick had left Germany the previous May to ride across the Baltic states to Russia and Mongolia and then onto Korea. His stay in Korea lasted from October until just before Christmas, when he left to reunite with his bike in Valparaiso.

It was perfect timing on his part, he was leaving the increasingly darker days of the Seoul winter for the last days of Spring in South America. While he was off chasing summer on a motorcycle, I was about to get hit with a bad case of the winter blues. Not because my love had ridden off into the sunset. We were not even dating. We did frequent the same clubs and were not exactly strangers. He liked that I had a hot shower and I loved hearing about taking a year or more off to ride a motorcycle around the world. I had never sat on a motorcycle at this point and had never heard of anyone doing this. In fact, it was so foreign to me that the possibility of it had not even crossed my mind. And yet this idea attracted me immensely.

This on top of the increasingly trapped and smothered feeling I was experiencing had me keen to read his updates or chat with Patrick when he was online. Add to this I was not happy with a turn in management at the school I was working at and I found myself increasingly thinking about Patrick and his ride through South America. And so 2 months later when he mentioned that if I wished I could join him in Argentina, my only question was if he could eventually drop me off in Chile. (I had fantasies of working as an English teacher in Santiago.)

He never dropped me off.

We spent 5 months traveling Argentina and the northern tip of Chile together and I was hooked. Both on the guy and on motorcycle travel. When we returned to our respective countries we continued to talk and visit each other and I eventually moved to Germany. And the entire time we talked about our year off to travel the world together – only this time I would be riding my own bike.

The slight kink in this plan was that moving to Germany