Pushing Miles

By Wendy Crockett and Ian McPhee

The incredible true story of a 100,000-mile motorcycle world record attempt where the only thing that didn't break was their spirit.

In the spring of 2022, renowned long distance motorcycle riders Wendy Crockett and Ian McPhee set out to execute their meticulously planned World Record ride attempt. The premise was simple enough: Visit every Australian state in alphabetical order, documenting each visit by photographing the state's capitol building. The approach would then be replicated in the United States, visiting a grand total of 58 capitols on an epic road trip adventure spanning two continents and three countries.

Reality hit hard with the revelation that absolutely nothing about this undertaking was destined to go smoothly. Yet even in the face of unfathomable adversity, including breakdowns, illness, animals strikes, historic weather events, and multiple hospitalizations, this tenacious duo refused to abandon their quest. Fueled by boundless optimism and unrelenting determination, Pushing Miles is a brutally honest and surprisingly humorous look at what it takes to make an uphill ride into endurance motorcycling history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pushing Miles Media
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798988989301

Book preview

Prologue

One thousand miles a day; piece of cake. Well, for us anyway, Ian and me. Though we hail from opposite sides of the globe, we met through long distance motorcycle riding competitions and found, having linked up quite by accident for the better part of a particularly aggressive Iron Butt Rally, that our riding rhythms are nearly perfectly aligned. Fuel range, sleep schedules, food, and other of (ahem) nature’s requirements — all uncannily synchronized. So it seemed perfectly reasonable when, in late 2019, Ian told me he had an idea: 66,000 miles in 65 days. Barely over 1,000 miles per day, a leisurely pace for the likes of us.

Here’s the twist: we would be visiting all the capitals ... in alphabetical order by state, including Juneau, Alaska, and Washington, D.C., which he cleverly named the Alphabetical Capital Expedition, or ACE. Now we were talking! Limited ability to route around weather? Traffic beyond an Aussie’s wildest imagination? Way too much time bouncing around New England with its infamously glacial speed limits? Sounded intriguing! But I can’t give Ian all the credit; I came up with a diabolical postscript all my own, visiting itty bitty towns whose names begin with letters not represented in the alphabetical state list. Z, X, Y, Q, J, H, B. Backwards, because why not. Careening coast to coast to coast, the ride ballooned to 83,000 miles in 78 days. For good measure we mimicked the alphabetical quest concept in Ian’s homeland of Australia, giving us a final plan that clocked in at a respectable 100,000 miles in less than 120 days.

And plan we did, for nearly three long years. The pandemic gave us way, way more than enough time to hash and rehash every conceivable detail, accounting for all sorts of realistic delays and contingencies as predicted by two people with a combined two million two-wheeled miles under our belts. Even after allowing five full days for services, which as career mechanics we would be performing ourselves, we were still barely skimming 1,100 miles a day.

We entertained lofty goals such as eating at least one meal a day and spending a bit of time exercising off the bikes. Though we’re both fine with sleeping rough, we figured we ought to get a hotel and bathe probably once every three days or so. You know, fancy stuff like that. Ian stores a rally bike in America, so in October 2021 I retrieved his trusty steed and associated accoutrement and began a full-scale ground-up service and prep on both of our bikes. I gathered all the necessary service parts, tires, tools, equipment, fluids, snacks, toiletries and anything else I could stash in storage for five months that might save us time or trouble on our service days. I carefully scouted out potential locations for our service headquarters, finally settling on the small town of Odell, Illinois, located about smack-dab in the middle of the country. On April Fools’ Day 2022, (date chosen specifically because it suited our goofy humors) I would hop on a plane for Oz, elated to begin what was sure to be the most flawless, pleasurable, and meticulously planned mega-mile ride of all time.

If you’ve made it this far into the book, congratulations! You’re either into the physical flagellation we call Long Distance Riding, you’re intrigued by people who undertake spectacular feats of mind-blowing endurance and unrelenting determination, or you’re some kind of weirdo sadist who likes watching two grown-ass adults, who should rightfully know better, flog themselves well, well beyond the point of reason. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. And since we’re throwing out the disclaimers, did you read that part where I said we are both mechanics? Here’s a fun fact: Swearing can be one of the most critical tools in one’s kit. It’s true. Enthusiastic cursing is even listed as a critical step in some service manuals, just not the ones sold to the public. Now some people may say that swearing is a sign of a weak mind, and frankly, fuck those people. Because there are times when that bolt is seized fast, rusted and gunked into place from years of neglect and abuse, and all the heat and penetrating oil and gentle coercion in the world aren’t going to do a damn thing. The bolt laughs in your face, then kicks your puppy for good measure.

At this point, experienced mechanics won’t get mad, they’ll get sweary. They’ll toss out a heartfelt, Fuck you, you motherless goddam piece of salty tick-infested goat-ball-licking miserable bastard-ass shit monster ... and then the bolt suddenly breaks free. It’s just science. I’ve tried the breaker bar, I’ve tried the impact gun, now it’s time to bust out the heavy artillery with some language that would get me defrocked, if I’d been a better person before I’d encountered that bolt. Anyways, all of this is to say that if you are rendered faint by words like toot and tooshie you’ll probably want to turn back now. We’re going to swear. Not like a ridiculous shit ton of swearing or anything, but enough to get the job done.

As you progress through the various levels of hell that comprise our journey, please don’t think the occasional medically indicated use of swearing as a jackhammer or a blowtorch means we’re just a couple of simple-minded idiots. I believe in time you’ll find that our actions speak quite loudly for themselves in that regard. So strap in, folks, and brace yourselves; things are about to get pretty bloody rowdy.

~ Wendy

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T-minus Four Days

Monday, March 28 (USA Time)

Go time! The car was meticulously packed, the trailer was loaded and configured with all the skill of a true Tetris master. Lists within lists, all checked and double checked before that list could be checked off other lists. You think I’m joking, but I seriously love my lists. After three years of planning and six solid months of physical preparation, everything was finally coming together so breathtakingly flawlessly that I was actually able to leave my home in Rapid City, South Dakota more than a day ahead of schedule.

Just kidding. This isn’t that kind of adventure. What really happened is that everyone in my household had contracted some vicious strain of norovirus and there were already more patients than bathrooms in the household. Rather than risk me getting sick and having yet another person trying to out-maneuver everyone else for coveted access to the porcelain throne, they demanded I get the hell out while the getting was still good. I was appreciative of the gesture, while at the same time I was disappointed that my little going-away party had turned out more like the pie-eating contest scene from Stand By Me. I didn’t spend too much time indulging my disappointment, however; it was nearly 7 p.m. when I received my eviction notice and with 920 miles between me and Odell, Illinois, I was in for a long night. Longer than anticipated, it turned out, because I was barely past Wall, South Dakota — a mere 70 miles from home — when I totaled my car on a deer’s face.

Yeah. I wish I was kidding. Being a moonless night, I was already going under the speed limit when I saw this miserable basta (oh, right — self-imposed swear limit) ... when I saw this bucking buck standing on the right shoulder. No problem; I moved to the left lane and smoothly applied the brakes as the distance between us narrowed. I was going well under the speed limit by the time this dumbass stepped directly into the front right quarter panel of my 3.5 ton projectile. I’ve never in my entire life hit anything bigger than I could eat in one sitting, so I wasn’t prepared for how intense the impact was. I immediately began to fishtail all over the (thankfully empty) highway. There was no left shoulder to speak of, and the median dropped off into a steep grassy slope. I had nowhere else to go to avoid the miserable prick, but I was able to pull out of the fishtail and ease to the right shoulder without further incident. My heart was racing, I was pissed off and freaked out, but also unhurt and pretty damn proud that my reaction after the impact hadn’t made things any worse. Other than some flying chunk of deer debris that had broken my motorcycle’s windshield support bolts, I kept her up (in motorcycle terms) and the only fatality was my car. I honestly expected to hop out and slap some tape on the headlight, maybe on some bodywork, but she was seriously mangled. The radiator was in the process of vomiting out the last of her load, the wheel was twisted in a very unnatural angle, and the passenger side doors were buckled in to the point where they would no longer open. The hood was toast and all manner of wiring was dangled where no wiring had dangled before. And that’s only what I could see at night. I was alive, the bikes were alive; now it was time to retrieve my heart rate from the stratosphere and come up with a plan.

The second piece of bread in this shit sandwich was that Mike, my husband, was one of the afflicted patients back at home. Being only 70 miles away was a silver lining in that I was inside my 100-mile tow limit and could have my car dropped at a shop near home. The downside of being located at the midway point of a 140-mile round-trip drive (with half of that spent sitting next to a stranger in a tow truck) when you’ve got explosive emissions from both ends, is pretty self-explanatory. Besides having Mike bring me his truck and having him accompany my demolished car back to Rapid City, I’m not sure what my options were. I could ride home with the tow truck to swap vehicles myself, which would require either an expensive out-of-pocket tow for the trailer or leaving the trailer behind on the side of the interstate. I’d planned on making the drive straight through — during daylight hours, for that matter — and had only secured the contents of the trailer enough to deter casual thievery while I ran for a quick pee, not while sitting completely unattended in the middle of nowhere for hours.

I could rent a truck, sure, which would only be a Band-Aid to get the trailer to Odell. It was wildly impractical to rent a vehicle for six months only to have it sit in storage the vast majority of the time, but without having ready access to a vehicle with a hitch our entire plan would implode. We would have no way to move the trailer, no way to use the hitch-mounted tire machine, no way to transport ourselves or anything else off the bikes. The plan necessitated some kind of full-time four-wheeled conveyance in residence in Odell, one that didn’t annihilate our budget right from the get-go. I gritted my teeth and gave Mike a call. He was extremely displeased about the situation, but he dragged himself to the truck and headed my way. I got Tow Insurance Company on the phone and made the necessary arrangements, explaining that we would need time to swap the trailer and all the contents of the car over to the truck. They were pretty cool about it; since I wasn’t far from the geographic middle of nowhere, it was going to take them a while to reach me anyways.

Requisite conversations concluded and with nothing to do but wait, I settled into the isolation of my own black world and began to seethe. I had to leave at that precise moment, more than a day ahead of schedule, and spend precisely the wrong amount of time fueling up the car in order for my conveyance to merge with that deer’s stupid ugly face. I catalogued all the myriad ways in which the past few hours could have, and should have, unfolded differently. It was malicious and unfair. I decided I deserved vengeance, or at the very least a souvenir. I grabbed a flashlight out of my tank bag and set off walking up the freeway in search of the reviled beast who was responsible for my current situation. With no landmarks against which to orient myself, it’s hard to say how far I’d gone — a quarter mile maybe? — when my flashlight faded and died.

But I was a woman on a mission and I wasn’t going to let this little stumbling block slow me down. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, flicked on the flashlight, and soldiered on ... for a minute, maybe two. As the crisp night air crept in and my frustration began to subside, I took stock of my situation. Surely, I had to be close to the deer by now, but I was also standing on the side of an unlit interstate in the middle of the prairie on a moonless night, depending solely on the pitiful little beam emitted from my phone, wearing all black. Black shirt, black sweatshirt, black shorts. I sighed. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if I died in the pursuit of retribution, and honestly, the exercise had probably provided more of an endorphin boost than I would have received from standing around kicking a mangled deer corpse. I turned, somewhat begrudgingly, and made my way back to the relative safety of my wrecked car. I sat and waited.

When Mike finally arrived, he didn’t have much to say, so we got to work. All the bins and tools and parts, so painstakingly arranged mere hours before, were hurled from one vehicle to another with reckless abandon. It’s amazing we didn’t lose anything critical in the process. We were down to swapping the last few items when the tow truck rolled up. Just like that, five hours into our six-month trip, the Traverse was unceremoniously hauled off and the Tahoe became the official cage of the USA Alphabetical Capital Expedition. I updated Ian on the situation, and we agreed it was probably a good thing we’d gotten all our bad luck out of the way early. The Universe snickered quietly to itself, I gathered my composure, and I accelerated back out onto the interstate. I’d torched four perfectly good hours and there were still 850 miles between me and Odell.

T-minus Three Days

Tuesday, March 29

I spent the remainder of the night and a good part of my day driving straight through to Odell. It’s weird hopping into someone else’s vehicle; nothing is located where my muscle memory thinks it’s supposed to be and the phone holder doesn’t fit my phone and I’m starting to realize how many non-critical comfort bits I’d inadvertently left behind in the Traverse (R.I.P.). Nothing worth stopping for, just enough to throw me off my game. Still, I was indescribably grateful for the contribution of the Tahoe because without it, the ACE ride would have been over before it began.

I headed directly to Odell, arriving at the storage facility that would become our Ground Zero. I’d done absolutely exhaustive research trying to locate a property inside our target region, within our budget, with available units big enough to accommodate both the car and trailer, ideally with power, with 24-hour access, and an owner who wasn’t going to be too fussed if we were to do some low-key, very quiet, non-messy, practically saintly kind of repair work in there from time to time. That was far easier said than done, and after many months of work (and while I should warn you I am the world’s biggest fan of hyperbole, I’m not actually exaggerating in this case) I finally tracked down this joint. Odell, Illinois: Population 989. Great location with easy interstate access, situated right on Historic Route 66 with a gas station directly across the road.

Who could ask for anything more?

They have extra big units, long enough to accommodate both the car and trailer, although the desired unit was currently occupied and would be available the following month. Then the following month, then maybe a month or two after that. Turns out the current tenants weren’t in all that big of a hurry to vacate and we were running out of time, so the owner had offered a workaround: two separate units, one a bit bigger than the other, to tide us over until the single extra-big unit came available. It wasn’t going to be a big deal initially; while I was gone in Australia the truck would be living in long-term parking in Chicago, meaning we wouldn’t need to max out our storage space until six weeks after we took up residence.

I agreed to the arrangement, signed the contract, and sent a check to cover our deposit and first few months’ rent to lock everything down. With all the excitement of the day I hadn’t given the storage situation much thought, but when I finally found myself sitting in front of the units, I recalled that the Tahoe is actually a smidge shorter than the Traverse. Some quick measurements revealed that the units were ever-so-slightly larger than advertised, meaning we had barely enough room to squeeze the truck in the smaller of the two units while the trailer fit perfectly in the larger. With a price difference of only about $25 per month between the compromise units and the promised single unit, we decided to stay put, pay the remainder of our six months’ rent, and proceed with the confidence that everything storage-related was set in stone. I appreciated, after the rough night I’d had, this unexpected little stroke of good luck. I’ll take it where I can get it!

At this point I was running on empty and found myself questioning my ability to execute days like the past 24 hours for three months straight. I wanted to do the bare basics, grab a meal, and get settled into the hotel — alas, I had loads of work still ahead of me. I left the bikes on the trailer, knowing all that heavy lifting would be infinitely easier when Ian and I handled it together. I’m normally pretty slick with backing up trailers, but the space between rows of storage buildings was a bit snug, and our unit itself was only about 4" wider than the trailer. I made a couple half-hearted runs at it but couldn’t manage to get the trajectory quite right. I resigned myself to unloading the trailer’s contents into one unit and moving the trailer into the other by hand.

I’d just lowered the trailer’s ramp when a car pulled up. You want to back that up? a gruff old man barked at me from the driver’s seat.

Yeah, I was thinking about it, I replied. Bit of a tight fit. Would you mind spotting me?

Well, that’s why I’m here, ain’t it?

I smiled to myself. This grumpy old cuss felt obligated for whatever reason to assist this poor helpless woman with her big ol’ trailer, yet he clearly wasn’t happy about it. I’m guessing the lady in the passenger seat may have had something to do with this particular chore. I closed the tailgate, hopped back into the truck, and proceeded to snicker to myself for the next five minutes or so while he scream-dictated my tasks.

NO! I didn’t say to turn THAT much! Just barely to the right! Gawd, now we have to start over. Pull forward.

I can’t tell you why this guy’s attitude tickled me so much, because he was clearly displeased at my painful ineptitude, and I’m guessing that my audible giggling wasn’t helping matters any. We finally got it aligned perfectly and I eased it all the way into the unit, with a couple inches to spare on all four sides. Perfection. When I turned to thank my nameless cranky benefactor, he had already gone. He’d saved me a solid hour of work, demonstrably against his will, and faded silently back into the cornfields before I could force my unwanted pleasantries upon him. I’d gotten my first taste of what it was going to be like operating in a town of under 1,000 people. If we had something going on, by golly almost everyone knew about it. This was gonna be great.

Generally satisfied with my day’s work, I locked up our units for the very first time and made the 14-mile journey into Pontiac, IL. Pontiac is a much bigger town, with a population fairly bursting at nearly 12,000 souls. This is the town where we would find grocery stores, auto parts stores, restaurants, and the hotel that we would call home. My friend and fellow Iron Butt Rally vet Rick Martin lives in Pontiac; it was his replies to my rather cryptic social media inquiries about storage options in the greater Chicagoland region that resulted in my current presence.

As torched as I felt, I also hadn’t had a proper meal in a few days, what with all the chaos and mayhem and shifting of schedules. I invited Rick out to dinner and we met up at a restaurant a few blocks from my hotel. We chatted away over a nice turkey dinner, discussing motorcycle travel in a very broad context. He didn’t have the slightest idea what we were doing here; he didn’t even know there was a we involved. He’d gleaned that it was something big, really big, and in keeping with Iron Butt decorum he didn’t press for any more information. Fat and happy that things were finally going my way, we said our goodbyes. I still had a ton of staging to do in storage, but I figured I’d earned a good night’s sleep; I retreated to the hotel and dropped immediately into bed, dead to the world.

T-minus Two Days

Wednesday, March 30

An early riser by nature, I was up with the sun and ready to fine-tune things in storage. I pulled our many tires off the trailer — 18 in all — and carefully arranged them along the side of the smaller storage unit. This would make things easier and faster when it came time to unload our bikes upon our return, because once the clock started ticking on Ian’s 90-day visa, every second would count. I unloaded the truck and organized our multitudinous storage bins, each dedicated to a particular category of item. There was a bin for Ian’s spare parts and another for mine. A bin each for toiletries and personal items and snacks and tools. A bin with general items for services and repairs, like tin foil to prevent draining oil from spilling on exhausts, a variety of funnels, Loctite and anti-seize, super glue to repair both mechanical and personal injuries, four types of tape and as many types of zip ties, spare hardware, and lubes of all kinds. If you can think of it and it might make a job go more smoothly, I probably packed it.

During the process of prepping our bikes for this undertaking, I’d made a list of every single tool and supply I used along the way and ensured they were included in my final packing. It’s amazing how many sundry bits get changed out over the lifetime of the bike, and these bikes have been at it hard for 20 years, give or take. That’s not even counting the incredible number of rally-related accessories (or farkles) we’ve added to the mix. So while the service manual says that’s a 12 mm bolt, it might actually have a 13 mm head. I sat back and surveyed the thorough, logical arrangement of our many requisite supplies: I was ready, I thought, for damn near anything.

~

Preparation. It’s important, right? For three years we had both been at it: maps, routes, service requirements. Wendy’s Australian bike purchase, then sourcing a fuel cell and fitting all the bits Wendy shipped over for just one ride. Review of fuel access in Australia, which can be problematic for long distance riders on the clock in our country, locating a suitable service location in the USA, watching the exchange rate kill the Australian dollar to the US dollar. Watching as Covid flogged everyone, then the rising fuel prices — and we two are juggling total costs against all these factors. Against these costs ballooning, our tyres represented one of the largest single costs, and as a natural progression of conversation ideas, Wendy floated that we run car tyres. Wendy’s motorcycle, a 2005 Yamaha FJR, is a reasonably easy wheel size to find a tyre for; my motorcycle, a 2001 BMW R1100RT which I dubbed the Buffalo, is the exact goddamn opposite, as it is with everything. But as is the norm and became the accepted standard, Wendy found a supplier who could give us enough tyres to run the 83,000 miles. Our tyre costs went from thousands to hundreds, and we breathed a financial sigh of relief.

Once again, Wendy shouldered the main load while I watched from the other side of the world. She ferreted out, secured, stored, stacked, packed, and corralled the enormous pile of everything we would need in the USA. Meanwhile, Wendy's very carefully sorted, catalogued system was being created in the exact opposite way in Oz. We had tyres for both bikes organised in Canberra to be fitted right before the Oz ACE starts, our minimal tank bag food was picked up two days before we actually needed it, and along with drinking a few beers, eating meat pies, buying Wendy her first pair of double plugger thongs, we were ready. The preparation for this ride was not the same as a rally. While rallies tend to be a very short, sharp, focused effort, we were undertaking a very long relatively steady ride, so our preparation differed.

~

I ran a few more errands around town, confirming the used oil recycling regulations at the nearest auto parts store and deciding at the last minute to grab a neck pillow for the flight. I finally made my way back to the hotel, settled in, and in my ignorant cockiness, since my actual flight wasn’t until Friday afternoon, I began looking up hiking trails in the area that I might enjoy in all my copious leisure time. It was central Illinois so the trail search results were pretty grim, still ... I’d managed to button up all my chores quite nicely and the world was essentially my oyster for the next 38 hours. I’d eventually make my way up to Chicago and overnight in a hotel near the airport, which is where the truck would be stored while I was away.

I rarely go out to eat in my normal life and I have a particular distaste for chain restaurants when I have other options. I did some digging around and found a little local joint that specializes in almost exclusively locally sourced meat, dairy, and veggies. Their menu looked amazing, so I called and placed an order for carryout. At the prescribed time, I meandered out to the stalwart old Tahoe and ... click. Nothing. I tried again: crickets. It wasn’t even trying to start; it acted like the battery had just enough juice to light the dash, but when faced with any greater draw it wilted away like a pathetic neglected flower. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Mike has never had a moment’s trouble with this truck, and now all of a sudden it won’t even allow me to feed myself. Sigh. All my serious tools, like my multimeter, were staged in Odell. I had spent the previous few years undertaking aggressive physical training in preparation for this ride, and as such I was perfectly capable of walking 28 miles round trip to fetch it, though my dinner would be long discarded by the time I got back. I grabbed the tools I had handy and assessed all the usual culprits; no dice. Mike had a scanalyzer stashed in the truck that I plugged in and got a mass air flow sensor code. Not good. I called the restaurant and apologized profusely, explaining that even if I started sprinting towards them at that very moment, there was no way I’d arrive before they closed. I knew they don’t offer delivery, so I was surprised when they said they’d send my order with one of their employees as soon as they closed. It looked like I was going to eat after all! Yeah! The question is, would I be able to get myself to the airport in 36 hours?

I spent a little more time hammering away at truck troubleshooting, without success. My food arrived, I praised (and paid) my delivery guy like the god he was, then I retreated to my room to nourish myself and confer with Rick about my newest problem. He knew a guy who knew a guy who worked at the Chevy dealership, conveniently located directly across the street from the hotel, and arranged to have the Tahoe towed there in the morning. Outfuckingstanding. Content that I had some kind of plan in motion to tackle the immediate problem, I settled in to enjoy my phenomenal dinner and research the distressingly sparse public transportation options between Pontiac and Chicago O’Hare before finally calling it a night. Suddenly tomorrow seemed much too close. Maybe this should have been the omen I listened to, since the deer was clearly a fluke, but no. This was another mountain to be climbed and I was strapping on my hiking boots. Come hell or high water, I was going to make that plane to Australia.

T-minus One Day

Thursday, March 31

Rick isn’t much of a morning guy — his morning is about three hours past mine — still, he dragged himself out of bed with his multimeter first thing. In the meantime, I’d done a bit of research into whether a faulty mass air flow sensor could be responsible for the Tahoe’s symptoms. I called around to the auto parts shops in town as soon as they opened, but nobody had a mass air flow sensor in stock. It would be a couple of days, they said; that’d be a couple of days too late for me to make my flight to Australia. Once Rick rolled in we plucked away at the problem, and one by one, we ruled out the easy fixes. We’d about run out of leads when the boys from the Chevy shop showed up, ready to tow her off for assessment. This was going to be a long, boring, and probably expensive day.

Rick had other shit to do besides babysit a sad sack waiting on her busted truck, so he wandered off while I begged the hotel for a super duper late checkout. Reprieve request granted, I made busywork trying to figure out alternative means of getting my ass to the airport, should it prove necessary. Half a day later, I received a call; my mass air flow sensor was confirmed bad. (I already knew that.) There are no mass air flow sensors in town. (Ditto.) They could get me rolling by unplugging the sensor, but I’d have to source another one on my own. (Record scratch.) I’m sorry, WHAT?!? I could have fetched my own damn dinner simply by unplugging the faulty sensor? This is some seriously useful information that absolutely should be on the interwebs. (Note to self, one year to the day later: You really should post this shit on the interwebs.)

Finally, late that afternoon, I walked my extremely happy hiney over to the dealership. For some weird reason (I’m crediting Rick here, assuming the rapid-fire turnaround was a one-off) they had Googled my name, so I got into a long conversation with the boys behind the counter regarding long distance motorcycle riding and the broad strokes of the ride I had waiting in the wings. It was fortuitous that I’d known the right guy who had known the right guy, and I was more than enthusiastic to talk about my chosen sport since a nearly functional vehicle was sitting right on the other side of that conversation. Good luck in the midst of my bad luck. I paid the bill, we shook hands, and I sent Rick one last message thanking him for all of his help: past, present, and (presumably) future. At this point he still had no idea what we had planned and no idea what a huge role he would play over the course of the summer; we were just happy to have reconnected in the far-flung world of long distance riders. I made record time on the one-block trip back to the hotel, tossed my meticulously cataloged and packed belongings into the back of the marginally running truck, and with some mild trepidation, I hit the highway.

The truck didn’t behave at all unusually with the sensor unplugged, which was a relief. Still, I didn’t want to park it with a known fault so I got to work making phone calls to auto parts stores in close proximity to my target hotel. As luck would have it, the closest store actually happened to have the sensor in stock. It wasn’t terribly expensive and was a simple job to replace, so I did the swap right there in the parking lot. A few ignition cycles later, the check engine code had cleared and the truck was back to its old self. At least I got all of my bad luck out of the way early!

While I was out on the town, I searched myself up a little mom-and-pop soul food restaurant. I didn’t realize it was a brand spanking new place until I walked in and found a professional photographer taking pictures of each dish for their new menu. I excused myself and moved to exit, but the owner insisted I stay. I was in absolutely no hurry, what with all of my worldly problems having been resolved, and I was content to sit there as I was to sit in some stuffy hotel room. What followed was among my favorite random encounters of this entire adventure. We chatted at length about life; she and her daughter had been running a small take-out place for years and had finally decided to go all-in on a real sitdown location. We talked about her background and mine, about my upcoming flight to Australia and some of my past travels. She was busy in the kitchen as well, preparing each dish to look its very best for its photo, and interspersed throughout the cooking and conversation she would bring me various dishes to sample while awaiting my main dish.

I sat in there for hours, reveling in the fantastic smells and mouth-watering tidbits, feeling like I was reconnecting with an old friend. When it finally came time to leave, she refused to charge me for any food. I protested, to no avail, so I settled on leaving a gigantic tip instead. One thing I knew for sure, I had to bring Ian there when we flew back from Australia together. Once again fat and happy, I made the short trip to the hotel and prepped the Tahoe for long-term storage. I disconnected absolutely everything that might cause a draw on the battery, made sure to park it somewhere that wasn’t shaded by a pine tree, and locked her up tight. Next time I unlocked those doors, we were going to be on the clock for USA ACE. I settled in, antsy and excited. I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep; I always sleep poorly before a big day. In spite of everything, I’d managed to make it to Odell and on to Chicago. To be safe I made a reservation on the extra early shuttle bus, confident that my troubles were over.

Day Zero

Friday, April 1

I was the only person on my shuttle bus. It was quite early, much earlier than I really needed to be heading to the airport, but I was awake anyways and would much rather be hours early than a few minutes too late. Australia, along with many other countries, required travelers to provide a negative Covid test before they would be permitted to fly; all of my research said the airport testing location was by far the fastest and most reliable, and unlike many community testing sites, it was guaranteed to give you the correct paperwork required for international travel.

Still, I had my concerns; in my experience if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. I don’t like doing things last-minute for that reason, but the test must be performed within 24 hours before your scheduled flight. I’d intended to hit the airport yesterday afternoon to be 110% certain I’d have the test results in hand, before the truck decided to take a shit and eat up half my day. If I was going to be forced to have the test done on the morning of the flight, I at least wanted to make sure it was done as early as possible. Ideally, with documentation in hand like eight solid hours before boarding. My shuttle driver and I chatted about my upcoming trip, about his life growing up in Cuba and all the places he’d traveled and lived. He’d never been to Australia, but it was on his list. I promised to tell him all about it when I returned, then I gathered up my bags and bid him farewell.

Turns out it was a good thing I had arrived early; apparently my original flight, scheduled four months ago, had been canceled. Since any alternative combination of flights would have significant impacts on my travel schedule they opted to ... you know ... not say anything. They kinda low-key erased me off both my flight legs and hoped I wouldn’t notice, I guess? Or maybe they figured we’d all have more fun trying to sort this out in person at the last minute, which as I mentioned previously is something I’m quite fond of. That’s cool. I guess that explains why I wasn’t allowed to check in for my flight online.

I ended up engaging in one of those conversations ... Have you ever been talking to someone who is so detached from reality that you start to wonder if you’ve been secretly drugged? It was one of those. We can put you on the 4 p.m. flight to Los Angeles, arriving at 6:30 p.m. That’s awesome, except the one and only direct flight this entire week between Los Angeles and Brisbane departs at 6 p.m. tonight. We can put you on a flight to Los Angeles next Wednesday, flying direct into Brisbane the following Friday? Sigh. Ma’am, I’m standing at the airport now. I can’t even begin to tell you how many aspects of this trip will be mangled if you start hacking weeks off my allotted time in Australia. Let’s please work together to get me, from here, to there, very soon-ish. She finally offered up an alternative which, while not ideal, at least didn’t require modifications to the space/time continuum in order to catch my connections. She had me flying from Chicago to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles into Sydney, Australia and flying on to Brisbane from there.

I did voice one concern about the new plan, which is that the two-hour layover in Sydney might not be sufficient for me to catch my connecting flight. I’ve heard nightmarish stories about the Sydney airport; international flights arrive at a far-flung terminal, necessitating a lengthy shuttle ride to catch domestic connections. The shuttles run every 10 minutes under some circumstances, only every 30 minutes under others. The precise details of the shuttle schedule were a bit too murky for my liking. And before I could queue up for the maybe 10-minute, maybe 30-minute shuttle intervals, I would still have to go through international customs. It seemed too tight for comfort, but the desk agent assured me that Qantas would not allow her to book this series of connecting flights if the layover time was insufficient. I blinked at her. This is the same lady who, not five minutes ago, was asking me to travel backward in time to catch a connecting flight to Brisbane. Alas, she decreed that if I wanted to be on my way to Australia today, this mish-mash of flights was my only viable option. Ok, then. Let’s make it happen.

Long before my flights were sorted out, I received a text saying my Covid results were in. I’d tested negative, the digital paperwork was in order, and I was cleared for takeoff. This whole last-minute testing requirement was one of my big worries for the trip, so at least that had gone smoothly. From there it was a whole lot of hurry up and wait. I walked laps around the airport for hours, played some logic puzzles, and at long last boarding for my flight was announced. Finally, I was on my way. The flight from Chicago was packed solid and generally uneventful, as was my layover in Los Angeles. It was after 10 p.m. when I boarded my flight to Sydney; it was a massive plane, yet my head count showed a total of 14 passengers. I was cautiously optimistic; I hadn’t bothered to pay for a seat assignment, saving a few bucks and hoping for the best. As it turned out, each traveler was provided an entire row, wall to wall, all to themselves, staggered in alternating rows so nobody was in the row in front of or behind them. It was one of the first days since general air travel to Australia had resumed amidst the pandemic, so it made sense that the flight was barely filled, and I had a bit more sympathy for the fact that my original flights had been canceled. If I had to guess, I’d say these 14 customers probably represented at least a few different consolidated flights. I settled in for a nice dinner, then stretched out to enjoy a few movies; I not only had 14 hours of flight time to kill, I was trying to align my schedule with Brisbane time in order to minimize jet lag. When I finally reached Australia, I wanted to hit the ground running.

Australia (Oz)

Sunday, April 3 (Australia time)

The flight, while long, was really about as good as an economy flight could possibly be. The food was good, the beer was free, there were ample movies to watch, and I had all the space in the world to spread out. I’m used to scrambling my sleep schedule for rally riding purposes, so staying awake for the better part of a day to align myself with Brisbane time was no big deal.

I was well rested and feeling great when we set down in Sydney, but that euphoria wouldn’t last. The line for customs seemed like it went on for miles (or kilometers, I guess it would be). Though my luggage was pretty much exclusively riding gear and motorcycle accessories, they didn’t give me a hard time about anything. I broke free from customs ready to bolt to the shuttle stop, but my sprint ended up as more of a long jump, because the shuttle line reached nearly all the way back to customs.

I hedged my bets and continued trotting down the line, tracing it all the way to the front to make sure that this was, in fact, the right line. Since the shuttle stop itself was far away and well out of sight, it was conceivable that this was actually the line for the bathroom or something, with some misguided traveler midway through the line inadvertently giving bad information to everyone in his wake. No such luck, and now I would be about 30 shuttle butt spots farther down the line. Ah, well — no risk, no reward.

I waited for what seemed like an eternity. I checked my watch roughly every 18 seconds, confirming that it had in fact been an eternity. I think at one point the line actually started moving backwards. This most definitely wasn’t one of those 10-minute-interval shuttle situations, and if it was supposed to be a 30-minute tram it was running way behind schedule. I checked my watch for the four thousandth time; I was almost certainly going to miss my connection. Ever so slowly, we began to creep forward. I could finally see the sliding doors! Suddenly half a dozen shuttles showed up at once, and gossip about some sort of crazy shuttle-delaying crisis began to travel back through the line. At this point I frankly didn’t care and focused on defending my real estate as similarly desperate, but less scrupulous, individuals began attempting to jump the line. People were jockeying for position and threatening the shuttle drivers if they didn’t agree to squeeze one more family onto the bus. It was ridiculous. Having cleared whatever shuttle-related clog had been preventing progress, buses started showing up three and four at a time, and it wasn’t long before I scored myself a seat. I wasn’t in the clear, but it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that I might squeak out my connection.

An arduous 15-minute ride later, we finally pulled up at the domestic terminal. I grabbed my bags and ran, believing that with an appropriate level of aggression I’d be able to pull this off. I hit the self-check-in kiosk, chucked a bag on the scale, and scanned my ticket. Go Away! it screamed, or something gratingly similar. I tried again with similar results, and once more for good measure. There were no further details provided, but my best guess was that with boarding probably having already started, they couldn’t guarantee my bags would make the flight using the self-check-in option. I cast my gaze upon the check-in counter to my left and was greeted with a line consisting of roughly every human who had been standing in the shuttle line. GAWD. FLIPPING. DAGNABBIT. As I skittered around, trying to gauge whether I could jump the line based on extenuating circumstances, listening to the dull roar of complaints from the other people in line, it seemed like everybody was fixing to miss their flights. Adding insult to injury, most of their desk agents had been caught up in the same coagulation that had delayed all the shuttles. Grrrrr ...

At long-suffering last, right about the time they were probably closing the doors on my flight to Brisbane, I finally reached the counter. I pleaded my case, showing the agent my running shoes and muscular calves, but he refused to even let me attempt to make my flight. I scowled and criticized, with all the saccharine sweetness I could possibly muster, the inadequate shuttle situation; he shrugged and directed his gum-smacking eye roll towards the growing line of disgruntled travelers. We proceeded to engage in a conversation similar to the one in Chicago — I’m guessing they’re all trained in the same mind-altering drug lab — and according to him, there were very few options that would prevent me from having an aneurysm. There was such an incredible number of people whose flights had been affected by this delay that he ruled out any possibility of a direct flight to Brisbane, as the next flights with seats available were days away. I was probably somewhere between twitchy-eyed fury and straight-up bawling when he offered another option: grab a flight to Melbourne, then quick like a little monkey scuttle on over a few gates and jump on a flight to Brisbane. If all goes according to plan, he insisted, I would arrive a mere 11 hours behind schedule. Fan-fucking-tastic. Let’s make this happen.

I was in no mood, but airport security agents thrive on dealing with people who are in no mood. I subjected my bags to inspection for the fourth time, and this time I was flagged for a more in-depth search. Now, I’m not a super frequent flier but I do have a 100% success rate of getting swabbed for bomb residue. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I play along without putting up a fuss. I also have a bunch of metal in my pelvis, which typically gets the metal detectors pretty wound up. Neither of these seemed to be the issue this time, however. The agent, with all the gruff glare he could muster, demanded I open my bag, then delve a bit deeper to open my toiletry kit. I was a bit confused; I’ve flown all over the world with that kit and I travel with printed copies of my prescriptions, so I waited to see exactly what he was after. Meanwhile, I checked my watch ... tick tock, tick tock.

He rifled through my bag, then finally emerged victorious: my tiny cosmetic scissors in their full ¾" bladed fury.

What are these?! he demanded.

Um ... scissors? Is this a trick question?

These are a restricted item! You are NOT permitted to bring these on the plane!

Are you serious?!? These exact scissors have flown in and out of at least half a dozen countries without issue.

He straightened up and said with obvious pride, Well, not Australia! He said I had two options: One, I could go back out to the check-in counter, wait through the line to buy a shipping pouch, pay to have my $20 scissors shipped somewhere, then stand through the security line again and hope like hell that I didn’t miss my flight. Or two, throw them away.

I said, in one of my less proud moments, They. Are. Fucking. Scissors. Throw them wherever the hell you want, pocket them for all I care; all I know is that I’m not going to miss another flight.

With great flourish he tossed my favorite little scissors in a bin, and looking quite pleased with himself for having derailed my dastardly scissor-related plot, instructed me to get my luggage back together. For the first time I directed my gaze to the elderly woman behind me, then apologized for my zesty language. She nodded, saying she was about to miss her second flight of the day as well. We bonded over our shared trauma, then wished each other luck, and parted ways.

I hoofed it double time to my gate and arrived as the last few stragglers were boarding. I was late as hell, but somehow I’d made it. This flight had us packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and I passed the time commiserating with the other ladies in my row. Both had suffered repeated flight delays and cancellations, bouncing airport to airport on long international flights that should have taken half as long, maybe less. The woman on my left, a Malaysian expat returning from a visit to her daughter, was hoping to catch the same flight to Brisbane as me.

Our flight to Melbourne had been delayed long enough to allow us to make the flight, but also just enough to make us really nervous about catching the connection. We took stock of our position, in the very last row, literally right up against the rear bulkhead. Since the flight had been loaded from both the front and the back, with the faintest glimmer of hope I asked the flight attendant if she expected us to deplane in the same fashion: yeah, nah. Melbourne airport doesn’t operate that way. Damn. We listened to wafting bits of nearby conversations; it seemed that everyone had been delayed and were pressed for time, and it felt like things were going to devolve into a game of Pole Position the moment our wheels hit the tarmac.

By the time we landed in Melbourne, the flight to Brisbane had already been boarding for several minutes. We stood there in the back, doing the pee-pee dance, willing everyone to hurry the hell up with every ounce of mesmerism we could possibly muster. I’d pre-scouted the airport map and it didn’t look like we had far to go when at long merciful last, we were among the final few people to disembark. My seatmate and I both left dust in our wake, skidding in at the last possible minute as the final two passengers to board. We wished each other well on our respective travels as we parted ways to find our seats. I couldn’t even calculate how long I’d been traveling and it was almost too much to imagine, but as long as the plane went up like it should and came down like it should (to quote Ian) my next stop should be in Ian’s home town.

I’m guessing they eventually ran out of ways of jerking me around because finally, at long bloody last, I landed in Brisbane. Poor Ian had been expecting to pick me up well before sunrise and instead he was retrieving my sorry bedraggled ass in the late afternoon. I fairly exploded off the plane; having no phone service in Australia at that moment, I didn’t know whether I was going to find him at the gate or if I’d be tracking him down sitting at the curb in the arrivals area.

I didn’t have to wonder long, because he’d cleverly positioned himself behind a large sign right where passengers were exiting the jetway. He was sitting there like a little boy, waiting to jump out and startle me — for some reason I happened to look that way and spoil his cover. We instantaneously fell into our routine of acting like a couple of obnoxious siblings — long lost Siamese twins from different mothers is what Ian calls us — and after three years of planning and roughly 972 days on various planes, I was all too happy to receive a couple good noogies in exchange for having finally arrived. I loaded up into Ian’s quintessentially Australian Holden ute (most Americans would call it a pickup truck) and we headed for home. After such an arduous trip, we settled in and called it an early night. Both of us, by nature, are the Early To Bed, Early To Rise types, and it’s never too early to cement a good routine.

~

The day I picked her up from the airport in Brisbane was the culmination of a lot of planning, talking, anticipation, despair, excitement, did I mention planning, my god, planning. Anyway, up I went in the ute, a real true blue Aussie Holden ute. In Australia, we term my type of ute the poverty pack, limited in its comforts with manual wind-up windows, a basic radio system, fitted with a 5-speed manual gearbox, the cheapest interior flooring and seats of that model range and a basic v6 engine. Wendy wanted me to pick her up in this iconic vehicle, so an hour before she landed, me and my silver ute with its non-stock exhaust half-roared, half-wheezed our way to the airport.

Her journey through the airports from Chicago to Brisbane had been familiarly hard to listen to as we chatted her way across the world as it was one I knew well, having followed that same path on my way back and forth over the years.

Watching from behind my hiding post at the mouth of the airway that spews people into the waiting throng, Wendy wandered out, and catching sight of me, we gave each other a hug three years in the making, picking up from where we had dropped off in Minnesota when I saw her ride out of our friend John’s driveway in 2019. Our reconnection had been discussed: What if when we met up the spark wasn’t there? What if we decided maybe you weren’t the right person to do this ride with? All these possibilities had been discussed and in that first moment of joy at being in the company of the other, all our fears about not being happy together vapourised in an instant. The road trip home, that 50 minutes on the road together, had us laughing and making jokes in our easy manner and so, with no more than that, we fell into our easy style of friendship.

Monday, April 4 – Friday, April 15

I quickly fell into the habit of waking up super early — probably 3 a.m. — with Ian typically up around the same time. A lifetime of shift work had his internal clock set to rise well before the sun. This is where we locked in one of our other favorite routines: sharing a cup of coffee and enjoying the sunrise. Once the sun rose our days got pretty hectic because we still had a lot of final prep work to do in order to make the Australian ACE ride a reality. Ian’s Yamaha Super Tenere was pretty well prepped, while my Australian bike was, for all intents and purposes, a blank slate. I’d had Ian combing the classifieds for months in search of a Gen 1 Yamaha FJR. It’s the same bike I ride in North America, and after 17 years of fine-tuning my rally setup I had more than enough castoff parts and accessories to build a complete second FJR in Australia without spending a dime. He’d settled on a 2001 FJR out of New South Wales because it seemed solid and the price was right; on closer inspection I found that almost everything else was wrong. It refused to idle properly and it vibrated like a Harley. It was missing about half its hardware, and the other half had been replaced with random non-OEM bits that appeared to have been fished out from somebody’s castoff bin. This held true for everything from the tiny screws holding my turn signal switch in the housing to super critical hardware like the crankcase halves. We certainly had a lot of work to do.

My first order of business was to diagnose the rough running issues. I started by pulling the spark plugs; cylinders one and two looked old but otherwise appeared to be burning nicely. Number three gave me about three full turns before she seized up tight. Oh. Oh no. No, that’s not good at all. Ian and I looked at each other, then agreed that a beer would probably solve the problem, thus establishing another one of our favorite hobbies. A couple beers and half a can of penetrating lube later, the plug began to give. It didn’t want to come out any farther, but slowly, ever so slowly, we were able to ease it back down into place. And that’s where it’s going to live probably until the end of time, because the amount of effort required to remove it and repair the damage is pretty horrific — definitely more than I was willing to do during my scant few weeks on this particular continent. We looked at each other, wiped the sweat from our brows, and agreed to never speak of it again. Aaaand on to number four, which was markedly oilier than its brethren in positions one and two, but at least it wasn’t seized up like that asshole Number Three. I replaced the three cooperative sparks plugs and really, three out of four ain’t bad.

~

Months later, weeks after getting home from the US of A at the completion of the ride this book is about, I tried again to take this No. 3 plug out. I was fully prepared with WD40, a few tools, a plan, some good music, a full day allocated, and a box of beer. The bloody thing fell out, I