Posted on by markusoreallyus

Leaving room

Some people don’t plan enough, and end up paying for it. Others plan too much, which can have its own costs. I tend to fall into the latter group.

Case in point, in preparing for my upcoming road trip, I had planned each day’s ride months in advance, booking hotels (and thus predetermining the route) for pretty much the whole thing. That felt pretty extreme, even for me, and the more I thought about it, the more my ‘planning’ began to feel like handcuffs.

So, I cancelled the majority of the hotels, keeping just a few bookings in place, mostly at the beginning and end of my journey. It may end up costing me a little more this way (although, that’s far from certain), and may lead to one or two dodgy moments when I feel like stopping but there aren’t any rooms available. But that’s part and parcel with an adventure. And that’s what I’m hoping to have.

I’ve been on road trips before where the place we’d planned to stop didn’t have any rooms – or only rooms at exorbitant rates – and we had to come up with a Plan B. It’s always worked out, and I have no reason to believe it won’t this time, too, even though this time it’s just ‘me’ in place of ‘we’.

The first time was on the first long motorcycle ride I did, a twelve day jaunt through seven U.S. states and two Canadian provinces with my friend Scott. We were both in our late 30s, and riding bikes not that much younger than ourselves. In the middle of our trip we had a string of three nights where accommodations were an issue.

The first night was in Phoenix, when the house we’d lined up – with air conditioning and a pool, two things we were sorely looking forward to in mid-August – turned out not to be available. After some scrambling, we ended up in a hotel that I’m betting frequently served guys fresh out of jail. It was conveniently located next to a strip mall containing a tattoo parlour and a liquor store. Sadly, not only was the A/C simultaneously loud and ineffective, the shower in my room didn’t work.

The next night, we rode for several hours to reach the small town of Kanab, UT, around supper time. After eating in a local diner, we decided that it was too early to quit for the day, and we pushed on to the town of Panguitch. When we arrived we encountered one ‘No Vacancy’ sign after another. Finally, we found one motel that had one room remaining – a room that could have slept eight or more – and we took it, as it was beginning to get dark. We asked the proprietor what was going on, and he said there was a high school rodeo in town. Who knew such things even existed?

The following day we set out in the hope of reaching Great Falls, MT. A trucker we met at a gas station in Idaho – who was hoping, back then in 2007, to vote for Hilary – said he thought we could make it. No such luck, though, as we rolled into Bute around 10 p.m., only to find that every hotel room in town was booked. Surely, in a city the size of Bute, this couldn’t be due to a high school rodeo! I asked at the Best Western, and no, it wasn’t that. They were having an “Irish Festival”, I was told. I tried vainly to convince them that Scott and I were the keynote drinkers, but they were having none of it. They suggested we try Helena, a mere 70 miles away. There was nothing else to do, so we set off again, into the night, which became foggy – not a good mixture for motorbikes. Every time I rounded a curve in the highway, I said ‘there are no deer here’, which happily turned out to be true.

About two-thirds of the way to Helena, we pulled into a gas station, mainly to let the adrenaline fade, and I asked the gas jockey if there were any places to stay nearby. Down the hill from the highway, he said, in Boulder, we could ‘try the O-Z’, and if that didn’t work out, there was a ‘resort’ another 20 miles from there. We rode down the hill, got a room at the O-Z, and a very late (but extremely entertaining) dinner at P.K.’s Pub. (It was nearly midnight when our pizza arrived. It had to be ordered in from the resort, as the pub’s kitchen had closed, and the kitchen staff were down at the end of the long bar playing dice with the bartender, Cricket, a former stripper who also worked part time at the women’s prison, she told us. She was particularly fond of Scott.)

I wouldn’t have any of these stories to tell if we’d booked all our hotels in advance and ridden from one to the next each day. And I want stories to tell at the end of my trip. It’s part of why we travel. To meet people, to do things unscheduled and unscripted, to deal with things as they come.

So while I will still plan, I will try not to over plan. I’ll leave room for improvisation, for discovery, and for adventure.

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 3 Comments

What it is

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

– T.S. Eliot

It is often easier to say what a thing isn’t than it is to say what it is. Case in point, my upcoming trip.

When people hear that you’re going to be travelling around Ireland and Scotland – or at least, when they hear I will be – they tend to assume: whisky tour. Now, while it is entirely probable that some whisky will be consumed, that is not the point of the journey. Indeed, if my plan were to try to hit as many distilleries as possible in the relatively short time available, I would a) not be making this trip on a motorbike, and b) would have planned more time in Scotland, and less everywhere else I’ll be. And that is even granting that the place I’ll be in most is Scotland.

If I were planning a whisky tour, I would be including many places I likely won’t get to: Islay, first and foremost, since several of my favourite malts come from there, as well as Jura, the Orkneys, and several other points on the map of Scotland. Now, I will be stopping in Oban, where it is a very good bet I’ll tour the distillery, and hope to visit The Glenmorangie, The Glenrothes, and possibly one or two others, as well. But they are roadside attractions, not destinations as such.

The trip is also not primarily about motorcycling, although I will be doing a lot of it. About 5,000 km of it, give or take. I like travelling by motorcycle. I prefer it to flying, driving, taking trains, or just about any other way you can think of to get places. But it simply my preferred mode of transportation, and not the journey itself.

So what is this trip, exactly? I’ve been asking myself that, since I can see it puzzles people when I say, “yeah, there will be whisky, but it’s not why I’m going,” or, “yeah, it’ll be cool to ride a Triumph around the Highlands, but the riding’s only a part of it.” And if I say both these things to someone, they tend to change the subject. (Which, admittedly, they may have wanted to do anyway. Oh, you’re going to Britain? Cool, I guess. Where do you want to have lunch?)

Now, unlike many Canadians, I am not really that wound up about where my ancestors are from. I’m interested enough in family history, but I don’t feel any visceral (or imagined) connection to my so-called heritage. I don’t think of myself as Irish, although a good number of my mother’s family came from places like Cork and Londonderry, if you go back far enough. Others came from Wales (god knows where) and Scotland (Edinburgh, I’m told). On my father’s side, the family mythology has them from Scotland, although our family name hails from Northumberland. Still, with relatively porous borders, anything is possibly. His mother’s maiden name was Berry, so I expect that family were English (although, I’d love to believe I was cousins with Chuck). But I also don’t think of myself as Welsh, Scots or English.

I’ll be riding through places that, quite likely, my forebears decided it was best to leave. That’s kind of interesting, I think, but I’m more interested in meeting people who have stayed, especially in small villages and towns. It’ll be interesting to talk to people I’ve yet to meet, and who I may never see again after I leave.

Even this, though, isn’t really a full explanation, if such a thing exists. My initial plan was to ride around the European continent for a few weeks with a friend of mine who is on a much longer adventure, take in a concert in Poland, and then come home. Somewhere along the way, my plan changed.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do this by myself. I’ve always travelled with someone else before. I’ve never made any kind of extended journey completely on my own. That’s exciting to me, if slightly frightening, too. At first, I thought of doing just part of the trip on my own, but the more I looked into it, the more I wanted my adventure to be just mine. Not something tacked on to someone else’s journey.

Eventually, I decided to travel in Ireland and the UK for two main reasons: first, there’s a good chance of encountering English, no matter how strange it may sound at first to my ear, wherever I go; and second, after this year, the journey may not be so easy to complete. The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland may harden. And that hardening may not simply be a matter of checkpoints.

Of course, the real purpose of this journey is something I won’t really be able to put into words for several months yet. The road hasn’t even begun yet, so how can I say where it will lead?

Posted on by markusoreallyus

The plan so far…

Flights booked. Bike booked. Accommodations booked for 90 per cent of the trip. Routes (roughly) mapped out.

I’ll be starting my trip in Ireland, skirting the perimeter of the island for the most part, and spending most of my time in the south. After picking the bike up near Belfast, I’ll spend a couple of nights in Dublin, giving myself some time to get used to everything being on the wrong side of the road. I’ll ride to my first accommodations, just outside of Tralee, before swinging up along the coast to Galway, where I’ll spend another couple of nights. Then I’ll be off up the coast again before ireland route

swinging east through Sligo to Belfast.

From Belfast I’ll catch a ferry over to Scotland, and ride to Dumbarton, where I’ll spend the night before heading to Oban. This will likely be the first of several stops involving a distillery tour, although I’m not planning to hit every distillery that I encounter, and haven’t included stops where many of my favoHighland route pt 1urite distillers are located (e.g., Islay). From Oban, I’ll make my way to Skye, and then up the west coast of the Highlands. I’ll decide when I reach it whether or not to ride the Bealach na Ba, or the alternate, slightly less dodgy route to Shieldaig on my way to Ullapool. From there, I’ll skirt along the coast first northward then eastward to John o’ Groats, the most northerly part of Scottish mainland.

I’ll spend the night in Wick, then head down the east coast of the Highlands to Craigellachie, conveniently located near four (at least) distilleries. From there, it’s down to Stirling on my way to Edinburgh, where I’ll meet up with a friend and former colleague.

From Edinburgh, I’ll head south along the coast into England, through Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Scarborough, and stopping in York. I am told some of the best motorcycling roads in England are to be found in Yorkshire, so I’m looking forward to those. From there, Highland route pt 2I’ll angle southwest towards Bath, where I’ll stop for the night before heading to Wales.

In Wales, I’ll ride through Cardiff to Swansea, on the south coast, former home of Dylan Thomas, where I’ll stop for the night. The next day I’ll ride up the coast to Snowdonia National Park, and spend the night in Colwyn Bay, on the north coast of Wales.

From Wales, I’ll head through the lake district back to Scotland, stopping in Moffat. I’m told it’s a beautiful town, by a good friend of mine who just happens to be named Moffat. I’m sure there’s no bias in her appraisal of the town. The next morning I’ll ride back to the ferry, and return the bike to the dealership in Belfast. A shEngland & Wales routeort bus ride will have me back in Dublin for another two nights before I board the flight for home.

If anyone has any advice – things that must be seen, things to avoid, to watch out for, and so forth, please leave comments. Over the next couple of months, as I get closer to June, I’ll talk more about the bike I’ll be riding, what I plan to pack, that kind of thing. If you’re really curious about any aspect of the planning, let me know.

If you made similar trips and want to point me to your blog, your YouTube video, or whatever, feel free to leave that in comments, too.

 

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

Calculated risk aversion

While waiting for Air Canada to publish their 2018 rates for shipping motorbikes around the globe (well, to Europe, anyway), I decided to do some additional checking about just how much it would cost to rent a nice new bike, rather than shipping mine. It turns out, as I expected, it costs more. But – there’s always a but – not so much more as I had thought.

This is mainly due to what’s included in the price of the rental (pretty much everything I could want), and what I’d have to pay for in addition to shipping costs to send my bike over with me (things like import fees and insurance, as well as servicing my bike, and most likely putting new tires on it).

For a mere £2,355, I can have a nice, new Triumph Tiger 800, with cases, helmet, jacket, jeans, gloves and boots, pre-programmed GPS, comprehensive insurance, roadside assistance and unlimited mileage. That’s about $1,000 more than shipping my sixteen-year-old bike, including the dangerous goods insurance required for the shipping. But that $1,000 would have a hard time covering new tires, servicing and insurance. And I still wouldn’t have roadside assistance, or as they call it in the UK, ‘breakdown cover’.

It might sound strange coming from someone who rides a motorcycle, but I’m fairly risk averse. At least, when the calculations associated with that risk make me so. I don’t expect I would break down on my bike, but I could. It’s old, things fail. I know this all too well. And when things fail on an aging BMW, the cost can be depressing.

Now, I also don’t expect to break down riding a nice (relatively) new Triumph Tiger, but if I do, it’s nice to know that someone else will be picking up the cost.

This also takes a lot of the complication out of my trip preparations. I don’t have to fill out a lot of paperwork, clear a motorcycle through customs, arrange to be at the airport the day before the bike flies (which would be the day before I do). I just get myself to the airport, fly to Dublin, catch a bus to the rental shop and start the fun. At the end I just do that in reverse.

Renting the bike also removes a lot of uncertainty and risk associated with cost. My budget can be more defined, and this makes planning a lot easier. And easy is good.

Of course, if I were going to be riding for longer than I am, bringing my bike would be a no-brainer. Just as a shorter trip would have removed that option from consideration. As it is, this looks like the Goldilocks solution to my question.

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 3 Comments

Best laid plans… part 2

“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all”  – Albert King

This seems to be the year of the failed vacation. 

The first attempt, as I wrote about recently, was a washout as a result of physics. Namely, a puzzling wobble that my friend’s bike developed that has, for the time being, scuttled a road trip we had planned. We’d likely be eating lobster in an east coast pub right now, if things had gone as planned.

To make up for it, my wife and decided to do a miniature road trip of our own – in a car, this time. After balking at paying nearly $500 a night for substandard hotels on the Oregon coast, we decided to pop over to Vancouver Island for a few days, and come home via Powell River and the Sunshine Coast. This time, it wasn’t physics but physical illness that interfered.

The first thing to know is that Adele is almost never sick. She never takes time off work for colds or the flu. The second thing to know is that she rarely takes vacations.

Unfortunately, just as we were getting ready to go, Adele started coming down with something. She was determined, though, that she would fight it off, and we would have a vacation. She drank lots of fluids, took ridiculous amounts of vitamins, all to no avail.

After a couple of brave days in Qualicum Beach – nice little town, by the way – this morning she decided she needed to see if there was something more useful than vitamins she could take. We spent an hour or so in a clinic, and found out she has viral bronchitis & laryngitis. I cancelled the hotel in PR (hopefully they can fill the room so I can get a refund), and we came home after lunch.

Tomorrow I’ll pick up the cat, who has thankfully not been an asshole while staying at my mom’s the past few days. Beyond that, I’m not making any plans for the last few remaining days of my vacation. What would be the point?

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

And now for something completely different

Enough of politics! (At least for now…)

The longer I live, the more I believe it is important to have a wide diversity of interests, hobbies and pastimes. For many years, now, I have ridden motorcycles. Learning to ride – which I am still doing, really, after more than ten years – has been an extraordinary journey, one made up of dozens of smaller journeys. It. Hasn’t always been fun. For example, crashing a few years ago. But even with that, I wouldn’t give it up willingly, and I’m glad I decided to learn it in the first place.

Learning new things and acquiring new skills is one of my chief enjoyments in life. That’s why a few years ago – shortly before crashing my motorcycle – I bought a bass guitar. It’s why I recently bought an electric guitar – so I can learn both together. (If I had a bigger place and more money, I’d probably get drums, too.) It’s why I love to read, to watch documentaries (and films generally), and to attend lectures and exhibitions.

Learning about new places is the best part of traveling. When we went to Morocco a few years ago, I tried to pick up a little Arabic and Berber, partly to amuse our guides and the locals, but mainly because it was fun to learn. Traveling on the motorcycle is like that, too, even though I’ve only been places where a version of English is spoken. Learning to find my way around, though, is a lot of fun, especially if I’m on my own and only have paper maps to go by.

A while back I started to develop an appreciation for baseball, too. I don’t think there’s a professional sport more given to arcanity than that. Learning the different types of breaking balls a pitcher can throw, the infield fly rule, why – generally – you don’t bunt with two strikes: this all takes time to acquire, to say nothing of the history you learn from announcers as you watch the game on TV.

I don’t quite know what it is that makes learning so fun for me. I know not everyone shares this passion for knowledge acquisition. In fairness, though, they may just have different things they like to learn about. Woodworking, knitting, quadratic equations. Different strokes, right?