Quit our jobs, sold our home and everything in it, gone riding...

[l84toff]

Lighcycle, what about your kids ? Don't you wish to become mother and father ? Is this an unstoppable ride ? Don't you feel tired ? Are you searching for the happy man? Here's the story http://fairietale.livejournal.com/11044.html
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/alexander-pope-2.html

Thanks a lot eh. Between the links you posted and the subsequent link hopping, I totally killed the last hour. Interesting reads though.

Not trying to speak for Lightcycle but we all have our own paths to walk. For some parenthood calls, for others the open road beckons. Their blog along with all the others I have followed and read over the last few years has helped (to borrow a term from a movie) to free my mind, so to speak. Just because most consider going to work, paying down the mortgage, the car, the bills, having kids a normal lifestyle, doesn't mean it's the right thing for you . Nearly every single person I work with, to me at least, seems unhappy to be there. Perhaps not everyone hates their job but most of us probably aren't doing what we truly love. I mean if what you're doing ticks off all the checkboxes for you, then all the power to ya. But if you've ever wondered what it would be like to go on an epic adventure of your own....

Most of us won't be in any physical shape to do something like this when we turn 65, if you're even lucky to make it that long. Funny enough I am much more exhausted after a stretch of shifts at work than I am after a week long bike trip. Every time we ride we talk about how we just want to keep going. Blogs like this have inspired us to make a paradigm shift. For us, this ticks a lot of checkboxes. Our adventure begins 2014...

 

[Riceburner]

The only trick is having access to the saved up funds in all corners of the adventure.

 

[l84toff]

Fair point, although you might need less than you think - really depends on where you are travelling and how you want to travel. By that I mean are you going to stay at nicer hotels every night or you ok with stealth camping/couch surfing? Do you want to eat out every night (in some places this is actually cheaper btw) or you ok with picking stuff up at the grocery store? Lots of info out there on ways to bring your costs down to prolong the trip (if that's what you want). Of course if you're able to keep generating an income while travelling, that doesn't hurt either.

 

[regder]

Of course if you're able to keep generating an income while travelling, that doesn't hurt either.

Many moons ago I was backpacking Italy and met a man in his fifties that was backpacking without an end date. He owned a couple properties in Australia that his daughter rented out for him and managed. That provided him with a enough income to keep travelling without worry.

 

[Lightcycle]

I just found out Alex MacCaw (writer for some of technical books that O'Reilly publishes - the ones with the animals on the cover) just tweeted our blog. He's a long-term traveler as well, albeit not on a motorcycle, and he has an interesting blog post on how to travel long-term while still making an income. Timely information given what you guys are discussing:

http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/how-to-travel-around-the-world-for-a-year

 

[Lightcycle]

Lighcycle, what about your kids ? Don't you wish to become mother and father ? Is this an unstoppable ride ? Don't you feel tired ? Are you searching for the happy man? Here's the story http://fairietale.livejournal.com/11044.html
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/alexander-pope-2.html

Hi Natfx, we never really wanted kids, what makes us happy is to just to explore and see the world. It does get tiring after awhile, hence the next few blog posts you'll see us do a bit more relaxing than moving.

The main point of the trip was not to make it a trek but to have our journey play out naturally with whatever rhythms and paces we felt over an extended period of time - if we were restless, we'd move on, if we were tired, we'd stay. It's a benefit of not having a destination or timetable and it's a luxury we never had when we were "vacation traveling".

As far as poetry and life choices are concerned, it might be cliched, but this is one of my favorites:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-road-not-taken/

 

[vlocka]

I just finished reading page 18 and this is like a movie reading your stories. The haul road looks crazy and disastrous. You guys had me hooked at page 1. I wish you guys would of checked out the okanagan valley when you guys were by the kamploops highway. Or maybe you did and I haven't gotten to that part yet.

All I gotta say you guys are dam inspiring

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/101.html

First things first: We're celebrating ONE YEAR ON THE ROAD!!!

Nothing says Party-Time like coconut cream cake. Mmmm...!

I think the cliched thing to say is that "It's hard to believe we've been traveling for a whole year", but it's not that hard to believe at all. We've seen and experienced so many different things in the last 12 months that it's quite the opposite - it's hard to imagine that it all fit in a year! Especially compared to our lives before, where larger-than-life adventures had to be shoehorned into 2-3 week boxes between the crates of sedentary working existence.

Marking the passage of time while outrunning the changing seasons also contributed to this very concrete feeling of time being a rushing wave that we were constantly trying to ride on top of or ahead of. I imagine if we were just traveling through somewhere tropical, our temporal senses may have been more subdued.

Ride all day, drink all night

Central America is a funnel. While travelers roam across the north or south continents, they may occasionally bump into each other at nexuses like motorcycle meets. But when the land narrows like an hourglass to the thinnest point in Panama, right in the centre, these traveling grains of sand start bumping into each other as they line up single file to hoist their bikes onto sailboats or pack them into cargo containers to fly between one side of the hourglass to the other.

We've been keeping in contact with other travelers online and while we were in Antigua, we met up again with Andi and Ellen, the Two Moto Kiwis from New Zealand. We originally met at the Horizons Unlimited meeting in California last October. We also spent the evening with Phil and Jayne, from The Ultimate Ride, the brother and sister motorcycle duo whose goal is to play Ultimate Frisbee everywhere they travel. We ran into them briefly last December in La Paz, Mexico at the ferry docks crossing to the mainland. Also with us that evening was Julio, AKA GauteRider, an Austrian ex-pat who now lives just outside of Antigua and plays host to pretty much all the motorcycle traveling grains of sand that trickle by his front yard.

Having dinner with Andi, Ellen, Phil and Jayne was a riot of a time, comparing stories of our adventures. We all started about the same time last year, taking very similar treks from north to south and while other riders race towards the Antarctic for December 2013, we joked that our three teams were in a much different competition against each other: To see who could ride the slowest down to South America! Poor Andi and Ellen have been besieged with breakdowns and injuries and Andi was actually laid up in Antigua mending a broken rib. As for Phil and Jayne, they meander and dawdle worse than we do! All of them accused us of cheating because we had actually made it to South America, but then took a detour through the Caribbean to end up back in CA again! I guess you don't technically lead a slow race if you lap someone...!

Ellen and Andi on the right teaching a local restaurant owner how to make sushi

Ellen's sushi is famous amongst motorcycle travelers, she makes it everywhere they stop for hosts and friends

While Phil and Jayne didn't stay too long in Antigua, Andi and Ellen are spending a month here so we hung out quite a bit, getting to know them. They are a very friendly and genuine couple, and it was really nice to be able to celebrate and commiserate with folks going through the exact same things we were going through.

Two Moto Canucks!

Other than trying to reach certain destinations, we've been without a true quest our entire trip. But Andi gave one to us. Fetch his motorcycle from Guatemala City, where he left it after his crash last month. He couldn't ride it back himself because of his broken ribs. GC is only 45 minutes away, and we needed to get Neda's bike serviced anyway, so with a little help from Julio, we managed to do all this in a single trip.

Andi and Ellen have got a beautiful KTM 950SE that they've nicknamed Maya. I make fun of KTMs all the time, but I used to have a KTM dirtbike and Neda and I spent many weekends on the trails around Ontario, roosting each other and crashing into trees. Thankfully the road between GC and Guatemala is very twisty and I got a chance to test out the 950SE. It's comparable to the F800GS, similar weight and power but the SE sounds a heck of a lot nicer and felt more flickable than the Beemer. It's very much a hooligan bike, I liked it a lot!

Que es el problema, Maya? No se...

I know from personal experience that KTMs are very finicky and maintenance-intensive. So it wasn't too much of a surprise when riding back from GC, Maya's rear brake seized, forcing us to pull over in heavy traffic. We couldn't pull over safely for quite a distance and when we finally stopped, the rear pads were smoking more than Neda did in Cuba.

I txted Andi to ask him if this was normal. There was a bit of confusion over the phone. Apparently, New Zealand English and Canadian English are not the same, so I pulled out my Google Translate and sent him a Canuck-to-Kiwi translation:

Croikey dick, the rear brake's done near knackered! I give the old gal a bit of a kick and whadayaknow, Bob's yer uncle and everything's a box of budgies! I'm feeling pretty chuffed and Neda piped up with an ole, "Good on ya, mate!" so hooray to Guatemala City! We spent a few moments dodging lorries on the roadway, had to tella few to "NAFF OFF" but we got to Antigua all home'n hosed and just in time for tea! Phew, I could really go for a vegemite sarnie, right about now!

To my surprise, Andi understood that perfectly!

Wheeling in Maya into Andi and Ellen's hostel

We had Andi, Ellen, Julio and his wife Luisa over for dinner where Neda cooked up some yummy Croatian dishes.

Something happens when you stay a while in one place: you start growing roots. Our social calendar was getting booked up with people that we met, dinner with a Japanese couple, Miwa and Kohei, who opened up a B&B in Antigua, and hanging out with Andi & Ellen and Julio & Luisa, who hosted quite a few get-togethers in their beautiful home just outside of town.

Julio use to be a chef and cooked up some amazing plantain flambe

Luisa is an amazing hostess and quite the avid gardener

Chilling at Julio & Luisa's

 

[MacDoc]

Niiiiice shot

Croikey dick, the rear brake's done near knackered! I give the old gal a bit of a kick and whadayaknow, Bob's yer uncle and everything's a box of budgies! I'm feeling pretty chuffed and Neda piped up with an ole, "Good on ya, mate!" so hooray to Guatemala City! We spent a few moments dodging lorries on the roadway, had to tella few to "NAFF OFF" but we got to Antigua all home'n hosed and just in time for tea! Phew, I could really go for a vegemite sarnie, right about now!

hehe strewth - when Aussies and Kiwi's get going on the slang
it's
a) hilarious
b) unintelligible

After nearly a year there in total over several trips I still get the giggles or the blank look or both.

Even the gov is concerned

http://www.news.com.au/national-new...to-cut-the-slang/story-fncynjr2-1226694726246

Tho nothing beats some Caribbean slang for speed and " unintelligible to the casual visitor."

 

[knowledge]

Fair point, although you might need less than you think - really depends on where you are travelling and how you want to travel. By that I mean are you going to stay at nicer hotels every night or you ok with stealth camping/couch surfing? Do you want to eat out every night (in some places this is actually cheaper btw) or you ok with picking stuff up at the grocery store? Lots of info out there on ways to bring your costs down to prolong the trip (if that's what you want). Of course if you're able to keep generating an income while travelling, that doesn't hurt either.

This! It's actually cheaper for me to travel than it is to live here in Toronto. You learn a lot of things along the way and you don't have to be a dirty hobo to travel for extended periods of time.
-----------
Welcome back! You're probably tired of telling your same stories to everyone, but I'd love to shoot the **** about central/south America when things start to die down for you. I could use some travel ideas; especially about Mexico - I'd like to do the whole country intimately; but it won't be on a motorcycle.

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/102.html

Living on the road for an extended period brings up a unique set of issues, mainly around the issue of residency and citizenship. By now we've figured out the monthly duties like paying credit card bills, but annual chores like filing taxes and renewing licenses and passports present new challenges as we've got to figure out how to do all this while being out of Canada.

Maya and I made a friend outside the Canadian Embassy

Neda's passport was due to expire, so when we picked up Andi's bike In Guatemala City, we also paid a visit to the Canadian Embassy to renew her documents. During our time in Antigua, we would regularly travel back and forth on the scenic and twisty road to the capital city. And all of this before 2PM, as we try to complete all our errands before the daily afternoon tropical rain showers.

Well traveled (and divided) road between Antigua and Guatemala City! W00T!

We've been feeling burnt out from our travels for quite some time now. The month-long Internet-isolation in Cuba exacerbated our weariness and half-way through our stay in Antigua, we decided to take a short vacation from our travels to visit family and friends back in Toronto. Our spur-of-the-moment decision complicates things a bit - Neda's passport is in transit somewhere between Ottawa and Guatemala, so we've got to wait for it to be processed before we can empty our Air Miles piggybank for the flight back.

To add to it, our month-long rental came to a close and we are once again semi-nomadic.

Breakfast at our temporary B&B accommodations

Guatemala belongs to the CA4 (Central America-4) Border Control Agreement, a recent act which allows free travel for visitors between Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica on the same Tourist Permit without having to apply or renew at each border. This added a bit of a complication because we wanted to visit Toronto right near the expiry period of our current permit. Which meant we had to renew our CA4 permit *AND* our vehicle permit before we left Guatemala. Otherwise our expired permit prohibited us from entering the CA-4 zone for 90 days.

However Neda's passport still had not arrived from Ottawa...

Every step required time - 21 days for the passport, 4 days for the tourist permit renewal, and a separate trip for the vehicle permit. And we had already booked our plane tickets! Uh oh. Because of our lack of planning, if everything went according to the official timeline, we would not get our tourist and vehicle permits renewed until after our flight departure date, which meant delaying our plane ticket ($$$), or we could bypass the the 4-day Tourist Permit processing by riding to the Guatemala/Mexico border, getting a Mexican TVIP again (more $$$), spending a night at the border, canceling the TVIP and then re-entering Guatemala.

My head hurt thinking about the logistics of that one. So in the meantime, we went for a ride with Julio, Luisa and Andi. No passport or tourist permits required for this!

Andi and Maya on the left, Julio and Luisa on the right

Group ride through some of the small towns around Antigua

Morning fog hugging the hills, lush scenery all around us

The early morning weather felt a bit cold and iffy, but we decided to chance it and braved the damp roads and ominous clouds overhead. We were still without riding boots, which made me a bit nervous! Julio took us through some very scenic routes through the hills surrounding Antigua, capped off with an brunch with a great view of the volcanoes and rolling hills around the area. We scurried back home to escape the looming afternoon rains.

Brunch and a view

Trying to beat the rain home

Twisty mountain roads on the way back

Things fell into place for us in the end. Ottawa sent Neda's passport back earlier and we had plenty of time to make another trip to GC to extend our tourist visas and vehicle permits. We were allowed in the CA-4 zone till November! Wow! When we asked Julio for some storage facilities in the area, he graciously offered his own garage for the time we were away. We are constantly blown away by the kindness of people we are meeting along the way.

Julio and Luisa took us out for our farewell dinner in Antigua. So nice!

And we're off on summer vacation!

 

[MacDoc]

You need someone you trust with power of attorney.

http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/family/pgt/poakit.asp

 

[LiNK666]

Why isn't this thread a sticky yet???

 

[Lightcycle]

Here's something a bit different.

Neda had taken a whole bunch of videos on her iPhone, and I wanted to learn how to do some video-editing, so here's a trailer for our next couple of blog posts.

[video=youtube_share;7QJhRWNyUeE]http://youtu.be/7QJhRWNyUeE[/video]

 

[cknowles]

I love the travelog! It's great to keep up with your wanderings here, But I prefer to read it in the original Klingon at ridedot.com so I get to experience it in a continuous stream. Read the rest of your blogs while I was there as well great stuff and fun writing.

The video is a nice tease!

Live your dreams while you are young and unfettered.

 

[vlocka]

Lightcycle Woe just found out that neda is from Croatia. Did you guys every visit the Adriatic sea in Croatia yet? Its amazing. Im From Toronto but my parents are Croatian and I went there last summer it was beautiful next time I will be riding down the coast hopefully from Zagreb or Zadar .

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4

 

[Wingboy]

Why isn't this thread a sticky yet???

Good idea,done.

 

[Lightcycle]

Update from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/104.html

We are thoroughly enjoying summer in Toronto, catching up with family and friends, lots of eating, laughing, eating, being wide-eyed tourists, fighting traffic and eating. Over meals, we recounted our travels to our friends, and by far, the most common question they asked us was, "What has been the best part of your trip?"

Before we answer that, let's start from the beginning.

[video=youtube;vR76424kHOc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR76424kHOc[/video]
30-40 foot high geyser of drainage water spews above the Don Valley Parkway

We left rainy Guatemala hoping to catch the sunny season in Toronto. However, not a week after we arrived, we found ourselves stuck in the car on the highway during the worst rainstorm the city has ever seen. We normally get 75mm of rain the entire *MONTH* of July, but during a *TWO-HOUR* period, 123mm of rain fell down around us! Cars were stranded on the highway as water levels rose past their windows, city streets were flooded as people waded out of submerged subways and underwater parking garages. Power went out for hours throughout most of the city and as we watched the news from a safe place uptown, suddenly Guatemala didn't seem that wet and gloomy anymore...

Our ride for the summer in Toronto - picture by Neda's dad, Vjeko

Thankfully the rains only lasted a week and we were able to get some riding done.

We have amazing friends! So many of them have been so generous, offering us motorcycles, cars, accommodations and taking us out for dinners and cooking us meals. We're thankful to my parents who let us crash in their basement for a few days while we looked for a place to stay for the summer. Our friends Dave and Dee basically gave us a V-Strom as well as their car while they were away on vacation. Our other friends Jeff and Ed also lent us their cars for the weekend and I can't count the number of two-wheeled offers we got! If you're reading this, thank you all so much!!!

Big ****** traffic

So what's it like coming back to Toronto after a year on the road?

It's like we never left. When my parents picked us up from the airport, we hit a traffic jam on the highway and it was such a familiar feeling, like we had just left a week ago. They say when you've been gone for a long time, everything looks and feels different, you even feel different in your old environment. I don't think we were gone long enough, though. We'll have to work on that...

I think the biggest change is how bad traffic has become. Toronto is now the 4th largest city in North America and has the congestion to match. I used to be able to judge exactly how long it would take me to get from any point in the city to another at any time of the day, arriving within 2-3 minutes of my appointment. Now I'm either 15 minutes late, or 30 minutes early - the traffic patterns have changed drastically in the last year.

Our condo was so high up, we could see outer space from our window!

While I was looking through the pictures Neda had taken on the contact sheet, this one looked like the earth from outer space. It's actually the sunset over the skyline taken from our condo. The shutter button on iPhone is on the right, but since she's a lefty all her pictures are displayed upside-down! So I warped the edges of the skyline a bit and got this cool spacey-looking shot.

We're on the 48th-floor of a condominium right downtown overlooking the western part of the city. Having never lived in the heart of the city before, it was great walking everywhere and being tourists in our old hometown.

Neda blames this injury on her being a lefty

We got our first serious casualty since the start of the trip. Neda had a major altercation with a can opener and sliced her finger very deeply. She blames the fact that the can opener was made for righties and not southpaws... uh huh... We had to take her to the hospital where they put 6 stitches in to close the wound. Unfortunately, there is a risk of tendon damage, and since it's her clutch hand, she's off motorcycles for the duration of our time in Toronto.

A friend commented, "You traveled around the world for a whole year on motorcycles and the only time you injure yourself is back home in the kitchen..."

Neda's Davy Jones impression

OMG, we really miss the food in Toronto! I think this city is the most cosmopolitan place in terms of food. While I enjoyed the Mexican and Central American cuisine, it's all so homogenous! And after months of rice, beans, tortillas and fried meats, we really craved soft-shell crab rolls, lamb vindaloo, curried goat, all washed down with some ice-cold Hobgoblin ale. We really miss all the varieties of food you can sample in Toronto, and I've got the extra 15 lbs around the midsection to prove it!

I competed in a Moto Gymkhana competition

Gymkhana is an ancient Japanese sport involving motorycles, swords and ninjas. Or in this case they are CBR250s...

I didn't do too well. But because this is Canada, everybody is a winner and gets a medal!

The Skydome is Toronto's baseball stadium. A few years ago Roger's Communications paid a lot of money to rename the building to, um... the Skydome...

Watched some local artists in action

The intersection of Yonge St and Dundas St is Toronto's mini Times Square

Cruisin' the streets of Toronto is a popular pastime for urban riders

In Toronto, green means go. In Toronto, red also means go... True story.

Fishing in Algonquin Park

Every weekend in the summer, tens of thousands (or at least it seems like) of Torontonians sit for hours in traffic on a Friday afternoon to engage in an activity called Cottaging, which I don't even believe is a real word. Then they'll sit for hours in traffic on Sunday afternoon to get back to the city. Minus the time spent sleeping, these urbanites will spend more time during the weekend Trafficking than Cottaging.

"We made it to Algonquin Park! Time to leave soon..."

So anyway... What *HAS* been the best part of our trip so far?

Reaching the Arctic Ocean in Alaska may have been the most rewarding achievement of our trip. Utah may have been the most scenic place we have visited. Mexico may have had the friendliest people in our travels. Crossing the Darien Gap by sailboat with our motorcycles may have been the most interesting part of our journey. But both Neda and I agree, the best part of our trip has been "Freedom" - the ability to go anywhere we wanted, staying as long or as short as we desired and not having any destination, plan or schedule to map out or stick to. *THAT* has been the most amazing feeling in the last 12 months!

 

[jc100]

Check "cottaging" in the urban dictionary. If more people did that...less people would probably use the word

 

[djez]

but both neda and i agree, the best part of our trip has been "freedom" - the ability to go anywhere we wanted, staying as long or as short as we desired and not having any destination, plan or schedule to map out or stick to. *that* has been the most amazing feeling in the last 12 months!

amen