The Count-Down Is Go Houston!

For the last 6 months I have been saying the phrase “I’m gonna ride my bike around the world”! Now I realize that this is not a sentence that usually makes into a dinner party conversation, but it has mine. I have said it so many times to our old tapas bar customers that somewhere along the way it lost currency. As the words formed in my mouth they somehow separated from meaning, kind of like ‘how are you’. We don’t really care how they are doing and if we get a long-winded monologue on Aunty Sally’s cats fungal infection we rarely think to ourselves ‘well, I did ask’. And so it is for me here now.

But something changed for me yesterday, a switch was flicked and I’m almost certain the people sitting around me in the café thought my medication was failing. Surrounded by the hordes of mediocrity and consumerism that is the smell of a sterile Australian shopping centre, there I sat and wrote those exact words in my freshly purchased journal. Then it occurred to me, in 2 weeks I am going to head east and then, should the gods smile upon me, in three years’ time I will return from the west. I have no worldly reason nor desire to purchase anything from the home-maker centre. Nor the clothes shop, the phone shop or the electronics department. In fact if I can't put it in my fuel tank or mouth, I don’t want it. A reduction of needs to Maslows lowest level (food and shelter) while having a foot firmly planted in the highest (self actualization). I’m skipping the crap in the middle that inflates credit cards, suppresses with mortgages and puts ‘image’ on the essential rack. This is freedom, and finally it has dawned upon me. 

So here I am, sitting in an airport lounge using the free wi-fi and making my one cup of over-priced, weak coffee last two hours. We are on our way to Adelaide to say a few goodbyes then back to Brisbane for the final pack and crate the bike for shipping. The countdown is really on now and we couldn’t feel more ready for the adventure!

From the Road…..

DAY ONE, or maybe day half!

What’s the saying, the best laid plans of mice and men…. ? The plan was to show the birds how to catch worms and even a self-induced ‘one wine only’ night was had the day before. However the law is anal. It is fastidious and frustrating and when selling a business and a house it is also necessary to get right when you are about to head around the world.

But a quick backtrack to the early morning spent packing. It should have been a rapid fire, throw it all in the panniers and start the motor gig. But I have lived in this house longer than I have live anywhere apart from my childhood home. I have sweated, bled and swore at its renovations. I have seen a dream come to life to morph a run-down piece of shit into a stunning home that sold within 2 days of being on the market. So when the time came I suppose I took my time knowing that everything I did here would have a level of finality that I hadn’t quite prepared myself for. So it took longer than it should have.

A quick trip to the bank was in order to sort out the mortgage. No I don’t mean a withdrawal at gun-point but the never-ending documents that needed to be signed. Then a chance phone call came in and my plans to depart evaporated like the morning dew that heralded the very hot day ahead. Back to the solicitors office, sign here, triplicate there, email this, call that. Then, suddenly, I was on the road. Wow. To say that the cares and worries melted away like the new rubber from my wheels would be nothing short of romantic. Phone calls kept coming in needing to be addressed. At least I was away!

Skip forward to now, sitting here in some non-descript pub somewhere south from where I started. A day of 38 degrees C and 450kms behind me and I feel great. It’s not the beer talking, a strict limit of two a night currently enforced (getting out of the sleeping bag to pee is simply not worth it, a clear sign I am getting older/wiser/like my dad!). The bike has performed faultlessly. Sitting on around 105-110km/h with plenty in reserve for passing, sounding a beautiful note that only bikers can appreciate and rock solid over the bumps and through the corners even loaded like a fat pig. But the days of trials for the bike are ahead. The corrugated roads, muds pistes, murderous topes, the list goes on. But we are bonding and tonight my shelter is strapped to the handlebars, slowly we are becoming rider and bike, the journey has only just begun.

Until next time…. Mark

Now it's Personal!

Sure, we tell family, we boast to friends and wax lyrical to our old customers. But, well ...... now we are on TV! Now it's REAL! Sure, once you spend $10,000 on a motorbike, another $4000 on the necessary equipment you would be thinking to yourself, "hey, I'm gonna do this". But somewhere deep down there's another voice saying "yea, right, YOU, ride around the world, keep dreamin".

It's the same voice that stops us from uncovering our true dreams and following them.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm as cynical as the next fellow. Don't believe what you read. Propaganda and all that. But now WE are on the idiot box (please don't make any assumptions here) so it MUST be real. While it was playing on the nightly news we had the real estate photographer here doing her thing. And I think she was quite impressed, maybe I heard her call me 'sir' after that but I'm sure Carlie would have a different recollection of things. In the cold light of morning, and once again watching the video, we now call each other 'adventurers', I'm "A1" and Carlie is "A2" - hey, I'm the one doing all the steering.

Thanks Matt from WINTV for doing such a great job. He and Namok have become friends just as we are leaving, it's always the way. I'm sure they will be out there before long on their own adventure.

Until next time ........

SOLD!!

AAhhh, finally....  we have a contract on the business. That was the trigger to set us free. After a few false starts and tyre-kickers, hundreds of $$ in advertising and the never-ending questions from customers we had our final night in the restaurant on the 26th Dec 2012. Hey, it was a Christmas present I suppose.

Tears? I hear you asks. No way! The business was great, made friends, money and found that we had put down roots in the community but Carlie had made 4512 serves of salt and pepper calamari and I had smiled a few too many smiles that came from the wallet rather than the heart.

So jump online and get those remaining overseas purchases happening so they get here in time and now we start to think about things like dates. But the list of 'to-do's' is long enough to justify using some till roll. We have the house now to sell, not such a big deal as it is a good time for doing so but all those maintainence jobs have now jumped from the back-burner and into purchases from the hardware store.

It's all on now and the timer has been set, the 14th of Jan 2013! Now, where's that hammer.....?

In The Beginning .......

In the beginning there was life. Working 60-70 hours per week in our very own tapas bar, renovating an old Queenslander wooden home, making excuses for a growing waist-line and under-exercised pet dog. Sorry, did I say 'life', sounds more like existence.

We gave up the on-the-road lifestyle over 4 years ago at the unmerciful hands of an epitome while riding bicycles through Central America. The challenge had simply left the building, leaving us a bit 'hollow' at the thought of another amazing Mayan ruin, or delicious road-side taco. Next challenge ---- act like normal people! Skip forward to today, we have a finally completed house, a very successful small restaurant, a group of good friends and ...... yup, you guessed it, itchy feet. The wunder-lust of wanting to know what sits around the next bend, what different spices can be put into the next Indian Biriyani or what new colour will a Mekong sunset throw up never really die I suppose. Without getting too soppy and morose I suppose for us it’s about finding meaning in life from places outside our comfort zone and cultural norms.

The gestation of the current journey could said to have begun while living in the UK around 2003. I had met overland bikers while riding thousands of kilometres by bicycle through Europe and Turkey and the idea just sat somewhere in my head that it would be cool to ride back to Australia by motorbike. And there the thought idled, a distant hum that rarely got above 1000rpm. Many journeys and passport stamps later her throttle was to be twisted in the most unlikely of moments, by the most unlikely of people! While in the throes of setting up the restaurant around two years ago and with a brief glimpse of what our working life was to become Carlie shone the spotlight into the dark tunnel of overwork that maybe, just maybe, when we had had a gut full of the business we could live the dream of circumnavigating the world on a motorbike. The engine had roared to life but so had the sound of our ever-increasingly busy existence.

But true dreams don't fade; they patiently wait until whatever forces are at work line up in a nice neat row. The challenge in life is not lining things up but in having the courage to recognize when they have and the bravery to make bold decisions. So the business is on the market and the house is going to be sold, easier said than done! The bike has been purchased and run-in and hours of dedicated searching online for equipment, prices, ideas and motivations are underway. But before we ride off into the sunset with the whispers and shouts of bon-voyage and be safe from friends and family there is a whole lot of waiting and patience to suffer with a light heart. So stand-by for more about our journey, but you had better get a real comfy seat....!