Genesis

Flying home from Santiago, five miles over east coast of Florida and traveling somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 mph, it's hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks, I will be going back the other way in decidedly different fashion, married to the ground through two narrow tires, a set of handlebars, and a seat decidedly not made to have a narrow, bony butt sat on top of it for more than a few hours at a time, much less days, weeks, or even months. It is next to impossible to imagine trading the daily view from the side seats of my ambulance and engine for the simultaneously narrow and expansive view through my helmet visor and over the dashboard of my motorcycle, the companionship of my friends and pets for the sometimes oppressive solitude of life on the road, the comfort and convenience of a house I own with central A/C and a memory foam mattress for a 2-meter-square tent, pad, and sleeping bag pitched in locations I have yet to even fathom, and yet the July 22^nd date of my departure grows ever nearer, and with it simultaneous anxiety and excitement for what many would deem the “journey of a lifetime.”

What would possess a 31 year-old paramedic/firefighter with steady employment and a good, if not 100% perfect living situation to plan to drop everything, jump on a motorcycle, and ride nearly 8,000 miles through 13 countries over the course of two months and change, with all the risk, potential hardship, and temporary poverty that implies?

Well, you see, it all started with a girl…

Ngaire (ny-ree, for those not versed in Maori pronunciation) and I recently crossed six years of marriage and are fast approaching ten years together in total, to say nothing of the ten prior years for which we’d known each other, having met in our 7^th-grade orchestra circa 2000. I’d been utterly bonkers about her almost from the start; she’d wanted nothing to do with me romantically until a change of heart in 2010, shortly after we’d both returned from reconnecting during college semesters spent in Brazil (her) and Ecuador (me). The international theme of our relationship has always been a strong one, taking her to Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Argentina throughout her undergraduate, Master’s, and doctoral studies of international education, but it was the offer of a full-time job in Santiago, Chile that changed us from a couple whose overseas separations were an exception, to one where living apart was the rule, punctuated by brief home visits and meetings in other cities for work trips, with weeks, sometimes months in between. Most couples would have agonized over the decision, perhaps even turned down the opportunity altogether; not us. She knew how much I valued my work as a paramedic, firefighter, and instructor of new EMTs; I knew how important the opportunity to work overseas doing the kind of work she’d spent over a decade studying for was to her. Neither of us was willing to ask the other to compromise, and so began our time as a long-distance married couple. There was, however, something of an ulterior motive behind my support for her endeavor; a small, insistent, and ever-growing voice in the back of my mind repeating one thing over and over:

“MOTORCYCLE TRIP!”

The first motorcycle I remember laying eyes on was a blood-red Ducati 998 prominently displayed in the Art Institute of Chicago’s modern design gallery in the winter of 1997 or 1998. My parents had taken me there for the first time as part of a week-long marathon of museum-hopping; my overarching memory was of a violent case of bronchitis, but the two-wheeled Italian supermodel earned an honorable mention, and started an enduring love of motorcycles. It would take several more years before a friend would teach me how to ride one around the empty farm fields surrounding our hometown in Iowa, and a few more beyond that for me to purchase my first bike, an electric blue Kawasaki Ninja 250, but taking off on a bike I owned for the first time turned that love into an obsession. A long sequence of Hondas followed, powered by snarling, soulful V-4 engines and striking a perfect balance of style, speed, and comfort, and only deepening the wanderlust I’d felt since I’d first nervously booted my friend’s old dirtbike into gear. I rode everywhere I possibly could, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of pure desire, through sun, night, storms, snow, and even the early stages of a hurricane while living in New Orleans. I devoured stories of project bikes, racing triumphs, and epic travels through the pages of Motorcyclist magazine, online forums and blogs, and the crown jewels of motorcycle-related media, the Long Way Round and Long Way Down miniseries chronicling Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s adventures circumnavigating the globe and traversing Africa on a pair of kitted-out BMWs. If there was a place to be explored, I wanted to explore it on a motorcycle.

Thus, the opportunity for a seemingly ideal trip presented itself through an otherwise undesirable situation; I had a destination, a very good reason to travel there, and, through an unexpectedly forthcoming employer, the time I would need in which to do so. Now all I needed was a bike, and a plan.