The End of the Road…

I have had some great feedback on the bruvsnbikes blog, a lot of people told me that they enjoyed “coming along for the ride” and I have enjoyed sharing the experience with my friends and family. Sometimes it was difficult to write. There were times with no internet or no battery life on my phone, times when I knew I could not find the words to express what I had seen and felt. Sometimes, while riding, I would plan what I was going to write, I would see something or have a thought that I would plan to include in the blog, only to forget it when I sat down to create a post.

But this one is the hardest to write by far. A recap, a summary, a conclusion. It is hard because how do I gather all of my thoughts and feelings, how to bring the blog to an end?

It is hardest of all not just to write about the end of the trip, but to live in the ‘after’ of the trip. All the months of planning, all the research, all the buying of bikes and gear. And the ride itself, living an adventure derived from a dream.

And now, back at work, back to traffic and phone calls and back to not being on an adventure at all. Not a bear in sight.

It kind of sucks!

As Prince Jorge once said, “it is better to have been on a long bike expedition and be sad it is over, than never to have fallen into a ravine and been eaten by a bear, at all”. Or he might have, who can say?

But we did have an adventure!

We did get eaten by bears!

Total distance: 5600 miles

Total time : 20 days (280 miles per day).

Deaths or maimings : 0 (excluding the several million bugs on the screens and head lights, which was just a bee massacre really).

According to Sprinty’s little computer, our top speed was a moderate 116 mph and our average fuel economy was around 45 mpg (not bad, eh?).

The bikes were great. Dora the 1200 Explorer is tall and heavy. She got dropped on the ground twice, once when my foot slipped out on gravel and once when Chris tried to get off her and just threw her roughly to the floor, like a comedic centurian. We had a couple of broken indicator lights, fixed with duct tape, a leaking fork seal, which required the changing of a paper towel held on by zip ties every other day or so. But both bikes performed admirably, 300 miles a day, chugging along through heat, rain, cold, dust and gravel.

We both really got to know these British bikes well, two distinct machines with very different personalities. The Tiger, big and powerful, comfortable and modern. Every day I told MyMateChris, “you have to ride this thing, it’s incredible”.

But MyMateChris was riding the Much Loved Sprint, my faithful steed for the last four years, beautiful, sleek, fast and fun, thought activated, a racehorse eager to run. And he was very happy.

Two distinct personalities, these bikes, but there were other personalities along the way. I shared some pictures of the folk we met in British Columbia, there were many more in the U.S., too.

So we rode for miles, saw amazing things and stayed in some motels (mostly pretty shit) and drank a lot of coffee (mostly pretty shit) in some lovely little cafe’s

We camped 13 of the 20 nights, as best as I can calculate it and looking back, it was a ton of fun. I loved finding new sites, new secrets. My favorite was Boya Lake in B.C. where we were the least adventurous people there, but they did have “excellent drinking water”.

There is a sense of achievement from completing this type of a thing, I definitely feel that. I know we both feel like we have improved as motorcycle riders, Chris feels more confident shifting weight to steer with his feet, I certainly became much happier about dealing with a heavier bike and riding on gravel (which I hated when it was road works but loved when it was next to a ravine on a mountain track!).

So now I am sat by the fire, slippers on with my dog at my feet, three weeks after “Kick Stand Down”, still trying to find a way to wrap it up and write my conclusion, pull the brake on the blog.

All I have is this: when we left the Rockies I said to MyMateChris that we might have left the best part of the trip behind. But that was before The Alaskan Highway with its sea of forests, its lakes and herds of buffalo. That was before the Northern Lights, before the Grizzly Bear and the Salmon Glacier, before Highway 37, endless, always changing.

So yes, this part of the trip is over, but have we left the best part behind? I can’t say, perhaps we should let the clutch out and see what is around that next bend?