It’s April 16, 2010 today, exactly 4 and a half months before we hit the road. Our ultimate goal is to reach Ushuaia, the bottom of the South American continent. Countries we are planning to visit are : USA, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Hondura, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil. We will be driving our 2 BMW motorbikes. However, if we don’t get there, no sweat ! After all, let's not forget ! this is all about having fun, taking our time, and meeting people along the way.
This will be our first entry in our blog and our first blog altogether. We are not computer geeks, and hopefully we will learn quickly and not struggle too much with the technology. We haven’t started our blog yet. We thought we would share with you some of our concerns and our experience before we even start our trip, some of the things we have started doing and how we are living this preparation as we get closer to the departure date of September 1, 2010.
The name of this blog is dedicated to my brother, Philippe, who came to visit for the first time in Montreal last year from France. He was excited to be visiting Montreal and every time, we left the house or entered the car, he was singing this old song : ''On the Road Again''.
We have decided to write this blog in English as many of our friends are in North America and speak English only. Most of our family in France and friends in France or Quebec speak English at some level or other. We hope that everybody will enjoy it. We may decide to include some French along the way. We will see how it goes.
Why have we decided to take on this trip: in short, we find our lives boring with far too much routine. We get up in the morning, go to work, go back home, exercise to stay fit, watch a moving and go to bed, this, 5 days a week. You enjoy a week-end off and then, you go back to work! The life of many people and really there should not be anything to complain about. Yes, we are absolutely privileged to go for this adventure and we realize this. We have obviously had choices to make. We don’t own luxury cars, we would have needed some furniture, our house could use a coat of paint… This is all about questioning our way of life, about taking some risks and challenging ourselves. We both probably won’t have a job when we come back and we are not sure what will come our way and what we will decide. We have one certainty though; if we don’t do it now, we won’t ! It’s the right time for us. So, let’s go!
Our motorbikes : We have completed equipping them, we now have bought most of the accessories (side cases, top case for Alain’s bike), crash bars for both of them. We are slowly starting to learn some mechanics. I performed my first oil and oil filter changes. Our basin to hold the oil was to small, so we had oil spilling over and on our garage floor… Real Amateurs ! Just imagine the mess! We had some paper towels to clean and in the end, we managed. I also tightened my chain for the first time. Sounds easy, but when you do it for the first time, it is quite an experience. Both sides of the wheels have to be tightened exactly the same way. In the next month or so, we have planned to talk with a mechanics who has agreed to show us some basics for the maintenance of our bikes like how to fix a tire…
We bought all our camping gear last year and tried it out already. Yes, that’s the plan, camping as much as possible at least in North America. Our vaccines are in progress. We had 4 shots already for Hepatitis A and B, yellow fever, tetanos... We are seeing the doctor at the end of April for getting antibiotics with large spectrum. Our house has been posted on the internet for rent fully furnished, we don’t know what we will do at this stage. We think that if we don’t manage to rent it, we will have our son, Julien, take care of it. We are not overly thrilled about having a 18 year old take care of the maintenance of a house, but that’s life ! My car is also posted on the internet in case someone would like to take over the lease. If it does not work out, then our son will probably take it. Quite a few uncertainties ! Quite a few things left to do, take care of our travel insurance, getting an international drivers’ licence… One thing at a time ! We also started learning Spanish on our own, reading books, travel books magazines about the different countries we will be crossing, their culture, history and people. What about our itinerary ! Imagine our bedroom with all the maps on the walls and pins on each of them. We are still debating our itinerary within the United States, avoiding the East Coast as this will be the storm season and going straight from Chicago to Louisiana, where we will visit our niece and family, then heading West, spending a lot of time in the different parks in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona,Utah, Montana maybe.
We are not sure whether we will go visit our son, Thomas either in Calgary, but we would like to. We are just concerned by the weather and the cold on our motorbikes over there in October, November 2010.
As we ride, our intent is to share our funny, strange, scary incidents in our ‘’Road Journal’’ section. However, we are dedicating a specific session’ ‘’Faces and Places’, ’to people we meet that are extraordinary in their daily life or are working in unexpected fields. We were surprised to see that the United States have an Association of Cheese producers. We would not necessary think of the States as a cheese eating country. Well, we would like to meet one of these producers. You have all heard of Roswell : we think we may be able to meet with someone who would talk about UFOs. In Central and South Americas, we are hoping to be able to become volunteers for Non Profit Organizations. These are just a couple of the ideas we have. We don’t know how they will turn out, but we will be on the outlook.
