The Journey So Far.

Well that was a bit of a shock !

In 5 days my first blog post has been read 320 times,I am not sure if the times I re-read it and noticed all the dodgy spelling and grammar are counted in this total but still ……….320 !

After I published it I  was ummming and ahhhing about sharing a link to the post on Facebook.Mr cynical told me that only attention seeking teenagers post about what they are thinking/feeling on Facebook. Mr Cynical is just jealous that I have stolen my profile back from him and wont be using it to constantly moan about stuff anymore (my ‘timehop’ is like reading a page from scrooges diary).

So I made the decision that I had kept all this stuff to myself for most of my life,it hadn’t done me any good so far and posted it……….. and then felt very sick and hovered over the delete post button.

Posting the link on Facebook was a massively cathartic experience and all the support I have received has blown me away 80+ likes (its not cool to know the exact amount) (84),49 well wishing comments,messages,1 share,texts,phone calls and a couple of people stopping me in the street (people I know,not strangers that would be weird).

All of the above culminated in me feeling pretty damn fantastic for a couple of days which is something that hasn’t happened in a while so thank you all very much you’re amazing.

So back to the trip –

The dream was always to ride coast to coast,taking two lane highways,back roads,sleeping in motels,eating in diners,meeting people and collecting stories along the way.

For a couple of days I bottled it a bit,the familiar voice of Mr Self Doubt piped up and convinced me that there was no way I could ride that far. I decided as a compromise instead of coast to coast I would fly to Chicago and follow Route 66 to LA .After some further research and forking out on some expensive illustrated maps I discovered that a large chunk of Route 66 no longer exists and locating/following the route could end up being a bit of an un-necessary pain in the arse.

The maps,a couple of states are missing because I stuck them on my wall for inspiration –

So it was back to plan A,coast to coast.

For about a week I stared at the atlas that I bought,spent hours on google maps and posted on forums just trying to work out how to go about planning a route across such a massive country that would be both interesting and physically possible in the month that I have taken off work to complete the trip.

That was when I stumbled across this post – http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=988742

If you cant be bothered to put the little arrow on the link and apply pressure to the button on the mouse with your index finger I will quickly explain what it was that I found.

The link is to a forum called ‘Adventure rider’,its a site for people who like to have adventures on two wheels. This specific post is buy a guy called GPS Kevin. This summer Kevin and his son rode across America from San francisco to New York at 25mph on a Honda CT70 and a 150cc Chinese scooter (for those of you who don’t know anything about bikes they basically did it on mopeds).

Kevin and his son at the start of their trip –

It also just so happens that GPS Kevin is a very friendly helpful guy who likes to programme GPS routes for people to load on to their sat navs and follow.After a quick email conversation with Kevin discussing what I want from the trip (more on this later) he agreed to programme a route for me for a small and very reasonable fee RESULT.

The ball is well and truly rolling,all this planning is doing a great job of occupying my mind during what is potentially a very tough couple of months for me (more on this later too).
Although it seems like every time I cross something off my to do list something else gets added it’s all massively exciting and if I could I would leave tomorrow.