Jesse: In the good old days, back when I didn’t have to worry about a career and whatnot, I was a bit of a free spirit with frequent bouts of wanderlust. My first such spell occurred around the end of my undergraduate degree, and so off I went on a whirlwind tour of Europe: 18 countries in 3 months, as far west as Spain, as far East as Turkey. Several years and a Master’s degree later, I was living in Hamburg Germany and had a few months to kill, so I travelled up to Scandinavia, then across Russia on the Transiberian Railway, down through Mongolia and China, and ended up in Thailand, approximately 15,000 km later, most of that by rail.
That was nearly 8 years ago, and since then I’ve completed by Ph.D., gotten married, and started out a career. In between, I’ve made a few jaunts abroad, to Italy, Spain, Peru, India and Cuba, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, and lately with my free-spirited wife. Each little trip simultaneously satisfies my wanderlust and whets my appetite for a longer, more epic journey. Each time, I get a little taste of life on the road. The routine 9:00 to 5:00 lifestyle fades away from my memory and I fall into a different routine, that of planning routes, buying tickets, finding a place to sleep, finding something to eat, pouring through Lonely Planet guides to find out where to go, what to see, meeting other people who, while on the trip, seem incredibly important, but rarely, if ever, do I keep in touch with. It’s a different lifestyle and a small cadre of the population, those that travel widely, know it very well.
The next trip will be epic indeed. I’m taking a 4 month leave of absence from work and my wife, Jessica, and I will be motorcycling from our home in Waterloo, Canada, down through the States, into Mexico, through Central America, then we’ll fly our bikes from Panama City to Columbia, and continue on into South America until we finally reach Ushuaia, Argentina, the southern-most city in the world. We’ve spent the last 3 months intensively preparing both ourselves (learning Spanish by CD–at least that commute is good for something!, vaccinations, planning our route, etc.) and our bikes (new tires, seats, luggage, new chains, sprockets, etc.) for the upcoming journey. We’ve got 2 wheels each, 15 countries and 20,000 km ahead of us.
The Great Panamerican Motorcycle Expedition 