Our Sunday (Saturday) Scoop

I love New Years, because I love the idea that maybe this year I could become a better version of myself. I love thinking that maybe this year all those hopes I have will come true. And maybe this year I'll work harder to achieve my dreams.

But it also gives me the chance to look back at the past year, and realize that I actually have achieved a lot, and honestly, I am already living my dreams.

The pandemic put a lot of our lives on hold, and for Tim and I, our travel plans were no different. But somehow we still got plenty of motorcycle traveling in, and had incredible adventures throughout the riding months of 2021. In the spring, we flew back home to the US from Africa, and we hit the road in the States, venturing all the way to Key West in Florida, and out west to Idaho. We saw the fall colors of the Northeast, and we successfully went to all three Overland Expos all across the country!

But there was a reoccurring theme throughout our journeys - bike breakdowns. Our KTM 1190 now has 87,000 hard-earned miles on her. We've put her through a lot (we're still apologizing for the Bolivian Salt Flats), and it definitely shows. It's not just scrapes and dents (and lots and lots of stickers). It's electrical failures, throttle body misalignments, and a full list of error codes that permanently pop up on the dash. It's the fact that we just don't have confidence that even if we spend roughly $6,000 to fix her up (that's what it'll cost with new parts), that we'll be able to successfully get to the top of Alaska, which is our plan for the summer.

It's the hard, sad truth. But I think our motorcycle is ready for retirement.

​Which means one thing - we need a new bike.

And so that is our task for the beginning of 2022, finding our new third member of our trio. Though we've reached out to the major motorcycle companies for sponsorships, no one has responded back to us so far. But we've also been in contact with a friend who has a lightly-used KTM 1190 S for sale - our exact bike! And we wouldn't be spending too much more than it would cost to fix up our current one. This seems like it could be our best option at the moment, and we're really excited.

So things are looking up.

I believe that 2022 is going to be the year where we all get a fresh, new start on our life's journey again. Yes, it might feel like we've just been hitting one breakdown after the next, and every time we get that engine up and humming again, we hit another bump in the road, and BAM! Down for the count. Closures, stuck in the house, worried about ourselves our our loved ones getting sick... worried that we'll never get that engine starting again like it used to.

But this year is going to be different. This year we're given a shot at a new beginning. A new key to start her up. And yes, we know this new bike will have its problems too, but we're also confident that whatever it is, we'll be able to get through it.

There's a lot of beautiful tarmac out there that's just waiting for us to glide down it.

And I can't wait to do so.

I hope everyone out there has a wonderful New Years! And I hope that all our wishes for new beginnings in life come true.

We have a New Years video out today that I think you will enjoy! It a bit of a time traveler's video, because we recreate our steps seven years ago through one of our favorite National Parks - Bryce Canyon. It's stunning, it's otherwordly, but most of all, it teaches us that time is a relative thing. And that sometimes the passing of time does not necessarily mean change.

Merry Christmas everyone (or Hannukah, and all the other incredible celebrations out there)! We just wanted to make a fun post to celebrate the holiday season by showing you a recap of all the cool places we've been for Christmas over that past four years.

That's right, this is our first Christmas that we'll be celebrating back in the States, at home with friends and family (and that is a great feeling). For the past four winters we've been in faraway lands, and have been welcomed into other peoples' traditions and customs.

Here's a quick glance at the past four Christmases going back in time -

Last year we were celebrating in our rental home in Kenya. I made comfort food - a roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese. A little strange, but it worked. We also had a little tree decorated. And even though we were somewhat locked down due to the pandemic, we had great company (Marco and Dora, the kittens).

Our Sunday Scoop

It had been a tough choice, but Tim and I finally decided that it was time to go home. We hadn't had a winter in Chicago in four years, and the truth was, we hadn't had a winter at all during that time. We'd been chasing summer throughout our travels, first wintering in Mexico, then in Peru and Bolivia, and finally we spent two winters in Africa - in Tanzania and Kenya. But now that our travel funds were coming to an end, and our bike was in desperate need of repair, plus it was getting a bit too cold for traveling in the northern US, we knew it was time to start heading home.

Now we just had to hope that we could get there without too much mishap.

The previous day had been rough. It was so bad, that we figured there was no way things could get any worse. We'd been having the time of our lives riding the Northeast BDR backroad through the Catskill Mountains of New York state, when we hit a particularly nasty section of loose rocks hidden under fallen leaves. And we fell.

That wasn't the real problem though. The falls were fine, and besides a bit of a busted lip that I got from hitting the windshield, we were uninjured. But on one of these drops, the bike wouldn't start again once we got her uprighted. It was that same electrical issue that we'd been having for months, actually ever since we started off on our journeys and broke down over the Mississippi River. It had all the symptoms of that problem that we thought we'd fixed out in Utah. And so far, everything had gone fine.

​But now as we stared at the flashing error codes, we knew the problem was back. And our hearts sank.

We did get her started again though. And after finding our way back to a hotel through some torrential rain, we had a discussion about what to do next. Since the weather was getting fairly cold anyway, we felt that this was the right time to go back home to Chicago and spend the winter working odd jobs in order to build up some cash for our next journey (Alaska!!!).

It was disappointing, to say the least. We had dreams of scaling Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, and of possibly finishing the Northeast BDR that would end in Maine. We had plans to visit my friend Kim in Vermont, and perhaps taking the Canadian road back to Chicago and see our friends Phil and Sapna (who we traveled with in Central America), and if we were lucky, Craig and Michelle (who we traveled with in Ecuador). But the bike was telling us that it needed a rest (and a good mechanic to look at it), and so none of these dreams were going to happen now that we were just going to be heading home.

But if there's one thing we've learned from traveling, it's that you can't plan too much and too far ahead. Something will always divert your plans, and it's best to not resist it. Just go with the flow.

So the next morning we headed off from New York, and rode into Pennsylvania. We passed an area where the Pennsylvania Dutch lived, clearly marked by their antique-looking signs displaying windmills, and their horse and buggies trotting along the road. We almost made it out of the state and into Ohio, but after an exhausting and frigidly cold day of riding on noisy highways for hours on end, we decided to stop at a hotel near the border for the night.

But as we were turning on the heat in the room and getting ready to take a nice shower, Tim said to me, "What's this?" He could feel something on his skin under his left armpit. But as he pulled up his shirt, I gasped with horror.

"Oh my God!" I cried.

"What?! WHAT?!" Tim shouted, and tried his best to see his back in the mirror.

"Wait, stop, let me look at it!" I held him still. "It's a tick bite, but it's the worst tick bite I've ever seen."

Now, it's a sad thing to say, but I am VERY familiar with ticks and all their different bites. I've had hundreds of ticks on me, if not thousands in my years of traveling. One day in particular, a whole tick bomb of hundreds of baby ticks had gotten under my socks and pants when going through a corn field in Guatemala. Like out of a nightmare, they swarmed up my body in an instant (it's surprising how fast they are). I spent over a month pulling ticks out of random places on my body, including in my hair on my head.

I had also lived in rural Maine for years, and I had many friends (and even my dog) who had gotten Lyme disease. I knew its tell-tale bullseye sign, I knew what type of ticks carried it, and I knew it was no joke.

Unfortunately, the tick that had now buried itself deep into Tim's flesh was definitely a female deer tick (the ones that carry Lyme disease), it was definitely deep, and the wound area was definitely all red and pussy. But the bullseye wasn't there (it doesn't have to for it to still be Lyme disease), and strangely enough, the entire area of the bite itself was black.

I had never seen this type of black rotting skin before in the States. In fact, the only time I'd seen it was when Tim had gotten African Tick Bite Fever (ah yes, another horrific tick experience) while we traveled in South Africa and Lesotho. That was a flesh-eating necrosis disease that Tim still has scars from. This looked like that, but it couldn't be. We weren't in Africa (we had cured Tim of it years ago), and this was a different tick. I was completely stumped as to what was going on.

I did my best right there in the bathroom to pull the tick out gently to get its full head, but it was so deep, it was the first time in my life that I couldn't get everything out. The whole thing ripped in half, and I just stood there shaking my head. "We need to get you to a doctor as soon as possible," I told Tim.

If we had been back in Illinois, this wouldn't have been a big deal. But we were on the road in rural Pennsylvania, still many days' ride away from home in Chicago. We knew we needed to find a doctor before getting home, because if this was Lyme disease, time was of the essence.

The next morning, we made all sorts of phone calls, and found a walk-in clinic in Akron, Ohio, not too far away. So we zoomed over there as quickly as we could, and Tim was taken right in.

While I waited in the seating area, he texted me updates.

"The doctor says she doesn't think it's Lyme disease, but as a precaution, I'll be taking a round of antibiotics just in case. But she does say it's badly infected," Tim texted.

Then he shot over a picture of him with his shirt up and a scary looking scalpel being shoved in the direction of the bite. "She's going to dig out all the pieces with a scalpel!" he texted, punctuated by a TOTALLY-FREAKED-OUT emoji.

​Poor Tim. I guess even when just coming home, there's never a dull moment.

While Tim underwent his surgery, the waiting room filled up with anxious patients. The receptionist told every new entry, "It's going to be several hours because the doctor is dealing with a very difficult patient right now." Then she corrected herself, "I mean, not difficult, but just the situation is difficult."

Yup. I knew that was Tim.

Finally he was released, missing a whole chunk of his shoulder blade's flesh like he was the Merchant of Venice. His expression looked like he had just gone into battle. He told me, "She said she kept finding pieces, that tick was so deep in there."

"But you're feeling all right?" I asked.

"Yeah." He gave me a weak smile. "Let's go home."

It was another two days of riding through Ohio and Indiana until we finally made it back to Illinois and Chicago. We were cold, tired, and in desperate need of a good rest.

Once home, Tim picked up his cat Moto again, and gave him a big squeeze. "Oh, it's never felt better to be back!" he said. And I couldn't have agreed more.

That was late October. Since then, we've gotten jobs for the winter, seen our friends and family, and have caught up on all the rest we needed after our travels. And most importantly, Tim did not get Lyme disease.

The bike is in the shop under a different type of scalpel doing surgery on it, and we're making exciting plans for our spring and summer trip to Alaska. 

So I'm sad to say, but this will be my last Sunday Scoop for the winter until the spring, or unless we have any updates we'd like to tell you guys. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and if you'd like to see our adventures in more detail, keep checking our YouTube channel as we'll be uploading new videos every Saturday morning. Below is our latest episode on a challenging ride in Canyonlands that had once gotten the best of us.

Thank you for staying tuned to all our adventures, and for being a supporter of our journeys.
​

Our Sunday Scoop

In our last blog post, we were stuck near the top of a mountain in New York state, and the bike was dead. The road had gotten pretty rough, and after a few too many falls, the motorcycle would simply not start again. It was the old gremlins resurfacing once more, but this time we were in a particularly bad spot.

To make matters worse, the skies were getting darker and darker, not just with the approaching evening, but the deep rumblings of a thunderstorm could be heard brewing not too faraway.

"This is bad," I just kept repeating over and over again to Tim as he tried repeatedly to get the bike going again. I didn't know what to do, as my brain was fresh out of ideas. I felt helpless, and a part of me just wanted to plop down on the ground and wallow in misery for our situation, but that wouldn't have done any good.

"We'll get through this," Tim reassured me. "We always do."

Our Sunday Scoop

The previous day, things couldn't have gone better for us. We'd been riding along the Northeast Backcountry Discovery Route in New York state, and had zigzagged across the Delaware River, and were now headed towards the Catskill Mountains. We were enjoying ourselves so much, I even told Tim, "I think we should do the whole thing - the whole Northeast BDR."

And he agreed. "And if anything, we should try to get to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Hopefully it won't be too cold by then," he said.

But the weather was already changing on us. Plenty of leaves had fallen off the trees, and autumn had set in with full force. We passed lovely orange pumpkin patches while the skies sometimes clouded over into a gray haze. Exposed bare branches of trees turned the world around us from green to brown.

Our Sunday Scoop

We had just finished our final Overland Expo with a bang, and were simply loving our time on the East Coast. Having never been there before on the motorcycle, we figured this was our chance to explore and ride through a region of the country that was new to us - the Northeast.

We kept hearing about the new BDR out there, which stands for Backcountry Discover Route. It's a road that has been carefully mapped and plotted out, and, as you guessed, it goes through the backcountry of the state. It hits up a lot of off-road, but mostly weaves its way along the most pleasant and scenic roads through the rural areas, places which people normally would never get to see.

Our Sunday... oops, Tuesday Tuneup!

After our soul-nurturing ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway for three days, we arrived at Overland Expo East in Virginia, not really knowing what to expect. Well, we knew what the other two Expos had been like. The one in Colorado, and the big one in Arizona had been full of adventure motorcyclists and 4-wheel drive enthusiasts who loved going off-road, hitting the high-altitude mountain trails, and roughing it out in the middle of nowhere.

But somehow I just couldn't imagine the east coast vibe being quite the same. We'd already heard that the East event was significantly smaller than West. Plus, horror stories of mud, mud, and more mud kept surfacing in conversations. It had been hard, and sometimes stressful getting all the way out to the east coast from Arizona in only ten days... and I wondered, was this going to be worth it?

Our Sunday Scoop

We had just spent the past week rushing across the country, from Arizona to Georgia, in order to get from Overland Expo West in Flagstaff to the upcoming expo in the east. It was hectic, it was uncomfortable, and I was miserable.

The days had been long and exhausting, with my ears ringing at night from hours of my helmet being battered by highway-speed winds. Plus, the weather had been terrible. Starting with the hailstorm that hit us in New Mexico, to the high winds in Oklahoma, and then topped off with the torrential rains of Arkansas and Tennessee, by the time we arrived at Tim's uncle's cabin in northern Georgia, I was ready for a rest.

But with only a few days left to get to the expo in northern Virginia, we had to now make a choice - stay an extra day in Georgia and then take some grueling highways up to Virginia, or leave the next morning and ride a more leisurely road up north called the Blue Ridge Parkway.

As we wrapped up our wonderful weekend at Overland Expo West, we now faced the daunting  prospect of what was next - traveling from Arizona to Virginia for the next expo in just ten days. Since these were overland expos, most people attending were in vehicles with four wheels, and if they were going to both of these, they'd be driving. That's still not a lot of time, but for us on a motorcycle, it was an even tighter schedule.

I find that motorcycle travel, though exponentially more exciting, is also more exhausting than traveling by car. The wind, the weather, the heavy gear, the sitting on a rattling machine in one position for so long... it all adds up to be more strenuous than going in a luxurious padded seat with armrests, drink holders, and windows to block out the rest of the world as it rushes by. 

​This is also one of the things we love most about motorcycle travel - the vulnerability of it. The way we're exposed to the elements, the way we're immersed in our surroundings as opposed to being in a bubble. But in this particular instance, I was not looking forward to the ride out the Virginia. And this was not only because we'd be taking highways, skipping all the sights, and having long days, but because the motorcycle hadn't always been working properly for us this summer. And we felt that at any moment something else could go wrong.

I look back on the days when we were living in our house in Kenya, and how I would excitedly write up my Sunday Scoop blog post each week. I would have time to think about it, to write it just the way I wanted it, and to choose the right pictures... Those were the days.

Because ever since we've been back on the road in the US, things have been different. Our days are filled with getting miles under our belt, bracing the winds, or cold, or heat, or hail. Sometimes the bike would function, sometimes it wouldn't start at all. And all the while we were nervous about keeping to our strict schedule of Overland events. And we were nervous that we might never reach our destinations.

Even now that we're back in Chicago (we're settling here for the winter), I barely have a moment to write a blog post. So I apologize for the lateness of my stories, but this one I think you'll like. Especially if you know our origin story of Maiden Voyage, and how we took our motorcycle on its first trip out West to Colorado and Utah, you'll understand the significance of us revisiting some of those places.