I’ve been planning this trip for a long time. Probably a really long time but doing it on a motorbike is probably a more recent incarnation. I figured I’ve done trips by hitch hiking, buses, vans, cars, boats, and walking but never on a motorbike or a bicycle. My South America trip will be about 50,000kms and at my age I think I’d run out of time if I tried to pedal my way around. So, motorbike it is. How hard can it be? I’ve ridden bikes before. And no, it wasn’t when they were first invented. But probably soon after. It can’t be that hard to do. They even have an expression about how easy it is, “It’s just like riding a bike”.

In preparation, the last couple of years I’ve put a bit of time into my health, like getting my weight back down to what it was when I was a young plumber. I’ve been doing lots of running and doing some gym work and I am possibly as fit as I’ve ever been. Technology has also encouraged me to count my steps and I try and do 10,000 a day (after a six month stint at 15,000 a day). I also work on my mental health doing Wordle (in english and spanish), Worldle, Sudokus and Duolingo each day. Next week I will have a 1000 day streak in Duolingo.

My plan to finance this trip is based around money I saved in Antarctica which will pay for all the big ticket items like flights, motorbike and bike gear, and insurance. My day to day living expenses I hope to cover with the income from renting out my house while I’m away. That works out roughly at $600AUD a week. I’ll mention how much things cost from time to time because I know a couple of you are planning to do a similar trip.

While I was in Antarctica, I managed to book all the flights and also my first two months accommodation in Cartagena, Colombia. I also organised a couple of visits with friends on the way there. More recently I brought insurance which was $2200 for 12 months but excludes Venezuela. Apparently, it’s too dangerous and they won’t insure you. I guess I’ll have to sort that out later when I get there. I upgraded my phone to an iPhone 13 because it will accept e-sims and has a better camera. I’ll also take my old iPhone to use as a GPS on the bike and for putting local sim cards into if that’s the best way to do it. A good tip would be to not leave it until the last day to change over to your new phone and update your apps and sync everything to icloud. Even if you have the assistance of a daughter and friend.

I somehow managed to squeeze in a couple family plumbing jobs in the last few days, catch up with a few people and leave enough time to pack. Well. Enough time to pack is subjective I guess. I was packed by midnight. In bed by 1:00am and up at 3:45am to walk about 3kms with my 20kgs of luggage to the train station to catch the 5:00am shuttle to Melbourne airport. My first flight was at 8:00am to Sydney, then a long wait for my Fiji Airways flight to Fiji and then a second Fiji Airways flight 2 hours later to Los Angeles. Despite my lack of sleep the previous night and the 30,000 steps I did, I would have been lucky to get an hour’s sleep on all those flights. I’m beginning to think that my inability to sleep on flights is related to altitude as I only seem to fall asleep while the plane is on the ground or taking off or landing.

I left Australia at 2:00pm on Sunday and arrived at LA an hour earlier at 1:00pm on the same day. After 14 hours of flying that messed with my head a little as I’d watched the sunset on the way to Fiji and then again that night when I arrived in LA. Two Sunday sunsets. I was nice to be picked up at the airport and have a mate’s place to stay at. I managed to stay awake for the rest of the evening and hopefully that will help with the jetlag. I have to mention that it took us three quarters of an hour to get out of the carpark building at the airport and then I had a good laugh at some of the directions Siri was giving on the way. “stay in the middle five lanes for one and a half miles”. At one stage there were eight lanes, all pretty full and everyone was doing over 70mph. And it was a Sunday.

So I’m now in LA and tomorrow I will start buying all the travel and motorbike gear I need for my year away. I plan to buy as much as I can here and then all I will need to buy in Colombia will be the motorbike. I’m here all week and off to Mexico on Saturday. My first attempt at photos. Hopefully I can do better next week. Adios.