…and around it goes

After typing out The Trip, a few things happened. First I found out that this blog is not dead. That there are many who get notified in some way that I have updated. Most of you have expressed your displeasure that I have disabled comments. The problem is the spammers abuse it so much I got fed up with it. Comments are more work for me and I like the less work for me concept better.

The Trip spurred e-mail discussion, both from readers and here at home with my girlfriend (well, not by e-mail with her, she’d be a tad ticked if I did that). The general consensus was that I should do it. My girlfriend agrees, not happily (I don’t think she wants me gone that long), but she understands. So a tentative date, summer 2010.

This will give us time to sell the condo and settle into the house. I’m attempting to entice a friend to go with me, but don’t know if he can. It’s one of those trips that is safer with two, but a better journey for one. Either way I will still go. I have to plan an itinerary, it will be a one or two month trip. Lots of stops to visit places, things, and people. I also have to figure out how to fund it.

It won’t be overly expensive, but even $200 a day for gas/tolls/food/lodging/etc. adds up to $12k for sixty days time and and 18k for ninety days. Granted some days will be less, but some will be more. I also must have cushion for the unforeseeable, a major bike repair or something. All this while also keeping a household and children going. I have almost two years to save it, but it will be tricky as I put nearly everything Packetderm earns back into the business.

In addition I would like to video blog it. To do this as well as easily work from the road I do need a full pc. I have used my ipaq with a bluetooth kb to ssh back to the servers, but it’s missing some things I need and would be cumbersome for handling the video uploading as well as the servers and e-mail. A small laptop is what is needed, but that takes up lots of space for a bike trip. That has me looking at umpcs.

I’m considering a 1.6 ghz, 120 GB, 1 gig ram, Verizon EVDO oqo umpc. About the size of my ipaq 4705 but a full XP or Vista (hope for XP) machine. That looks like $1700 on e-bay, ouch. I also must find a decent video camera. Something that is small, good picture in most light levels, good battery life, that can be waterproofed somehow.

Anyway, this is going to be a lot of fun if I can get it to work. Not so sure on that now, financial crisis always rears it’s head at the most inopportune time. However, at least now the only remaining obstacle is financial, that’s a quantifiable target and the service continues to grow daily, lately at an accelerated rate, so we’ll see.

I have this dream trip in mind where I take two or more months to ride across the country on my Valkyrie. It would be a journey fraught with perils, but rewarded in personal insight and growth. From bike breakdowns, to weather, to the danger of obstacles and other vehicles, it would be perilous. But the reward of having done it, that is an experience that could never be taken away from me.

I don’t have many life changing or soul building experiences. I mean I have the standards: marriage, failed marriage, child, and your other everyday average experiences. I don’t mean to in any way demean these experiences, each was a bit “magical” in it’s own way, it’s just that I haven’t had one all my own, that millions of others have not also experienced. Some people take off and backpack Europe for a year, climb some unclimbable place, or brave the Amazon rain forest, just to say they did. I didn’t do one of those. But even as a teen I dreamed of owning a motorcycle and riding it cross the country.

Well, I own a motorcycle, a rather nice one, comfortable, I commuted 120 miles a day (60 mi each way) through Boston with it and I regularly put on 300-500 recreational mile days in the summer. The miles put on during a normal summer are less than the miles it would be to zigzag across country and back. So I know I can easily do it. Riding cross country would be almost the same as summer riding, with a destination, or many destinations.

The problem is that I am getting old. Now is actually the prime time to do it. I don’t have an employer with whom I have to build enough vacation time. I can work my business from the road. I am still in decent shape with decent reflexes. At 43 I am old enough to be cautious yet not too old to be overly so (overly cautious is just as dangerous as complete lack of caution on a bike). I need to begin to plan my journey. I need to make it happen. One summer, out and back.

Will I do it? Or will there always be an excuse not to, I’m buying a house this year, kids in school, one needs this, another needs that, girlfriend wants marriage, she wouldn’t be happy with me gone for two months, the excuses of life which squash dreams. The excuses that set them aside for the future and keep setting them aside until there is no more future, will they get this one? Only time will tell, but this trip is my dream.