Here is a rough day I had in Bolivia. It was adventurous, agonizing, and amazing all at the same time.

Getting through that day was hard, but looking back on it is great. The most challenging times are the most memorable. This photo is one of my favorites. I sank Jenny into a patch of mud that I thought would be a “shortcut”.

I’d like to thank EasyCanvasPrints.com for a free sample of their service. It came out really well and I’m happy having a 16×12 canvas print hanging on my wall to remind me of that day.

When I look at it I smile. Sometimes I cringe, but I always remember the day and the whole journey that changed my life forever.

I blaze a trail across Kansas en-route to St. Louis where another friend is putting me up for the night. I plan on ridding throughout the night with a full moon keeping me company on the deserted roads. The sun sets and dusk is fading. I stand up on my foot-pegs to stretch my legs and notice my headlight is out. So much for riding throughout the night. In 20 minutes I will be riding blind. I ditch my plans for a late night ride. Maybe this is a sign to call it quits after a long 400 mile day. I pull off onto a dirt road to look for places to camp. Between two wheat fields, who’s crops already were harvested, is some tall grass and a couple of trees. It will have to do. After setting up camp I diagnose my faulty headlight down to a simple blown fuse. I scold myself for not checking it right away on the side of the road. I could have made it to St. Louis that night. Lesson learned. Curling up in my bivy sack sounds pretty good at the moment anyways. Sufficiently safe in the obscurity of the brush I fall asleep to the raucous sounds of a tavern in the distance.

After a short stay in St. Louis I head north to Chicago. The first sign I see for Chicago gives me goosebumps. I am happy to see family and friends, but I begin seeing the stop as the final one before Mexico, which I am anxiously waiting to enter.

After a week and a half in Chicago I get too comfortable. Beth urges me to hit the road, insisting I’ll never get this stupid thing over with if I keep “dicking around” with my friends. I say my goodbyes to everyone and most feel like they are giving me a last goodbye. “I’ll be fine,” I insist, especially to my Mom.

Violence along the Mexico border from drug trafficking is surging and commonplace in the news. Stories of civilian decapitations and images of vehicles riddled with bullet holes is what comes to mind to most Americas when they think of Mexico. Here I am heading straight for it. Their worry is no surprise. “Be safe”, most would say as if I am going into a war zone. With futility attempt to switch the perspective on some.

“Oh I’ll be fine. It’s you I worry about. Chicago’s crime rate is the fastest rising in the nation. I just hope to make it out of here alive!”

I’m the only one who finds this funny.

On the way to St. Louis I stop at my sister’s who I had not seen in a while. Two miles from her doorstep the rear tire starts to feel squishy and my handlebars begin to wobble. I pull in my clutch and slowly come to a stop on the side of the road. I have a flat rear tire. Great way to start the day. I take this as an opportunity to test my roadside tire changing skills. The valve stem is ripped off so the tube can’t be patched. I rest Jenny on her side as I begin to wrestle the rear rim free. It is a Sunday morning in the countryside and naturally there are a lot of bikers out for a ride. It takes me about 90 minutes before I fix up Jenny, but 30 of those minutes are spent with people stoping to see if they could help. Jenny is tipped over, most thought I crashed. A caravan of bikers with rubber necks whipping towards the spectacle that is me and Jenny almost caused an actual crash when one rider brakes and another doesn’t notice. He locks up his rear wheel and screeches down the road. Most who stop to chit chat could not believe that it was possible to perform this kind of repair. “Nah, I’m good. I do this all the time” I lie.

In St. Louis shipments are waiting for me. Once again, two miles from a doorstep I have another mechanical problem. After I exited the expressway I make a sharp turn and the chain rolls off the rear sprocket. “Aww c’mon!” I cursed. I am so close to the end of a ten hour day on the road. I unkink the chain and seated it back on the rear sprocket while rolling the bike forward. “C’mon Jenny, just a couple more miles…” I plead with her. The chain rolls off every couple blocks on side streets and the last two miles take me an hour.
I rip into the packages like a kid at Christmas. “Four millimeter tubes, knobby tires, new chain and sprockets! Oh my!” I install all the new parts over the next couple of days. Knowing that these are the last familiar faces I will see for a long time I feel hesitant to leave. Eventually my rationalizations run out. I leave my friends and head south for the border.

Thanks Cycle-Parts.com for getting me all the parts I needed to continue rolling down the road.

I’m working again and it feels better than I anticipated. Just a couple weeks ago marked a year since I left for Latin America. It doesn’t feel like yesterday, or anything else really. I recognize a year has passed, and now I’m wondering what the next one will bring.

I’ve settled back into geekdom quicker than I imagined. Coding comes naturally. I was looking at my Google Web History the other day. While I was on the road my search queries were filled with names of cities. Monterrey, San Jose, Panama City, Cartagena, Cusco, Puno, La Paz, Santiago and of course, Ushuaia. I imagine a year from now when I look back it will be filled with queries about CSS, SQL and the syntax of a switch statement (I always forget).

I work part time, by choice: three days a week. The other two days I spend writing. I am in Panama right now. Figuratively speaking. I’m not on chapter 3 or 4. I’ve stopped grouping my writing into chapters. It feels too artificial. It’s a first draft. I am “clearing my throat” and writing about anything I can remember. I’ll figure out the mess later on. I fear I will forget too much as time passes. There’s evidence of it already. It’s a good thing I kept a lot of notes and shot a lot of video.

I put quotes around “real world” in the title of this post, and they carry a heavier significance for me now. I would air quote, “real world” when speaking because it represented a new era or lifestyle. For instance, “After college I’ll be in the ‘real world’ and get a job.”

There is a new era, a new lifestyle that I experienced ont he road, and that is what I am trying to write about, remember and prevent slip away from me. I’m living through the past on the road, and enjoying writing about it.

I don’t have a publisher. I don’t know if I want one. I may self-publish. I don’t know. These questions aren’t so important to me at the moment. It distracts from the task of writing.

Here is a taste from the past of the “real world”

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Hey everyone, welcome to The Atlascast. A story telling podcast about my journies around the world by motorcycle. This episode is from Decemember 2010 when I traveled solo from America to Argentina for eight months. In the evening I would often record my thoughts and recount what happened that day. This recording took place on Playa Negra, Costa Rica.

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