“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon”. Something that Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) wrote in one of his letters to which I can relate pretty well after nigh five years on the road. For him and […]
Zion National Park, Utah “Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end.” Edward Whymper nailed it in Scrambles […]
Woody’s Wheel Works, Colorado Roughly 1,000-killer-miles straight from Death Valley to Denver, we worked our cockadoodle guts to get there. But then our friend Woody is like L’Oreal, he’s worth it. A guy that can only be described with any real accuracy as Jack Nicolson meets Father Christmas. But first, it was a challenging test […]
Ancient beings in the Bristlecone Pine Forest, California In early April, when Death Valley had finally, finally started to lose some of its gleam, we jumped back on the road. And an hour’s scoot to the east of Bishop, up the road from Big Pine, arrived at the Bristlecone Pine Forest nestled in the White […]
Las Vegas Packed up once again at our Arizonan base in Prescott, the rolling dice until sunrise awaited. Vegas, baby. I could only imagine the indulgent sights that lay in store smack dab in Nevada’s Mojave Desert. Sure of myself that its focal point, the Strip, would be akin to Blackpool, my hometown but on […]
“I really don’t want to go,” and pouted as I tried to internalize an unnecessary degree of petulance. Dispensing our warm goodbyes to biking friends in Borrego Springs, we saddled up and I reluctantly turned the key in the ignition. After multiple postponed departures, that is. A heavy sigh betrayed a sadness in parting from […]
A turn in the weather whistled a bolt of cold over my body, goose-fleshing as we journeyed towards Jasper and Banff in Canada’s Alberta province. Cold inquires at first investigated the tips of my fingers, chin and nose, feeling their sharp little claws sink in when my gums were no longer warm. What did I […]
Wheeling up to the US border at Tecate was more of a ‘Triple Whopper with fries but better make that a diet coke’ drive-thru experience than the usual cacophony of queues—left, right and centre—about the Latin American customs and immigration offices. The familiarity of my old, comforting Latin American life was about to leave me […]
Intense light fell from a vaulted powder-blue sky that offered here and there a cloud so fat and dense-looking, it might have been full of milk. A monied seafront gleamed as much as the ocean. The coastline was lined with an assortment of majestic marine figurines, spotless sidewalks and restaurants with menus on which we […]
The morning after the night before Mexico Independence Day was akin to Boxing Day in a rural corner of England. The highways were deliciously quiet, deserted even and the streets had become all but bare. Riding down the empty roads gave rise to revelling in a deep quietness. For a moment, I imagined what it would be […]