An open invitation to join us

Our hope for this trip is to have friends and family join us for some portion of the trip. We just got our first guest joining us in a few weeks in Alaska. Isabelle, a friend of Caroline's, has decided to take advantage of a trip she is taking to the USA to join us before returning to the UK and starting her new job. We are super excited!

A good reminder for us to tell you that we would love it if you could do the same!

A day in the life of a motorcycle rider

One of Isabelle's questions or concerns was how she could fit and if she could fit into our motorcycle travelers' lifestyle: the answer is yes! You just have to bring a helmet if you want to ride with us or we can put the bikes aside (a break is always welcome) and travel with you for a while. We are also felxible about the places we can go to: our itinerary constantly changes and we never plan more than a week or two in advance.

Anyways, her questions made us realize that we have not shared a lot yet about our lifestyle on the road so here is a little bit more about our daily life.

The motorcycle rider's routine

We camp a lot these days in the wilderness of north Canada. Every few days, we go to the grocery store and buy some food for breakfast, lunch and dinner so that we always have something in case we are really in the middle of nowhere when hunger strikes. We play almost everything by ear and decide each morning what our day will be made of, based on recomendations and the weather that day, but we have a few important steps that make our daily routine:

- clean these bugs off our helmet before we take off for the day so that our vision is cleared off the bug kills of the day before

- check and lube our chain if needed, when it is still warm after riding and wait for 20 minutes before getting back on the road

- check out our gas gauge and don't just leave right away, very excited to be back on the road for another day

Some days we ride a lot and some days we don't. We have in the past stayed longer in certain places just because we liked it or skipped others because the weather was bad. More recently, we have also changed our route to Alaska and joined forces with 2 other riders. We are now 4 on the road together: Josh and Mike, two Canadians, have been riding with us over the last couple of days and we will follow the itinerary they had in mind just because it is much cooler than the one we had.

The art of resting on the road

Given the distances, we have been riding a lot lately to make it to Alaska. That and some hikes we took made us really tired so we happened to nap a couple of times in the afternoon, just for a few minutes. Chad has mastered the art to being efficient in that domain: he takes naps on the bike (see proper technique on the picture left). Caroline has been much more traditional in that sense and pulls over in a rest area to lay down in the grass, under the sun. We have liked both equally and it was just our way of recognizes that there is no shame in taking it easy when you are tired.

So now you got a glimpse of our new life. We have not told you all the details, like the lack of shower certain days or the bugs that are so numerous here, but we promise: for the most part, it is a lot of fun on the road so come and join us...