Motorcycling brings people together. At the very beginning or our trip, Ramona and Herbert met an American girl when fuelling in Seattle. She was very interested to know about their travel plans. “You are living my dream,” she replied, and wished them the best of luck: “Keep the rubber side down.”
Ramona’s brand new Xchallenge particularly caused a stir. Hardly a day went by when we weren’t at least invited to a beer by friendly locals. It usually turned out that the people were motorcyclists themselves or, like Jonah Street, professional racers. For us it was these encounters with people which made our tour so unique. Sometimes it was enough just to look at the map or the GPS and we were asked if we needed any help.
The ability to make contact with others so easily might have something to do with the fact that you are so exposed to the elements as a motorcyclist. Ramona and Herbert even inspired the sympathy of a group of hunters one evening when they came across the latter’s roaring camp fire while looking for a site to put up the tent in the forests of Oregon. The hunters invited the two of them to a bourbon – freezing and wet to the skin as they were, they naturally accepted.
When you travel off the beaten tourist track as we do, you often get to know rather eccentric individualists – and of course there are good reasons why such people have turned their back on a conventional life in “civilisation”.
There are many people we could add to our list of interesting acquaintances: Phil, the guy who loves old English motorbikes and runs a bike shop in Seattle – he even gave us a little tour, Joey, a Native American who initiated Ramona and Herbert into the secrets of an American washing machine at a laundrette in Nevada, or the motorcycling family we met on a bumpy sand trail in California which might as well have been a motocross race track.

 

Topic: Curiosities

Topic: Bivouacking

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