Day -1 : And so it begins....

It was with a mixture of nervousness and sadness, but mostly excitement, that I said my fairwells to the family at Newcastle airport this afternoon, and started what is for me, an adventure of a lifetime.

This week has been very busy making my last minute preparations and packing for the trip. My birthday was on Thursday and I was very touched by the reaction of everyone at work. My desk had been decorated with banners and balloons, and I was greeted by a chorus of "Happy Birthday" on my arrival. Very nice and unexpected.
The evening was spent with my family at Fratelli's, a nice Italian restaurant not far from where we live, and it was great to see everyone before I left. It was nice that Lynsey, Matt and Seth travelled up from Leeds to help me celebrate.

Saturday was our wedding anniversary, which Gillian I spent at the Mal Maison hotel in Newcastle, and we had a lovely dinner at "Six", the restaurant on the top of the Baltic art gallery in Gateshead, with outstanding views over the river and across Newcastle.

And so to today. We had a family Sunday dinner at The Badger, a pub/restaurant next to the airport, and then I was dropped off to catch the first leg of my journey to Heathrow, along with a few emotional goodbyes.

I don't think that it's sunk in yet that I really am doing this. I travel to London fairly regularly on business, probably about 2 or 3 times a month, so this part didn't really seem out of the ordinary. Tomorrow, when I head off to the USA will really be the start of the trip, and I expect then it'll dawn on me that the trip, years in the planning, has started.

On the flight down to London though, I began to realise that in 18 years of marriage, this will be the longest time I've been away on my own and the longest journey that I'll have taken on my own. I'd like to thank my family, and especially Gillian, for letting me take the time out to do this trip, and although it will be exciting and great fun (I'm sure), I will be thinking of them, and wishing I could share my experieneces with them. Unfortunately, getting them all on a motorbike would prove to be challenging!

Well it's late, and it's been a long day, I'm tired and getting emotional, so I'll sign off for now, and retire to my bed in the luxurious T5 Travelodge!

Today; London, Tomorrow; Chicago!

Weekly Countdown: 1 week to go!

With just 7 days till I leave for Chicago, the excitement is mounting. It's going to be a busy week this week with some 'domestic' things to do before I go, and of course, celebrating my birthday on Thurday. Then it's our wedding anniversary on Saturday - 18 years, which is porcelain I'm informed. SWMBO want's the bathroom refitted this year, so that seems appropriate.

Dave B came through with the goods this week, and has loaned me a set of H-D bags specifically designed to fit in the Harley's fitted panniers and top-box, so I know how much space I have to play with. Not much is the answer, so I am cutting down on what I will take with me. Still, it's better to know now rather than having to ditch stuff when I pick up the bike.

I ordered a small amount of US dollars - ironically the best exchange rate was from SAGA, with free next day delivery. I dare say the first of a number of transactions with them over the years to come!

I've also booked some internal flights to help me get home at the end of the trip, as the availability on the flights back from San Francisco has not improved any - these give me the option of flying back from LA, Seattle or even New York. I must remember to collect the tickets on Wednesday. It's not nice to think that a month from today I'll be back at work though.

Preparations are so well advanced in fact that last night I was even able to go through my music collection to decide what I should load up onto my iPod and take with me. How organised is that? I also realised that I'll be away on St George's day, so have got a St George's flag to fix to the bike. That should provide a talking point when I stop for gas.

Looking at my route again for the upteenth time I noticed something that I hadn't thought about before. I will be travelling through 4 time zones over the course of the trip (Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific). As I'm travelling east to west that means that I will get an extra 3 hours! What a bonus. So bike hire is actually 18 days and 3 hours. I hope they don't try to hit me with a surcharge!

Now it's just a case of waiting for Sunday. This trip has been so long in gestation, that it's hard to believe that it's now just a week away. It's also slightly scary.

Weekly Countdown: 4 weeks to go

I'm in a good frame of mind today, for a number of reasons:

• My bike was MoT'd last week and is now back on the road. The weather's been very nice the last few days, so I've managed to go out for a couple of rides.
• Last night I fought off a late challenge in my local Poker league and won the league by 15 points.
• But, most of all, it's now less than 1 month until my Road trip! Unfortunately that means it's even less time to my 50th birthday, but let's skip over that bit.

In terms of the trip, I think I'm fairly well advanced with the planning. The reason I think this is that I'm now starting to worry about the smaller details, and nice-to-haves. For example, I've started to look at how best to use my phone when I'm away. As data roaming chatges in the US are astronomical, I've started searching for an American PrePaid (or as we call them, Pay as You Go) SIM card with data, that I can buy when I arrive and use my HTC smart phone whilst I'm there. The best deal I've found so far is from AT&T, where you get unlimited calls and texts for $2 per day, and 100Mb (not much) of data for $19.99. Still expensive though compaired with what we're used to in the UK.

I've also been thinking about getting a bluetooth headset for my crash helmet, like this one, so the SatNav (which doubles as an MP3 player) and phone (which also doubles as an MP3 player) can be connected without wires. Do you think I'll also need my iPod? Just in case I run out of music?

One slight fly in the ointment though: I've been checking the status of my flights back from San Francisco, and they are full on the day I want to come home. So, contingency planning has kicked in, and it looks like flights from Seatle are a good option. I'll monitor the situation, but it's looking like I might need to make 3 flights in order to get home on time: SFO-SEA-LHR-NCL.

Days to departure: 28
Paydays to departure: 1.


Funding: Given up worrying about it!

Some re-thinking going on

Yesterday was my birthday, 49 btw, So now just a year away from "the trip". I spent the day painting the rendered outside walls on my house, and woke up this morning to see just how patchy they now look. Worse than when I started - gutted!

However, spending all day doing that mind numbing task gave me plenty of time to think about things, and enevitably my thoughts turned next year's trip. In the end, I started to rethink the whole thing quite radically. Now, I'm not sure if my new thoughts have legs, or will come to anything, so I'm going to take some more time to mull them over before I post them here. If they do stand up to scrutiny, then expect some big changes to my plans......watch this space.