“That there motorbike is your fucking lifeline”

stated Joe the Celt in a thick Belfast accent as he stabbed the air with his pointed finger in the direction of my motorbike. “If something happens to it and you are in the arse-end of nowhere, then you are fucked!” Joe the Celt had a point but more than that he had a way of delivering said point in such a way as to put the fear of God into you. Joe the Celt was my motorbike instructor and a highly proficient one at that. He had been mounting these two wheeled motor machines since his teenage days in Northern Ireland. Joe traversed many of the toughest dirt tracks of the South American continent and was at that time about to embark on a trans-continental motorbike trip from Ireland to India. I looked up to Joe, he was an inspiration. Stephen and I on the other hand had never owned motorbikes before and yet we decided to buy two and ship them to Buenos Aires. Whatever experience we lacked we certainly acquired over the two years it took us to drive from Argentina to Alaska. Joe was right, our bikes were our lifeline. Of course we encountered the usual stuff: hurricanes, punctures, crashes, snow, a broken arm, baking sun and freezing nights and a little bit of deportation. But we got there in the end. And it was worth it. And it still is…

I didn’t have a camera on that trip so any of the photos from that trip were taken by Stephen. I have included a few down here. And of course there is the blog that he wrote:

http://www.footstops.com/argentina2alaska

I guess that’s why I am writing this one, so that I can look back from time to time and have a record of it.