Nick Sanders blog - life back home | Insidebikes

Back To Nine Conclusions

Added on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor

Nick and Caroline, back at home

It’s that big journey, isn’t it? It’s the one every rider has always wanted to do.

It’s strange being back. It all happened in a bit of a rush. One moment you are riding around the world, crossing the Andes at 16 000 ft, racing across the plains unredeemable flat and the next back home, sitting in your living room looking at a blank wall. All these images are clichés but true and you wonder if it happened at all.

What is it about time, that when sandwiched between points of familiarity, it obliterates everything in between. It happens on any holiday…the expectation of the journey, the excitement of the start followed by the theatre of events that seems to take forever, until suddenly, you are sitting at home wondering likewise if you had ever gone away.

We are creatures of habit and animals of routine. We like to know what is expected of us. Practically we go to work and come home to our partners and children. At the weekend most of us get on our bikes and go for a ride. This is all fine and is the way of life for nearly all of us, until, once again, suddenly, you get an idea you want to do more.

It’s that big journey, isn’t it? It’s the one every rider has always wanted to do. Problem is your whole life has to be stripped away, the routine ripped apart like old floorboards. Your life has to be seen in the context of restoration. Remembering what it was like to live life on the edge.

The bike has to be prepared, paperwork processed and all the goodbyes to friends. No one starting a journey has a real idea what’s going to happen next. Then you are off on your bike, alone, with your partner or your mate and invisible to everyone you have left behind. It’s a great journey; you see great those plains and vast oceans and the highest mountains in the world. You cross deserts unimaginably big, and bit by bit, you succeed in making them seem small. There are jungles so pungent with fresh smells and decay you can hardly breathe, and salt flats so dry you choke on the dust. The roads seem to go on forever. And then….you are where you started.

Back home I like uncertainty. I sit in my office and watch the clouds scuttle by. I like the way every day is a surprise. Of course surprises are not always pleasant. Much of my home life is spent dealing with business shaking dilemmas that are highly stressful, but every new thing that happens, good or bad, pricks me into feeling alive.

Out there I am oblivious to home. Back home I am oblivious to where I’ve just been.

Am I glad to be at the end of the journey? That depends. For most would be world riders such a journey would be a one-off and unforgettable ride. It would be a story told to children and grandchildren until it became a Fisherman’s Tale (such stories take on a warm and unbelievable quality). It’s a tale that deserves to be told by everyone who rides their bike. For me, it is a journey that was crammed into a long summer. It is a tale that started out from the Hein Gericke store in Stockwell on a cloudy April day and finished in Wales in the autumn. The day I got back I had a party, it was my turn to look after my children, the visit to the supermarket, sorting out the bills….suddenly the book is out, ‘Parallel World,’ and this helps me conclude.

Conclusions…
ONE: Panama looked nice and so did Costa Rica. Nicaragua was cool whilst Guatemala looked like Honduras, and El Salvador was recovering from a devastating war. More specifically at the end of this journey I see a mixture of things that are jumbled up in my mind. I see beautiful people hidden behind blackened windows, and also people whose skin is stained by diesel, hands darkened by oily rags, teeth yellowed by tobacco and eyes full of promises that remain unfulfilled.
TWO: Violence, nothing. Not even a scowl.
THREE: Gangsters, yes, if you include shoe-shine men and boys under 10 who insist on selling you something you don’t want.
FOUR: Colombian drug barons? Unfortunately no one was malevolently interesting. No stories of decapitation in the jungle. No shallow graves. No desperados.
FIVE: Other bikers? Yes, five: Erik from Carlos Paz, Jorge from Lima, Helmet from Germany and Simon and Lisa in America.
SIX: Tequila on the beach with a cool chick as a temporary pillion …well, yes actually, and no, I didn’t get the Tequila!
SEVEN: Learnt anything? Err, I’ll have to think about this one. I know there are more butterflies in Guatemala than where I live in Wales but who would care? Yet, essential characteristics of some of my encounters are imprinted onto my brain like genetic code. Gyro who sat next to me, his arms the size of my thighs and his neck as broad as my chest; “You keep smiling son,” he said to me, “and keep your head down, don’t upset anyone and look as if you know your way around!” And he was right, I am fine.
EIGHT: Dangerous? Perhaps, but only over-indulging hamburgers! Waist–hip ratio is directly related to the risk of developing diabetes and the increase in Body Mass Index is also linked to my increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
NINE: And the end? Mexico and the United States of America! But now I have stopped. At the end I sat on a train to Newtown. The final leg of my journey was destined to finish with a bus-replacement service to Machynlleth on behalf of Arriva. I cannot bear to take an hour to cover a distance I can ride in 20 minutes. Life is too short to address time with such impudence. I also feel a sense of confusion. This journey ran out of time. It conflicted with my duties as a father so that I didn’t ride to Alaska. It is a perfect kind of irony that after riding the hardest sections of a very tough route, the easy itinerary, on excellent roads, in safe countries, remained untouched. 41 countries, 35 000 miles, five months, a slight revision on the early ideal of what I set out to do. Yet, my sons and daughter called for me. For many weeks and, yes, months, they had become invisible in my thoughts, forgotten almost, because how can you do something like this when people you love hang on to your heart?