Copy of published article in Colombian magazine "Caras"

Milestones from Germany

We have arrived at our friends Tom and Christine's house in Cologne, Germany. We are now well over 20,000 miles traveled. We set a record on the way here, doing 4 countries in a day. It was a mighty effort, we pushed ourselves to the limit, but we did it--Belgium, Luxembourg, Belgium again and then Germany. John Glenn would be proud!

Funny how stereotypes are so often based in reality. Once we got on the autobahn....the left lane started zooming by us at 100 mph, from Mercedes, to tiny Fords, even a Smart car. We also stopped by the Iranian embassy in Brussels to try and get a visa on the day that the French and Iranians were verbally blasting each other about war. Not necessarily the best day to work on our French while we spoke to a native Arabic speaker, but it went fine. The Pakistani embassy was typical of the "impossible" paperwork regimes famously known in Pakistan and India. The embassy smelled of something, I thought food, Clara thought worse! The civil servant's first response was that our request was impossible and that we would have to go to Washington, DC to get a visa but with some prodding an alternative was found, although also not an easy one.

Germans have some interesting habits. Some good, some bad, some strange. Good is that beer glasses are automatically refilled unless you put your coaster on top indicating you have reached your limit. Bad is that the wait staff won't come to your table if your menu is open, which can be a pain if you don't remember. Strange is that they only drink bubbly water. They even have machines in their homes which add "fizz" to tap water. Some restaurants don't even have bottled water without fizz. Quite odd!

The Cologne Gothic cathedral is pretty amazing, huge, detailed, and inspiring! Our hosts have been fantastic, as we prepare ourselves and our paperwork to try and make it to India.

Luxembourg was quite nice, and worth a day or two trip if visiting Europe. Gas was a bit cheaper than in the rest of Europe so far, maybe $7.50 a gallon instead of $8.
The cost of things is killing our budget, and a constant reminder of how far America has fallen. Thanks George!

Hope the Red Sox can limp across the line first...

3 days in Amsterdam

On one of the hundreds of bridges in Amsterdam.

We finally had a "honeymoon" on our honeymoon trip. We booked a nice hotel for three days, parked the bikes in car garage, bought a tourist ticket and saw the city. Boat tour, museums, restaurants, the redlight district where sex, drugs, and probably other things were offered to us in Dutch and English. Wonderful walking city with friendly people and the whiff of legal marijuana smoke emanating from many corners.

I feel like I have seen a real master, as I was blown away by the Rembrandt paintings. The Van Gogh museum was excellent as well, and Clara in particular really enjoyed it.

Off to Brussels tomorrow, to try and get some Visas, Belgian beer and maybe some chocolate.

Away from UK

Knock, knock
Who is there?
British Isles.
British Isles who?
Exactly!

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Leaving on a merry ferry

We are booked into the overnight ferry to Amsterdam tomorrow, we will head for the terminal right after my leaking gearbox seals are replaced at the Bolden BMW dealer.


We are camping near the beach again where the river Tyne flows into. The English channel. Took a nice walk this evening, a pond with swans, amusement arcade park getting ready to close for the season, a basketball, biking and skateboarding park, where teenagers were doing bike tricks, shooting hoops, and a couple were destroying the block wall between the park and the road. The type of wanton destruction that makes you want to just slap some sense into someone.

But we are just observers, leaving this land soon, so could only shake our heads and move on.


Had a second great tour of Edinburg this morning. A gorgeous and expensive city, that we place right at the top of the list of recommended places.

Finally, the magazine article about us came out in Columbia this week. A nice 5 page spread. I believe the magazine is called faces, and it is the weekly one with Tom Cruise in it!


Excuse to me, but is a good time having possible in the Amsterdam?


(Oktoberfest is nearby in Munich, anyone, anyone? Meister???)

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Change in plans

Turns out the ferry from the shetlands to norway is completely booked, so we head south...

To where we are not sure. At least newcastle, maybe Africa or India. Such are the vagaries of our mission.

We made it to Cullen, to enjoy the famous "skink" for dinner. This is as inhabited as a ghost town can allowed to be. We are camped on a bluff overlooking the ocean, where raucous winds aided in our tent preperation, the same ones which buffeted us all day. Another day of wind and rain. Not the plains of Spain here.

Delicious fish and chips just south of the castle for lunch, as we cruised down the east coast. Once a day for me on average, I can feel my body larding up, but it has been 10 years, so I must indulge.

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Thoughts from the cold, windy tent

We’ve been riding up the West Coast of Scotland and it is as stupendous as described by contemporary biking friends. We’ve seen rugged mountains, heather everywhere, highland cows –pronounced “haelen coooos”, herds of wild deer, tourist buses from Skye south, eerie landscapes and castles, tourist information boards which explain the different ghosts you might see, and which of those are friendly or not.

Water, Water everywhere. From light blue ocean lit by the glint of a sun ray sneaking through the clouds, just visible between rocky peaks coming down out of the misty hillsides. It is visible like an unobtainable oasis. It doesn’t even warrant thinking about finding that sunlight as experience in the highlands teaches that the sun is occasional and wonderful and to be enjoyed when touched upon you, but never worth searching for. (short of a trip to Spain, of course). The weather has not been bad, but not good either. We end up wearing our rain suits eventually everyday, then leaving them on until we come to our tenting place. Another source of the water, is the numerous Lochs that offer up stunning scenery of tranquil surface reflecting sheer walls of rock with heather and ferns clinging to their sides. The fresh water Lochs are fed by the numerous rushing streams, crisscrossing the countryside, winding back and forth in their bogs, they in turn being fed from springs emanating from the ground or cascading from edifices high up the hills.


The clouds are quite unlike the clouds over Ireland which are dull and flat and gray bottomed, seemingly bored with their usual everyday activity, like a factory worker on a shift. “hi, George”, “hi, Ralph” the clouds seem to say to each other, clocking in for another faceless day of hanging over the Emerald Isle, spraying down whatever insides they have picked up in the evening from the Atlantic and getting ready to do it again the next day. But nor Scottish Clouds! The clouds are magnificent and alive, whirling, twisting, closing, touching, forming and reforming. You look up and form a notion as to their type as you ride along, then are sidetracked by an ocean view, a ruined church,
or some natural beauty; when your eyes return to the sky they have reformed leaving one to doubt ones own memory as to how recently the heavens were checked. They cling to the mountains like tendrils, rush through passes with an icy sting that feels like a ghoul going right through you, they rise and fall, caught in the same currents that push your motorcycle around the one lane roads. At one point today the entire sky became light and wispy on a blue background and seemed to me to be reflecting the waves of the ocean below it over a canvas thousands of miles square.

We inquire about local hostels or wooden huts in the campsites, but everything has been booked. Although not overrun with tourists, the facilities are full with the ones that are here, many, many of whom are motorcyclists who know a good thing when they roll their throttle through it. Tonight we stay in Scourie, at a campsite overlooking the bay that is run by elderly but friendly Angus McKenzie. When I introduce myself as McCrea he immediately knows the history of my clan, that we are known as “the suit of mail” to the Mckenzie’s, long have we been their protectors. His mothers family are McCrea’s, and he recounts how many of them left the local area in the early 1800’s displaced by the English. He laughs as we finish up and says we are probably related in not too distant past.


The town of about 500 has a wedding on in the town center. There is an announcement in the once a week town paper which is a double sided 8.5 x 11 which apologizes that they couldn’t send out invitations but everyone is invited, just bring a bottle and enjoy. We walk by to observe, and a lovely waltz is being played by fiddle, guitar and flute. Kids run around outside in the dark as the informal but beautiful reception continues inside, and more and more locals walk up the gradual hill to join in. There is such a beauty and elegance in a small town simple get together. Real warmth and sharing, that we often miss in the formalities and banalities of the big city.

At lunch the day before at an ubiquitous white tavern/hotel on the side of beautiful bay I talked to the proprietress about the malt whiskeys. She said the locals only drink the blended whiskeys, the foreigners and tourists partake of the dozens of single malts hanging about the bar that Scotland is famous for. I tell her I’m glad I’m not a big drinker, and particularly not fond of whiskeys. She laughs in a knowing way.

I spy with my wee eye...

Something beginning with the letter D:

Something beginning with the letter S:

Something beginning with the letter H:

As Gruff as a Billygoat

Kevin On top of an Historic Bridge in the Speyside

We survived our night on the shore of Loch Ness, alas no sighting. We spent the next day at the gorgeous Eilean Donan, the ancestral Castle of the McCrea's. It was rebuilt in the early 20th century after being blown up during the Jacobite risings.


Scotland is rugged, beautiful and hard. The kind of place you fall in love with in a deep, earthly way. Maybe the only place you would put on a tartan skirt and wield a 6 foot broadsword against superior numbers in order to defend. Life is not bountiful, but it has everything one could need.

We spent last night on Skye, before coming over crossing some haunting mountains which looked like the hugest ancient temples in the world, wrapped in mist, to settle at Applecross for the night. Joining us are Andy and his partner and friends. Andy, his sidecar and sidekick just spent 1.5 years in South America where they met many of the same people we did such as Tom and Christy. Easy bonds are made amongst such similarly minded people. Who couldn't like a guy and a sidecar driving around South America and Scotland!

Up the west coast tomorrow, wheather weather permits or not.

Confronting the Monster!

No, not the corruption and idiocy in government. Something tangible.



We just set up the tent on the south shore of Loch Ness, almost directly opposite Urquhart Castle.
We will wait through the night to catch the beast, perhaps doing the famous "nessie" dance which is related to the washing machine except with the addition of some camera tourist oblique references.

Some great Scottish words and phrases we have picked up in addition to the ubiquitous "oach eye". When there are advantages to either of two paths to take you might say "you gain what you lose.". The way to describe a typical day here which includes constant varying wind, high and low clouds and mists of rain here and there is a "dreich" day; and of course, the long-haired beasts grazing in all the fields around here are called "heeland coos".

We head to the ancestral home tomorrow, Eileen Donan, the McCrea castle at the head of 3 Lochs. We are planning on heading north to the Orkney and Shetland Islands before catching one of the last ferries of the year to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. If people have suggestions for places to stay or see please let us know.

Fall is definitely in the air, and we are getting our cold weather gear ready for Scandanavia.

Say "Whisky!"

Today we traveled the Whisky Trail here in the Highlands. We visited three distilleries, namely:

Glenfiddich,

The Glenlivet,

and Cardhu.

At each distillery we learned more and more about the process of turning three basic ingredients of water, yeast and barley into fine Malt Whisky. We got to taste the best 12 year whisky from each distillery and both agreed that we liked the Glenfiddich sample the best, with Cardhu coming in second and Glenlivet a distant third. However, all the distilleries were beautiful and had very nice and knowledgeable staff. It really was too bad that we were driving our motos because I would have loved to continue following the trail and partake of a lot more whisky. Hmmm!

6 months on the road!! and now In the Highlands of Scotland.

Yesterday, marked the beginning of our seventh month on the road and it was one of the best days of Kevin's life because we spent the whole day at the world famous Braemar Gathering, one of the oldest of the Highland Games, sitting opposite Her Royal Highness, the Queen watching events such as Highland dancing, piping, putting the stone, throwing the hammer, my favorite the tug of war and Kevin's favorite tossing the caber.
Kevin could hardly sleep the night before due to his excitement and he woke up at 5am and patiently waited until the alarm went off at 6am before he sprung out of bed and began to encourage Phil, Christine and me to hurry up! We were in our kilts and ready and on our way by 7:15am and arrived in Braemar at 8:30am. We were among the first people at the gate, assuring us the possibility of getting great seats on the field.

Kevin and Phil looking like proper clansmen



The Queen!!! waving at ME!

Kevin doing a proper highland fling.

Off to see the Queen!

We have arrived in the town of Alford, near Aberdeen in Scotland, home of my friend Phil Lodge.



Tomorrow is the Braemer gathering, the most famous gathering of the clans for the highland games. The Queen and other royals shall probably be there.



Phil is the "chosen man" to Haemish, the head of Clan McClean. We arrived unannounced around 7 pm and since then have gone mushroom picking in a range rover through a field protected by a giant bull, seen wild rabbits, foxes and owls, tried some swords out for size, were loaned some antique quilts (including a McCrea tartan from his mother) from Haemish for the games and did some nighttime target practice with Phils nightvision rifle, before sharing a wee dram of whiskey before bed. In other words, a typical day out.



Clara has been riding with all the packs to simulate riding with a passenger, her next goal. We also saw a long haired red cow with big horns. I put on a new rear tire today, and bought a new front which is strapped to the back of my bike so we look like real "world tourers"





Can't wait for the log throwing tomorrow.

Farewell to Ireland

We spend one more night here, before catching an early morning ferry for Scotland. Spent a wonderful night last night at the Teach Hudie Beag which is Irish for "house of tiny Beag". Hudie Beag was a famous gaelic footballer from Donegal and his wife and son are the proprietors of the hotel and bar which hosts great traditional music on Monday nights. Their son Hugh is a great fiddle player, if not mechanically or computer literate.

Although there were a few tourists, clearly it was the place for the locals to enjoy some good craic! (Not to be confused with "crack")

We are very eager to get to looking for Nessie in Scotland, but we're sure to miss the places and people of the emerald isle.

In love with Ireland

While Kevin is downstairs at the pub trying to explain to the owner that he has broadband in his establishment and helping him to remeber what his password is, I would like to share some thoughts about my favorite country so far. Ireland is just how I imagined it, only better! Each day that we have been here we have ridden on some fantastic, wildflower-lined, narrow winding roads through picture-perfect towns made up of brightly colored homes with manicured lawns and gardens bursting with flowers. Wether on a coastal road with wiews of cliffs and beaches and waves crashing against limestone shores, or on a desolate country road surrounded by acres of boggs and farmland divided with stone walls and dotted with grazing two-toned sheep and hearty cattle, I feel part of this land. I have no Irish ancestors to speak of, but there is a sense of warmth and community yet at the same time a feeling of isolation and sadness that appeals to me at a level deep, deep inside. I have a sense that at some point in my life this is where I was meant to be; in a small stone cottage overlooling the sea. Where I could sit in my sun room and watch the rain fall and the waves crash stoicly against the rocks, or tend to my rose garden wrapped in a wool blanket on a bright crisp day.
Here, I get the feeling of being close to everything but far enough away so as to be able to feel modern and ancient all at once. I don't know, it is hard to explain, but if you've been here, traveling on these roads, you know what I mean.
In terms of ridng my motorcycle, Ireland is a dream! All the roads are paved, even if they seem impossibly narrow. Distances are short, but traveling the distances takes a long time because of the configuration of the land. The coastline is made up of "fingers" each containing numerous inlets. On any given day, we ride winding roads with tight turns and whoop-de-woops past a half dozen whole or partly whole castles, through tiny towns and modern cities each with their own personality but very much a part of the collective Ireland. I have become very comfortable with leaning waaaay over to one side then the other followng the curves of the snaking road. I've yelled out plenty of woo-hoos, especially while wooshing under a canopy of trees and wild flowers or on a cliff road by the sea. I have begun to drive with my visor open so I can constantly take deep deep breaths of crisp fresh cool air!
Well, Kevin is back, no luck with the broadband. We'll be back downstairs at the pub around 10pm tonight to partake of a lager while we listen to the Irish music jam session.
Besitos.

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More scenes from Ireland

Poachers at the Tour of Ireland, the Philanthropist (and Yankee cap wearin) Al who bought us fish and chips in Cork, O'Connor's pub in Doolin, scenery...

Pictures from Ireland!

Here is Kevin at the Spire in Dublin, Clara at a Castle (Kilkenny?), Kevin and John,
and us at a monastery abandoned in the 15th century.

Camping in Doolin

We are roughly following the same route, inadvertently, of the Tour of Ireland bike race. We are back to the clouds mist and rain for which the isle is well known.

We visited Lough Gur yesterday, a 5000 year old settlement site and home of Irelands best stone circle. Later to the spectacular cliffs of Moher, draped in mist but occasionally giving the 600 foot view down to the Atlantic.

Last night we enjoyed great local music at world renowned O'Connors pub, recommended to us by our friend Joe, whose wife is a niece of O'Connor clan.

The food is pricey but good, blowing our budget but filling our tummies. One pint knocked me out before midnight!

The roads and scenery have been fantastic. Amazing how 20 miles an hour can seem so ponderous in the Andes, but so glorious here. All the names and faces of Boston are here, murphy, connolly, o'brien, etc. My grandparents names of Fitzgerald and Murphy are as common as smith and jones in the states. I feel a part here, as if I am home, although maybe not so comfortable.

The people are kind, friendly and gentle and a feeling of safety abounds despite the tabloid headlines.

The roads are screaming, bringing back eachoes of my racing days. I even got the notorious front end wobble as I crested a wee hill yesterday, something I hadn't experienced in over a decade. A large smile got plastered on my face as we continued through the hedgerows and stone walls hemming us in on either side.

Galway!

Ballylichey,countyCork,Ireland

We had a gorgeous beautiful ride yesterday. Everyone said it was the nicest weather in two months. We went along the southwest coast cutting over to Cork, where a great lad Al pulled up to us on his GS at a stoplight, brought us to the best chippie in town and treated us to food and stories before heading off to the dentist.

We went down to the coast again, to Clonakilty, Skibberdeen and to Bantry where we camped for the night on the shore of the bay. There was a rally of old men and their old motorcycles on the roads, black outfits on black cycles, with the occasional singe of gray haired beards under a half helmet and goggles. The passion never dies...

I think I saw an AJS from the 20's, a few vintage sidecars and one solo rear wheeled car. All zooming through in traffic, no parading for them!

Delicious lamb chops for dinner, a pint at the pub with some local flute and music box before retiring under budget for the first time in Europe.

On to Kerry to confront the tourists!
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