am in the same boat....... again.
i have had a life pattern of this living and then normality and the normality always feels like the slumps.(i have travelled by foot,backpack,yacht for 7 years and of recent years by bike and its the same pattern).whilst travelling you have sensations of hieghtened experience good and bad and also meet with likeminded eclectic people.once you get home that kind of dulls and for most hampster wheel walkers washing the car on saturday and who won the local football game seems of a hieghtened importance to them.even if you try you can never really re connect to this (if you were ever connected in the first place).
a wise fellow yachtie (3 circumnavigations on a yacht called upyurs!!) once told me once you get the sand between your toes you can never wash it away.travelling by any means is exactly like this and with bike is no exception.
i have always found that you have to pay the ferryman and thats what i consider the slumps but in that time ....you can slowly and quietly draw your plans.re group,consolidate,repair, and then go!!!
whens the best time to plan the next trip i always feel its when you are actually on the one you are on.if that makes sense.
the first step is always the hardest but the rest will follow and then all of a sudden you have the 'flow' once again.

i am washed up on the beach (meterphorically) in perth also at this time alas 2013 will be better for one and all.
happy new year!!

So very true, decision made, waiting on the house & toys to sell..........

A yacht, now theres an idea for a base, mobile too Just need something under 47' with sails that I can fit a GS on. Mmmmmmmmm?



Cheers Dave

Hi My name is Xander and I am and Overlanding Addict.

Well it has been a long time since my first post:

Since then I have found what could only be described as my dream job.
I have bought a house. Rebuilt 2 motorcycles from the ground up. 1 more on the go. We take weekenders and fortnight trips.

I have only (like in the last month) been able to start re-reading the hubb. I now feel that my experience is so out of date that i don't have that much to contribute to the Hubb, and i feel bad about this. I have started to edit the blog that never got uploaded. It will one day get uplaoded (maybe). In many ways, my life is back to normal.

HOWEVER: the addiction has not gone away. I look at my panniers on the floor and get sad (no other word for it). I love my job, but almost every morning (on bike or not) I look at the road ahead and have to force myself take the left hand turn to work and not go to the see what i can find beyond the horizon. And although at times i hated (yes strong word but accurate) the traveling, I think it was when i was truly to my core happy.

Conrad's quote from "Hart of Darkness" (which BTW has always been one of my favorite books and think that Apocalypse Now trashed it) it as true as it can get.

I still dont talk about my trip much, I answer questions but that is about it. Odd huh? It is a huge part of my life that is now almost become private.

Summing it up I am happy, but still highly addicted. I know I cant take an other big trip for a few years, I am okay with it. In a bad way though I dont plan or dream about the next one, a bit like an alcoholic cant take a taste. I have to think small, and not compare.

I have re-read all the posts here, and one thing that strikes me as odd I never called my trip an adventure, although many people here did. I dont think of it as an adventure. To me it was travel, i dont want to say for others it is not an adventure. But to me it was more then that, and never had a goal o plan... it was just just me and my wife and the world to see. Truth be told I dont know what my point is..

__________________
2000 Africa Twin
http://two-up-ona-twin.blogspot.com

That is not true at all..... There is a lot more to the hubb than recent exchange rates and shipping prices.


I know EXACTLY how you feel on that.... You dare not dream the dream as in contrast the world around you soon starts to look really dull.

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Everyone here needs to read The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. You'll learn that sedentary life is not necessarily 'natural'. All my life I had a hunch I belonged on the road (as opposed to going on 3 month jaunts/adventures, or living as an expat), and in 2003 I took the plunge and began working/living on the road. As others have said, sometimes I hated it. It wasn't easy. But it felt 'right'. Two years ago for numerous reasons, I bought a house in Chile overlooking the Pacific. Dream view. I'm no where near as productive with my writing. I cannot wait to be on the road again! Getting all my ducks in order first...

Lorraine

__________________
Rallying for A Wild Life — THE FILM!
http://igg.me/at/AWildLife

www.LorraineChittock.com
www.facebook.com/lorraine.chittock

I'll second that!

__________________
Submariner
Life Member DAV
BMW MOA member
BMW Riders of Oklahoma

Post trip Blues

Well you did it, you took life by the handlebars and you steered your way around your fears, you took on the challenges put in your way and now you struggle with the mundane and ordinary of life? Well you almost certainly aren’t alone, just as a soldier comes back from a tough tour you are conflicted between the uncertain place that inspired the best in you and the safety of normality, and you can’t relate to anyone who doesn’t understand because they weren’t there and you don’t want the memories invoked by others who are currently living their dream journey because it’s like a kick in the ribs of your decaying bloated roadside carcass, the yesterday man, the has been, the fool full of tales and bitterness that time marched past as it cast you into obscurity.

Well who told you to quit? What was the point of your journey? Was it to learn or to inspire? Do you think you know everything? or have stopped being able to give to others what you know?

That listlessness is because you have been given a greater you and you are failing to utilise that, damn right you should be depressed, and embarrassed and ashamed!
Look at the adventures in front of you, to be a success in business, in love, as a father, the next trip.

Did you really think you would be gifted a better world by your indulgence? Your gift is the knowledge of a greater world, all its joys and all its faults, the greatness of mankind and the inequality, your potential.

Now what are you doing about it? You’ve returned to find the mean average of life unsatisfactory, what are you going to do to change it? Or do you think that this is someone else's responsibility?

Go out and make it all mean something or float around and go on another trip to escape the reality that will still be there when you stop running

Change the world? that sounds kind of impossible, so here is the thing, change somebodies world, and for the better, that you can do! don't sit by doing nothing because you cant do everything, look at something that is wrong and fix it because one thing you must now see is that we are all on the same rock spinning through the universe and there is a lot to be done before our house is in order.

Well One sure cure is have kids! After travelling I worked throughout Africa and argentina, and just couldn't do an office job. Going to Europe or America bored me; too crowded, too many rules, tame house cat land. I had to get away. When kids came I was happy to be with them. Now I do 1 long solo trip per year and one shorter one. My son is now old enough to come with. Once he turns 18 well then, maybe we go across Russia or something on 2 bikes.

I am glad i am not alone in this, i also been on the road, and out traveling for extended periods of time on motorcycles, semi trucks on two continents, and just whatever i could get my hands on old cars, and even small boats when i was younger.
I've met so many great people along the way.

Ever since i came back,what i regard to as home some four years ago, i got really depressed, relations never worked out, i even got fired one time for fixing a technical problem on my own, because this was not allowed within company rules, the fact that i saved my employer half a million, by taking action, the way i did was ignored, so i even got up to i point i really didn't trust myselves into doing anything, properly, not even replacing an, innertube on a bycicle .

The loyalty i've experienced out on the road just isn't there.

I have some friends from the militairy that experience the same.

Now i find it hard to imagine, that i used to repair my own semi tractor in minus 40, somewhere in Canada the US or Europe,or completely rewire the the smoked up electric cables on my Tenere, some where in New Foundland.

Or so much other stuff i can look back at, now that i am reprogrammed again, for normal live as i look at this myself.

There's no one to share your story's with i find which makes normal life so difficult, so now i've stuffed all my belongings into storage and getting ready to be out traveling again, on a motorcycle, my energy, self confidence, and just joy of getting up is gradually coming back.
So not sure, if this is just me, or more people that think like me, if a normal or regarded to as a normal life, people dedicating themselves to just consumerism is really the way to go.

Or should the majority like us all be out there, like nomads, helping each other and others out, when help is needed,and staying away from swamping ourself in materialism as much as we can?

I'm glad i'm not the only one suffering from this, Aloha!

Well said!

Even after the last year in hospitals having four operations due to a bike crash, I can't wait to be on the road again. I leave this week for Latin America and have already agreed to buy another motorbike.

__________________
motomon at pobox dot com
Have returned to Latin America ... again in 2024/2025. +15179800336 WhatsApp

Good for you Ted, for the fact that you recovered, and brave enough to be out there again

Something similar happened to me in San Diego, where i was in a hospital for 3 weeks, before being released back to a motel just a mile from the border, where complete strangers invited me into their home to recover, drowned me with their kindness and warmth for about a month, and never asked anything in return, anything but being friends for live, before i was being flown back home.

I want to be back out on the bike again by the end of september, just buy a plane ticket to the US get a bike and go from there, and write a book about my dad, who's led an exceptional live.

Thanks my friend, biggest compliment i've had for awhile.
Maybe we'll meet sometime on two wheels