What has stopped your trip in the past?
 

Gagging for a trip but the my wife's Mum is very poorly and on her way somewhere better. So sadly all holidays postponed until further notice. Bugger! It just makes you realise how "all the planets must be in a line" for things to go your way.

Not moaning - my place is here to support my wife - but just wondered what has stopped your trip happening.?

I guess money is the top answer !

For me, money has got to be the main one... And even if you have it, it's the worry of not being able to get it again when you get back from your trip.

I'm financially destroyed myself in the past to get away and it's not always worth it.....




Whilst away, I've been dragged home with emotional blackmail by previous girlfriends who supported my trips before i went and then changed their tune as soon as I'm away.... Once you get home, you just end up breaking up anyway...

Never again !!!! Don't ever let someone else dictate YOUR life.. Kid's are obviously different.

Loads of things have stopped me doing trips over the years but not in a single case was it because I got cold feet and I've never planned anything I couldn't afford to do. Mostly its been a combination of the "motorcycle widow" filter - see Ted's post above for a good explanation of what that is and the "no man is an island" filter - having responsibilities to others that changed between the planning and the execution of the trip. On one occasion my wife developed a severe ear problem that put her in hospital the day before my departure. It was either catch the ferry or look after the kids.

The only time I have come back early from a trip was when I phoned home ( after not doing so for 3 months ) and found that my father had been in hospital for the best part of 6 weeks and my mother was going in for major surgery......at this point I had been away for nearly a year, so made the choice to wrap the trip up.

Plus I had run out of beer money.


I have had the almost traditional blackmail from girlfriends who knew full well what I did for a living and the places I work in, but that was easily solved by becoming a singly again....Now I think I have been a singly so long and so used to doing my own stuff, I doubt I would ever change my plans unless it was life or death.

I think money. I took a two week road trip last month for the first time in quite a while. It cost me about $1500: gasoline, camping, food, park fees, some camping equipment, etc. I wasn't living high on the hogs by any means, and spent only 3 nights out of 14 in a hotel - and even then they were only 2-2.5 star places.

This was in the USA; cheaper than some countries, but more expensive than others. I think if I were on the road for a long time I could get the average price down quite a bit lower, but I can't see getting to less than $50 a day. I think when I toured Australia a few years back, I spent about $50 a day for basic expenses, not including flight or rental of motorcycle.

If I somehow stumble into a pile of money, I promise you I will be travelling...

Same here. My mother was also gravely ill, just a while back, when we were due to leave for SE Asia on the evening on December-27th last year (2012). The day before - on Boxing Day morning - after a restless night, I said to the missus, "Y’know .. we can’t go tomorrow, it just doesn’t feel right."

Frantic changes to our plans then ensued. :eek3:

Have you ever tried to re-schedule flight tickets on December-26th? It’s theoretically possible, at a price, up to > 24 hrs before departure time; but working with a Cathay Pacific skeleton admin. crew on Boxing Day is not an entirely straightforward exercise, believe me!

Eventually I managed to re-arrange everything that day. I moved the whole deal forward by two months, hoping this allowed enough time for the family crisis to sort itself out, one way or another.

My dear mum (RIP) passed away 12 days later on January-7th. I had made the right call.

Support your wife through these difficult times mate; the money doesn’t really matter all that much under the circumstances. Think too of the example you should be setting to the other members of your family, the children (if any) in particular.

The road will still be there when all this is over.

Best wishes

Keith

PS - At the end of February we got away - and it all happened. Best trip .. EVAH!! :thumbup1:

Money, kids, depression, the sunless sea at the black heart of the soul...that kinda stuff

It was raining.

Money and guilt. just returned from a trip in Mexico, would have gone at least to Guatemala if I wasn't worried about the money running out and my wife and parents ending every e mail with the same question "when are you coming home?"

My ride report
Off to Meet the Jews in LA then Mexico - ADVrider

Nothing. I've always made each trip I have planed.
John933

Dogs. My Canadian wife insisted we get 2 dogs to help with her homesickness. We split up 2 years later and now I'm left with the dogs. My 6 month trip to South America planned for next year is shelved for the moment:thumbdown:
The thing is they are like my kids now and I don't think I could leave them for 6 months anyway. So its RTW in 8-10 years.

there seems to be a theme here....
 

Out of the three main things mentioned - family illness, money and women, I am quite lucky in that I am currently only being struck by the latter two....

My original plan to build a classic bike, sell everything I own and hit the road for five years was going pretty well. I'd sold the house, built the bike and was in India heading towards Australia (where I was planning on spending a year to top up the travel funds), when I went on holiday with my on-again off-again (OK, on, then OFF for ten years, then on again) girlfriend. After a month in SE Asia we were about to part company and she was pretty upset. There were two options, break up or be together forever. I can't stand conflict so I did the easiest thing and bought a ring. No problem, I still had time to ride to Australia, work for five months then fly home before my Carnet ran out.

Now I have a month left on my Carnet, and taking the bike to Australia for a measly month is going to cost me over three grand, so I'm doing the sensible thing, ending my trip early and putting three grand in the travel fund for me and my better half (although I may well decide that a really quick bike is a better consolation prize.....).

Luckily for me she is pretty ace and the next trip is going to involve two bike from Alaska to TdF and probably take a few years. She's a nurse and I'm 'accident prone' - despite the fact that plan a is in the bin plan b looks pretty sweet.

The trip might be over but the adventure is never-ending. Until the end, but when your life flashes before your eyes it's OK as long as it' worth watching!

Congratulations Henry. The trip you are about to go on with your girlfriend will probably be wilder than any road journey :)

Cheers Senno, my thoughts exactly! Plus if I can save enough over the rest of this summer I might have my Metisse rebuilt for a Road of Bones attempt next year, bring it on!

The final drive on a 2004 BMW R1150GS. Oy...what a ride.

pretty lady
 

ok so it diddnt stop me going on a trip, but during my 'i'm not going home' trip in europe i bumped into a pretty german girl in barcelona. she said i should contact her when i was near her home city which was a month or 2 further on my trip. i did. and now i'm living in germany, so she stopped my trip that way.
planning the next trip together now though. maybe back home to show the parents the new girl.
i guess there's worse reasons to stop.

Thats not a stop to your trip, it's the start of a new one :)

sent with tapatalk because i made it work!

In 2011 we were planning to ride from London to Oz, but then the husband had a fantastic job opportunity with his company. He was asked to open an office in Rio. So we put our travel plans on hold and went. Long story short, we decided after a very difficult year and a half in Rio to come back to the UK last Christmas.

Now we did a very stupid thing in Brazil: we adopted a dog, that came back with us to London.

The other issue, is that we rented our property to professionals crooks who stopped paying the rent, wrecked the house, sub-let to at least 5 other people and stole half our furniture. (Plus they took massive loans and we are still fending off the debt collectors on this!)…

As the law is biased in favour of tenants, after taking legal advice we were told it was best to take our losses and suck it up. Put it on experience.

So double whammy.

We are not willing to rent our house anymore and there is the problem of the dog.

When we came back we thought he would be wonderful company for my mother in law. My father in law passed away 18 months ago and we thought, as she always had 2 or 3 dogs on the go, that she would take him. She had no dogs for the last few years as she was sole carer of her husband…

But she has made it very clear: “no dogs”. She won’t even take him for a couple of weeks if we go on holiday!

For the house, we can ask the neighbour to look after it while we are away…. But for the dog…..

What do people do with pets?

Maybe we should organise in the HUBB a system where people with dogs look after each other pet while they travel?
We definitely won’t put our trip plans on hold for ever.

I am convincing my brother to take our dog for 4 months next summer so we can travel to Mongolia… but what after that?

As per my earlier post my 2 dogs have put my trip on hold for quite a few years. My opinion is that to me they are family. A dog is for life.

You either find somebody to look after it or you wait till it dies. I can't understand people that give up their animals after caring for them for years.

You could try a reputable house sitting site where they look after your house and pet for free rent, they just pay utilities. Usually its a retired animal lover.

Hi,

I agree with you, a pet is for life. Which means we either put our plans on hold, find family to look after him while we take shorter trips... or take him with us on long trips....

We have no intention to get rid of our dog! We went through hell to bring him back to life (he was extremely ill when we adopted him) and also to bring him back to the UK, because we are very attached to him.

But it is hard to go live in Brazil and not adopt a pet... there are so many abandoned it breaks your heart... all expats I met there ended up with at least one dog adopted, if not more...

I will investigate the house sitting plan. Cheers,

May 2012 I had to leave for a long planned holiday: had to ride from my hometown in northern Italy Up to Iraqi Kurdistan by my motorcycle.
A short holiday, only 18 total days to go and be back, but I was really eagering to do it.
I had to leave on June 3, but on May 20 and 29 two strong earthquakes hit 30 km south of my area causing 24 casualties and creating massive damage to housing, factories and to our medieval heritage.
My girlfriend's house reported heavy structural damage and she, along with other 14,000 people was forced to leave their own homes for months.
I did not feel it was right to leave and have fun on the road while she was forced to return at her parent's house with her daughter and her dog waiting for earthquake shocks to end and to have her house restored.
So, I cancelled my holiday and postponed it to end of 2012, when I rode Nepal and India on a Royal Enfield, and it was a great holiday.

Now, their house has been fully restored and they came back to live in it already months ago.
And I am going to leave to Iraqi Kurdistan by my motorcycle on. August 14... bier

Not bothering to wait (2-3 weeks) for a proper V5 - didnt make it further than Turkey with a photocopy of the handwritten bit! although a Hungarian border guy thought it was still the cold war and made me wait nearly an hour while he checked it over.

Ironically a dog is what ended my last trip to Mexico first of the year (still recovering).. Also gave me a hospital bill over $30k US. I am a dog lover and will always love dogs. I currently have two who are part of my family and will be for life as well. I do recommend however watching out for Mexican dogs that can catch you off guard. doh

My wife had piled a few things in front of my bike.

Never mind; there's always next year.

Running my own business and having a family pretty much stopped all my trips in the past ... but then I never had a dull moment in all these years. :biggrin:

One solution to the dog issue
 

https://sites.google.com/site/threew...gs-in-sidecars

Andy

My Ex girlfriend stopped my trip, hence why she is now a Ex..... :-)

sad or happy or both?
 

Sadly my wife has said goodbye to her mum recently, so our trip is on. I expected to wait a while but she wants to get away. I decided not to disagree.

So after some :crying: we are both looking for some :mchappy:

You've made the right choice. After something like that, getting away for a bit is often the best thing to do.