O
ur individual adventures will be as different
as our personal circumstances, but when the
journeys we’ve meticulously planned are ending,
we’ll all be returning to something. However, in our
absence that ‘something’ will have changed - a lick
of paint here, a fresh face there, a higher price for
everything – but I’ll guarantee that it won’t have
changed quite as much as we have.
For many of us money will be an issue, and sooner
rather than later, we’ll need to return to the
workplace. But, after twelve months in the saddle
just how comfortable will an office chair feel? In our
absence, will management have become any less
irritating and will the corporate Kool-Aid still have
the sweet taste of success? Will the prospect of a
week’s annual vacation on the Costa Del Somewhere
be quite as appealing as it used to be? Will our daily
commute to the factory now feel a few thousand
miles too short?
If we’re retired or financially independent, then at
least we won’t need to worry about finding
employment, but will the life we’d left behind be a
life we’re happy to return too? Our homecoming
meal will be delicious, but will it really be as
satisfying as we’d dreamed it would be back in
Myanmar, that rainy night stranded on the border,
sheltering from the monsoon rain with nothing but
blind-faith and yesterday’s rice for comfort? In our
absence, has Uncle John’s view of the world radically
changed, or was he always something of a racist?
And dear old Auntie Mary, does she honestly believe
that simply because we’ve visited Iran, and
occasionally follow the news on Al Jazeera, that
we’re about be measured-up for our own personal
suicide vests? Before leaving home, hipsters had
been an unfashionable style of jeans, and beards
were only worn by uncaring old men, but do we still
feel the need to conform to the latest fashions? Do
we really care that some celebrity we’ve never heard
of has been evicted from a reality television show
we’ve never watched? When we hear our an old
riding buddy advising a would-be adventurer that a
new BMW is the only motorcycle capable of
circumnavigating the globe, do we smile and
remember the two Chinese scooters that saved our
bacon by towing us out of that gnarly riverbed back
in Vietnam? In short, does everything surrounding
our old lives now carry the distinct scent of bullshit?
F
ew would disagree that with Long Way R
Charley Boorman sparked a renascence in adven
demonstrating that amazing journeys were possib
of budgets, the likes of Austin Vince, Lois Pryce, Ed
helped to democratise such adventures. Thanks t
way and inspired our dreams, the roads of the w
two-wheeled adventurists, free-spirits proving