We are two guys from Marlow in Buckinghamshire, England.  Fed up with corporate life and with the urge to fulfill our desire to embrace life and what it has to offer, we have come to the crazy decision to quit it all and take ourselves and our motorbikes off into the unknown for the next couple of years and enjoy what we love doing best....RIDING!!

 

December 2004 we sat in our local pub discussing our discontempt at life in general when we jokingly suggested we should just quit it all and go on a bike trip.....initially we laughed about it but as the beers flowed that evening we started to embrace the idea more and more. We have both done many rides throughout many parts of Europe and Martin up the East coast of Australia so our thoughts turned to what if?   After a few more beers we agreed to both think it over for the next week and see if it was a realistic possibility...I mean we had to consider our careers, finances, girlfriends..(well maybe not girlfriends) properties etc.  Fortunately neither of us were married with kids so from that perspective what could stop us!  We spoke later that week on the phone and agreed to meet on New Years Eve, again in our local and come to a final decision.   Not helped by the fact that Ewan Mcgregor had just aired the beginning of his 'Long Way Round' documnetary it fuelled the fire for us and we became avid followers of the series.  So that was it NYE 2004 guinness in hand we shook on it and agreed that in 4 months we would have everything prepared and leave the UK on 1st May 2005.  Oh how little we knew about the prepartaion required and what was ahead of us.....but thats part of the fun...Isn't it??

 

About Alan:  Workings as a Corportate Account Manager in Industrial and Software sales for many years I'm an avid biker and water skier.  I've undertaken a number of rides across Europe to Italy, France and Spain, usually on sports bikes.  I first learnt to ride bikes as a kid on an old Honda C50 'chicken chaser' and then progressed to riding motocross bikes.  Years later, I finally decided to get my road license and the love of riding sports bikes began.  My desire to travel became apparent in my twenties and I was fortunate enough to work in positions that took me travelling all across the world, from Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, Australia and North America.  The fun was often overuled by the many many long haul flights and I always knew there were better ways to see our planet...I just hadn't figured it out yet.

 

About Martin:  Very much the fitness fanatic and love of all things extreme, Martin had also been riding from a young age.  After a succesfull career developed in Industrial Engineering (A/C) that took Martin to many parts of the world including Russia, South Korea and Sweden amongst others and having previously worked on fairgrounds across the USA in his university gap year he is also a qualified sail boat captain and diving instructor that provided opportunities to travel by sea to many of the more luxurious places on our planet.  He has ridden motorcyles up the east coast of Australia and across Europe which helped nurture his love of biking.