When I finished that trip which was my longest one ever I kept in mind to write a post about it as a summary when I'd be done with posting the content I harvested during these 4 months. That post turned out to become 7 parts and now I am on the 8th! As you can imagine I could go on forever but I will try to write a final one now, unless you want me to talk about something I didn't cover in the previous ones. Let me know!
First of all, I owe you something from my previous part as I forgot to tell you what rain gear I used. What kept my legs dry was this piece from BMW:
It's a waterproof inner lining from BMW motorcycle pants which has worked fine through the years. The only thing that managed to beat it was the monsoons I faced while riding in Serbia, something that you can read about here.
The upper half of my body depended on this piece:
It's also an inner lining from a motorcycle jacket and it also failed only once during that Serbian ride I mentioned. Says something about the amount of water...
I don't mind wet hands unless it's cold and if I really wanna stay dry the following pair which is chemical proof does the job:
Depending on the temperature I can wear them solo or over my summer and mid season gloves. Far from sexy but more waterproof than all the motorcycle "waterproof" gloves I have ever tried combined.
This trip offered me the most weird sense of time I can recall. You read the stats of this trip on the title and you may go like "omg! what an odyssey!" but when I came back it felt like I started yesterday. I have to look at the map of my trip over and over again to realise the size in time of it considering when I was at each place. In Germany alone I spent more than a month!
I'm not gonna say it is that much of a surprise that the sense of time changes according to the experiences one faces. But the level of time "alternation" is what impresses me. Even @mipiano told me the same thing when I came back home after this journey "wow, it felt like it was yesterday when you announced that you're starting". And @beeber also commenting on how "soon" it felt if my memory serves me right. So it's not only me.
We tend to see time passing by faster as we grow and I have an explanation for this. A month when you are 18 is a much larger part of your life than a month decades later. It's also because we tend to become more flat emotionally as we grow and dull our senses (and sensations). I'm doing good in fighting both diseases but trust me it's VERY tough, especially if you don't meet enough people with the same inclination (delete enough and put any instead).
But this trip felt fast like this for other reasons. I think that the pressure of keeping things in tact during those hectic days from place to place made it feel like a zipped parenthesis in my life. Only twice I had a bit of time to slow down, once in France and another one in Netherlands, both during housesitting but even then I had commitments (3 chickens a garden and a diabetic cat in Netherlands alone 🙂). Well, we tend to say "time flies when you're having a good time" so this also might be it. Even though weather often sucked big time these were the 4 "fastest" months of my life.
Speaking of weather, I gotta say that if you're looking for a martyr of the climate change just text me. My home land was burning under the more insane heatwaves Greece ever faced while I saw no signs of summer until mid August. Even locals admitted to me in various places that they can't remember a colder summer. The shit is serious guys and we might haven't seen anything yet...
So what has this trip left as an aftertaste? From one point of view it was a bit of "proof of concept" for me. I mean, I didn't do it just for the sake of records, I did it combining commitments I had, last minute coincidences (better say setbacks but that's another story) and first and foremost my love for road trips, especially motorcycle ones. However, I was curious about how such a long one might feel. And it kinda felt like the trip of my trips even though I've done lots and impressive ones as you can see here. The feeling of tasting so many countries for that long observing all the cultural differences and similarities is priceless. However, at the end of the day it opens the door to some peculiar type of loneliness.
Let me explain: Despite the globalisation, internet and all that barrier breaking stuff, our world is very polarised if not more polarised, odd as this might sound. Personally travelling has offered me the chance to see the world zoomed out. It has opened me the window to the big picture. Unfortunately it doesn't have the same effect to all but that's just because not all people travel for the same reasons and with the same motivation. All this intellectual/cultural wealth I accumulate makes an even more intense contrast with the majority of the people as they tend to stick in their comfort zone. Imagine this as if you're becoming richer but there's less places where you can spend your money. And it's even worse now that internet has made everyone think that they know everything more or less. In the past there were more people willing to listen. Now they prefer to Google it or ask ChatGPT. I still listen and I still Google. The more sources the more sound the conclusions. Needless to say how people look at me when I say that I'm thinking about ditching my car but keeping my bike 🙂 So long story short, I have entered a wonderful space due to travelling but...
Another weird thing is how extensive travelling on my bike has created an ever-growing love for my gear, especially parts of it. I hate being redundant so if you want to read about my gear check my previous post but I'm like "thank you my dear boots for keeping me bone dry and so comfy, thank you dear bike for taking me to so many places while NEVER letting me down" and such. Casual things like these have changed drastically to my eyes after all these kilometres. It's a priceless gift that reminds us all that travelling is the only thing that makes you richer though you spent more money than you earn (if any).
What did I miss during this trip? To be honest not much. I don't have an anchor back home to make me homesick and I actually don't precisely have a home at the moment as I let my mum stay at mine while I rent for the time I don't travel. I'd miss the weather but the South was literally burning while I was touring the rest of Europe so I didn't miss that either. I did miss two things though, at times a lot:
My guitar:
And my drums:
I still have a project in my head of touring with a portable guitar recording jams on various places out in the woods...who knows...one day 😉
How HIVE was that HIVE Tour? Depends if ones tends to see the glass half empty or half full. Since I am a self financed unsponsored traveller and a ghost on social media, Hive was the main source of financial support during all this. However, through all these months of constantly posting content I collected on the road around all these countries, one (1) whale upvoted me many (if not most) times (appreciator) and OCD for only a few times. That's it. No one else. From one hand I hate to mention it for two good reasons (1 is that I hate to sound as if I complain and 2 is that I find it VERY pathetic) but on the other hand it's impossible to omit such a fact while commenting on a trip like this which, as you can see from my posts, was not covered in the most pathetic way (to put it mildly). So that makes the whole aftertaste kinda lukewarm. I mean, if it wasn't for appreciator the outcome would be literally ridiculous. I named that trip after Hive trying to promote it and the few people who were interested to dig deeper in it had similar questions like "why your post got A amount of money and that post got 3A while it's just 2 paragraphs and a picture from a dog walk?" Seriously, I don't know how far can this go but who expected that hip hop girls will start listening to Nirvana in the early 90s...It sucks, it's stupid and it's not based on the quality of my content. Unfortunately.
So I think I should end the series about my trip here, unless you have something more you wanna know. It was an amazing part of my life for so many things that's hard to list them all here. The great guys I met on the road, the unique places I've been at, the wonderful rides I had, the insane weather I survived scratch free, but most of all I can't thank you guys who followed enough. It was such a pleasure to make new friends here out of it and watch out cause I might meet some of you out there during my next one.
Until then do yourself a favour and stay tuned cause I am moving to another place this Sunday where I'll spend the winter which means new stuff is coming up as soon as I find the time.
Thank you all for your support, see you in here or out there!