Chinalbeit

This is a blog entry that I wrote back in 2006 about a motorcycle trip I took in Northern China.  Enjoy…

Part 1: Mental and Physical Preparations

Ever since a young age, as early as I can remember really, I have been obsessed with traveling. I don’t mistakenly use the word obsessed either. I did not just like to travel, I was totally overwhelmed and fascinated by it. Every summer my mother and I would make the drive to Minnesota to see our family. I would bring a large, spiraled notebook with me on these excursions to draw all of the road signs I saw on I-94. I suppose that to my young mind, the fact that they could somehow accurately determine from any point in the endless sea of grass, cows, and corn of Wisconsin how far Minneapolis was and slap the number on a big, green sign. Minneapolis: 274 miles away. Did some guy actually measure that out? Honestly, I still don’t know exactly how they do it and I don’t really care either. Of course, at the age of seven I barely had any concept of what exactly a mile was, but I definitely saw something in those signs beyond a giant slab of green metal propped up with lots of white words and colorful images on them, and I don’t think it was natural.

My impulse to travel manifested itself in many forms as I was growing up. I took every opportunity that I could to try out some new way of getting from point A to point B. I rode trains. I flew on airplanes. My dad took me on a trip in a semitrailer. I went to Canada in my uncle’s RV. I took a boat down the Mississippi (well, part of the way). I took helicopter rides. I even rode in the goddamn Goodyear blimp. Road trips were an inevitable part of my late teens. I rode by myself through the Great Plains to Vancouver and back. My friends and I drove to Detroit, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC. I inevitably donned my backpack and headed for Europe. England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic…knocked all of those off the list. I still can’t say what has driven me to do all of this. Many other people have visited all of the same places that I have, but that only adds to my confusion. Why do people travel? To see sites of historic interest or great natural beauty. Or to just relax somewhere for a while away from work and family. Maybe they are just really rich and have nothing better to do.

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