Belfast, Northern Ireland, April, 2019

To have some time to pick up the bike properly, I rented a room in a woman’s house nearby the owner’s. We bonded quite a bit and she enjoyed having me, and encouraged me to come back. The pickup was a really beautiful experience with it’s former owner Thomas, who showed me how to ride it and wished me a good trip. From picking it up I went back to the house of the woman I was staying with and prepared to continue my journey.

Once I left, with two heavy, proper metal suitcases on either side, I started to drive to my next destination. and then, being Ireland, it started to downpour. The rain started slow enough at first that I could make it, since it was only about 25 minutes away. Within 5 minutes I realized no. I pulled into a parking lot thinking what to do, and did the only thing that came to mind in this moment of panic, and went back to the previous apartment. Horrible ride, I remember crying. It was also late. The woman was not happy to see me. When I showed up, I was soaked and crying and asked her if I could stay one more night, she pointed to the sofa and went back upstairs to sleep.

Belfast, Northern Ireland

In the UK, if you want temporary motorcycle insurance as a foreigner for a few weeks, which is how much time I planned on staying, every of the many available companies quoted about $1,500 / week. My bike was $4,000 or pounds, or something close to that. It’s actually absurd, and I refused to get it on principle. I obviously wasn’t going to get into an accident in the UK.

When I was talking to my therapist and we both knew I would get the bike, I said to him, “Is it true that anyone who owns a motorcycle gets into a accident?” and he said, “Yes”. I said, “Have you?”, and he said, “Yes”. I knew it wouldn’t happen for a while so I was relaxed.

I believe on my very first ride (this was from the farmhouse to the Northern Coast) to run a simple errand, driving a nice easy pace of about 30km, I went through an intersection and crashed into a van. Why did I do this? I saw a green light in front of me. It was from my peripheral on the corner in front of me. In many European countries (Brexit hadn’t happened yet), the stoplights are on the side of the road, almost next to you, not across the street. Across the street (like they are in the US) are the lights for the other side. I have an good reaction time so I was going around 14km / hour or less when I hit it. The van didn’t move. It was dented. I was thrown off the bike and got a little scratched up. My bike had fallen over and been injured worse then me. I cried over the bike.

It turns out the van I hit was owned by a delivery company of some sort and the driver was not the owner. He said it was necessary to collect my insurance penalty. In the UK, if you get caught without insurance, they seize your bike. I told him this would be very difficult, but that if he could call his boss and ask how much cash would be enough for him, he said 400£, or 600£, I don’t remember which, I just remember I pulled out a stack of hundreds and handed him either 4 or 6 of them and proceeded to return home to rest.

Belfast, Northern Ireland

What is there to say about Mark? He was gentle, friendly, accommodating, he had two large pigs, which he let roam the house while we ate dinner, and many baby piglets which were then about the size of a small Pit Bull and ate potatoes.

Mark took his patients from home, so we would regularly have the neighborhood folks over one at a time for him to perform minor (I think minor) operations on them in one of the downstairs rooms. I never heard anyone screaming. I also somehow knew he was an exceptional podiatrist.

He also owned prized Highland Cattle, beautiful creatures if you’ve ever seen them. He had one male and six or seven females. They don’t look like cows so much as they look like buffalo. They were not for meat, in fact he said the only condition under which he would ever eat one of them is if it was old and died naturally and was still consumable. Other than that, they were his prized possessions. A single Highland Cattle costs around 4,000£. Mark was clearly doing well as a podiatrist.

His brother lived at one of the next houses over, which would have taken somewhere between half an hour and an hour to walk to, yet was still visible, and it was the house where he had grown up, his father’s old house. At the time I was there, his father was old and needed support so he lived at our farmhouse and my host took care of his father until his death a year or two later. His sister lived a 10 minute drive away. The people of Northern Ireland understand what it means to be “close” as a family.

He also, for some reason, had a greenhouse which was beautifully kept and had quite a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and exotic plants. I think this was what he was the most proud of.

I had booked a stay at Mark’s house, which by the way was a gorgeous and rather large farmhouse with enough acreage to get lost, for two nights. It was very last minute (almost everything I do is very last minute) and he accommodated. During this time, I looked for a repair shop to properly fix the bike, and on one day with beautiful weather, I rode the bike along nearly the entire north coast of Northern Ireland. There’s more to say about Mark later.

The North Coast, Northern Ireland

It took one day, the entire day, and it was stunningly beautiful the entire way. It was so beautiful that I have to ponder deeply on how to communicate this one day.

Belfast, Northern Ireland

Unfortunately, they needed to order a special part to fix the bike. Something I was aware of because my therapist told me is that the Kawasaki KLR 650 is a rare bike in Europe, because they have stricter emissions laws than us, so it actually wasn’t on the market in Europe and had to be imported. So parts often had to be imported as well. While I waited, I tutored a student for highly technical interview preparation most of the day and was able to support my living costs with the money.

I don’t remember how long this went on, it was either one week, two weeks, or more than two weeks. However long it was, there was a point where the hospitable Mark’s hospitality cracked and he asked when I was planning to leave. At some point shortly after that, he blew up at me for entering the laundry room, since he had insisted in doing my laundry and after a while it just didn’t feel right having someone do my laundry all the time so I went to do it myself. I immediately booked a bus to Dublin, without having a place to stay.

Belfast, Northern Ireland

The day I left the farmhouse, I decided that before I left I would do one last ride along the coast, and go all the way this time, since it was so beautiful. It should be of no surprise that I did not book a place to stay that night. The ride itself was not as awe inspiring, partly because I had already seen it, and partly because I was exhausted from the last few days. I was aiming for a final viewing point, I forget the name. I didn’t forget my breaks cutting out just as I was at the top of a sheep hill about to descend to the destination. Somehow, with twists and turns and good vibes from the sheep rooting for me, I managed to slow the bike down enough that when I pulled into the parking lot, I was able to swerve into the first spot and only crashed lightly into the sheep fence, which was embarrassing.

There was a car in the next spot over. I really did not want to engage in conversation with the person in that car, because I was certain he had just watched me crash into the fence. My cell phone service was, consistent with a running theme, not working. I sat there for a few minutes and thought to myself, “It is getting late, the sun is setting, people will leave soon, I have no cell phone service, I don’t know where I am, my bike doesn’t have brakes, and if I don’t act quickly I will be stranded out here.

I sheepishly (yes this is a pun) approached the passenger’s side of the car and knocked at the window. At first the man ignored me, but eventually, realizing I wasn’t going to go away, rolled down his window and asked what I wanted. He was listening to Philip Glass. I happened to be obsessed with classical music and listened to a lot of Philip Glass (this is not common), and said “Oh, this is Philip Glass”, so he became nicer. This was Reggie.

Reggie told me that his daughter and her boyfriend were out viewing the sight, but when they returned in a few minutes, he might be able to help because he was “good with motorcycles”. Ollie was previously a professional motocross racer, but I didn’t know this until he showed up and his girlfriend slipped it into conversation.

Ollie was able to use a zip tie to reattach the front break. He assured me it would hold for long enough to get to a repair shop. He also taught me how to ride a bike with only a front break. It involved taking things slower and more carefully because the front brake is a bit more aggressive. Then, one of the reasons I continue to travel, Ollie said to me they were throwing a barbecue at their place that night and invited me. By this point, both his girlfriend and his father were quite friendly with me, it was only a 20 minute ride from there, and they told me I could just follow them. I didn’t need to call my therapist this time. I said yes and we went. And then as I’m following them with only my front brake attached by a zip tie, halfway there it obviously started raining. A lot. This time I laughed tears instead of crying them and it just slowed us down about 5 minutes and got me soaked.

Somewhere Near Belfast, Northern Ireland

We arrived at their house. It wasn’t exactly a house, more of a small mansion. It didn’t have an address. It was a really pretty port town, with a big, white house that you would pick out as long as your eyes were open. This was their house. Packages addressed there were addressed to:

The Big White House

Town I don’t remember

Region I’m not sure was Belfast anymore

Northern Ireland

The house was owned by Reggie and his late wife. It had many rooms, and she used to rent them out to visitors, as sort of a proper B&B. They were very, very good hosts, fed me well, And then we proceeded to get proper Northern Irish drunk on Northern Irish whiskey and sat around telling stories all night. The best story was Reggie’s side of our first encounter.

Reggie: I was sitting in my car, listening to peaceful classical music, when a motorcyclist pulls into the spot next to me and crashes into the sheep fence. They took off their helmet and I noticed their long hair, and thought, “Oh god, it’s a girl”, then he turned around and I thought, “Oh no, it’s a German guy. A drunk german guy.” and said to himself please don’t have this person come to my car and knock on my window

Reggie and I spent a lot of time that night bonding over classical music, and some other things. He let me stay over in one of the rooms. By the time I left, we felt kindred spirits.

Northern Ireland

The next morning, which was a Sunday, Ollie spent the first half of the day driving me around in search of one particular screw that was needed to fix my brakes. It was a long screw, which made it harder to find, and it was thin (or thick, who can remember these things) threaded, which was even more rare. Ollie, Anna, and Reggie were all on their phones messaging and calling people all morning asking if they had the screw or knew where we could find it. Ollie took me to a giant home improvement store and they had every screw except this one. One couple was going out but had found it and left it outside their door on the doorstep. We drove there to pick it up and it was the wrong screw.

After around five of these missions, we finally get sent to a farmer’s house who is known for being around on Sunday, and also known to have a few bikes and spare parts. We twist and turn around the wavy road to his cottage, and things are starting to look up as we notice two motorcycles sitting outside on the lawn. Within a minute, the farmer walks out, comes up to the car, and asks what he can do for us. We explain the situation, going into detail about the complexity of finding such a screw on a Sunday. He shows an understanding, walks into his garage, and returns no more than five minutes later with the screw. It is a bit old. He apologizes profusely about the condition of the screw as I’m sitting in the car in completely awe and joy. I ask him how much I can pay him and he laughs and goes back into his house. This is the spirit of the people of Northern Ireland.

The Ocean

The ferry to Scotland was fairly painless to figure out. Buy a ticket…drive there on time and wait for them to board you. There were only a few guys with motorcycles, so we all sort of stuck together. It was a bunch of buddies on a motorcycle tour around Scotland. One of them took the time to handwrite a route to follow to start my journey. They were a bit boring so I let them get ahead of me. It was an Irish exit from Northern Irishmen in Scotland.

The Highlands, Scotland

I had the expectation (have no expectations is a good overall principle to follow) that Scotland would be one of the most beautiful places in the world. As it turns out, I had just come from one of the most beautiful places in the world. Scotland looked like a lot of dull green hills in comparison. I did stop at some sort of Trump golf resort (the man has them all over the world, you just sort of end up at them from time to time), and then stayed in a really nice house of a really nice Scottish woman for one night to rest and recover from onsetting exhaustion.

I say onsetting because one night of rest does not compensate for the amount of exhaustion one accrues by riding a motorcycle so many hours so many days in a row. But I continued on my way to the famed Highlands nonetheless. What I remember from my attempted journey through the highlands was this: it started to rain early on. It became clear that my exhaustion was not relieving, but actually compounding. And conclusively, I had neither the physical energy nor the professional liberty to venture into some of the most unique places in the world, in spite of being only a few hours ride away. Instead, I briefly stopped at Loch Ness to check for the monster, stayed a night at Inverness to wait out the rain, and proceeded on my way out of the highlands the following morning.