Life Lessons on the Road: An Irish Lad's Motivational Motorcycle Journey Around the World

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After you talk.

Twenty years ago, I awoke on a lifetime searcher only to find that I was left with a people.

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So, friend, let's talk about it.

Adventure, a sense of adventure.

Do you have it or not?

I feel like that's kind of two different fields.

We got the people with a sense of adventure, the people who like to set off, who have no set or destination in mind, who don't even have directions.

They just have maybe an idea of we're gonna head north and see where we go.

Other people, well, other people, they need a party.

They don't need a strategy, they need GPS directions.

Well, today's gonna kind of blow your mind.

That book is called Going the Wrong Way.

And he is here to talk to us about his story that involved a motorcycle in the entire world.

SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was probably would you believe uh when we joined the Boy Scouts, some of the older guys had these old British motorbikes, like Nortons and BSAs, and then you used to trundle up at the end of our Boy Scout evenings with these bikes and they'd go off down to the pub or whatever they were doing.

And I think it always struck me the the the noise and the excitement of the uh machines at that stage really impressed me.

And then I got the 16, it was like yourself Ballway dirt bike and used to run around the fields and I just couldn't wait to as you know when you're s teenager on your bicycle, the the thought of actually going up a hill without actually pedaling is just like magic, you know.

So I couldn't wait to get get an engine under underneath me so I could actually do that.

So from a very early age I was I was just enthralled by bikes.

And in those days it was cheaper to ride a bike than it was to drive a car, so it was also a cost factor as well when you were 17 or 18.

Yeah, you couldn't afford a car, so you rode a motorbike, whereas nowadays it's the other way around.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

Now now talk to me, so where did you grow up at?

SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the 70s, and I um which wasn't the most suspicious place to grow up in, um middle of the troubles.

Um I never got too much involved in it myself, but uh my father's furniture shop got blown up numerous times, and there was that through school I went to was in the centre of Belfast.

He would have looked out the windows and seen bombs going off and be uh lockdowns and people getting shot around the city various times.

So it was a pretty nasty place to be at some stage.

But of course when you're growing up you didn't really notice that because we didn't know anything else.

It was only when I got a bit older realized, well, there's places that this sort of stuff doesn't go on, so it would be nice to visit some of these places that people don't sort of shoot each other because they're of the wrong religion, you know?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: At an early age, I think it was about sixteen or seventeen, I decided I'd like to go to Australia.

And being a biker, I thought, well, the best way to do that would be to ride there on a motorbike for a bit of an adventure.

So the idea was to ride to India and then ship to Australia from from the UK, from Ireland.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and how old were you then?

SPEAKER_00: Well, it was twenty-one when I set off from Belfast and I got as far as London.

And uh the I told him any decided to take over the American embassy in Tehran and it was in November 79.

So it hadn't got very far, it only got about 400 miles, and basically the road east was blocked with the revolution.

So it uh I decided well it couldn't go back home because I told them my friends would be away for a year and a half and or for a year and it couldn't go back after two weeks, so it decided to go to South Africa instead.

But basically, after planning this trip for the last sort of four or five years and guidebooks that got my routes planned and so on, my maps, my visas, everything for going to the east, I ended up going down Africa without a notion where I was going.

SPEAKER_01: Okay, so so before I I start asking more questions about this actual trip, I mean, what made you want to do this trip?

And especially, I guess, you know, your your your first destination of push was Australia.

Why Australia?

SPEAKER_00: I think it's a few relations there.

I reckon I could get a job there for a while and see a bit of the world as well.

Um English speaking country, see a bit of the world on the way there.

And I wanted to I think I wanted to challenge myself as well.

I didn't want to just fly out, wanted to sort of challenge myself.

You're always under sort of some sort of influence from from outside.

I wanted to just get away from travel on my own and find out about myself rather than what I was what I was under the auspices of uh somebody else, you know.

So I wanted to I was keen to be away on my own.

Didn't want to go away with somebody else.

So I didn't really know that at the time, but uh looking back on it, I didn't think that's what it was, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

Now what kind of motorcycle were you riding?

SPEAKER_00: Well I had a Motor Guzzi Le Mans, which was the coolest bike in this in the street in those days.

Um bit of Italian flash.

It was a cab what we call a cafe racer, which was good for scooting around motorways and fast corners, but wasn't really a touring bike.

So it converted into a touring bike, it just put higher bars on it, a screen and top boxes and panniers and it was a sort of sh uh wolf and shapes clothing that it was uh still a high performance bike with a touring kit on it.

But I thought it'd be okay for going to India because it was also pretty much tarmac roads the whole way there.

But of course when it got to Africa I had to cross the Sahara Desert, so it was totally out of uh out of the picture, out of the off the wall for crossing a desert of sand 500 quid 500 miles worth of sand on a basically on a standard road bike.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Now all of this, all of this venturing across the world by yourself, right?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Well, you meet up with people along the way, you could go in the same direction and travel with them for a bit.

But the nice thing about that is if you don't get on or you want to go somewhere else, you just say bye bye and why you go on your own again.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Okay, dude.

So this is this is so cool.

Now we're we're talking a massive trip, this undertaking, whether whether to South Africa or Australia, either one, I mean a massive trip.

How long did it end up taking you to get to South Africa?

SPEAKER_00: It took me about five months to get to South Africa.

I think I got there about April after leaving in October.

So uh Africa was pretty tough going.

You know, go through the Middle East to went through Israel and Syria and Jordan, and Syria was pretty dodgy at that stage.

Israel was just in between wars, I suppose.

In fact, most of Africa was between civil wars or revolutions or something going on at some stage.

I went through Uganda just after I Amin, if you remember him.

Particularly nasty character.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Threw all his politicians to the crocodiles.

As I say, after that he went a bit off the wall.

But uh went through Rhodesia's just after uh became Zimbabwe in South Africa in the middle of apartheid.

So it was it was pretty uh rough going.

And it was one of those situations that if it if I had known uh what I was going into, I probably wouldn't have done it.

Um because it wasn't really that stupid, it was pretty stupid, but it's hard to it's hard to imagine in the sort of pre-internet age that you you know you had a guidebook, you had what you were taught school, but you you know, you it's much harder to get information about summer nowadays.

You just Google whatever you want to know, and you can book your hotels, you can see how far it is, you can communicate online, uh whatever you want, it's all online.

But those days, you know, you you really didn't know what was beyond the next country unless you've done your homework.

I mean at one stage I drove off out of Sudan into Uganda.

I actually drove off the edge of my map.

I had to swap maps with somebody coming up north and find out where where the country was, what country was going to next.

So looking back, if I'd known what I was going into, I wouldn't have done it.

So ignorance is bliss sometimes, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, of course, of course.

Now, along this way, I mean, is there anything when you when you think back?

I mean, obviously there had to be countless, just incredible experiences, but but any like kind of most notable that you could share that maybe, maybe moments that were kind of like, now this is why I'm doing it.

Maybe, maybe because it scared the crap out of you, and you're like, whoo, maybe I survived that, or it was just something amazing.

Anything stand out?

SPEAKER_00: Well, funny the weird thing about people is sometimes it's the hardest things are the most memorable.

And driving across the desert, I was supposed to take a train across and I missed a train.

There wasn't going to be another train for another week.

So we joined up with some other guys and we rode across.

It was about four or five hundred miles, and it took me the best part of it took me over a week, about eight, nine days.

In fact, the next week's train actually beat us to it.

But um you know some days we would be traveling for digging and pushing and riding for all day and maybe cover ten miles through the sand.

It was so so difficult.

Other days you'd maybe do a hundred miles in the hard packed sand.

But looking back, it was one of the most memorable times because you were driving through the desert in the middle of nowhere, following the Nile, completely sort of back to basics, back to nature, looking at the stars every night.

And thinking back it was it was a wonderful time.

But I wouldn't want to do it again, you know.

Certainly getting to South Africa was uh it was quite a feat in those days, um, because it was with sanctions, it was pretty much cut off from the world.

So it was it was sort of breaking through the the bar various political barriers and physical barriers as well.

But South Africa enjoyed South Africa g the feeling of of completing that challenge, I suppose, you know.

But yeah, there was other times the Tanzanian army had had ousted him, but there wasn't a government set up yet, so there was a curfew every night, uh there was child soldiers running around with AK-47, so it was it was a pretty scary place to be.

It was probably one of the most scary places.

Go up down to Cape Town, which as I said was a it was a it was a feeling of relation getting there, but it was it was kind of short-lived because one thing about a journey is sort of realized that it wasn't really traveling to go there for any particular reason.

So when we got there, that was the end of the journey, you know, it's nearly a disappointment then because you know when you're enjoying a journey as a day-to-day life, it's nearly a disappointment when the journey's over because that's the end of that trip gone, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

That makes total sense.

Now, what happened when when you did reach the end?

I mean, what happened then?

How did you did you go back home?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you know, it was uh it was hard to get out of South Africa, but I managed to get a job on a yacht, sailing yacht, and a yacht race coming back to Europe, which is a sort of predecessor of the like Silvio Ocean race, which are it's like a Formula One of yacht racing.

But in those days I was able to talk my way onto the boat with a bit of dinghy sailing experience.

So after crossing Africa on a motorbike, I found myself in the middle of a yacht race coming up the south and north Atlantic.

So um call that lucky or bad lucky, but uh it was quite an adventure as well in its own right, because the rudder broke off at one stage and we ended up having to stop in a little island in the middle of the Atlantic and get that fixed.

But it was at that stage it was traveling for the sake of traveling, as I said, really enjoying it.

And then I got the the ship the sponsors of the uh race shipped the bike to the States.

So I picked it up in a cut uh three months later and rode up to uh Seattle and then Vancouver across Canada and then down through down the east seaboard, stopped in North Carolina for a couple of months to replenish, got a job to replenish a wallet there and really enjoyed the States.

SPEAKER_01: Um Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

So going through all of you know Africa, uh it wasn't enough.

Now you're like, we need a new continent to explore.

And so you I mean you act like you act like it's a new neighborhood.

No, it's a whole nother continent.

SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's why I've called the book going the wrong way.

Which is the story of my life, just basically.

But yeah, it was made me realize that um traveling's about the journey, not about the destination.

So I just wanted to keep the journey going as long as I could.

My parents by this stage were going up the walls wondering what I was doing, you know.

But when you're young, or you're 21, 22, you think you're invincible that nothing can stop you and you can do anything, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, now so when you're traveling through America and stuff, like what time frame was that?

SPEAKER_00: I think I spent about six months in the States on and off.

So I really enjoyed America.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Got into lifestyle and it was hard to it was actually hard to to get back on the road after that because I wanted to go to South America at that stage and just complete that side of the continent.

But it was hard work getting going uh after so getting a bit soft with easy lifetime style.

But yeah, headed down to South America through Florida, it's down to Texas and down to Central America.

I was running out of money, running out of motivation, I suppose, as well.

It sort of covered as you said, why why are you doing this?

I was starting to wonder why I was doing it to this myself.

But um so yeah, we got as far as Bolivia and I caught hepatitis and had to shack up in a hotel for a while, ran out of money, and that was basically I had to make my I was hoping to get the Terra del Tego down the bottom, but I cut it short and went to Buenos Aires to and Argentina and shipped on from there.

So I success.

Left for Australia and ended up in Argentina a year and a half later.

SPEAKER_03: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: Uh but one of the hardest things probably was actually finances because uh the trip should have taken about four to six months.

I had about thousand pounds then saved up probably equivalent to about five thousand dollars now, but I had to make that last for a year and a half, so we can imagine it was pretty tight going at that stage of living like a living sleeping at the side of the road and that sort of thing.

So that was one of the main issues, I suppose, of money.

But uh I suppose uh what I did then at Park, I started writing a book about the about the trip, and then somebody else wrote a book about something similar, and I I just gave up putting my papers away for a long time and uh got on with normal life for 40 years.

SPEAKER_01: Okay, so what I'm kind of curious about though is once you finished this and in you you went back home.

Did you go back to your your hometown?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I went back to Belfast and uh at a job in the family business.

Um and sort of motorbikes and traveling and was sort of overdosed to them at that stage, so I was happy enough staying at home with that stage for a while.

So I got part of the family business and developed that into a uh property company and it diverted uh into some several different sort of directions over the years.

It was very successful.

I think a lot of the lessons I learned when I was traveling came in useful uh about motivating myself and persevering with difficult situations, sort of made me the harder individual to to go through life to meet up meet with life's trials and tribulations.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, you know, what what I was wondering was after such a long time being on the go, always experiencing new things, I had kind of wondered if it was hard for you to transition back into quote unquote normal life again.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was difficult at the time.

I think it was sort of maybe suffering from PSTD, whatever you call it, maybe but because you're sort of you know, you're living on your own, traveling on your own.

Every day is different, every day's another stress, another uh you wake up every morning in a different place aside the road or some doll's house.

You really don't know what's gonna happen the next day, which is part of the excitement of it.

But after a year and a half of it, certainly it was feeling pretty drained.

And then going back to normal life, the same thing happens every day in groundhog day to an extent in any job.

Uh it was difficult to motivate myself for a while, but uh I think I did it by bought a house, renovated a dad, just got stuck into work as a challenge and used my energies in that sort of direction rather than traveling.

But I had to make a definite decision, doesn't I'm gonna you know, it's gonna be difficult.

I'm gonna have to keep get my knuckle down and keep my head down and concentrate on this and gonna succeed.

Otherwise I have met up with other people since then who've who've had found it uh practically impossible to settle down after a trip like that and have had negative implications from it, you know.

Yeah.

Never quite settled back into normal life as such.

SPEAKER_01: So you though, you settled back down until 42 years later, and then you got the itch again, huh?

How did this come about that 42 years later, like, let's give it another go?

SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, funny enough, there's a guy called Ian McGregor who's done a couple of motorbike trips around the world.

Maybe we heard of him as uh in Star Wars and a few other movies.

SPEAKER_01: I okay okay, so real quick, I'm gonna let you continue, but I've been trying to think of his name because I watched a documentary with him and another guy on Apple where they did an electric motorcycle from the tip of South America.

That's right.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: He's actually a bit of a motorgozy freak as well, as myself.

I thought, God, this guy's gonna do it in a motigozy, he's gonna have to go down to South America and Multigozy though.

I'm gonna write a book about it.

So I thought, well, I'm gonna write my book first.

Yes.

I mean, Craig could ask the guy who did what he did, uh, but it was a very different trip than mine, being with a bunch of guys and a camera crew and all the rest of the sponsorship.

Very different something on your own.

So I thought, well, I want to get my story out.

So I decided to finally get around to finishing my book 40 years later, which I thought was going to be more difficult than it was because memory fades after a while.

But it was amazing how much you used reading my notes, reading my diaries, my journals, and all came back and what I was thinking and what I was doing when I was 21, 40 years later.

And it actually gave me a much better insight into it, like being able to look back on my young self, as I say, doing those things and meeting those issues and problems and how I got around them.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: With the sort of knowledge I have now, looking back as a wise old aisle, if you like, uh to write the book and give it a different layer, different uh different sort of overview on it.

So it's very much a sort of coming-of-age story rather than just a motorbike trip.

The book was uh came out three years ago and it's been a bestseller on Amazon quite a bit, quite a few months.

It's done remarkably well.

Really pleased with it.

I was never an intellectual at school, at academic particularly.

So I think if there's a story, there's a book in everybody, but if if I can write a book that's a success and a bestseller, uh just about anybody can, you know.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: And one of the great things about technology is the e books and audiobooks and uh the Amazon.

system that you can actually sit in Belfast, write a book and get it, be selling it, you know, the States is one of my biggest markets.

Australia is one of the you know selling as many books in Australia as I am in the UK.

So it's amazing how small the world's got from that point of view.

But yeah, so um one of my mates said, well you wrote you never actually got to Australia so why not give it another go?

So I still had the same old motorbike sitting in my garage in the store.

So I thought well I'm gonna do it might as well do it in the same bike.

So I have a family and a job self-employed but still have obligations.

So we decided to do it two weeks on and leave the bike where we were and flew back fly back and back to work and fly out again two, three months time and do it over stages like that.

So it took me a year and a half different went to Athens and then to Israel and back to Athens again because I couldn't get out of Israel into Jordan and then traveled across Turkey into Iran, down to Dubai and then left the bikes in Dubai again, up to Iran to Pakistan for another leg.

Then the final leg was to uh Pakistan across India to Nepal where I flew the bike to Australia last last March just so it was finally making a triumphant journey down the east coast of Australia after took me 43 years to get there.

On a bike in myself at the combined age of 109 so it's going to be some sort of record break there.

And then so yeah I'm not that fast to ride it but I get there in the end.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Wow wow wow that is incredible.

So now though I mean we're talking we're talking a lot older when you make this ride.

How was it compared to your younger self just the physical toll?

SPEAKER_00: Well physically it was fairly um I mean when I was younger I was able to ride all day and do 500 miles and then go out and party all night.

Yes now when I rode all day find a nice hotel, go to bed, have a nice dinner and throw a little we ball in a nice comfortable bed whereas before it was on the side of the road or somewhere.

So uh it was nice to have it was certainly nice to have a bit more money to be able to spoil myself but uh physically it was much more difficult.

Yeah it was tiredness is the main thing and you bad your backs your muscles ache and you're my pensioner officially so certainly made it more difficult from a physical point of view.

Mentally I was probably better prepared because uh I think just looking back I think reading my journals and I realized that most of the days I was actually propping myself.

What was going to happen whereas now wisdom old age older age and knowing what was going to happen and having Google.com and all the sort of modern GPS to find out where you are you never get lost.

You sort of be able to much more knowledgeable about what was going on and the world's a slightly easier place to travel across nowadays but certainly Iran was still difficult.

Pakistan was tricky.

SPEAKER_01: I mean were did you ever have any moments traveling through some of those countries like any scary times you know with with just the state of the world?

SPEAKER_00: Not really to be honest.

I mean Iran was certainly it comes in rural press and they were told what a terrible place it is but uh actually it's one of the friendliest countries I've uh I traveled through um people were lovely very uh open and hospitable and wow totally uh the opposite of what I was expecting you know um a couple of times that you know credit cards don't work with sanctions so you have to use cash and they have their own credit card system in the place the gas stations so you'd have to

sometimes have to say to somebody can you film a tank up and I'll give you cash and a couple of times they'd fill the tank up and say no we'll take your money enjoy our country and go on have a good time you know so friendly and they want you to come back meet your family and have dinner and whatever.

It's it's like all these things you what the governments do and what the people are like is very often completely different.

Pakistan as well was a fantastic experience and to travel through in an armed convoy through countries places parts like Bleachistan where they have um terrorist problem there.

SPEAKER_01: I don't know if just sitting at a back of a landover with a bunch of guys with AK-47s isn't such a big deal when you've you've been brought up in Northern Ireland I suppose during the 70s like going to school a lotadays you know well not quite but yeah yeah well well you know I mean I have to say I'm sure most of these people are like this dude's traveling across the world on a motorcycle he's gotta be crazy don't mess with this dude I mean I suppose one of the interesting things was taking an old bike everybody said I mean when it

took the gone because he crawl away in the first place when it was newish it was only two years old people said you're mad because it's not a Turing bike has been no good for that trip.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah but it proved him wrong then and I was actually able to do the trip again on it 43 years later on the same 45 year old bike.

So but it's interesting just the technology being able to work on something in an old machine pre-digital pre-computerized something happened that went wrong or could fix it, you know most of the things you could it's a reasonable amount of mechanical knowledge you could get it sorted out again yourself.

Whereas the modern cars and modern machines, modern bikes, something goes wrong.

You need to take it to an authorized dealer with the computer program to plug it in and see what tells you what's wrong, you know so sometimes it's nearly an advantage to have another machine like that.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah no I agree completely.

So we're we're all dying to know was Australia worth it?

SPEAKER_00: It certainly was I mean I really enjoyed Australia I got a great welcome from the guys out there been waiting for me for 43 years the slagging as we would say the Australians and it does sort of realize some of the things have happened to you in your life I realized you know if I had if I'd left two weeks earlier I probably would have got through Iran before the revolution I could have got to Australia, got a job, got a girlfriend, got set up there.

Would I ever have come back, you know, would that have with that two week delay leaving Belfast in 79 change my whole the rest of the the direction of my life after that, you know?

It's strange thinking back on things that happened to you along the way that are nothing to do with what you've done or sort of a tangent sets you off on a tangent which completely changes your how you ended up in your life.

Yeah No I'm not done yet I'm hoping to take a bike to across the States and meet up with a few friends there and bring it back that way do a complete circumnavigue navigation on it eventually.

Yeah I mean that poor motorcycle though I mean my goodness that poor thing's like dude can you ever just get an upgrade and let me retire at some point I must admit I didn't think that when it was coming up to Camandu it's Cat Mandu's in the top of not in the top of the Camilla's buttons and there's a road going up which is quite steep and it was a dark track and there's trucks sand and dust everywhere and the bike wasn't going well and I was having to slip the clutch and rev the the guts out of it to

get up the hill and I thought this poor bike must be cursing me one of the way after 43 years it's still treating me like a dog and you're doing the sort of things you should never mostly guys the mons are sitting in the garage polished with about 10,000 miles in them at the most those minds get 75 and it's been dragged across the world twice, you know there's a person who would never talk to me again it's going, listen old man, I'm old too.

SPEAKER_01: What are we doing man?

So this feeling guilty the whole time oh my gosh that is so funny.

So talk to me a little bit more about your book as far as for somebody who's listening to you enthralled enough with your story wants to learn more tell me a little bit about the book.

What can they expect from it?

SPEAKER_00: Well I suppose I started writing the book as a travel journey you know made 40 years ago and I realized I started writing it I hadn't got a name at that stage and going the wrong way was obviously fitting because of as I say I went to the wrong continent uh did numerous things the wrong way along the journey and got through it by looking by by hook and by crook.

But I realized that I'd gone the wrong way quite a few times in my life and got a lot of pleasure from doing that.

So traveling the road less traveled if you like instead of going the easy way, going the hard way and in business and in my private life and different things I've done obviously been a trait of mine to to to go the wrong way in different occasions, different times in my life and did a different way.

But it's what's given me a lot of pleasure and a lot of satisfaction from different challenges I've done.

You know, you take the extreme you always take a jump of jet or to to Australia she'll get there but you won't get any uh satisfaction out of it.

You've just been sitting there it'll be quite you're just you're just getting fed and watered the whole way you so you you you will enjoy you might enjoy the trip but you won't get any satisfaction out of doing it in the more difficult way you I think I'm a bit demented somehow that I actually make things make life difficult for myself along the way.

Yeah but I think you it made me realize that by doing things make making life a bit more difficult for yourself and doing it in a more difficult way you will get much more out of life.

The world these days is very health and safety conscious so you have to do yeah we're hammered into as to take don't take any risks, don't go too fast, don't do anything you shouldn't be doing in the last uh 30-40 years it's become more and more like that.

Sometimes by taking the risk and doing something off the uh beaten track you can get much more from it.

But don't be coming up back to me and gurning if you hurt yourself along the way I'm taking no responsibility for you.

If you do anything that don't don't do what I say but do what I this that's what I do.

But um no it's made me realize it's um as I said there's more to life than just following the following the rules and the regulations and people are should be a bit more individual in what they do sometimes I think.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Yeah I love it.

I love it.

Man dude you are exactly what I thought you were going to be this awesome guy who's done these incredible things yet you're so humble you're so chill you act like it's no big deal to just travel across the world on a motorcycle twice going wrong directions and loving every minute of it.

Well once it's careless twice it's stupid yeah but uh but where is the best place for somebody to to find your book at well my website's Chris Donaldson Dollworld but probably the best way is on Amazon a company that we we love and we hate in the same measure because they're taking over the world but we can't do without them but um it's on audiobook it's on Kindle it's on Hartback it's on paperback so it's it's amazing the technology that they have that you can do this.

SPEAKER_00: But uh that's probably Amazon's probably the best place to get it going the wrong way by Chris Donaldson.

SPEAKER_01: Amazing amazing Chris last question for you through all of these experiences that you've had whether it was traveling the world whether it was just being at home when you share the story in your book or hear the podcast what's the theme that you want somebody to come away with like why what is your reason why for doing this?

SPEAKER_00: Pretty selfishly I suppose you do something like that, you do it for yourself.

Lucky to have a very understanding wife and very patient with me to let me do these things.

But I suppose uh yeah you know if if the original trip was a coming of age story this trip has been a coming of old age story and my main thing with people of my age in the 60s late middle sixties seventies whatever is get off your ass and go out and do it because generally you can do what you did when you were 21.

You just have to do it a bit slower or have a bit more rest afterwards.

But it's amazing what you can do if you put your mind to it and there's more got to be more life than people r retiring from 40 years of working life and ending up digging the garden and playing golf twice a week get a motorbike or get a car get whatever it is you want to do and go and do it.

Don't just sit and talk about it.

SPEAKER_01: Chris dude listen to you just do it you just need to pack some advil an ice pack and a heating pad because you're gonna be a little bit sore and get out there and ride the bike across the Sahara and do the thing you know where a bike can go.

Yeah I love it dude I love it.

Chris man you have made my day 110% over thank you for being here on the podcast awesome awesome well for you listening today I can only hope that you are smiling as big as I am still kind of chuckling at what a crazy awesome guy Chris Donaldson is.

And do yourself a favor please check out today's show notes grab a link to get a copy of his book today.

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