8 Great Motorcycle Books That Will Ignite Your Wanderlust
These 8 books, most true stories of famous motorcycle rides, will inspire you to hit the road or at least look at in a different way. Usually you hear a lot about where to go and less about how to get there – aside from getting there cheap and quickly. You might not often think about motorcycles as anything more than for local travel but those two wheels and a motor can reconnect you with the joy – and act – of traveling.
Jupiter’s Travels
Ted Simon rode around the world on a Triumph motorcycle during the early 1970s and wrote one of the best travel books ever. Jupiter’s Travels is his account of the trip, 78,000 miles over 45 countries. Before the trip Simon was already writing as a journalist and Jupiter’s Travels flows on every page. In 2001, when he was 70 years old, Simon took the trip again – a similar route on motorcycle – and wrote Dreaming Of Jupiter. His observations from the first trip to the second one 30 years later are truly fascinating.
Long Way Round
One of my favorite travel books, this is a motorcycle trip around the world by two actors. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, inspired by Jupiter’s Travels, set off on their BMW bikes and head from London to New York. Long Way Round is a series of journal entries written separately by the pair and recounts an adventure with some interesting characters along the way (particularly in Ukraine). It’s not deep writing but very raw and gives you a sense for the joys of the long open road.
- There’s also a Long Way Round DVD that’s fun to watch after reading. (Who doesn’t like seeing what people described in books really look like?) Most of the footage is shot on cameras placed in the bike helmets and small hand held cameras.
The Motorcycle Diaries
The trip of Ernesto ‘Che” Guevara and Alberto Granada in South America is a book (and subsequent film) which is one of the most common mentioned when talking about travel. With The Motorcycle Diaries, as well as the other books mentioned, you begin to realize the road changes the riders in a way that travel by plane or train does not. The motorcycle cannot be separated metaphysically from the traveler and the trip is where Guevara transformed into Che. The Motorcycle Diaries is a powerful read and inspirational tale.
A Few More Great Motorcycle Travel Books
- One Man Caravan – Robert Fulton goes around the world by motorbike…in 1932.
- The Rugged Road – Two women, Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron, with a motorcycle and towing a trailer go from London to Cape Town in 1935.
- The Longest Ride – 10 years, 500,000 miles, 1 Argentinean named Emilio Scotto has one hell of a ride.
Two Books To Read If You’re Considering Your Own Motorcycle Adventure
You’ve been inspired by the trips in these books and found out why you need to take a motorcycle road trip at least once in your life. These are two books you can read if you’re considering taking your own trip (writing your own book optional).
- Sahara Overland, 2nd Edition: A Route and Planning Guide – Specific to riding across 9 countries, including Morocco, Algeria, Niger, and Chad.
- Adventure Motorcycling Handbook – You’ll need to know how to maintain, repair, and improvise with your motorcycle.
Ever since reading these books, in particular Long Way Round, I’ve made an RTW trip on motorcycle one of my dreams and life goals. These books will help you ignite your wanderlust and remind you of the joys of actually traveling. There are so many things you miss when moving by plane, car, or train that you can still reconnect with by getting closer to the road.
[photos by: Pez King, THEMACGIRL*, psd]
A Chat With Roger Middleton About RoomAtlas, Hotel Booking Google Maps Mashup
Roger Middleton is one of the brains behind RoomAtlas, a very neat Google Maps mashup I think many of you will find useful. Roger was kind enough to set aside some time to answer some questions about how and why RoomAtlas might be part of your next hotel booking plans.
What is RoomAtlas?
RoomAtlas is the easiest way to find and book the right hotel, in the right location.
We plot 53,000 hotels on Google Maps, with color-coded markers showing live room prices and availability. To make the traveller’s life easier, we’ve built in everything needed to make the right choice – TripAdvisor reviews, Wikipedia landmarks, Google Street View, and more.
All the information you need to find the right hotel, all in one place.
How is RoomAtlas different than other online hotel locators?
We’re all about location: our interactive map shows hotels on the beach, near the shops or by the airport. We don’t force you to complete a form before seeing hotels, and we bring all the extra information (reviews, landmarks, photos) you might need under one roof.
Our interactive map is great for leisure travelers, and even better for business travelers – since they can enter the street address they’re visiting and view all nearby hotels. No more discovering the hotel you’ve booked is the other end of town from your office or conference.
Where did the idea for RoomAtlas come from?
We felt the standard, linear hotel booking process (completing a series of drop downs, leading to a list of hotels) could be improved.
There’s a huge amount of rich information out there, but until now it’s been scattered across the web. One might start with Expedia, then check location on Google Maps, TripAdvisor for reviews, Wikipedia for information about the area, Street View for a walk down the street… choosing the right hotel can be a time-consuming business!
We wanted our site to make it quicker and easier, by bringing all those information sources together. Instead of pages of results, we show the full range on Google Maps – and instead of our users consulting multiple other sites, we’ve built them in to RoomAtlas.
Where does RoomAtlas pull its data from?
We have over 53,000 hotels on our map, drawn from Expedia and Hotels.com. They provide us with live prices and availability, and handle bookings for peace of mind. There’s no premium for booking via RoomAtlas.
What’s your favorite single feature of RoomAtlas?
Hard to choose, but we think our color-coded hotel markers are pretty cool. They show live prices, right in the marker, and only appear on the map if the hotel is available for the user’s chosen dates. We have pins for low, medium and high priced hotels (with thresholds set by the area), and an orange pin for special offers.
When we saw them scattered across the map for the right time, we knew we had something our users would find useful.
Do you have any other upcoming projects or updates to RoomAtlas in the works?
We’re always working on new additions to RoomAtlas and have a ton of exciting projects under way, including a mobile app – watch our blog for new announcements!
We’ve actually just launched a new feature to allow users to create their own custom hotel maps, for events like conferences, sports events and weddings. They can then send these out to attendees, with a pin at the location of the event – and all available surrounding hotels shown on the map (e.g. http://www.roomatlas.com/e3expo). We’re pretty excited to see what our users do with that.
You can check out RoomAtlas for free. I’m also excited to tell you that Roger will be getting geeky with me tomorrow and answering some questions as to how RoomAtlas works over on the Tech Guide For Travel.
Did You Keep Your Travel Resolutions For 2009?
At the beginning of 2009 I took at look at some travel resolutions that we could all stand to make at one level or another. Personally, I know not cutting it so last minute was a goal I had set for myself. All I was really able to accomplish was perfecting being late to an art. I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked right on to a plane as they were shutting the gate doors behind me this past year. Leaving that behind I’ve resolved to take more pictures and also set a number of travel blogging goals.
What I’d like to hear from you is, did you keep your travel resolutions for 2009?
Perhaps you never made any or have just set some for 2010. Feel free to share your most important travel resolutions and how you fared. Announcing them might make them easier to keep or encourage others with their goals. I’ll be sharing some of these in a post later on next week and your contributions are invaluable.
[photo by: mare.bowe]
What Is An RTW?
You may have come across the acronym “RTW” lately (especially if you’ve been reading travel blogs) and one of my predictions for 2010 was that you’d see many more airline RTW options and plans. For those of you who may not know exactly what an RTW is or the culture behind it I’d like to introduce you to the three letters RTW.
What Is An RTW?
Simply put, RTW stands for round-the-world and in the travel community it usually means a trip around the world. The length and route of these trips vary quite a bit, with the average being a year trip across destinations in 3-6 continents (sorry Antarctica).
RTWers
People who travel around the world for a year or so can be considered RTWers when there is a planned beginning and end to the trip. There are many others who travel indefinitely, but typically RTWers are those who’ve taken a career break, purchased a round-world-ticket (many airlines offer them), and set off using savings or working from the road to pay for the trip.
- RTW Tickets can range from $2,000-$5,000 dollars using an RTW trip planner.
- AirTreks has an excellent RTW trip planner.
- Many RTWers don’t permanently leave their jobs. Briefcase To Backpack is an excellent resource if you’re contemplating a career break.
Travelers Currently On RTW Trips
For those of you who are curious about RTWers you can catch some of them mid-trip by checking out the following blogs written by travelers on RTW trips.
- A Travel Around The World
- Dan’s Adventure
- Manali + Terry
- One Giant Step
- Saben and Lin
- Seat Of Our Pants
- Sending Postcards
- She’s In Love With The World
- The Road Forks
No Set Definition
RTW doesn’t really have a set meaning, although there is a general idea around it. I suspect the phrase will find itself in the broader lexicon eventually as more people take RTW trips in the coming years.
Some RTWers only travel for few months, focus on a particular part of the world, or break the trip up into segments. Others start off on a RTW and never make their way back and just keep traveling.
Are You A Past, Present, Or Future RTWer?
It would be great to hear from those of you who’ve had the RTW experience as it’s unique to everyone. Your comments would help explain the concept of “RTW” much better than I alone and perhaps be encouraging to those who didn’t know such things existed (or that so many people do travel around the world). If you still don’t think it’s possible or how to go about it, my eBook Overcoming the 7 Major Obstacles to Traveling The World can teach you how.
[photos by: Mike Mertz, Al_HikesAZ, Oldtasty]
