Trip Epilogue

Alright. So this page here is completely dedicated to what we think about the trip after we have finished it. It is chuck full of things we wish we had done differently. There is a chart of all our stuff rating how useful it was. I think recapping on the trip will be useful for all of you wanting to do the TAT or something like it.

Conclusions to things I left hanging in the trip:

• We never were able to get the GPS to talk to my headset. It never said anything when we were on the trail anyway so it wasn't much of an issue usually.
• The first day was the hottest part of the entire trip. Things came close, but not like they did in that traffic jam.

After the return:

The first thing I noticed about being home was the bed. Sleeping in your own bed is wonderful. You do not realize how much you like your bed until you do not use it for a long time. The first night I got back I slept until 1 PM the next day. Let it be known that I had been awake for around a full 24 hour period due to the flights home. I was about to get up sometime in the morning and fell back asleep in the process. You need a few days after the trip to recover.

I can't shake how unreal everything feels. I felt like this as we left for about the first week on the trip too. I mean you take everything in just like normal, but it just doesn't feel real. It is like your are watching a movie. I think this must be what a tree feels like when it is transplanted.

I drove a vehicle that wasn't a motorcycle for the first time in weeks. It is a standard stick shift. At first I pulled out the driveway like normal. When I got on the road I subconsciously started swerving potholes and sticks. The problem is I am now a lot wider than a motorcycle. Swerving puts me right in the way of the other vehicles. I have to get used to hitting potholes again. I also noticed how heavy the vehicle feels and how slowly it accelerates. I am afraid to suddenly change speed in a way that may make me fall over despite having four wheels. Shifting the stick feels slow and cumbersome to using a toe shift. Long story short, everything feels foreign. It is amazing how different it feels. I asked Dad once he had driven again what he thought. He said it felt like driving a barge.

Now that we have covered the after effects of the trip and have had a little time to reflect I think it is fitting that I write about what we wish we had done differently on the trip. The first and most obvious thing is that we should have never camped. Sure, it is a really cool way to see the trail. It is true that there is nothing like sleeping in a tent. However, sleeping in a tent often does not give you a very good nights sleep. Allow me to explain. Dad and I both usually slept the whole night through. However, it was not a very deep sleep. You do not get much recovery out of the sleep. We got the same same quantity of sleep with less quality. If there is anything you need just as much as food and water on this trip it would be some recovery in your sleep. As a result we felt tired and sore after sleeping in the tent. Every time we stayed in a hotel we noticed that we felt refreshed and normal. On top of that, not taking a tent would make the trip much more enjoyable at the base level. Think about the weight factor. The tent may only weigh about 5 pounds. However, the cooking supplies, food, and sleeping materials really add up the weight and take up a lot of space. We estimate that we could have cut our total carried weight in half by simply not staying in a tent. This loss of weight makes a crazy difference in how responsive your bike is and how much effort you use to ride it. Really the less weight you take the better your bike will feel. We rode the bikes without the weight in Port Orford and were shocked at how easy they were to ride. For those of you who are concerned about the money of all the hotels, think about all the money you will spend on camping equipment. If you look into it chances are that camping will be cheaper but not by much. You can generally find a pretty cheap hotel that has nice accommodations along the way anyway. You can find some really dirt cheap places if you are fine with some lousy hotels. You also have to realize that you may be paying to camp in places like national parks or camp grounds. That means you aren't camping for free. So let me recap here. For camping: A cool view of the stars once in a while, a real grasp of the country at night, and a little bit of money saved. Against camping: A slow and steady decline to exhaustion, a lot of weight and lost space on the bikes, a lesser quality on the feel of your bike.

Secondly, we should have bought very nice boots. Do NOT skimp out on your boots. Get the most expensive boots you can reasonably afford that are waterproof. Wet feet are not an enjoyable time. The riding boots can make your feet hurt anyway.

Be very careful to remember who will be leading most of the trip. The dust will eat you up if you ride in the back. We should have been better prepared for a maelstrom of dust like no other.

It was very difficult to catch back up on sleep after the trip. I found a very effective strategy was to sleep for as long as possible for one day and then maintain a steady sleep schedule after that. Dad struggled with sleep as his work prevented him from ever getting this very lengthy rest.

I have been asked a lot of times if the trip was fun and if I would do it again. The answer to both is "absolutely". Overall it was fantastic. If you are somehow teetering in your decision to take the trip, just go right ahead. I am nearly certain that if you even considered doing something like this then you will enjoy it. Most people look at this trip and and think we are crazy. By even thinking that you might want t do it you already have what you need to make it. Go out, get what you need, and leave. It is even better if you can find another crazy so you can go in a small group. The more time you have to take the trip the better it is going to be.

Below is a chart reviewing each of the items we purchased on the trip. (The horizontal scroll bar is at the bottom of the chart.)

As of this point, I am officially moving on to preparing for the ext trip. There might be some things that overlap with information here on the next trips preparation, but the events of this epilogue are over. Head on out to the link titled Tale of GEAR to continue on. If you want to pick up right where this left off, go to the page underneath the Tale of GEAR tab labeled "TAT-GEAR Transition".

:)